My family and I were looking to move recently. Of course, we have to print out our credit reports. It used to be nice years ago when Yahoo had a service where you could easily get all 3 in just a few mins. But I'm sure since that was actually useful in real life, someone had to end it. So now, you have to log into the big 3 separately and request your 'free' report.

Of course, it's not 'free' since there's quite a bit of time involved in just getting it. You have a right by law to get this information once a year, but in order to do so, you have to put in your credit card. Red flag right there. This 'entitles' you to a free month of credit 'protection'.

After your done with your 'free' month, you have to call and cancel or else they'll charge you. Yup, you're right, no easy way to do that, no cancel account link or button to click - you gotta get on a phone and do an old school call. To keep the good times rolling, once you're actually off hold and connected to someone, it's some call center in another country. Mine happened to be India. What ensued next was back and forth on just getting the fucking thing canceled. There were many "just a moment" pauses and even a few upsells. I had to tell the guy 3 times I want to cancel. Just click the cancel button in your crappy web app.

30 mins later, I was off the phone. This company and the people that work for it are trash, plain and simple. They are a scourge on society and a drain on humanity. And along with banking (and warring I guess), credit 'scoring' and manipulation has to be one of the worst human endeavors ever. I don't understand how these people sleep at night and I'm not surprised they're selling people's info to whomever will pay.

Apple is not the only company doing this. Google does it was well.

Nice title. Maybe it alludes to you being able to tell the future?

No one is saying Apple will last forever. Nokia blew it because they made their money on things that were not the next generation. No one has (yet) out next-gen'd Apple, so they still make the most money.

Regardless of their success over the years, they've been celebrated by their users (who constitute their actual sales), and pounded down by the tech pundits and their detractors (who are none of their sales). In the end, they still have the highest market cap in the world and are the most profitable handset maker. No one is claiming gold is 'innovating', but people want it. For the local stores I checked, they all said it sold out in the first hour - all sizes. I don't see how this is a gimmick. My wife wanted a gold one and she wasn't 'tricked' into liking it.

If you step back from the hype and punditry (which you don't seem to be able to), the reasons Apple's been on such a tear is because people love their products. They make things that are not based on the lowest, cheapest crap, but quality with thought behind it. It's not about tech specs and everyone at this point is still playing catch up. Especially Nokia.

Yah, I totally agree. I think this will be a mostly Google thing and maybe extreme nerds. Sorta like how the Segway was gonna take over the world and it never did. I already wear glasses and I don't necessarily want some thick rimmed things with a hud messing w/any of my vision. My goal with wearing 'real' glasses is to have the frames as lightweight as possible and as little metal as possible - glass only almost. And, unfortunately, I have 2 prescriptions - 1 for close, 1 for distance. So I'd have to have 2 pair of Google glasses (I'm sure they'd love that)? Now if I could get a pair that could adjust the light based on what I'm focusing on, then *that* would be cool.

I just can't see 'everyone' wearing these in 5 years. I think it's gonna be another Google project (like wave) that was so 'revolutionary' and then just quietly went away. It's not there yet and too nerdy for the mass population.

You can't say this for sure. There are plenty people working on longevity issues. In fact, this issue is not just about possibly working longer, but also has huge social implications (do you stay married for over 100 years for example) and life experience (if you retire at 75, do you vacation for 50 years and if so, where?).

The body is just (a real complicated) machine. Like Aubrey De Gray says, it's only a matter of maintenance and trying to figure out how the maintenance will work. Once we start living longer, social security will not work, drugs will be astronomically priced (some would say they already are), and so we'll probably have many 'careers' and why not? Einstein didn't stop 'working' when he turned 65.

Personally, I have no doubt this sort of thing is coming and I'm looking forward to it. Just the advancement in technology will be worth seeing, not to mention space exploration and other ways humans will progress in the future.

Riiiight.... I'm not gonna argue os here, just hardware.

