Ars Technica had an article about a hidden framework that Apple was developing before Apps hit with 2.0. http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/12/pastrykit-best-iphone-web-app-library-you-never-heard-about.ars

Actually looks pretty cool and could allow more web-based apps.

I still think that local apps will be preferreable. The thing is that a lot of apps are only useful on the web, so the concerns about not being able to access them w/o a net connection are baseless. Not all apps, but there's lots of social networking apps and others that need networks.

This is why we can't have anything nice. Please stop acting like children.

There isn't any way that this could be productive.

This seems like someone ones misunderstanding of civil disobedience. The idea behind CD is to do something illegal (which this is not) and then be punished for it. Then, the public is so outraged at the punishment, and that causes a policy change. The public is not going to force ATT to change its policies to allow juvenile, hacker (that's what it will be called) behavior.

Entirely untrue. The North had a majority of the industrial infrastructure and manufacturing base at the end of the war. It was in a significantly better position.
The problem was that they couldn't do anything with it. The West certainly didn't want to buy any of their products, and who could blame them for not wanting to do business with a hostile, oppressive regime that fought a bloody battle? I can't think of a single good decision that North Korea has taken since the '50s. They are second to none in the worst run country category. They have no allies; the best thing going for them are countries that tolerate them (i.e. China and Russia), although they are starting to get ticked off as well.
It's unbelievable that anyone could consider the North Koreans victims.

I'm tired of the rest of the world trying to tell US citizens what to believe. If you are so pissed off at us, then do something about it.

I think the US is the best country in the world, no exception. I don't give a shit in the least what anyone else thinks of that. I'm proud to be an American.

During the Napoleonic Era, France had the best armies in continental Europe; England dominated the seas. From the Wikipedia entry on the Battle of Trafalgar, "The British victory spectacularly confirmed the naval supremacy that Britain had established during the past century..."

I absolutely agree that the French surrender thing is stupid and juvenile. It needs to go away. There's some "The French always surrender," then we get comments like yours that are like "but the French saved you in the Revolutionary War" and so on. I'm sick of the whole damn thing.

I suppose you mean the War of 1812 when you mention the US losing to Canada. That's a retarded conclusion to make. First, we were primarily fighting Britain because of trade tensions because the British restricted trade to, of all countries, France. The war ended because both sides finally realized that there was no point in fighting.
A lot of people think that Vietnam was a huge "defeat." I'm not going to say that it wasn't, but we did accomplish some goals. Communist Vietnam never became a strong force in Asia, and didn't spread. We effectively contained Communism there. There were two goals in the Cold War: 1) don't allow Communism anywhere, and 2) if #1 fails, then contain it. We absolutely failed at #1, but #2 worked well. People will probably respond that we shouldn't have done anything to stop Communism; I agree that we probably should have stayed out, but the countries where we did stop Communism are markedly better off now, in particular North vs. South Korea.
You seem to be confused that all assholes are ignorant. I'm perfectly fine with being an asshole sometimes, especially when someone criticizes something of which I am proud.

I think that you are an ignorant, America-hating asshole that seems to be so pissed off because the US makes the rules for world. There are a lot of groups/countries that have hated the US over the years, none of them have done particularly well.

I know the slash-tards think everything is fair use, but this has nothing to do with it. It has to do with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_News_Service_v._Associated_Press The term is called "hot news." The ruling basically states that you can't copyright the facts with current events.

Fair use is a defense when you are guilty of copyright infringement. It's an extenuating circumstance. On the other hand, Google has not engaged in copyright infringement because the articles themselves are not copyrightable in the short-term -- as the events are happening. They do not need to use a fair use because the headlines/summaries they are copying are not under copyright.

You do realize that the judge ruled that a warrant must be obtained. This ruling only changes who must be notified of the warrant. It has long been held that if a 3rd party is in possession of the property to be seized, then only the 3rd party must be notified of the warrant. The actual owner is not in (sole) possession of the seizable items, so why should the owner be notified?
Being notified of a search warrant is of little use; it's not like you can raise an objection with a court and block the seizure while it's happening. Ok, that's being a little ridiculous. The thing is that Google or whoever the email provider is can still choose to notify you about the warrant; just that the police are not required to do so.

The big problem here is that digital data can be perfectly copied. If I loan my car to a friend, and the police seize it with a warrant; I obviously known it was taken when I ask my friend for it back. On the other hand, if gmail turns over my emails due to a warrant, there is no automatic indication that the emails were copied. I still have them, but so do the police. I don't know Google's policy, but I would hope that they could forward that warrant to me, but you really need to trust your provider.

Here's my take from the decsion: only give private information to people/entities that you trust; once they have it, they can do what they want with it (both legal and illegal). They could post it to the net, give it all to the police, delete it, not notify me of a warrant to seize it, keep it safe, or any number of things. Unless you know exactly what they will do with it, assume the worst.

Honestly, I'm not too concerned about privacy of my email because I know that it's not private and act accordingly. If the government or the world wants to know the mailinglists to which I belong, whatever; I'd be pissed at Google, but I wouldn't get my panties in a bunch.

Great post. I was thinking the exact same thing as soon as I saw Ruby was being used. It gets even worse than that: they are using Ruby on Rails. Slashdotters start foaming at the mouth thinking about how insecure Diebold code is; they should be furious that something as god-awful as RoR is being used for elections. RoR has its uses, but not in any kind of security sensitive situation.

The project does seem to be interesting because they are trying to get the FEC to update some of its certification requirements.

