The Parallax Propeller is a great multi-core chip to get started with. The chip is $7.95 and has 8 cores running at 80Mhz. You can pickup the Quickstart board at Radio Shack for $40, including an overpriced RS USB cable (they normally retail for $25).

The Parallax Propeller is a much more economical way of getting started with multi-core programming. Parallax offers the PropTool, which provides SPIN and PASM language support. For C development you can get SimpleIDE which is a great IDE to get started with C programming on the Propeller, which uses a port of GCC.

Bravo! You have made the beginning of my day!

The title of my next newsletter:

Ruby: A language designed by programmers for non-programmers

Then followed by these illustrious titles:

Ruby: Non-programming for Programmers
Ruby: Unprogramming what you've learned about Programming
Ruby: Lobotomy required
Ruby: Brainfuck for the masses

Yeah, um, ya...

I just reviewed the documentation for the receipt verification, and that process is broken too.

To summarize, you forward an opaque token to the appstore and verfiy success using a simple clear text status flag. This is fundamentally broken because the client doesn't authenticate the source of either piece of data. The original hack in this article is based on a Man In the Middle attack, their receipt verification system is vulnerable to exactly the same type of attack.

The lack of cryptographic hashing and authentication on the client side is a complete failure of Apple's API design. The first step should be message signing and authentication to ensure the server is who the server says they are. Apple is relying on SSL certificates for this role, which I feel is inadequate. The SSL Certificate Authority system has been broken for a long time and reliance upon them to assure authenticity is a Bad Idea(tm).

The concept of centralized CAs is good in theory, but recent events have proven that CAs are easily corrupted by economic, political, and technical means.

I'm sorry, but any way to slice it, that's just a straight up anti-competitive move.

I don't use Meebo, or much care about it, but Google is *clearly* using their might and cash to eliminate services. I can't decide whether it's Google trying to squash tools that marginalize the difference between competing products, thus eliminating any advantages one IM protocol has over another, or they are just trying to remove products from the landscape and further promote the mono-culture they have pushed so very hard.

Android is an utter pile of garbage, having used both Blackberry and Danger, it is a sorry second, but because Google has pushed it so hard, we live in a mono-culture of Android vs iDevice. It's been years, and Android still can't do things in a sane and successful manner, they seem to feel that going against intuition is the best way to innovate. Eliminating well understood UI concepts and relying on quirky interfaces. Apple just confounds me with the "let's take everything out that could possibly add power or confuse", and thus you are left with the "dumb" smart device.

Why does everyone agree with me when I complain about my phone, but we don't have the tools available to make our own good phones? I WANT SEND and END BUTTONS!

I'm excited to find out that Motorola has a semi-native Debian distro hiding under Android on their phones, which is only exposed via webtop. At least it's something?!

Sorry for the OT Rant, but I can't help but go on a tangent once in a while.

I was hoping this would turn around, I'm tired of hearing stories of companies that take gov't money and fold right quick afterwards. That ugly monument to screwing the taxpayers, SolyndraBuilding, irks me every time I drive by it.

I wonder if the neighbor's kids have ever gotten laid.

Them kids just sit in their rooms and play games, smoke weed, and play some more. There is some sort of employment they are involved with, but it doesn't look real stable or regular, certainly not a 9-5 job.

That said, I blame their mom. They are over privileged and simply have to pitch a fit to get what they want, whether it's a new computer part or a car to replace the last POS they bought.

I don't think it was games that did it, I think their mother's lack of parenting and failure to instill drive in them is to blame. Dad is whipped, so he's not much of an influence.

Teach kids right from wrong, learn them some work ethic, and give them opportunity to succeed, that's what I think is lacking.

When I read the article I felt like the world at large has failed. With the resurgence of the DIY genre, why do the young ones have to be ignorant of history? It seems like the intention is to forget all that came before, so nobody can have an original idea. The irony is that many great, original, ideas are a rehash of some previous idea because it was the best way to do something.

As someone who grew up using floppies, building computers, learning to program, and finally leaving that arena to explore a career in one of the oldest professions, metalworking, I have a particular spot for history and nostalgia.

Just because every 14 year old kid has an ARM A5 processor strapped to them doesn't mean the lessons that were learned in the 80's, innovating computers and electronics, aren't just as applicable today.

I feel it takes an appreciation for the classical trades and the way things *were* done, to truly appreciate what we have -- and apply the hard won principles of yesteryear to tomorrow.

Sure, those icons stand for concepts that we rarely use today, but many of them were "obsolete" when they were invented. Further, what would we replace them with, what are the analogues today that people will unmistakebly associate those actions with? What, two fingers making a V? How about a curly swipey gesture?

The world is full of things past and present, let's not throw them away because the "future" beckons "futuristic" notions.