Exactly. I can almost forgive them for the mistake with the word 'encryption' in the metadata. The rest of the rejections were clearly for not following the rules. Disliking the rules is one thing. Complaining because you can't talk to someone to get a waiver for those rules is something completely different. The majority of this article can be summarized as "We did X, which we know wasn't allowed and were surprised when Apple rejected our poor little app. Then in order to fix X we did Y, which we also know wasn't allowed. Yet again we were surprised when our poor little app was rejected." I'm sorry, but if you want your app to run natively on the iPad/Pod/Phone you need to make it compliant to Apple's rules. That the developer was not following the guidelines while creating this app for a paying client speaks quite a bit towards the quality of work one can expect from that team.

What's your argument for there needing to be some sort of correlation between disabling WIFI and that forcing an application to close? That doesn't happen. I can have Navigation open on my Android phone and turn off the GPS receiver. Navigation continues to run, alerting me to the fact that it is no longer talking to GPS satellites.

Seriously, paranoid much? A quick search on Google Play shows that Android Assistant is an app that helps you manage your device (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.advancedprocessmanager). Have you tried uninstalling it from the Apps setting screen. Wiping your phone by battery removal is all good and such, but it solves a symptom, not the underlying problem. In this case the underlying problem could be that you didn't uninstall the app or it could be that you're convinced someone is constantly injecting that app onto your phone...over a wifi connection you say you can't even access. I'll let the court of public opinion determine which is the more reasonable option. So you've got a wifi AP that doesn't like you and a widely available system management app. I don't care how much you insinuate about relatives in secretive government jobs, you're not convincing me that you are the target of some directed and repetitive hacking attempt.

...will be able to be hit in its weak spot for MASSIVE DAMAGE!

I wasn't logged in, but that was my post.

Why? Why is uniformity with every other random application a user might have installed considered the bellweather by which all interfaces should be judged? Is it because that's what they teach in school? Is it because of Apple's arguably outdated and internally inconsistent HIG? Personally I'd rather not have the same exact visual style on the interfaces for my 3d modelling package, video player, and word processor. Claiming they should all be identical is like saying the buttons on my alarm clock should exactly match the buttons (colors, fonts, shapes, materials, etc...) on my blender. Why would I need that? I've never been confused by the fact that my washing machine has a knob control and my diswasher doesn't. In the course of any day I'm using Chrome, 3ds Max, Eclipse, Visual Studio '10, Photoshop, and an internally developed game editor. Some have light color scheme UIs, some dark. Some have ribbons, some don't. None of them would be an app that you could point at and say "That follows Microsoft's look and feel to the letter"....not even Visual Studio 10. I have no problem using all of those apps. My head hasn't exploded. Expecting a bunch of disparate developers to follow the exact same rigid and authoritarian UI guidelines is madness. Make the UI that suits your application.

What kind of weird-ass chickens do you have? This time of year, it's too hot to be feeding them at 4pm. They eat in the morning and again around 7pm.

Don't underestimate the power of Linux users to delude themselves into thinking that "If everyone did..." is the same as "any day now everyone will..." Ask yourself this...what would compel any, let alone every gamer to switch to Linux? It's not the games, as they don't exist. It's not the access to high performance video drivers, as they don't exist. It's not the access to ubiquitous and non-finicky audio systems, as they don't exist. The gamers need something better than what they have if they are going to move away from their current situation and negate their library of games. With regards to Linux that doesn't and probably will never exist. The majority of game companies won't make games on Linux until there is a market, which doesn't exist. Catch-22. For this to ever even have a possibility of happening there needs to be a killer-game-app on Linux and a Linux distribution that is as easy to setup and configure, along with always offering access to current quality video card drivers, as Windows offers. So where is the killer game and perfect gaming Linux distro? Instead of wishing for ponies and utopian group-think you might want to dig in and get to work.

Linux gaming is a niche idea for a niche OS (-Linux on desktops for the masses. I know Linux in the enterprise is big). Microsoft isn't losing any sleep over the idea of Linux gaming going mainstream.

Right, so you can't very well put the cost of making GPL v3 on the shoulders of Tivo as you tried to do with the statement, "Once Tivo Inc. showed GNU just how evil a corporation can be, they had to spend time and money creating GPLv3, time and money that could have been spent actually doing something, instead had to be spent on lawyering." Tivo did what was allowed. The FSF got upset. The FSF then spent money and time drafting a license that covers the problem they didn't foresee. Like the original respondent to your post said, If the FSF wants to limit the way software using their license is used it is their responsibility to review and update their license to disallow the things they want to restrict. "Spirit of the law" is a nice sounding term but it has no bearing on a license. If the license does not stipulate what cannot be done with whatever it covers then it is perfectly legal to do that thing. Tivo had better lawyers than the FSF, end of story.

That's the one really important thing that you've got, that most others don't—a ham radio. That would be worth its weight in gold in any isolating disaster that lasted more than a couple of weeks.

Well, flood and forest fire, yes. My home has a galvanized aluminum roof and is clad in cement fiberboard, so forest fires aren't liable to affect me. And my home is cited on the slope of a mountain perched between a pair of ravines (not that severe, but you get the idea) down which water drains, so flooding would require that the sea level rise a thousand feet. :) Both of these are steps that anybody can and should take when siting a home. The mountain range I'm in hasn't been seismically active for millions of years, so earthquakes aren't a concern.

But we didn't spring for the astroid or volcano-proofing. :)

Congratulations, you found my home address in...er...1992. Now you just need to create a time machine!

How many ducks and deer do you think there *are*? If there was an actual disaster, the deer, duck, quail, and lizard populations would plummet as a teaming horde of well-armed people suddenly ravage the landscape.

Cornell University Cooperative Extension: "Today there are over 20 million deer in the United States and numbers are rising. [...] Densitites may exceed 40 deer per square mile in some rural areas, and over 100 deer/square mile have been documented near many eastern metropolitan areas. [...] As long as adequate food resources are available, deer populations can double in size every 2-3 years. Eventually some form of population management is needed to control herd growth and maintain deer numbers within the social carrying capacity."

There are plenty of deer.

I almost forgot: firearms. We've got a 12-gage shotgun, a .22, and a 7.92mm 1948 Turkish Mauser. I've only got a couple of boxes of shells, and maybe three dozen rounds for the Mauser (they're expensive) but I have a few hundred rounds for the .22. We can hunt enough turkey, deer, and squirrel to keep us in protein year-round. Right now I hunt rarely, and when I do it's strictly for food (not trophies), but I'm certainly prepared to do so regularly if it were necessary.

If you have never hunted, note that there is nothing about owning a gun that prepares you to do so. If you're thinking "hey, I see deer around—I could eat those," then you are wrong. Learn to hunt now. Get a license. Find somebody to teach you how to gut and butcher a deer. Otherwise, if you do wind up in a bad situation, you might get lucky enough to actually shoot a deer, only to find that you have no idea of what to do with it. Worse still, it'll be gut-shot, and you'll wind up getting some horrible disease from eating venison streaked with deer shit.