So, let's back up a bit here. What did 'smartphones' look like before the iPhone? Various screen sizes, clunky thinkness/form factor and a alpha numeric keyboard of some sort. We all know history, iPhone comes along, all touch based and it sets the precedent for things to come. Apple invented that. No one else did, especially not Samsung.

Then the iPod Touch follows about 8 months after. Note around this time, if you search everywhere on the web, for Samsung's tablets or anyone else's (like Archos, etc) all look like something between a Sony PSP and a Nokia 770. Yes, all rectangle, but just not the Apple glass touchscreen with a black bezel and metal band around the edge.

Now, few years later, Apple extrapolates out the form of *their* invention for a natural progression, the iPad. Somewhere in between all this, patents are filed for how the device looks and functions. Note: form + function == *design*! Apple purposefully designed their device. Their physical thing. They didn't copy a HP TabletPC or Sony Ericsson or Nokia. They made their own design and they popularized it and people loved it. Go back to 2010 and look at the Samsung Vibrant. Glass front, no keyboard, black bezel, chrome border. Hmm, I've seen that before somewhere in 2007.. Galaxy Tab, same thing.

Now, let's look at the packaging of a Galaxy Tab. White box, picture of device on it. Gee, where have I seen that? Open it up, same unpacking experience as the iPad/iPhone - device up front, other stuff underneath. Btw, Apple patented their packaging - all the way back in 2007! And speaking of packaging, even Samsung's USB charger adapters look like Apple's, except, get ready for it - they're black and not white. Looking at the USB cable, same. Black not white, but same connectors on both ends.

If you want more evidence of rip off, search around the web a few weeks ago for the picture of the Samsung store. Look hard - pictures of Apple's app store and Safari icons on the wall. That's pretty blatant - even Microsoft doesn't do that (altho they did have a lot of pc ads with Mac laptops, but anyway). After all this, in my mind, it's pretty clear that Samsung would rather copy, on multiple levels, one of the most successful brands out there instead of paving their own way. Plain and simple. They're also damaging the Android ecosphere with all this crap. Android needs to have devices for it that push the envelope, not copy designs years old.

This whole Samsung copying thing goes way deeper than just the 'rectangular touch screen'. It crosses multiple products and up to physical storefront. It is undeniable that it's rip off. Plain and simple. Patents do need to be reformed, but this is not an example of it in my mind as it has nothing to do with software, where the real ridiculous shit is goin on.

I agree with your first part - basically that the American internet social economy is based of the things you've listed. It is sad how many engineers are working at places like FB where the goal is not to make something transformative, but to, yes, sell you ads. What a waste..

Your last part I don't agree with. There are plenty of human transformative technologies and theories to work out outside of the things you mentioned. Just even the small task (speaking in galactic terms) of getting a permanent base/city in earth orbit that civilians can visit for a reasonable price is a worthy endeavor - and that's just in the immediate vicinity. Checkout Project Daedalus ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus) *that's* a worthy endeavor.

If the really wealthy really paid their fair share, I think society would be more at ease because things like health care, education, clean energy, and science would have the funding and would thusly give people more confidence and drive to look past the short term. Sure, the guys from google and fb have created 'value', but a great portion of the effort is misdirected. It's still looking at the little picture and not on the scale of humanity and its place in the universe.

So in my mind, there's plenty to do, there are plenty of options. We've just hit a lull in history where some technology is advancing but the real big stuff (space anything) is languishing. It's more than just the CA economy that's based on this - it's humanity itself. While CA is just a small chunk of rock in the bigger picture, it needs to send a message to these guys that it can't all be about their billion dollar profits that ultimately benefit mark, sergey, larry and friends. If they want to do business in one of the most technologically advanced areas of the world, then they gotta get past their small thinking. It has to be more about the bigger picture and not about figuring out to market and advertise better.

This is true. You can't get elected anymore without corporate contributions. Senators have said they don't read bills because they're too long, Eric Schmidt admitted openly that he was shocked how lobbyists wrote the bills, the Clinton administration and congress repealed Glass-Stiegel, the Bush administration rewrote the bankruptcy laws (among other anti-citizen steps), BP gets a slap on the wrist for the Gulf spill, etc. ALL these issues are pro-corporate, period. In the US it all comes down to money.

