True, true. There are a dozen free and pay Bible apps out there to chose from. Fortunately the LiveChurch version listened and removed the whole location part of the app.
I understand they were well intentioned with a fun feature to tag not only when but where you read a Bible verse that moved you.
But I am more worried about the apps that are not well intentioned, the 50 or so we heard about last week that were sending all kind of info to advertising agencies.

Unfortunately it seems that the refund period has been reduced from 24 hours to 15 minutes to appease developers.
15 minutes or even 24 hours may not be long enough to vet an application for security risks, let alone functionality.
Plus I have issues with being at the mercy of DRM for an application I paid for, as well as the risk of discontinued support and updates.
I would really prefer an business plan where the developers do open source, charge for the app in the market place, but I can compile it myself and install it if I want. Also the app can be extended if they drop support or forked.
Now it is a much bigger risk in the face of piracy for the developer and all, but it seems other open source developers have survived without even the market place option to receive revenue.
I would love to reward such practices and use the security auditing features to reveal to other users that they should support more open developers as well

Exactly, it is free bait and I want it revealed. But I am not totally opposed to paying for an application with my eye balls and information, as long as I control when and what.

Awesome! I only just skimmed through it so far, but if I understand what you are saying and what I read then it is exactly what I am asking for!
Now I just need Gingerbread for my AT&T Nexus One and an app to collect logs on all my apps and restrict them for me!
Thanks!

Eh, that is easy enough solved with a warning: "If you deny this application GPS, Internet...it may not function properly", "running in restricted mode some features of the application may not work as intended".
It would be worth it, I am not trying to please developers with this functionality, I am trying to fight them and take power away from them.

Developers giving information to advertising agencies is the primary motivation for such controls.
I respect that developers need funds to produce applications, if a user wants it for free they have to pay with their eyes and perhaps personal information.
But that payment should not be taken deceptively behind the scenes.

Developers can simply combat users cutting off their funding source from advertisement by disabling the application if advertising is not coming in.
The user will get a message: "sorry user we depend on advertising revenue to bring you this great app, please enable internet connection to use the app"
The user can then be semi-informed and decide if it is worth it.

Ideally I want developers divulging exactly what info they are sending about the user to the user.
But if I was a naughty developer i would be encrypting or encoding the information I am sending out so the user has no clue.
What would need to happen then is the user would at least be able to say hey what is going on here, looks shady, I am not going to allow it.

But as users we are at war with developers, some developers offer the world, seemingly for free, and users eat it up.
By forcing developers to out right be honest about what the app is doing it improves everything.
Developers who truly make better apps, better not in just accomplishing what the user wants but not doing what the user does not want as well.
A developer who is charging out right for an app that is clean and user friendly will end up hopefully seeing more revenue as a result, because some users will be willing to pay to protect themselves.

Android is the lovely open place where we users should know everything that is going on behind the scenes in order to protect themselves.
If you want to be bled dry and trust someone else, then the iPhone is readily available. Developers can get their shady business there.

Nice. Now all I need is application level control, so I can give say Google Maps my actual location, while still running some other application I want to deny my location.

I want more than the application to declare what permission it uses.
I want to be able to run an application that say wants access to my GPS coordinates, but I can say no you get fake GPS access.
The same with internet access, phone directory access, and so on.

I do not want to be restricted to all or nothing, and have to forgo an app all together over a potential security issue.
The best example I have is the Bible app from LifeChurch.tv. I love the app, but for awhile it wanted access to my GPS coordinates.
Why? God knows where I am already LifeChurch. But unlike the nagging iPhone version which I could deny location information every time I ran the app it was all or nothing, location information transmitted.

Heck I want everything the damn apps do logged, if I allow them internet access I want to know what pages and logs on the packets sent.
Then we can really avoid these naughty apps that are transmitting things, because the OS says hey this app is transmitting this user, and the user can say hells no.

I do not ever want to install an anti-virus application to my phone. Never ever, I do not need them on my desktop, do not need them on my phone. Die McAfee and Norton, die!

Just my two cents. Perhaps I should download the source and make my own build. But it would be much easier on me if a Google engineer did it.

Hmm, now you have me curious...
Matlock Season 1 DVD Rip, but that is all I found. Four seeders so at least it is not a dead torrent. Looks like Matlock ran for nine seasons and the first four seasons are on DVD with the fifth season due in July! Grandma just needs the DVDs and she can rip and seed for all the other grandmas...
Emergency! turned up some promising results.
That Girl only an unaired pilot, but all five seasons are out on DVD at at least providing a good source for a torrent to be ripped from.
Odd Couple turned up all five seasons!
Hopefully torrent search results are not too frowned upon here...

