So if you need a framework so you can pretend to have a native version of the application

No, you need a framework so you don't need to reinvent the wheel for every project you work on. With Sencha's frameworks, I can write a pretty slick-looking responsive site in a few hours (or days, for something larger) that would take literally months to roll on my own (and for the record, yes, I can and have rolled my own, back in the dark ages).


why not just focus on having a webpage instead of a shitty application which is just a web page?

Two reasons. First, it increasingly doesn't make sense to force your end users to download and install potentially untrusted code - never mind needing to maintain separate versions for every major platform you target (oh, you want this on iOS and Android and Windows and Linux and OS X, etc?), when you can accomplish the same result in one nice tidy webapp. Second (and you can fairly call this a matter of personal preference), IMO just about everything looks like crap in a browser on a phone, and even that assumes the browser handles it correctly (yeah, like I want to support Chrome and FireFox and *shudder* MSIE and Dolphin and Safari and Opera, etc - Going right back to all the joys of supporting multiple OSs, woo hoo!).

The concept of a "webpage" hasn't limited itself to some statically published version of a document-with-markup in over 20 years; that model lost so thoroughly that pining for it doesn't even count as beating a dead horse anymore, more like trying to clone a mammoth from frozen DNA.


This sounds like lazy people who want to claim they have an app, when all they're doing is pointing to a web page.

It really doesn't matter to me what you want to call it, whether an app or a webpage or a widget or a three-handled family gredunza, if it accomplishes the intended goal... All just a matter of using the right tool in your box for each task - Sure, you can hammer in a screw, but sometimes a plain ol' nail will do the job just as well.

Not sure about the rest of the places, but it's easier to find good mexican food in New York than in any city of Spain.

They're just trying to shoot the messenger but they created the problem by circumventing or ignoring the law.

The real problem here - And finish reading this post before you start shooting at me - Rowley has it absolutely correct. Tech companies do behave in ways friendly to terrorists.

Except, he has committed a fundamental attribution error by assuming they do in support of actual terrorism. Tech companies don't support terrorism - They support fairness, they support security, they support usability, for everyone. Unfortunately, "safe" and "secure" includes "from government tampering", and "fair" and "everyone" includes terrorists.

If the encryption software I use doesn't block all attempts to intercept my data, whether by flaw or by design, I will use something that does. Simple as that. Tech companies behave in ways friendly to terrorists because tech companies can't readily discriminate between the actions of crackers and governments, between privacy advocates and terrorists, between a legal court-ordered wiretap and an NSA hijacking - Nor should they.

What exactly do you want me to notice in the mirror?

I made no claims about my own intelligence or angst; only a throwaway joking comment about the self-assessed intelligence of the average Slashdotter.

That... That looks like English...

Well now, this should end up a wonderful thread full of angsty "geniuses" whining about how they can totally identify with the Termites because no one "gets" them.

Might be more rules with the police, but at least with private parties in Colorado a verbal agreement is a legally binding contract.

Even if they had it in writing, a purely one-sided contract would typically count as unconscionable. Since his "chat" with them didn't involve any actual concessions on their part (and "play nice and we won't harass you until the day you die", would make it equally unenforceable), I doubt you'll see them try to press this as a matter of contract law.

The fact they even mentioned it I'd call more of a smear campaign - The FBI needs to make this guy look like a complete asshole, because any other outcome would require actually acknowledging and fixing the underlying problem, rather than harassing the guy who pointed-and-laughed at the naked emperor.

Roberts said he had met with the Denver office of the FBI two months ago and was asked to back off from his research on avionics â" a request he said he agreed to."

"Don't look behind the curtain" is not security, however much it gives you the warm and fuzzies.


So he's scaring people and breaking/threatening-to-break his word, and they're being dicks to him. This may not be statutory justice, but it's poetic.

Unless he "agreed" to it in the context of a consent decree, that conversation has no more legal binding than agreeing to "keep your nose clean and stay out of trouble". Sorry if that scares you, but we all have the right - and in this case, I would dare say a moral obligation, to expose security flaws in commercial air travel.

If this really bothers you, try venting your ire at Boeing, not at the messenger.

Nothing wrong with learning new software. When new software brings great features to the table or when it fixes long-standing and hard to squash bugs - Great!