US 'democracy' is broken. I wouldn't even call it democracy, more of a corporate plutocracy, really. The only way this can be 'right' again is to enact strict campaign finance reform and kick the lobbyists out of government. But of course, since corporations have the same or more rights as individual citizens, more money at their disposal, and more connections to government, this isn't likely to happen anytime soon, if at all. People could start grass roots groups, but it would take a huge revolution of many tens of millions of people to shake up the system and that's just not gonna happen. People are either too busy just getting by, or too apathetic.

It's a total downer, but the truth sometimes is. Even the tea party people are pawns, dupes. Their main mouthpiece, Glenn Beck, is a multimillionaire. He's got a top book, tv show, etc. But the people that follow him think he's looking after their interests. Uh-huh, right. Same with Obama - healthcare 'reform' basically got gift wrapped for the insurance companies and net neutrality is d.o.a. So much for change...

That said, you can still live a 'decen't life here in the states, but you have to make money, like $150k and up per household. Otherwise, forget it. Forget any sort of healthcare (unless you qualify for Medicaid), forget a decent education, forget owning any property - forget the 'American Dream'...

Jesus, give me a break. So if a company doesn't make the most ugly, cheap ass, garbage, 'hackable' products, then they're toys. Right... You're right, this is no big deal.

The world is not going to end - it's just changing. So what, you're stuck with Java 6 for another year on a Mac while Oracle get's one out. Big deal. You can still run a business with coders on a Mac, using Java - I have friends that are still in business after this 'announcement' (shocker!). This is all just sensationalized bullshit.

Now for toys and trendy gizmos; this is the typical attack/response from people that see every change as a threat instead of an opportunity. They see the downside in everything. Jesus, why live, you're just gonna die from breathing all that car exhaust? No, the latest 'i' devices from Apple are not toys - they're real game changers. Yah, they don't run Java and frankly I'm glad. I did Java development for a long time and while I owed a lot to it, frankly, it was a mess on many levels. J2ME was a frickin joke. Write once, run anywhere never worked and in my mind, was just a marketing scam to get people indoctrinated into the one language to rule them all religion. No, Apple did the right thing with their devices by not using an intermediate languages. Oh noes, I can't create iApps in Ruby!...

There is a future in business apps, but you're right, Apple doesn't care much about those. Why compete with Oracle in a stodgy, old guy world, when you can re-make the computing world for 'everyone else'? Hmmm, as a programmer since I was a kid, I'll take the latter. Most of my day is not comprised of dealing with databases and doubhebag sysadmins, so why would I (and the majority of every other technology user) want to pick an area of software development that dealt with those types?

As for the kids coming up, they're interested, but it's not Apple, Java or Oracle that are making them failures, it's the American educational system. Government does not work anymore. No one can become elected without taking corporate campaign contributions and no one in govt wants to (or can) change that. So you get advertising on school lockers and you get to tread water thanks to a 'stock' donation from Zuckerberg. The conservatives got what they wanted and the rest of us didn't give a shit about it. So that's what kids nowadays face.

That being said, if you put a kid in front of a Linux box with a Java gui into an Oracle dabase and an iPad, 100% of the time the kid is gonna choose the iPad. Why wouldn't they? They're KIDS! They're not grown ups who have given up on everything and now just accept their paycheck on the way to the grave. They still have imagination, they're still young, they still have life before them - they have not yet been told no a million times. So to me, it's utterly ridiculous to think kids would want to use anything else other than the 'cool', 'awesome', 'wow' products.

Besides making the coolest shit, Apple also designs some of the best products out there. Talk to any designer (you, know someone who does it for a living) and they'll tell you that Apple is top notch. Compare this to any Linux/Java/Oracle/HP/Microsoft/etc product out there. The latter is all garbage, all cost, no care for the encompassing idea. I love and use Linux on the server - it's great. But why would I want to use a garbage desktop, laptop, phone, or tablet day in and day out? That just seems idiotic to me.

