I'm no fan of the extremes that Apple take their control of the app store to - but that doesn't mean that there aren't legitimate reasons and app should be banned and this is most definitely one of them.

As a general rule I've found Google's stance on privacy of users data to be pretty poor so on this one I say Bravo Google! It would be interesting to see if what (if any) steps they take to protect the platform as a whole from things like this, after all the app store isn't the only way software can be installed on an Android device.

I know the US is the litigation capital of the world and based on the information I've seen it sounds like they are mainly right in their arguments but I'm not sure what they hope to gain by suing, companies make products all the time that fail to be "fit for purpose" but unless you've actually sustained damages or injuries as a result (Think Toyota with stuck throttle type failure) then there isn't really any need to sue - personally if it was me I wouldn't have bothered suing as I would just have returned the phone - probably stamping my feet enough to get rid of any "re-stocking fee" in the process and then I'd go buy something better. Maybe they are just band-wagon jumping to try and get some cash in their pocket. To be fair I don't really know how the legislation works in the States for this sort of thing though!

While you come across as a reasonable guy who not doubt had good intentions trying to put the onus on SCEE to "play nice" as you put it doesn't really wash. After all the responsibility was on you to "play nice" and establish permission to use the name etc. first before you submitted the game to the app stores. FWIW I think you might have had a better chance of getting permission had you asked before you took so to speak.

Saying that you tried back in 2001 doesn't really work either since for a kick off that was 9 years ago and even if you weren't sure who owned it there surely was never a doubt that somebody did. It's like milk in a fridge, just because you aren't sure who it belongs to doesn't mean its OK to use it!

remember: manners are free but lawyers are expensive!

Only if your company is Microsoft :)

this, and this from TFA:

are quite scary really. Are Google honestly claiming that the whole thing is (and will remain) completely invulnerable to any attacks? And people are believing this? Yeah.... Good luck with that.

I'm not denying that it will probably be fairly secure out of the box - after all the less functionality something offers the easier it is to secure, but to claim "complete security" is just foolish.

Sounds like a fairly straight forward case of there being a few dodgy units out there to me - not exactly the biggest surprise when you consider the number of units produced and the short development/testing cycles people have to get new gadgets out these days. Apple aren't the only ones this sort of thing has happened to and they certainly won't be the last.

Watching all the fanbois go up in flames (bah-dum-tish) was however pure internet entertainment!

"nuh-huh didn't happen!"

"they are using it wrong"

"its normal!! laptops can browse the internet and gets hot - the iphone can browse the internet and gets hot. Same thing innit?"

"it's cos of the mega-fast hardware - it just shows how awesome it is"

"YOU'RE ALL JEALOUS!!"

As I expect there will be some of the same along here shortly I'll grab some popcorn :)

I've got to agree with this - the time spent in-flight gives me an ideal opportunity to have a quick breather. Something that is essential in a time-intensive game that doesn't pause.

well since the way that generally happened was by connecting a fresh install to internet without any firewall then yeah I'd class that as pretty poor in the OS administration department!

Who cares that web/dns servers etc keep running if there are no clients to make use of them?

I'm kinda hoping your trying to be amusing here, if you are though its gone under my humour radar today (and I apologise if I seem like an arse)

Yes most "professionals" will have backups of their data (which is what I presume you are alluding to) however it's not always the case that those backups will be literally up to the minute, and sometimes its just less hassle to recover any lost "recent" data then it is to just cycle to the last backup and deal with the shortfall. Also its not exactly uncommon for "professionals" to be asked to help recover data for NON-professionals.

I have to say that is hands-down the single best post I've ever read on open source.

as if there isn't enough outrage from the genuine stuff!

I'm confused here - In what way is MySQL not a "true" open source project?

I do however agree with you that proper abstraction layers are a good practice and help reduce reliance on any particular DBMS.

IMHO game publishers are coming at this from the wrong angle - they should be looking at the second hand market as an opportunity rather than a threat. Over the last year or two there has been a growing trend for games to have paid-for DLC (see Guitar Hero/Rock Band as prime examples). Since this content doesn't get resold when the game does the new owner may well then re-buy the DLC.

So although yes they might miss out on the profit from the original game sale (assuming that the person who bought it second hand would otherwise have bought a new copy) they ARE still making money.

Also don't forget trade ins - many console owners I know (myself included) will trade old games for money off new ones, often allowing us to buy more NEW games then we would have done otherwise. Why not embrace this? Publishers could offer incentives if people trade in one their older games for a sequel, or a direct competitor to their game - say trading in Guitar Hero for Rock Band etc.

When the music market changed under them (i.e. the internet) the industry tried to fight the change rather than embracing it as a new opportunity, that didn't work out too well did it?

I hate tabbed browsing

Seriously I just don't get on with the damn things. I find them very restrictive on how I manage my desktop real estate and they can make it quite awkward for me to find a specific page view that I'm looking for. Fortunately both IE and FF let me turn it off!

Anyway I know I'm a very small minority on this but it has given me a perspective on this question, and what I would say to the Mozilla devs is do what ever you want but make sure you still give the user the power to choose. As long as users can choose the work flow that suits them then I think its all good for them to be offering new solutions for organising things.