cgranade

The article seems unnecessarily harsh, frankly. It's easy to forget in all of this that Black is still 13 years old.

I find it interesting that the study found Android to be so markedly better only for sites that weren't optimized for mobiles. On mobile-friendly sites, the median was quite close and even in iOS's favor: "The two operating systems were much more closely matched for mobile specific websites with Android only faster three per cent of the time, with a median load time of 2.085 seconds versus the Iphone's 2.024 seconds."

I don't think for a moment that the difference in load times for mobile-friendly sites (about 3%) is significant, given the errors inherent in such a test, and the results for non-optimized sites clearly show that there is a lot of merit to Android's browser stack. Rather, I bring this up because I think it reflects on Apple's design philosophy as compared with Google's. Whereas Apple designs for their ideal of what the Web should be, Google designs for the Web that actually exists. One could argue that Apple's approach is better in the long-term, but I don't think that I agree. They've taken a lot of liberties with the idea of a web standard, after all, and seem to be banking on their market power to ensure that their technical strategy works. On the other hand, Google's approach is more developer friendly, I think, in that it treats standards as tools which may or may not be employed by individual web development teams.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but all the same, I do think there's some room for very interesting analysis--- The Inquirer missed an opportunity here to delve deeper. Alas.

I miss using ~ to indicate usernames.

I'm surprised that no one here has yet pointed out that posts like this are a part of the self-correction mechanism present in transparent communities. Sure, it may be drama in the short term, but I think the fact that we know about these altercations is an important thing in and of itself. I would be highly surprised if this kind of drama didn't occur in the proprietary software world, but we don't get to see it and learn from it.

Oh, definitely. It's also a bit of a wasted opportunity in some ways, as it becomes harder to retire SMS with each service built on top of it.

Just what we need: more services to depend on the already-obsolete SMS. From the standpoint of a gov't agency, that decision makes a lot of sense, but just further illustrates to me how badly we need to transition to messaging protocols like XMPP that are designed for use in the modern world.

If I understood correctly, the JSend statuses should be used in conjunction with HTTP status codes when appropriate. I guess to me the spec seems redundant, as I don't see the advantage over using just HTTP status codes.

That's just the point: it doesn't just work. My phone has Zebra Crossing (Google's open-source barcode reader), which scans everything from UPCs to QR Codes to Data Matrix... but not Microsoft Tag or AT&T's mobile tag format. Given that I am not keen on the idea of installing three new apps for these various proprietary tag formats, it doesn't just work. Instead, I have to recognize it's in a non-standard format, find/download the right app, etc. That's a big pain for something that already works quite well.

I don't see a lot of barriers against others implementing the same. The vast majority of the legwork seems to be carried by HTML5 (+CSS3 +ECMAScript +...), after all.

Yes and no. For one, Readability isn't a monopoly. Second, Readability isn't prohibiting (so far as I'm aware) authors from selling via other channels at other prices. While Apple and Readability are both offering a service to their various audiences, Apple goes further by demanding that developers on iOS use their IAP API and that they match prices offered via cheaper methods.

From the article, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association is quoted as saying that "Sony/Google are asking the Commission to ignore copyright, patent, trademark, contract privity, licensing, and other legal rights and limitations that have been thoroughly documented." Such dishonesty defines the terms of the conflict, and makes it clear that the conflict is not at all about who is right, or what is best for consumers, but rather what makes the most money in the very short term.

Not, of course, to say that the AllVid Alliance isn't also pursuing similar motivations. Rather, it seems that in this case that the NCTA relies heavily upon dishonesty about the AllVid Alliance's position in order to make their case. That should say something about which side consumers, developers, activists, etc. should be most comfortable supporting.

It kind of amazes me that someone can make a statement like that bolt cutters analogy and not stop to ponder why bolt cutters are still legal, despite their utility in stealing bicycles.

Given how instructive the source code is, I think it serves as a nice demo. Even moreso when you consider that this is (by all appearances, anyway) a personal project and not an orchestrated marketing campaign.

Not in general, no, but they do have quite enough market share in some niche markets, such as smartphone apps. I think that is sufficient to spark anti-trust suits in many jurisdictions.