So in conclusion, you're right, this is not a big deal. Apple is blazing a new trail and everyone that doesn't use their tools is pissed off at their success. That's fine because those making the future should not care about those stuck in the past.

Your company should have a real need for a DSCM, otherwise, Mercurial or Git have little value.

Merging/branching can be a little easier in Git vs. Svn. I've used it before on a team and have seen some things become easier; we had a dev working offsite with no access to our repo and we would just email back and forth the code dir every week and at the end of each week, merge in all his changes. However, this was more of a policy 'issue' on our end as I would have preferred not to merge his stuff in in the first place. Git does have some quirky things where it sometimes seems real easy to get your tree out of sync with the master. Then it becomes real fun to try to figure out what is wrong. Plus, hosting a Git server is not trivial. I hated dealing with Gitosis. An Svn server was much easier to setup in my opinion.

I liked Mercurial better than Git. For a Svn user, the commands are more in line on Mercurial. But again, you can get weird sync issues - I think that's just a side effect of a DSCM.

All this being said, I don't care much for DSCM's. If you have a small or medium team, then I honestly see no reason. The whole point of a SCM is a centralized repository. Checking into your local machine, imo, doesn't matter - there's no point. Your drive dies, so does your code. Plus, I want to do less and always having to push/pull to/from the master is an extra step - yah, lazy. Now, if you have a very distributed organization, then maybe a DSCM is valuable. But honestly, it's still hard to argue that it's more useful/valuable than Svn+ssh.

If you look at a lot of public Github projects, there's a lot of small OSS stuff that just needs a home. Github is a great service that found a good niche. But to host private repos, you gotta pay and there are no businesses out there that are gonna host their proprietary code out in the open with Github. No way.

Now, to have the best of all worlds I suggest a great service called SourceRepo. They have good pricing, like $7/mo for 1GB storage and unlimited users. You can create as many repos as you want in the big 3 - Svn, Git, and Mercurial. It's not meant to be social like Github is and I think fits businesses more. I've used their service for a few years now in multiple companies (as well as all my personal projects) and I've never had any problems. They also include (for free) each repo tying into the Redmine wiki and Trac.

Bottom line: thumbs down on Git and Mercurial unless you really, absolutely need a DSCM. 'Committing' code to your local drive with no centralized repo is complete novelty and really serves no purpose. That's where I think devs get sidetracked into thinking that DSCM's are cool - because I can just 'git ci' and I'm good. Wrong.

For those of you that don't remember developing a Brew or J2ME app for a Verizon device, let me refresh your memory.

* $15k submission fee - *non refundable*
* A 2-4 weeks biting your nails period to see if you app 'qualifies'
* If not, bend over, submit $15k again, repeat

Or, bail on Verizon all together.. Which I know many devs who did.

Now, that being said, it's amazing how much the big V is never discussed in regards to all this open/closed stuff. I guess many people just never had to deal with them. They're not the shining white knight that people think they are. Crippled phones, crazy fees for stupid stuff. I dunno, if the iPhone does come out for Verizon, I'd have to really read the contract before I switched. While their cell service is far superior to AT&T (and yes, AT&T is teh crap), their policies are worse.

And right now, it is Verizon, not Google, that controls Android...

I'm over all this geek complexity crap. Yah, I used to compile all my own Linux OS stuff in the past (read: *everything* so I could get the most performant, tailored install), but now it's boring and a waste of my time - I could be out enjoying life or compiling my os; hmmm... GTV reminds me of the same thing - nerd solutions for nerds that wanna screw around with stuff. I watched the IO demo live for the GTV announcement and was mortified. Honestly, that killed 'Google as great' for me. Felt like it was Bill Gates and co on stage - it was like an episode of the 10 stooges. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but you gotta hand it to them - less is usually more (cept for iTunes) when they're designing and making products. While everyone else is going super complex, with ATV you get 1 remote control with the minimal amount of buttons to control it. Just like the Google search box - minimal, to the point, excellent results; when engineering at Google was used to hide the complexity.

