Except that isn't true... Sony had already announced the removal of OtherOS from the PS3 Slim before Geohot started trying to break the hypervisor.

Aug 2009 OtherOS removed from PS3 Slim
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS

'End of 2009' Geohot begins to look for exploits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz

It is true that Sony removed it from existing PS3 Fats after that, but the damage was already done. When your PS3 breaks, and you need a new one, the Slim is the only style available now, unless you accept that people should be forced to go to Ebay to buy PS3 Fats for every increasing prices as supply dwindles.

Profit maximization isn't necessarily the problem IMO. One issue is that there are externalities that are not factored into the cost of production, such as the impact of pollution or disposal. Say you had two LCD monitors, one using a lot of arsenic and mercury that cost $100, and another that used less damaging materials for $200. If the externalities were factored in, then true cost of the monitors that the consumer might pay could be $300 for the first, and $250 for the second.

The other main issue, somewhat releated to externalities, I would call 'incomplete information for the imperfect consumers'. If the consumer can't know the mercury/arsenic content in an LCD, then they can't make a real choice. If they don't have the education to even understand why mercury/arsenic would be bad, that is another problem. Or if they don't have the ability to know the technical aspects of why one heart strent is better/more expensive than another, they can't make an optimal decision.

But our lives are littered with these non-optimal decisions. And that is why the government has stepped in to force certain industries/products to incorporate those externalities, or established standards and testing to ensure that the quality of the product is as described when the consumer is unable to determine this themselves.

If you can think of some other way besides government to include these obvious economic factors into the actual costs of products, then feel free to pass that along. Though I would guess it would end up looking like government in the end.

I am exaggerating to some extent on the 'throwing a fit' aspect too. It just was an issue that got thrown in my lap with a 'make it work' directive, and there wasn't anything I could really do about it.

Lol, I'm not 'skirting close to anything'. If anything I am saying that agencies or people that perform the agency function at companies are clueless. I mean seriously, who tries to upload a 750MB Pro Res clip to Facebook and then throws a fit when it doesn't work, and takes 2 days to manage getting a more appropriate format despite the fact that FCP is made by their own company? Oh right...they do.

I am sure the editor who made the clip was very capable, despite the Gleeful subject matter, but that doesn't mean the people upstream are, or even understand what a codec is.

Before that it was people trying to upload Apple Intermediate Codec vids for use on the web. 'But it is a MOV...it should just work!'

The issue is that agencies and their creative teams aren't on the same page. Not too long ago, I was asked why my video processing code wouldn't work with iCompany's video. I asked for the video they were trying to upload, and it was a 750MB Pro Res two minute clip for a pep-club musical tv show. Trying to explain to iCompany that their own Pro Res format was only supported in their program and that they needed to get us a more standards compliant version was a two day ordeal.

Accidentally, probably not. But did the programmer follow good development practices? Yes. In general, programmers are taught to store all inputs. Imagine the following scenario: The programmer DIDN'T log anything (even the wifi data with personal info stripped), and a problem was found with the processing algorithm. Do you think the programmer would have kept his job if the only solution was to send out the trucks again and redrive the routes? The natural response by a programmer is to log the incoming data to avoid that scenario.

It doesn't have to be a conspiracy. It is probably just something that didn't come up in review/planning and the programmer didn't realize it was sensitive since it was just radio data.

A number of people have mentioned the data, etc. But a lot of it has to do with managing and configuring your apps...I have 3 computers I use regularly and two others less so, and it is a serious pain in the ass keeping all of my settings and apps up to date across them. Enough so, that I use RDP/VNC type programs so that I only really have to maintain one copy of most of my apps (much less deal with licensing). Not saying Chrome OS solves all of these problems, or even any of them, but this is a good reason why moving things to the cloud can be considered as progress: Spending more time working with your data, rather than working on the programs that work on your data.

If at any time, I could:

* trade in my phone for another phone one at no monetary cost
* switch to any carrier at any time with no monetary cost
* Replace all of the apps I had previously purchased on my phone with no monetary loss

Maybe then I could agree with you. But in the real world, there are financial barriers to changing phones. Maybe your argument makes sense if we were talking about iPod's, but they don't hold with cell phones.

An amendment can also be passed at the state level, avoiding Congress altogether.

I can agree with most of that when it comes to the bulk of the Creative Suite, but since the purchase of Macromedia, Adobe has done some new good things, like Flex, Flash Catalyst, AS3 and the ability to load PSD's into Flash (the app not the plugin).

I still say they should open source Flash (whatever the license, just let people help secure it) since it has become so ubiquitous and suffers from the frequent security issues.

You are missing the point. The point is that it is entirely possibly to create good-performing, good-ui apps using Flash for mobile. It is also possible to create poor-performing apps for mobile, or try to run apps that weren't designed for mobile with mixed results. (Using apps here generically for flash embeds or app store standalone.) But the same can be said for ANY technology, and certainly 'HTML5' (preumably javascript combined with the canvas tag) fares much worse. But for Steve Jobs to say that even good-performing, good-ui apps should be banned from Apple devices just to prevent the possibility of the bad ones, is hubris.

I have suggested that Apple could have avoided all of this mess (bad PR) by simply adding a warning for apps that use 3rd party toolkits, and possible segregating them in the app store or with a setting to hide them by default.

Most likely this is about Android versus "Android by Google" being labeled on the phone. One is pretty much free to do anything with, the other is if you agree to conform to some additional requirements, you can put the Google label on your phone. If Motorola decides that they want the Google label, then yes they have some restrictions,. If they opt out of the Google label, then they can do whatever they want. Part of this is an attempt to force the carriers to not cripple the phones too much if they decide to leverage the Google brand, though obviously there are other benefits to Google.

Yes, in this specific case of 9 lines of code that aren't doing anything with many outside libraries, etc., it may be possible to read the documentation, and assuming the documentation is correct, rely on the default behavior. That is very rarely the case however.

However when I have come across a particular problem that is resolved by being thorough, and ensuring things are initialized, my tendency is to remember that and keep doing it in the future, which is the case for srand/rand.

Just sharing my story.

I thought the same thing, until I ran across a situation in ruby's Passenger, where they were initializing the srand with time or something similar, but of course all the servers were restarted at the same time. This then caused my UUID's to collide in another library because we had removed a 'superflous' srand in our code that was masking the problem.

Just saying you don't always know what the code that isn't yours is doing, so it is probably a good idea to assume it isn't done and do it explicitly.

You obviously haven't seen the RedLetterMedia reviews then, which explain in excruciatingly funny detail why the prequels are so awful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfBhi6qqFLA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI