Java, the COBOL of our era!

Is that praise? Or is it condemnation?

Yes, you want an Open API or access to data without encumbrance via a standard interface. Preferably, enforced by a contract and SLA.

We've already played the "scraping game" for decades. If you want to always be chasing the last change made by the target you are scraping, while also handling all your user complaints because your app just broke... again for the 3rd time this week... then go ahead and scrape.

And please come back and tell us how long it took you to give up.

They better be paying you incrementally for each user forever for all the data they collect from users that use your app or service... otherwise, you'd be a fool to base *anything* "on top of" the Facebook ecosystem.

I am constantly amazed that there are so many services that build upon Google, Apple or Facebook web authentication systems. It's just plain stupid for anyone to do that unless they are Google, Apple or Facebook as those services can eliminate your access to your customers ANY TIME they choose without you having any say in the matter.

And of the 3, Facebook is the worst, since by forcing users to have a Facebook account to use your service you are broadcasting how little you care about their ability to control any of their privacy given that tracking that you enable FB to perform against those users all over the net and FBs consistent history of altering their user terms to the detriment of their users.

If I see a service that REQUIRES a Facebook account, I will not use it whether it is free, paid or otherwise. And I am far from alone. Any developer that forces FB authentication in their apps or services is likely giving up at least 1/3rd of potential customer/users.

In 1995 IPng was to be implemented ASAP.

Now 16 years later we're still talking about it.

DNSSEC was also being promoted/talked about in 1995 to protect against exploits found 5 years earlier.

It was also ignored as a problem.

Maybe, finally., the cost of not implementing these has finally become greater than ignoring them..... but I somehow doubt it. ISPs can make more $$$ off the scarcity of IP4 addresses than they are likely to make pushing IPng/IPv6.

IPng/Ipv6, DNSSEC and "Duke Nukem Forever" have far more in common than they should.

If customers don't demand these they won't happen just like they've only been marginally implemented over the last 16 years.

Virgin Mobile in the US is about as close to prepay as you can get. Their least expensive plan is a prepay $25/month (including all taxes and BS charges) for 300 talk minutes plus unlimited data and texts.

Alas, the phone is still locked to Virgin Mobile's rented network. Which is really Sprint's CDMA network.

But you can get a Samsung Intercept Android phone from Virgin Mobile (or other retailers) for around $180 on sale.

$180 for the phone and $300/yr for service is a hugely sweet deal compared to the iPhone on AT&T for over $1200/year on AT&T's crummy network.

What's funny is that Sprint also offers the Samsung Intercept for $99 and $70/month (or $840/year) with a 2 year contract. Same network, same phone, just a whole lot more expensive.

Only in the Sun386i, which Sun killed in 1990 when they introduced the Sparcstation 1 and put all their "wood behind one arrow" in the SPARC architecture.

The Sun486i, while developed, never saw the light of day as a product BECAUSE it was faster than the SPARC offerings of that time.

Part of the issue was that the 386i and 486i were developed on the east coast at the former Apollo Computer that was acquired earlier by Sun. There was a lot infighting between the divisions on the each coast. The east lost.

ionice works great in a terminal window, but isn't integrated into any of the Desktop GUIs.

I suppose you could prefix the various file transfer commands used by the GUI with an added "ionice -c 3", but I haven't bothered to look.

Using ionice to lower the i/o priority of various portions of MythTV like mythcommflag, mythtranscode, etc. can make it quite snappy.

Let me guess. The "inmate ankle band" is made by Microsoft or Apple, right?

If Microsoft open source most of Windows Phone 7 and licenses it for free to hardware makers it may have a chance. They'd just have find a sweet spot of control like Google has. Otherwise, Windows Phone 7 is already doomed.

The Foleo was kind of an iPad with a keyboard. Without the keyboard and a lot more hype it might have worked.

Yes, this is a joke.