What strikes me as odd most nowadays is the sense of awe at Google's sheer 'engineering prowess'. Sure, they've done a kick as job in search, maps, and email - they're still the best in my mind. But it's like they inherited this M$ sorta view of the widest distribution of some whacky complex idea with some sort of specification and then leave it up to everyone else to implement it. This is great for the implementers, but not for the end user. Why? Because Google more and more seems to be not looking at things as a complete product and end users don't have all day to figure complex shit out - they're not some protocol engineers that think things are neat 'just because'.
Kindle and the iPhone are good examples of how Google is not approaching product design & development. The stupidest thing on the planet - to me - is wanting to watch tv and using a keyboard, trackpad, and remote control to do it. If anything, the tv should be voice controlled or at least controlled by some sort of cool iPad device - something that gives the end user some eye candy/techno lust. Making it into a computer that sits in the living room is a joke and keeps the nerds forever 'teh d0rx'.

Google's whole 'open' sthick and whats starting to happen with Android (carriers own that now) will probably bleed over into GTV. Set, box, and hardware manufacturers will eventually fill everything up with some sort of ad/crapware. This, I think, is the ultimate destination for Google's corporate vision of 'open'. 'Open' if your a corporate partner, suck if you're an end user (I'm not fooled by their plea that they're open as we developers like to think of 'open'). If you need any proof of this, just look at the various Android devices on AT&T or Verizon that don't allow you to uninstall apps and come preloaded with crapware (just like the whole Windows 'experience').

Just like WebTV and Wave, I think this one's gonna go down in flames.

For Slashdot readers this seems to be about Java the language (as created by Sun), Oracle & Google the companies, and Android the 'upstart'. However to Oracle customers (for which there are tons), none of this means anything because they are completely indemnified in anything relating to Java. They (Oracle clients and developers) are also neck deep in Java for many big Oracle products, so why should they care much about Google's Java-like language for a phone? Oracle is big enterprise and its users/developers are behind ERP, sales, db & inventory systems, etc - huge enterprise (not consumer so much) investments. I don't think most people using Oracle products are gonna notice anything unusual going on because this affects Android only - this does not affect Google server products, although if Oracle wins, then what's Google to do with all that Java server code? Anyway, think the Sun/M$ Java shenans that went on a decade ago. I'm sure Oracle is viewing this in a similar way.

Google has the most to loose, obviously. They will either have to obey and license the patents they are infringing on (and possibly change big portions of their code to be compliant) or switch out to a new language.

Look at all their 'inspiration', ideas, or acquisitions for their products and where they came from:

DOS - Bought from Seattle Computer
Windows - 'Inspired' by the Mac (which was 'inspired' by Xerox Parc)
Xbox - Play Station
Zune - iPod
Windows CE - Palm Pilot
Office - Lotus, WordPerfect, dBase, Forethought
NT - Unix (Sun, SGI, HP, etc)
Etc, etc, on and on...

The point is it's not in Microsoft's dna to 'invent' anything. At best they'll continue to copy. The problem Ballmer's facing is Google and Apple are more the center of the tech universe now, not Microsoft or Windows. Microsoft is all about being reactionary now. And when they've finally released a product that another company gained notoriety with years before, the other company has already moved on. So the endless game of catchup continues and Microsoft falls further and further into irrelevance.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Like other projects, Google throws things at the wall to see what sticks. I'm sure the idea going around last year (remember, the Nexus One was a little bit after the Droid, so the idea of a 'Droid success' had not yet been covered in the press) was 'mimic Apple, they have the hot ticket'. Microsoft is doing this right now to the point that it's almost ridiculous.

So for Google, Nexus One had its day and that's it - many others are succeeding with Android now and since Google gets all search revenue from it, it's win/win for them. And lets be honest, this was a geek phone, nothing else, so I'm sure the sales numbers weren't that spectacular.