I believe satellite TV was invented just for your situation...

No, all grandma needs is a Matlock torrent.

Wow that is a huge difference in fuel, thanks for the info. Any speculation if hit by a similar 767ER if the Empire State Building would have suffered the same fate as the twin towers then? Would it be practical to build a tower that could withstand such a collision, like we build buildings to withstand the 100 year storms or what not?

I love your comment!

I always wondered why the cockpit was not just locked and all. Was it because most hijackings before were not suicide missions and procedure was to try and save the passengers by negotiation or something? Are there any authoritative sources saying what you are saying that I can reference?

Along the same lines a friend of mine would point out that the Empire State building stood up to a collision from a WW2 bomber plane and only lost three floors to fire. If we would just build are towers to withstand commercial airline collisions then we would not have to worry so much either. I am not being facetious either.

I want all the security theater done away with, guns, knifes, explosives, cell phones, let them bring them on the plane. The plane should be able to handle it and keep flying and us passengers can take care of the rest. I am just tired of taking off my shoes and taking out my laptop when it does not seem like it would stop anyone really wanting to blow something up.

What is even more ridiculous is when people try to pull violence into an argument about sex like they are on equal ground and therefore there is some kind of hypocrisy as a result. Violence is not that hard to understand in comparison to sex. From day one most every health person is capable of experience the results of violence in the same manner and figures out violence and its physical and emotional consequences early on. Everyone experiences more pain than they would ever like to experience again at some point in early life, a cut, a bruise, some blood. This experience is easily extrapolated to larger acts of violence and how such violence would result in a lot more pain than the minimal experiences of pain that one knows they already want to avoid. Furthermore most children loose a goldfish, a dog, or a grandparent and have to grapple with the concept of death one of the ultimate results of violence. Granted there are mental illnesses and extreme cases, but fortunately most people do not really have to deal with those situations head on in civilized society. Violence is mostly limited to an action movie, a video game, or a news report. Violence is pretty black and white, you never want to have to use it and if you do it is at a last resort.

Does that mean our treatment of violence in society is without fault? No not at all, but it is simply not comparable to sex.

Sex on the other hand is easily identified as more complex be simply looking at puberty and the physical and emotional changes that occur in a person at that time. A prepubescent child simply cannot fully grasp sex and its consequences to its fullest, they are not physically, mentally, or emotionally capable of doing so, and the results of adult sexuality imposed on children can have devastating consequences. Sex cannot be presented to preteens in the same way as adults as opposed to something like violence. But that does not address the assertion of 14-16 year olds being capable of understanding sex and its consequences. But most grown adults still do not even understand or deal with sex properly, the assertion that teenagers, who are essentially sexual infants just having gone through puberty can fully understand sex and all its consequences is absurd. Sex unlike violence is not black and white. Most everyone is taught and urged to avoid violence at all costs, violence is always bad or negative, albeit perhaps sometimes necessary. On the other hand everyone is told you will have sex someday (unless you are reading this), it is necessary, and most everyone is a least warned to some extent that it is not an action to approach lightly. The grey areas and additional complexities of sex abound in comparison to violence. That being said, like violence, the treatment of sex could still afford improvement of course.

Sex and violence are unfortunately grouped together and it is certainly a disservice to both issues. Arguing the treatment of sex is hypocritical in comparison to violence is simply ridiculous and dangerously minimizes sex.

Hmm, For the computer based exams I was mostly thinking ACT, SAT, and most AP type exams were a TI graphing calculator is overkill anyway. The GRE was entirely computer based and it is far higher level then those exams and no calculator was allowed for the math anyway. They had special testing stations setup to go take the GRE, no reason ACT, SAT, and AP exams could not employ the same technique. The biggest problem for exams on computer in a college setting would seem to be supplying the computer lab for the exam is all.

As for EE exams I could have made it through my undergrad exams without my TI-89. Entering and dealing with the large exponential numbers is a lot easier on those calculators of course, but a properly written exam could determine if the student understands the concepts without any real numerical calculations. The exams could ban calculators altogether, that way and avoid cheating. But really even if I had my iPhone and EE friend sitting on the other end it would have easier to know the material than cheat. Granted solving linear algebra problems without the lovely matrix functions on my TI-89 would take a bit longer.