The only thing I want interpreted in my elections is hanging chads; keep that damn python and ruby to your selves. And get off my lawn!

What on earth are you talking about? This has nothing to do with a desktop operating system. Furthermore, Canonical promised a year ago tomorrow to release the source code within a year. This pre-dates the announcement of Chrome OS by at least 11 months.

You are probably looking for PPAs on Ubuntu. They are "personal" repositories that users or sometimes communities/distros create to give users bleeding-edge stuff. I understand that your comment about Firefox was an example, but there is an easy fix. In jaunty (9.04), install firefox-3.5 that will get you updated to the most current version. It had the betas and even updated to firefox 3.5.1 the day it was released.
I have a PPA enabled so I could get KDE 4.2.4, and they are really great because I don't want to jump into 4.3.0 until it is released, so the devs made a separate repo for that version.
It is frustrating if there isn't a PPA for the brand, spanking new package you want, but there are for many common packages, so check it out.

I will completely concede the point about trying beta software on Windows. Since Linux uses shared libraries, a PPA might want a newer library but all your other packages want the older version; this can lead to problems... however, the high quality PPA's should be able to address these problems, and running core software from a PPA usually isn't a good idea (although, I just did admit to running a PPA'd version of KDE).

There are some options, but yes, it's not as easy as Windows; yet, you should've known that when you switched ;).

I think that the problem that I was trying to point out is that this is not a constitutional question. I think that the damages in the Copyright Act are perfectly acceptable from a constitutional standpoint. But again, I don't think they are ethically reasonable and should be changed quickly.

When I look at Ms. Thomas' behavior, I only see a fool. A fool sacrificing him/herself does not good to a cause. General Custer was not a hero or courageous; he was an idiot that got all of his men and himself killed. There was no honor in that. I think she is doing the same thing, and I think that her counsel, especially Kiwi, has put this idea in her head that she can change the whole system.

So adri, no I wouldn't do the same thing as her because there's no reason to throw myself in front of that bus. It just won't do any good. The only "win" that I can see coming out of this is a reform in the Copyright Act, but that won't help her at all -- she still broke the current version.

In my previous post, I forgot to discuss why I think that there is no constitutional argument against the verdict. The primary case that would be used to assert that the verdict was unconstitutionally high was BMW of North America v. Gore (1996). Gore bought a car that he later found out had been repainted, which decreased the value of the car. BMW's policy was that if the the repair cost 3% of the value, then it would still sell the car as "new." State court awarded him $2000 for the loss in value and $4M in punitive damages. Supremes eventually got the case and ruled that the punitive damage was too high.
They established three guidelines to determine if a punitive damage was too high.
      1. The degree of reprehensibility of the defendantâ(TM)s conduct;
      2. the ratio to the compensatory damages awarded (actual or potential harm inflicted on the plaintiff); and
      3. Comparison of the punitive damages award and civil or criminal penalties that could be imposed for comparable misconduct.
However, they did rule that damages could be very high if it was "necessary to deter future conduct."

In State Farm v. Campbell (2003), SCOTUS clarified the Gore ruling further with the =10x punitive award rule.

I don't think that these cases apply to Ms. Thomas because:
1) It's not a punitive award. It's statutory. the problem with punitive awards is that they are inconsistent and are not strongly codified.
2) It is certainly in line with guideline #3. Criminal copyright prosecution is exceedingly rare, but the penalties are scary: up to $250,000 and/or 5 years in prison per offense. The statutory damages are in line with that.
3) Guideline #2 is a non-issue because statutory damages are allowed because actual damages are too difficult to determine. There is no way to show how many copies were made, etc., so the statutory damages must be used (although I personally wish there was a better method to determine damages).
4) I think that guideline #1 is the most important one, and I think it's why the jury really took her to the cleaners. I'm not totally sure about the hard drive, but it's certainly arguable that she may have tried to destroy it. She lied about having it replaced through the first depositions. She perjured herself in both depositions and in front of the court. Her actions were reprehensible (I mean her behavior. I don't think the infringement is really that big of a deal).

I feel bad about this case, but not for her. I feel for her kids and family; what she did was not fair to them. She has acted stupidly and got burned. I really don't want to say this, but I think it needs to be said. It's going to sound wrong, but just think about it for a second. I sort of feel bad for the RIAA. They are really stuck in a hard place. The organization's livelihood (which is just a bunch of people who have families of their own) depends on the revenue from sound recordings. If people are "using" those recordings, without compensating them, that's just not right. What are they supposed to do, give up? Property rights are one of the cornerstones of civilization. They are trying to defend their rights. Not once during either trial did they ask for certain damages; not once did they suggest that higher damages be awarded. They were just as shocked as the defense and everyone following the trial. Right after the trial, the RIAA's head spokeswoman, Cara Duckworth, said that they had been and still were willing to settle for far less than the court verdict. Honestly what could they do different? Put yourself in their shoes. If a sizable amount of your work was essentially being "stolen" from you, what would you do? I think it would be incredibly disingenuous to say that you wouldn't seek to get some sort of compensation or at least try to dissuade people from acting similarly in the future.

That went on far longer than I wanted it to. I feel dirty now, but I think it legitimately needs to be said. All too often I think people on this site get too caught up in the "free" culture (I'm not talking about open source. I talking more "gimme" or looting-esque. I'm a big fan of opensource). That everything should be provided on the terms that I want, and if they aren't and I know some technological way to get them on my terms, then it's ok.

Just think about it. Ducks.