Most of the platforms with APis are running on open source and their developers are contributing code back. Nothing to see here.

Loaded cost for an employee is typically 18% of salary + $320/month for real estate overhead. So a $90 K employee ends up costing about $120,000 with benefits.

Apparently, you are not aware how easy it is to get started with Amazon's app store. It's easy enough that everyone I know with an Android device has done it.

It is dangerous to assume facts not in evidence. First, Android devices exist at all levels of the smartphone marketplace. Some are cheap (either inexpensive or poorly constructed). Some are very expensive. The best part is that inexpensive phones are critical in unlocking the global mass market. Second, Android users run the gamut from the prepaid phone user to people on unlimited everthing on every carrier available. Even the prepaid market is surprising when you study it. There are a lot of wealthy people who think paying $150 for a phone and $50 for unlimited everything with no possibility of the monthly bill going over $50 is smart business... mainly because it is. Since you clearly aren't an Android user (you said they were cheap and piracy was rampant without knowing how difficult it actually is to pirate software), then you probably have never had the pleasure of getting an app for $.10 because one app store had a sale and the other had a price match policy.

Um... you were doing great until you hit the piracy part. That isn't why apps are less expensive on Android. The issue is that Android's market (small m market) are competitive because there are multiple ways consumers can buy (Google, Amazon, etc)

With a legitimate argument. Sure they are going to appeal. Because they are out of business if they don't.

Nah. Mint will just update their GUI appropriately. Unity is early, and will probably die because of it.

Oh no. Not this again.

Problem is they confused an engineering problem for a design problem and ended up with an ornate piece of crap.

In the Unix world, we tend not to bloat one tool with the features of another. Just google linux mount zip or linux mount rar for some interesting ways to do what you want that rely on the Unix many simple tools that work together philosophy.

I am not a lawyer,and the following is not legal advice:

I can see where anyone who is a sole proprietor or owns a company and entitles them self a "systems engineer" or "software engineer" would run into trouble under that law. After reading all of 471, I can't see where some guy who gets a job as a programmer at a company he does not own and gets handed a stack of business cards that say "software engineer" on them would be prosecuted under 471.031. Would seem there are more than a few provisions in that law to prevent people in that situation from being prosecuted (see .003, 0.31, .023).

In other words, a printed card may or may not violate the statute, and you probably should get some legal advice from an actual lawyer if you are concerned about it.

Let me clarify this for you. A programmer is a puh-tey-toh. A software developer is a puh-tah-toh.

Got it?

Sheesh. This is silly. The only place where there is an issue is when someone hangs out a shingle that and practices engineering. People with creative job titles (i.e. Database Engineer) and graduate engineers (4 year degree EE without license) are not being prosecuted for calling themselves by their job titles or degrees UNLESS they hang out a shingle and open a contract engineering company or are claiming to own a company that holds an authorization certificate and does not.

This whole trying to make engineering work like the law industry isn't going

I'd rather you tell the truth and say you are a PHP programmer who has expertise with Joomla. Joomla is only programmable in PHP.

The issue is not the programmer. The issue is the customer being willing to waive their warranty rights in order to use software. In many states, you still have statutory warranty rights, it's just that the $3 you paid for Angry Birds is not worth going to court over when it locks up your phone. Your cities $1.6million E911 dispatch software that doesn't work is worth going to court over, and often times developers are held liable for defects.