Hypercard didn't have any access natively to the serial port or similar interfaces. To do this, one had to write an XCMD (wow, Dr Dobbs has a good archive) resource in pascal or C (or possibly assembly) to talk to the low level system/hardware. This created an additional command / function that Hypercard could call. To an extent, this did cause some fragmentation of the language

Looking at an old archive at umich, you can get an idea of what these xcmds could do.

To do anything beyond the basic capability of Hypertalk, it required you to be able to go in with resedit, download (or write) and add the appropriate additional functionality. This was a tool that was part of a programmer's toolkit - not a user's.

Syria has been under trade embargo since October 29th, 1991 as specified in Amendment to ITAR 126.1. The appears to apply to the Arms Export Control and include Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and North Korea. The key thing is the 'arms export'. This appears to cover defense articles and defense services - not regular commercial items. Strong encryption is classified as a munition. If the Syrian app store doesn't use strong encryption algorithms for its drm or the sdk, one would presume that developer licenses and app store would be allowed.

With iOS 5, the unique identifier is a combination of app/device - not just device. See Apple Insider for a change with the UDID.

It is possible (necessary?), that Apple retains private APIs to be able access this and does so with their applications - while the game that you propose writing wouldn't be able to access the UDID. If you want to do so, do so rapidly and hope your app doesn't get rejected.

Pardon me, but are you serious? Claiming that code is clean (or correct) because it compiles to a small executable isn't necessarily true. The demo scene prides itself on small executables and optimizes for this. Such optimizations are rarely the product of clean and correct code but rather hand crafted dark compiler (or assembler) magic.

There was an article a couple of years ago that looked into the history of one of the patents. Patent 6,269,361 that covers bid for advertisement placement in search results was developed by a company named Overture. Gates wanted it, but Yahoo bought the company in '03 for $1.63 billion. Microsoft started licensing the patent from Yahoo. There was also a settlement between Google and Yahoo over the patent. This could be the key that Microsoft wants to go after Google's ad words and keep any other competitors out of the market.

So you've seen the great computer at Apraphul? I remember when that article came out and wished I could go see it too.

They are recording the locations of 3, 5, 7, and 11 so that if you ever realized you can see 5 and 7 you don't need to count on your fingers to figure out you are near location #35 the second time. It by no means implies that you've been at location #77 just because you have those locations in cache.

If you've ever turned on a GPS device that had been off for a long time and/or moved significantly it can take minutes (the key information for GPS is only broadcast every 30 seconds and the satellite data has expired) for it to get a lock on the satellites. http://jeepx.blogspot.com/2006/01/cold-start-and-aided-gps.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_to_first_fix are good reads about the issue. The short version of it is that in order to determine which satellites are there to listen to quickly, you need approximate information about the time and location of the receiver.

The 3.1.3 iOS version is unaffected because data collection started with iOS 4. There is no need to to update that version. One option would be to downgrade the 3G phone to iOS 3.2.

Monoply's patent was challenged and invalidated because of prior art. This was discovered during the anti-monoply legal battle.

Another example of a board game patent is on Khet. Claims 31-54 cover the play of the board game. It isn't unheard of for boardgammers to poke around expired patents (yes, the search is broken) for games to implement (the biggest challenge being translating legalease back into board game rules). Most games that I've come across while looking at patents I've never seen implemented/sold. Oh, another game that is covered by a patent - icehouse. Mr. Loony was quite happy and even made a Tshirt of it. Yes, that hippy is very much into patenting his games (though he also has a freeware licensing policy for computer implementations of his games).

One tends not to go to court to challenge a patent that is valid in the first place

On iTunes the 'Summary' tab has a set of options. One of them reads 'Encrypt iPhone backup' as a checkmark. Poking about my system (~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/...) I can find some of the raw data that on my phone there (settings, files). So, it is possible to encrypt that data as the backup is stored but it sounds like that the unencrypted data is what iTunes accesses.

My aunt also needs a device that lets her send and receive email, look at pictures, read books and read news... without having to call tech support when someone gets through some exploit in a forgotten service and rootkitted her machine. Ideally, this machine would also use a cell service so that her somewhat technical children don't need to go and set up wifi for her. It should also be able to easily access and download applications signed by a reputable authority.

The majority of people out there are not tech savvy geeks. I personally would love a locked down interface designed on top of Linux that is as easy to use as some iDevice that fills all of her needs. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist at the same level as the iPad today. I don't want to have to drive down there and fix her computer every month, nor help her install (or uninstall) some program that isn't working right.

Android may be a nice alternative some day. It isn't here now. Nor is there any android equivalent of a genius bar that I can have her go to when something doesn't work (so I don't have to drive down there). There is more to a given device than what OS it runs.