Comment Universal Praise? (Score 1) 196
A lot of critics liked it, but quite a few, including Rex Reed and David Edelstein destroyed it. I'm with them, personally. It seems to be fairly polarizing.
Comment Re:Watch that price, NYT (Score 1) 217
If the NYT and Fox News are covering the same story, I want to read the NYT coverage and not Fox News. I don't trust FN, and I do trust NYT (at least I trust them more).
Or read both, and make up your own mind. Everything is slanted, and slimming your intake to just a few trusted sources is dangerous on either side of the political spectrum.
Comment Re:Watch that price, NYT (Score 1) 217
A couple months ago I saw a fire near my apartment. I search the name of the street on Twitter and there were tons of tweets describing what was going on with pictures....
This is the type of scenario that social media excels at, but most people don't have white house press credentials, or correspondents in kandahar, or the patience or experience to dig through piles of legal documents. Stories like enron, what caused the financial crisis, the CIA torture memos, etc all need experienced journalists who need to be paid.
That said, your point is totally valid. Why pay for something that is now free? Personally, I'm willing to pay for the increase quality, both of journalism and UI. But my cap is probably around $8-10/mo. And I'm a fanboy.
Comment Re:Windows Phone 7 Series Video (Score 2, Insightful) 427
I totally agree. Still way to many animations and eye candy. UI designers should keep the focus on what works well and fast not what looks slick, but the slick looking designs are the ones that get picked in the meetings...
My favorite part is the "find people faster".... that's what you're selling? exactly how is that faster, or at all different from your competitors? My treo 300 could get to contacts quite quickly, and the iphone search is easy and works well - is this a still a problem?
Comment Would you move to the winning city? (Score 1) 144
If Seattle or Baltimore wins, I'd think about it. Seems like whoever wins will get a giant influx of nerds.
Comment how about html/javascript for tinkering? (Score 1) 965
If someone is curious about computer tinkering these days, I feel like their first toe in the water will be with HTML/JS/AJAX rather than BASIC/ResEdit/Etc. ipad will definitely have a text editor and file sharing... and as many have said, if you REALLY want to get under the hood, they can step up to a linux box (or any other desktop OS).
besides, jquery touch looks much, MUCH more fun than 10 PRINT "VOIDSTIN RULES!" 20 GOTO 10
Comment If the scams are a Red Herring, stop them. (Score 3, Insightful) 148
So, if the revenue really comes from honestly entertained consumers trading money for an enjoyable experience, fine. Do that. Stop it with the text message scams and toolbar downloads..
But, since $9.99/mo in hidden text message charges > $1 for a tractor, it seems to me that the tractor is the red herring, in order to get you to the far more profitable malware. But Zynga can easily prove me wrong by stopping these practices....
Comment Re:"it just works my ass" (Score 0) 423
Are any of these complaints about Mac OS X itself? Seems like a lot of bitching about iphoto, mail, acrobat, and itunes. Yes, all of those bite. Use aperture/lightroom, gmail, preview, and
Dont like it? Enjoy your Treo 800 or Blackberry Curve.
Most software kind of sucks. I happen to think the iphone sucks the least of all the smart phones.
Submission + - Adobe Flash exploit could log keystrokes
Kenyon Lessi writes: Adobe has issued three critical security updates, one of which is designed to stop a problem in the way the Flash player interacts with browsers, which could result in users' keystrokes being transmitted to attackers.
The problem affect Adobe Flash Player version 9.0.45.0, 8.0.34.0 and 7.0.69.0, as well as their earlier versions running on all platforms.
Journal Journal: Is Gary Coleman Evil?
Gary Coleman has been shilling for Cash Call lately, trying to sell people on loans with outrageous interest rates (99.25% APR for example). These are the kinds of loans that help keep poor people poor. And that brings up this question: by virtue of making a buck off of this kind of exploitation of the poor, is Gary Coleman evil?
Submission + - Promoting Your Website?
Aabra writes: I'm an admin in a relatively small (300 or so) community. Google, despite our best efforts has decided to put our website on pages 2-4, far below sites that are completely irrelevant when searching for our keywords. We're trying to increase our playerbase (It's a free source port for a once extremely popular game.) and are having difficulty getting any traffic to the site. What are some good ways to promote your website and increase traffic?
Top 5 Reasons People Dismiss PostgreSQL 704
Jane Walker writes "In an effort to dispel some of the FUD surrounding this impressive product, this article puts forth several of the most commonplace reasons for a user to dismiss PostgreSQL." From the article: "While PostgreSQL's adoption rate continues to accelerate, some folks wonder why that rate isn't even steeper given its impressive array of features. One can speculate that many of the reasons for not considering its adoption tend to be based on either outdated or misinformed sources."
Long Dev Time Equals Better Game? 88
Via a GameSetWatch post, a piece on Treyarch Producer Stuart Roch's blog. He discusses the long development time of Shadow of the Colossus, and what four years of work did for that title. From the article: "Granted, it's a bit of a stretch to make a simple correlation between more development time and higher quality product based on this tiny product sample, but I have to admit, there is certain attractiveness to the argument. Can it be that in a given number of development cycles, those that had more time with less resources would create better games than those that had short dev cycles with monster teams? One might think that having more time would allow for more polish and iteration and therefore yield higher quality product, but as I'm sure you're thinking, examples can be made of both good and bad games that were in production for long periods of time."
U.S. Investigating Online Music Pricing 213
An anonymous reader writes "Times Online has a story about the U.S. Federal Government investigating whether the music labels are fixing prices for online music sales. 'The antitrust division is looking at the possibility of anti-competitive practices in the music download industry ... Mr Jobs suggested such a move would drive owners of Apple's iPod, the hugely popular digital music player, to piracy, a problem that has cost the music industry billions in revenues in recent years.'"
