I've got news for you, most don't write them for Windows either. That's why Java, C, C++, PHP, Python, Flash, etc are so popular. In fact, there are relatively few enterprise apps written to platform specific APIs. I'd say well over 80% of Fortune 500 corporate enterprise class apps are written in platform agnostic languages / APIs. The age of platform specific enterprise applications came and went a while back.

Trying playing an HD video (read h264) under Windows in WMP and see how well that works. WMP is one of the few media players that's actually worse than QT.

I disagree, the iPhone was the first to offer a touch screen based UI, a solid internet browser, a usable mobile calendar, and a viable iPod replacement. Is it the end all be all of cell phones, no. However, what made the iPhone so good was the software stack more than the hardware stack. The iPhone software stack is still by far the best on the market. The hardware is just slightly above average, but I (personally) think Apple did this to create an upgrade path. For example. want GPS? Upgrade from V1 to V2. Next will be, want video? Upgrade from V2 to V3 ... etc.

I know you're kidding, but, seriously, tough crap for people who chose to write their sites in non-standard compliant code. They screwed up by making a piss poor choice and they deserve to go down with the ship they hitched their trailers to. They can go back to their local community colleges to get some different certificate and leave the interwebs to people who know what it is they're doing.

I think the DJs on satellite are the single most annoying thing about the service. I use it mainly for the info channels like CNBC, CNN, and sports, but I do occasionally tune into music. If I wanted people yapping inanely over songs, I'd listen to land based music. That's an easy head count reduction that would actually improve the service.

LDAP and more specifically Berkley DB have been doing things like that for a very very long time. The reality is that that model doesn't scale well. As archaic as RDBMSes are they are built to scale and be generic in how they store data. I've used BigTable via GoogleApps and it's limitations as compared to an RDBMS are readily apparent when you want to share common data between objects.

Seriously though ... this might be the impetus to develop force shields a la Star Trek. It makes sense, when enough space junk builds up, deflector shields will be the only way to safely escape Earth orbit.

I like the premium economy concept. We're anything but rich, but I'm willing to fork out an extra $100 to not have my shoulders rubbing my neighbours. I'm not the the Hulk, but my shoulders are too wide for the hobbit sized seats on most econ flights. I'm more than willing to split the bill for removing 1 seat from a 6 seat row and gaining 4 glorious inches of shoulder room so I can avoid having to dislocate a shoulder to fit in my alloted air space.

Well ... yes ... MS invented and implemented it as an ActiveX control. However, MS wasn't the first to integrate it natively into JavaScript, that honor goes to Mozilla. MS only followed suit in IE 7.0. On that note, we were leveraging dynamic image loading in JavaScript to do ajaxy things in HTML long before XMLHTTP ever came around.

Yeah ... I was thinking the same thing. Good bye to C and Assembler? Ahhh, they mean goodbye to any low level hardware I/O or custom drivers ... nice. We already have a Phantom OS, it's called HTML / JavaScript ... no files to persist, no access to hardware, no low level performance tuning, networking is built-in, everything is interpreted ... how exactly is Phantom OS any different? OSes succeed when they offer GREATER flexibility, not when they insulate developers for low level APIs. Look at what can be done on an iPhone versus what is possible on a Mac. I think I'll stick with my "dinosaur" UNIX variant, with all the terrifying freedom and non-restrictions it provides, thank you very much.

You're wrong about being bigger: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe#Political_geography Europe, the continent, is larger than the US in terms of area -but- it does have twice the population at about 731M. The being cleared up, the best broadband I've experienced in the USA was in Tampa, FL where FIOS is widely available. However, the other US cable and DSL connections I've used have been barely satisfactory compared to speeds I've seen in Europe and Canada.

Here's a MUCH better ranking: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html Basically Java > C, but C | C++ > Java. However C# PHP, so not all is lost. There's no mention of ObjC on there at all ... which may or may not be odd.

I smell free lifeclocks and carousel for all!!!

I was thinking the same thing. Yes, 2.6 has a bigger codebase, but if you compile only the modules you need, instead of everything plus the kitchen sink, it's really no bigger in binary form (maybe +5%). In return, I find it to be noticeably more responsive given the same hardware.

Good post, but it is impossible to build an unbreakable device simply by definition. If code runs on it, it's breakable, even if it means a brute force code signing "attack". It might take 10,000 years to get the correct key to use in signing, but it's possible. What impresses me is how quickly these guys find a way in. I've done some playing around cracking hardware, for educational purposes of course, and it's nowhere near as easy as they make it seem.