I am still thinking EE exams could be done on computer, although the partial credit we all depend on might be harder to earn. You would be allowed scratch paper to hammer out your equations and a built in calculator to run the numbers. The only entry would be a number. Granted there are the occasional graphing or diagram problem, but I have seen all of those done digital in online homework; from simple RCL circuits to transistors and what not. I had online homework that allowed basic equations entered into the input field and the javascript would do the math.

I had 100 level physics courses: mechanics, electromagnetics, thermodynamisc, and quantum mechancis, that had online homework where the problem were broken into pieces to help you learn the material. There would be 5 to 6 sub questions that led you to the answer, something like that could be provided with the avoidance of to much help to give partial credit on a computer exam. Heck all those physics courses used scan trons for exams anyway. They had three test forms handed out, but that would be easy to circumvent by sitting two people away from your friend. All you would need to do is rig your TI with some wireless and transmit (1.A 2.C 3.B...) but again I trust myself more than a friend and knowing the material would probably be easier than cheating.

But really there was never any time to cheat on an EE exam. By the time you would type the question to your outside friend or your inside friend typed the answer to you, you should have solved the problem already. I am still maintaining that only poorly written exams and stupid subject matters can be cheated on (I am looking at you Biology).

I loved my TI-83 in high school, what great calculator. The TI-83 was also a great portable gaming device and my first introduction to assembly programming. I still carry my TI-89 around with me as I have yet to find a good substitute (not that I have looked very hard). But I wonder with the ubiquity of mobile phones how long it will be before it is more economical to have student download a graphing calculator app for their iPhone/iPod/Android device.

The latest smartphones appear to have way more processing power than the latest TI Calculator offerings, plus the phones are near competitively priced with contracts and much more practical uses beyond class than a $150 calculator offer. Seems the software is were it is at, but heck I had a TI-89 emulator for Windows. Granted on an exam it might be difficult for a teacher to curb cheating via instant messenger, but my philosophy has always been if you can cheat on an exam it is a poor exam--or at least have different forms of the exam to deter instant message cheating with in the same class.

TI sucks for restricting the TI-Nspire from running native code, but I can imagine reasons why they would do so. Often the calculators that students are able to use on exams and standardized tests are restricted to curb cheating. I remember having to put tape over my TI-83's IR port during the ACT exam. Really these exams should be on computers now days with a basic calculator built in to the program.

To preface, I despise Flash as much as anyone, primarily for its closed nature. But I have to play devils advocate here.

You make valid points about the lack of a keyboard and mouse on the iPhone inhibiting the use of current Flash apps by iPhone users.
Your argument for resizing a web page to 320x480 is where your short sightedness is completely revealed though.

Many web sites, flash or no flash, do not display well on a 320x480 screen resolution, or rather a 3.x" screen even at the higher resolution of 480x800--but that is why most sites have adopted a mobile version of their website.
The lack of a keyboard and mouse on a non-flash web site can be just as detrimental, but again we have seen an adaptation of web sites to accommodate big blob fingers.
The Wii's built in browser and flash support motivated a whole slew of Flash games with the Wii motion controller alone in mind--no keyboard.

Now imagine that Adobe is allowed to bring Flash to the iPhone. Surly Flash programmers would adapt their apps and games to accommodate the lack of a keyboard and giant click areas--heck Adobe may even offer an API to support multi-touch.

Now I am not fan of Apple and its closed nature. While I have an iPhone and MacBook, for the purpose of creating iPhone apps, I hope for Apple's demise.
But I despise Flash even more than Apple and find it quite amusing that Google and Apple are helping to bury Flash.

I agree an email address is intrinsically easier to remember to a human, but it has a huge flaw I experience all the time. Ever try to give your email address out over the phone, or any combination of unfamiliar letters? 'V' gets confused with 'B' and so on, especially when you have a unique spelling for a a name. My email address and my first name have been malformed a number of times by humans over the phone, but my phone number not once. Numbers are just easier to convey and less ambiguous, I always wondered if by design?

That being said there are technological solutions to the problem, when I meet someone in person I should not be verbally relaying my address (phone number or email...) we should be doing some digital vcard exchange over Bluetooth or something between our phones. Over the phone I should not be verbally relaying information that is more clearly conveyed in text. When ordering my air plane tickets over the phone (sometimes the human operators can pull off things that the online interface is not letting me do in booking) I should simply be able to switch to instant/text messaging the operator and clearly relay any text as long as I do not hit the wrong key on my damn virtual keyboard...