People who believe that ignorance is a synonym of stupidity are ignorant.

This holds true even if you have a stunted vocabulary and believe just that. It holds true also if you ignorantly mistake stunted vocabularies for semantic drift.

I am happy to be disagreeing with you!

Troll thread is fun.

My experience is most games sell both a regular and an HD version.

:-)

What, steganography isn't good enough for you?

Would be good.

Quartz drawing primitives are vector based, and Cocoa [Touch] interface layouts use resize masks to provide resolution and orientation independence, but all graphics contexts and supported image formats on IOS are bitmap only. The resource loading system will let you support all current resolutions by creating three versions of your image - image.png, image@2x.png, image-ipad.png - but that doesn't future-proof you.

You could use the Fiasco fractal library to compress your ultra high rez original copy, then decompress it into a bitmap appropriate to whatever resolution you detect at run-time; couple that with the other technologies that already make resolution independence easy and you're pretty future-proof. Not sure where you can get the original Fiasco, but it's part of the netpbm source distribution, and under a GPL license.

But the App Store is not compatible with the GPL. :-)

Or pay $99 for AppleCare up front and the replacement is free if it happens within two years. I'm pretty sure that means Apple expects the MTBF on batteries is over two years.

For what it's worth my 30 month old 3G is showing degradation, but my wife is using it now for light duties, and still typically goes several days between charges.

Anything over 18 months and I'm pretty comfortable that a phone has depreciated enough to replace, not repair.

Stick with the Android Market, which is fortunately the path of least resistance.

Not that this is how the world should be. Carriers should be held accountable for extending unlimited credit to consumers. There should not be a choice between freedom from carrier shovelware and OS version restrictions (iOS) and freedom from app censorship (Android). There should not be a significant risk with installing apps outside the Google marketplace.

But given this is how the world is, a NORMAL phone user sticks with the Android Market, and is pretty safe. AFAIK, anyway. I chose freedom from carrier bullshit over freedom from App Store bullshit, and remain an iOS user.

I think we're talking about very different circumstances. TFA doesn't disclose amounts, but I would expect at least a thousand times larger as a starting point for a bill racked up in that way, and being careless with my phone and leaving it unlocked and in reach of a child is a different level of personal responsibility to having malware take over my phone.

If it were my child, and $10, sure, I'd pay it.

Off the top of my head...

• The bill may be defaulted, in which case the provider is lucky to get much at all, possibly selling the debt to a collection agency, and losing a customer.
• The bill may be reduced to a payable amount, in which case the provider is lucky to get much at all, and possibly loses a customer.
• Bad PR, though let's face it, this doesn't mean much to multi-million customer organisations (at least, until it starts happening to tens of thousands of them).
• Any consumer protection agencies (do those exist in the US?) may side with the customer on this type of problem.
• The customer is likely to complain long and loud given their phone has no record of the messages and no record of incoming warnings, racking up a large support call cost.

If I were a wireless provider, I'd be all over telling my competitor's customers that we're the SAFE provider, and they should switch now.

Is it detrimental to the weak or less powerful to keep a functioning government during an emergency?

Wikipedia has a nice article on ex post facto law. It's unconstitutional in the U.S., but happens anyway. it's constitutionally OK in Westminster systems like the UK and Australia, but viewed unfavourably - and happens anyway.

(Also, GP, retrospective is probably not the word you intended to use; try retroactive).

Web security should never depend on a user recognising a specific pattern of pixels, either by determining whether that vertical bar with some marks at the top and bottom is a "1" or an "l" or by figuring out if the displayed UI element is part of the web page or not.

And, if your bank's website doesn't use two-factor authentication, disable it now.

Two years ago I went through metal detectors and bag scanners to visit "Liberty" Island.

(And yeah, same thing for museums, summer palace, and forbidden city in Beijing - but metal detectors are a far cry from an unshielded X-ray machine scanning my eyes and testes).

Yes, it goes both ways.

It's irresponsible for an IT department to avoid saying they require the capability to remote wipe in order to connect a device. The article really isn't very clear on whether the iPhone owner was informed or not - she didn't seem to know, but wilful ignorance is in vogue these days, so there's every chance she could have and should have known.

It's also irresponsible for an organisation to require individuals to use personal equipment to process confidential or sensitive data. If you're in such an important position that it would cost the company money for you to not be able to check your mail in the bathroom, spending a few hundred on a company smartphone shouldn't be a big deal.

If your company does either or both of those, buy a smart phone, claim it against your tax, and leave it in a desk at work.

Technically possible isn't even remotely the same as permissible. Confidential data usually comes with an NDA explicitly forbidding stupid shit like forwarding every email you get out to a third party.

I'm pretty sure the TSA are already capable of causing you to miss your flight because they didn't like your face. "Please step this way sir, we need to ask you some questions."