Believe it or not, the US spends more per capita on student education than France. I tend to think part of the US problem is that we do not target our money well, instead spending a disproportionate amount on those who don't want to learn. I do think we need to help those in lower income brackets, but I think it would be better to spend the money inside of that bracket on those families clearly trying to improve their situation.

My wife teaches in inner city schools and there are programs that focus on high achieving students. But programs for those with disciplinary problems, behavioral issues or developmental problems seem to get funded much better. One program, for example, for children with severe disabilities is really just a day care program with a teacher and an aide for 6 children. The ratio is so low because the kids need constant care to keep them from hurting themselves. Is this a role for an educational system or for a welfare program? I want these kids to be safe, but I also want our educational system focusing on those who will lead our future. Do we really need Master's degree teachers in a role that is probably better suited to nursing. These kids will never learn what four plus four is yet we spend money on a teacher that could be used elsewhere in the inner city.

You can't compare rolling stones and beethoven. Beethoven's works are much more complex than anything rolling stones made.

Rolling stones is simple, beethoven is complex.

Most progressive rock is complex and that's because it IS complex though it tends to make more of a show of it than Beethoven.

You're mixing up quality and complexity.

Rolling stones are non-complex and good. Beethoven is complex and good. Progressive rock is complex and everything from good to crap.

Rolling stones is simple? You've never tried to play a Keith Richards fill have you ?

The grade school system is terrible and needs improvement. Luckily they do not run the university system. The US consistently has more top universities than any other country.

US News and World Report: http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities-rankings/top-400-universities-in-the-world ARWU (compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University): http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2010.jsp QS World Rankings (compiled by a London corp): http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2011

Because it is remote, inaccessible and dangerous. That's the fun for the hiking hardcore.

Not everything is about beauty

I don't care a whit about beauty. What I care about is USABILITY. That app (like so many other enterprise apps have worked with) was built by a bunch of people who didn't have to use the damn thing day to day. I didn't say anything about the widgets or color or anything. I just said it was not a very usable application and that could be improved.

I, like so many other enterprise developers, had to work with what people were trying to design but also listen to the complaints of the people on the front line really using the software. It's amazing how little THOSE two groups end up really talking, even when in theory there is someone in part of the development process representing their interests... but it's almost always a manager who again doesn't REALLY know where problems are or what would make things better.

You make me remember a Mac supremacist and how I embarrased him when he bragged about his new macbook G4 back then

You remind me of every wanker I ever worked with who didn't care about people who used the software we wrote. God I detested those people. Utter wastes of a chair.

BTW, If you brag about so heavily about your work

It's not bragging asshole. It's telling you what real life experience I have had with the issues at hand. I am passionate about this because in any context (mobile or not) the software industry COULD be doing a way better job designing software built to meet users needs but instead all to often is merely the bitch of business groups who have total say over how something comes out, and your video frankly brought out PTSD style flashbacks of some of the horrors that came out of that process.

You can defend it all you like but every single person on earth who has developed software for the enterprise more than a year knows I am correct.

You may have the last reply; I see no need to someone hell bent on pushing people into using unusable software even when better could be had.

As for examples that prove my case, simply look at any large data visualization or data entry app like Salesforce Viewer on the iPad... SInce all of my work is pretty much client work (I am an iOS consultant) I cannot point to it directly, either because it's not public or it's not polite to build and tell.

Did you watch the video? Did you understand the functionality shown there? Would you say it'd survive just because of 'lack of competition'? Do you think the best under100 U$ app sold in the app store is more complex than the ERP shown there wroking on Android and updatign a remote DB in realtime?

I used to be an enterprise developer, for over a decade - working on all kinds of similar very heavily data-driven systems, many with lots of complex forms as well.

YES I understood what was going on in that video. Between understanding that AND understanding now from working full time as a mobile developer since the release of the iOS SDK, also on many heavily data-driven applications on the iPhone/iPad, the application demonstrated in that video is AWFUL. Not even good mind you; I would say that monstrosity sucks and for every screen I saw there are easily 10 ways you could improve the UI and in the end possibly even make it useful for the poor bastards that have to use it every day. That's not even taking into account the myriad of ways you could make it better just because it's running on a tablet and not a PC (which the application obviously had little understanding of) or taking advantage of tablet hardware....

But that's what glorified form designers do for you - they give you something functional that works, very quickly. Well it sort of works, since every single freaking enterpriseapp I've worked with has ended up with a TON of customization that in the end the tools either made impossible or very hard, so I had to tell the business owners I couldn't do the thing they were asking for.

With a native application I can do ANYTHING. If they want text in a cell alternating colors, or pulling up a map, or zooming an element to full-screen by God I can do it. I generally do build out a lightweight framework that makes form definition simpler but then I can attach native functionality anywhere instead of being gated by the tool.

That video is pretty much the DEFINITION of what I was thinking of with my original post. If I saw an application like that and I knew it was making any kind of money I would cry with joy at the opportunity presented to me.

I was just trying to keep my original method sort and pithy and trap the Apple Haters into a response (success! Not you of course).

You are right though that for enterprise use cross-platform tools can work - although I think enterprise developers should be looking at what the internal target market is using and build to that - i.e. sales forces are in fact just using iPads pretty much and it really makes sense to build a better tailored application that takes full advantage of the iPad.

As an iOS developer, I heartily thank you for continuing to use cross platform development solutions that leave such a wide gap for someone to come along and write a better native app.

I built a rather extensive commercial App on iOS. By abstracting the data/business layers well, when going to android it was as simple as writing a lexer to convert almost all the code. What took me 1000 hours of development took 8 hours to port over. The only thing that was really required was writing the UI, which was targeted for Android.

Allah tells us what we need to know. Qur'an is not a science book. It's a book of guidance. For 99% of all practical purposes earth-centric system of reference is what is needed. We say sunset and sunrise, not "earth rotating from/to darkness to/from sunlight".

You started from the things you found in Quran and found questionable (never mind they are from somebody else's site - "critical" thinking my butt), when I gave you very simple explanation, now you are complaining about things you DON'T find in Quran.

BTW, the Greeks you mentioned had many other theories, none of which became dominant and revolutionary in their times because the scientific method did not exist at that time as an established paradigm of thought.

If you are going to continue insulting my faith by using terms "stupid", "ignorant" and "crappy", please, let the parent comment be the last one, I am not going to answer any of your questions anymore.

15:19 does not mean that Earth is flat.

21:33 The sun and moon are orbiting the earth.

That's true. Have you heard of system of reference? Inertial and what not?