So what makes OSX better than Linux? Better than *BSD? What makes Maya better than Blender?

People are only allowed to volunteer on "working days"?

Examples of objectively better non-free alternatives to each of the programs he mentioned?

Stereo sound, at its inception, was disorienting to some patrons.

Color added story only through presence; 3D could be easily used in the same way.

Digital projection absolutely improves the experience, by removing film jitter and degradation.

3D doesn't make me nauseous; there's no downside for me. Ergo, I embrace it.

Color? Stereo sound? High resolution film? Digital projection?

You have my permission to replace 'audit' with a word you do not have strong preformed connotations for.

Are you claiming it is not easier to explain analyzed behavior with access to source?

1) But closed-source binaries have all those same problems, plus additional ones. Therefore, it is precisely easier to audit open-source software.

2) But with open-source, it's possible for the source to become distributed, whereas it's not even that for closed-source software. Therefore, it is precisely easier to audit open-source software.

3) I was unclear, here, and accept responsibility for speaking carelessly. What I meant was that a person who finds a problem can find other people to report it to.

4) Since most people would not like secret laws, but most people have not read through all standing laws, it follows that availability even without pursuit is a benefit -- therefore open source provides a benefit even if the code is not explicitly audited by the beneficiary.

(emphasis mine)

Meaning, therefore, there needs to be some FOSS in the loop, which is apropos of the non-trustworthiness of corporate software.

True or false: it's easier to audit software you have the source to, compared to software you only have a binary for.

True or false: the source to a piece of distributed software is in the hands of many people.

True or false: if one person finds a problem, they can find others.

How would you feel if laws were secret? Yet, how often have you read through all the laws on the books?

Interesting that this comment was posted at the exact same moment as the article. Other than that, yawn.

The site says it celebrates Apple patents. By claiming otherwise you are lying, because you know the truth is counter to what you want people to believe.

The old design of Android was because phones used keyboards. Phones used keyboards because capacitive touchscreens weren't available or economical. Everyone started using multitouch gestures at the same time. By claiming otherwise you are lying, because you know the truth is counter to what you want people to believe.

That store was a larger store with a Samsung booth. The icons on the wall had nothing to do with the Samsung store, and the Samsung people had no control over them. By claiming otherwise you are lying, because you know the truth is counter to what you want people to believe.

Regarding the rest of this hot air, take a look here for a pretty good list of suits in which Apple has attempted and failed to sue on all manner of crazy premises. Read through that and tell me with a straight face you support the legal actions of this company. They photoshopped pictures of the Tab in legal documents, altering multiple aspects of the device to make it (falsely) appear more like an iPad. They very clearly have no interest in "protecting their rights"; they just want to strongarm the competition with government help. This is consistent with their behavior for the past forty years.

I love comments like this. "What? No, no, it's not Apple so it can't possibly be good."

When did the level of discourse drop so low here, to where were getting, not even anecdotal evidence, but fanciful evidence?

This is an extremely common fallacy. The tech to make thin capacitive screen devices didn't exist before the timeframe in which Apple made theirs. They were a little quicker getting it to market, to their credit, but the idea wasn't new to anyone.

I can't really parse your first two sentences. Kind of the whole point of Android phones is the "phones" part -- in that you can select from a wide variety of devices conforming to a common operating environment.

You're saying the inability to a) use non-sanctioned apps, b) replace your operating environment, or c) have any purchasing power to select the device which runs your environment doesn't constitute lock-in? Also, the fact that you can "start over" and buy some other platform is a feature common to many forms of lock-in. You're never physically prevented from selecting another phone, just like you were never physically prevented from installing Linux instead of Windows and using a different browser, and just like you were never forced to keep buying the same razor blades. That by no means keeps it from being an artificially limited environment.

And yeah, it's easy to check out the latest iOS, because there's only one. The fact that there are multiple Android superphones is a feature, but since it's one not sanctioned by your chosen platform I understand that you will fight it to the death. Similar to how in your third paragraph, cancellation fees are supposed to be ignored for iOS, but in the fourth/fifth are some kind of huge blow to Android. It's the same pattern, over and over again.

Yeah, there would have been shouting, and the fact that you don't see the difference really exposes the lengths to which Apple people will use denial as a weapon.

Here, I'll spell it out for you.
One of the latest Android phones has an antenna problem. What do you do? Get a different Android.
Latest iPhone has an antenna problem. What do you do? Ooooops, your vendor believes in complete lock-in, so you have no equivalent options.

Well, yeah, you can say that, because unlike most languages, the preprocessor in C is part of the standard. Talking about using C without the CPP is like talking about using Java without using the JVM -- it's rather missing the point, I think.

Not that preprocessor use and abuse is a great thing, or that really complicated macros are a generally acceptable solution -- but in some circumstances, when they're clearly documented and everyone knows the limitations, they can save thousands of lines of code.

As an academic exercise, though, you can do PP-free polymorphic objects by having a pointer to a virtual function table at the beginning of a struct and re-declaring inherited members. That actually buys you a little over C++ as you have explicit bitcopy semantics. You get code like: myShoe->v[putOnFoot](myShoe, me); which is pretty readable.

Automatic calling of constructors and destructors are responsibilities of allocators; providing custom malloc and free can solve that, although if you really want 0 lines of preprocessor you'd want to pass it a pointer to a constructor when you initialize.

Perfectly possible. Easy, even.