Learning new software because OMGSHINYNEWPONIES, however? Fuck that. Particularly when the new ponies merely usurp preexisting functionality into a more fragile, unrecoverable environment. When the new ponies mean relatively minor configuration tweaks mean a reboot. When the new ponies speak a language only they can understand, and to hell with all of you who see any benefit in human-readable. When the new ponies have uncontrollable Tourrette's syndrome and like to spew random unintelligible obscenities at the user for no obvious reason and with no warning. When the new ponies don't actually do anything we couldn't do before. When the only reason we even have this discussion on the table involves NIH syndrome at RedHat.

An init system should do as little as possible, and do it well. Systemd ain't that.

I can remember reading several articles which stated that cryonics doesn't work because the freezing process is not perfect - it does not stop decomposition, which older frozen specimens were starting to show. Why do people still spend money on this?

See, you've looked at this entirely the wrong way.

Yes, all these suckers currently having their heads frozen have basically wasted their money. But instead of pointing and laughing, look at it this way - We might someday benefit as a result of using these corpsesicles as guinea-pigs to learn how to slow the clock of decay that starts at the moment of death.

No, Walt Disney and Matheryn Naovaratpong will never see this universe again; but what we learn from them might buy us an extra five minutes to get proper treatment after a heart attack or stroke.

So, ix-nay on the "wasting your money" bit! Instead, encourage your rich but scientifically-ignorant friends to "preserve" their bodies "for the future"!

The obnoxious cliques of senior editors with god complexes make it virtually impossible to correct anything of substance. And Jimbo cares fuck-all about it as long as enough people click the donation button.

Sure, you can get into revision wars over whether to use the word "which" or "that" in a given context; but fixing a factual error? Good luck!

"Citation needed!"
"But the old, wrong version didn't have a cite either."
"Doesn't matter, it stays, and my minimum wage burger flipping ass has just banned you for daring to challenge me, you pompous PhD-wielding expert in this particular field!"

What use does the average person have for any photo of outer space objects?

What use does the average person have for photos of their trip to the Grand Canyon? For that matter, what use does the average person have for any space exploration (as distinct from the more practical application of communication satellites)?

Humans interact with our world in a very vision-centric manner. It "means" more to us to see cool high-res color photos of some distant astronomical object than "knowing" the far more useful data about the makeup of its atmosphere.

And like it or not, that mean NASA gets more funding for cool pictures than for doing hard science. People care far, far more about the Mars rovers because they empathize with those plucky little robots still carrying on despite adversity (and sending back pictures to prove it), than because they fulfilled their primary mission objectives.

Chrome is default on both android and chromeos. Indeed google maintains a complete monopoly of what browser you can use on chromeos.

Okay, I'll grant you ChromeOS, but Android? Since when? I have two Androids (one tablet, and one fairly new phone), and both use some no-name no-frills browser by default, I had to explicitly install Chrome separately.

Or, that their experience tells them women perform better. Or smell better. Or (and this one is provable) account for a hell of a lot less cases of harassment in the workplace.

So can they also discriminate by hiring more Asians because they're smarter? More Jews because they make better accountants? How about more blacks because the CEO made a bet on the company basketball team this year?

"Positive" stereotypes can cause just as much damage as negative ones.


/ "Smell better"? Seriously??? At this point, I hope for your sake you mean this whole thread as a troll.

Google does have an effective monopoly in search, and it's not a bad idea to have some degree of regulation in place to make sure that it doesn't harm consumers. (Though nonsense like a 'right to be forgotten' is going too far, and should be dropped)

The problem is that that very well may not be the EU's only motive here. At about the same time that the charges were announced, Gunther Oettinger, the EU's Digital Commissioner gave a speech where he said:

A great challenge is also Europe's position in the development of the next digital platforms that will gradually replace the current Internet and mobile platforms. We have so far missed many opportunities in this field and our online businesses are today dependent on a few non-EU players world-wide: this must not be the case again in the future. ... We need European industry 4.0 champions to win the global game in industry 4.0. ... Industry in Europe should take the lead and become a major contributor to the next generation of digital platforms that will replace today's Web search engines, operating systems and social networks.

Maintaining a level playing field and ensuring fair competition is one thing. Using the law to rig the market in order to engage in protectionism, however, is not acceptable. If the EU wants to pursue Google, they're going to need to do so in a way that is justifiably beyond reproach. Otherwise it's relatively easy for Google to restructure the way it does business internationally to avoid the EU from having any power over them, while still offering its services to persons in the EU, and to have many people cheer them on in the process.