spiney - Slashdot User

Apple's Schiller Responds To iPhone Dictionary App Fiasco 200

Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 07, 2009 @07:04PM from the not-so-sinister-after-all dept.

beef curtains writes "Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, responded by e-mail to a blog post discussing Apple's rejection of a dictionary app. If Schiller's e-mail is to be believed, it offers an interesting perspective on this whole issue. He said, 'The issue that the App Store reviewers did find with the Ninjawords application is that it provided access to other more vulgar terms than those found in traditional and common dictionaries, words that many reasonable people might find upsetting or objectionable. ... The Ninjawords developer then decided to filter some offensive terms in the Ninjawords application and resubmit it for approval for distribution in the App Store before parental controls were implemented. Apple did not ask the developer to censor any content in Ninjawords, the developer decided to do that themselves in order to get to market faster. ... You are correct that the Ninjawords application should not have needed to be censored while also receiving a 17+ rating, but that was a result of the developers' actions, not Apple's.' PC World has an article summarizing the drama-to-date, the blog post, and Schiller's response."

CES 2009 Shrinks With Dwindling Economy 76

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday January 07, 2009 @06:31AM from the what's-passing-and-what-is-to-come dept.

nandemoari writes "Not long after we first heard murmurs Microsoft may be ready to lay off as much as 17 per cent of its workforce, the popular Consumer Electronics Show, held every year in Las Vegas, is rumored to be shrinking alongside the global economy. The Consumer Electronics Association, host of the CES, estimates that the numbers of both exhibitors and visitors will be down in 2009. The CEA expects about 130,000 people will attend this year, down 11,000 from last year. And about 2,700 exhibitors are expected to attend, down from 3,000 in 2008."

Should You Break TOS Because Work Asks You? 680

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday October 27, 2008 @09:13AM from the just-don't-crawl-this-domain-please dept.

An anonymous reader writes "My boss recently assigned me a project that was all his idea, with two basic flaws that would require me to break multiple web sites' Terms of Service (TOS). Part requires scraping most of the site, parsing the data and presenting it as our own without human intervention. While we're safe on copyright issues, clearly scraping like this is normally not allowed. At times it might also put a load on those sites. The other is, for lack of better words, a 'load balancing' part that requires using multiple free accounts instead of purchasing space and CPU time for less than $2,000 USD per month. The boss sees it as 'distributed' computing when in reality it's 'parasitic.' My question is: am I wrong about the ethics? If I do need to walk, how best can I handle it without damaging my reputation and future employment opportunities?"

RealNetworks To Introduce a Simple DVD Copier 244

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 08, 2008 @09:22AM from the why-must-there-always-be-drm dept.

langelgjm writes "The New York Times reports that RealNetworks will begin selling RealDVD today, a software program designed to make copying DVDs a trivial task for the average user. Unlike free alternatives, which generally require some technical knowledge and make it difficult to copy an entire DVD with extras, etc., RealDVD claims to be able to copy the entire DVD, menus and all. While sure to raise the ire of Hollywood, the program does have significant limitations: the DVDs it makes will only be playable on the computer where they were created; or, users can pay $20 per computer to play the DVDs on up to five additional computers."

Comment What we really need is for iPhone to support UMA (Score 2, Informative) 153

by spiney on Monday June 30, 2008 @11:45AM (#24001755) Attached to: iPhone App Enables GSM To WiFi/VoIP Switching

There is a technology available called UMA (Unified Mobile Access) which, with the right handsets, will seamlessly switch from cellular to VOIP over WiFi. It is what is used by the T-Mobile "Hotspot @ Home" plans in the US. The phones have cell and WiFi, and if you are at home or on another WiFi connections your calls (in and out) are VOIP and don't count against your cell minutes if you pay the $10 or $20/month. I use it because our building at work seems to block GSM cell signals, so I use WiFi to get signal at work. I also use it at home where the cell signal is a bit iffy.

The iPhone seems to have all the hardware required, but you can bet your life that AT&T won't be offering this any time soon, because their customers might actually like it...

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