And this usage will increase hugely when Internet of Things as promoted by IBM and others will be more real. Don't forget that number of devices like TVs, cars, and refrigerators that people use is massive when compared with computers.

I used to love not only computer games, but also those "cool" people who made it. It no longer feels like that. Where are they?

Here in Iran messages are censored but nobody knows for which words. It's not even consistent: when there's going to be a protest event or news the filtering increases. Normally it filters less words. People guess these words. The worst happens for advertisers and advertising companies that send bulk SMS and later find out that nothing has delivered!

I'm really tired of hearing that Picasso quote again and again out of context. No, it's not about designing products. It's about getting something from the world around you and making it into a piece of art.

There's something badly wrong about Apple.

Yes, they're great in may aspects. But there's something wrong with them.

I can't exactly say what is this, but a major part of it is that they hate non-Apple. In the early 80s they were hating IBM. Later they switched to Microsoft. Now Google and Android is the devil of the time. That's why being a fan of Apple usually means hating Google, Microsoft, Linux, FSF, and everybody else. I don't get it. I'm a fan of Apple, and am a big of lots of others too.

They think they are the only one doing actual work. Everybody else is copying Apple, but everything Apple does is new. They always talk about Apple's "innovation," and love talking about how everyone else is doing nothing but copying Apple. When we're talking about Apple products, they understand it very well that technology evolves, and Apple using already-available technology seems second-nature to them. When we turn to others... no, technology does not evolve. It begins at One Infinite Loop.

Also, they think everything Apple does is superior to every other competitor with no question. iTunes and iDevice don't support FLAC because they have Apple Lossless, but most of audiophiles have large collections of FLAC files. I remember John Gruber had lots of problems with a particular version of Safari, but the only solution he didn't consider was switching to another browser, because Safari is the browser.

And all of this comes from Steve Jobs' personality. That's normal because most companies are like their founders.

I wish Apple itself was half as good as their products.

It's not a secret that professionals were a major target of Apple's marketing for a long time, and now things have changed.

Most of Slashdot readers here might remember the time when "Pro" was among the items of apple.com's menu bar. Professionals were important to Apple then because they were the source of a considerable portion of company's revenue. Apple's main campaign then encouraged people to be different. Now it encourages people to buy an iPhone because everybody else have one. Because there's no need to focus on a niche market when you can have a major market.

But Apple is not pushing anyone away. Why should it do that? It just doesn't put them at the top of their list anymore.

Record retro-looking films with them! Retro pictures and videos are the trend now.

There's no one today in the tech world who can easily claim he's not been affected by RMS's works. It's funny that Apple's Xcode uses FSF's GCC.

But he's a lot like super fanboys of Apple: blind about their own choice and thinking that others who don't use what they use have a problem. Calling others fool because they use Apple products is not a great way of achieving any constructive goal.

What saddens me is seeing people who think that liking one of these good things also means hating others. I'm a big fan of Apple, but I'm also a big fan of FSF, Google, and others too.

Today I spent most of time using Emacs on a MacBook Air.

Talking in public about these is not a good idea (specially that you're name in the story links directly to your Gmail address), but no, I didn't have to change the port. It stopped working last week, but that was for a few days only. Anyway, I suggest that you never rely on only one anti-censorship solution. Have a handful of them at your disposal, and switch to another when one of them doesn't work.

The summary says Iran started internet censorship after the election and people started using VPN from then. No, it's not like that. First, internet censorship goes back to at 7 or 8 years, IIRC. Long before the election. Second, anti-censorship tools have always been changing in all these years. VPN is just the main tool of most of people now, but even two years ago (right after election) few people knew VPN and used other tools. So, things look tough, but it's not that we are going to lose our connection with the world. We always find a solution. Even right now I'm using a PPTP VPN and if you see this comment it works well. The only solution to prevent people from accessing sites the government doesn't like would be to shut down internet connection with the outside world completely. And I hope they won't do that, at least not for long.

Forgot to mention Brightly in my submitted story! This part is FAQ of the email is interesting:

It seems that it used to be called Dash, but was later renamed to Dart.

And you slashdot their homepage at the same time? Poor admins!