There's a vast, vast difference between being first to market, and using that advantage to unethically create a monopoly by cryptographically locking users out of their own devices. If we fail to take a stand against such blatant violations of user rights, then that is what will undo the wonders of computing. Under the Apple model, innovation must follow asking your competitor for permission. Truly disruptive innovation cannot be sustained as long as Apple has unilateral control over the devices that they make, even after they are long past sold.

That analogy only works if the theatre was also owned by the moviegoer. A better analogy would be a DVD player that wouldn't play movies if you ate the wrong brand of popcorn while watching in your living room. If you're going to call someone out as "just wrong" by using an analogy, please make sure your analogy says what you want it to say first.

Exactly. If duplicating a service is grounds for rejection and expulsion, then what is a company to do when Apple moves into a new market? Should the New York Times not have a newspaper app now that The Daily has been endorsed by Apple? Should Google Maps close up shop when Apple gets around to implementing navigation? Maybe Foursquare should pack it up once Apple adds check-in support to the base OS.

All snark aside, it's never a sound business model to hand a possible competitor the "off" switch for your business.

It's not so simple as that. Not at all. For one thing, a platform is a concept. As far as ownership is concerned, the users own their respective devices, not Apple. Moreover, it is not "fair" to exploit a monopoly (in this case, one unethically created by means of a closed platform with undisclosed and inconsistent app approval rules), and as such, many countries have laws preventing the unethical exploitation of monopoly-derived power.

Anyway, I find it very odd to speak of Apple's "rights" whilst simultaneously ignoring those that actually have rights: the users. The philosophy that organizations can have rights independent of and greater in extent than any of its constituent persons is, to say the least, bizarre to me.

Oh, and as for liking the terms of the platform: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further." (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080684/quotes?qt0358500)

The only justification I've heard, and it's a very weak one, is that Apple provides the customers. That is, if Apple weren't around to run the App Store, then customers would be too stupid to find anything interesting to read, listen to or watch. Surely, they can justify some amount for payment processing overhead, but requiring all apps to use Apple's payment processing terms is beyond ridiculous.

Frankly, I was all set to buy one, but if I can't even use WiFi from in Canada, that's a dealbreaker.

I am especially bothered by the Verizon details here. First off, how can they prohibit WiFi use? Second, it seems like the Xoom is unavailable in Canada, if it really is Verizon-locked. Ouch and ouch.

I am. Playing around with Google App Engine and Honeycomb at the same time, making some tools for tabletop gaming. Just uploaded first revision (very feature incomplete) at https://github.com/cgranade/ProjectUmbra/.

  Political parties do this too- conservatives are characterized by liberals as rejecting science, liberals are characterized by conservatives as being irresponsible or pot smokers.

The trouble with this argument is that sometimes the characterizations are true. For instance, the neo-conservative movement in the United States is rather well characterized by a rejection of science, including evolution, climate change, and sex education (that is, abstinence-only sex ed has been shown empirically to be useless). It is completely valid to point this rejection of science out, and moreover, it is useful and constructive to do so. By demonstrating that neo-conservative politics deviate from that which can be demonstrated scientifically, we as a society can move more towards policies which are well-supported by reality.

I don't mean to focus too much on a single example, but rather, I'm trying to use that example to make a point: presenting accurate, if inflammatory, characterizations of one's opponents is not harmful to society, but is in fact part of how we engage in constructive discourse.

By the same token, as I pointed out in a comment below, Apple has taken actions which are strikingly similar to those warned about in an exaggerated manner by the novel 1984; to wit, they have built an architecture for censorship and have applied it to restrict the ability of adults to use their iOS devices to partake of pornography or even of more mildly sexual applications. To point out the irony in Apple taking these actions, given their ad campaign back in 1984, is not to "ideologically immunize" consumers, but rather to make a valid and useful point. I do think that point is beyond the immediate goals of Motorola, however, and that their current campaign is riding on the bandwagon of valid criticisms, using them for short-term profit. That is not a destructive thing to do, however, insofar as the original criticisms are well-founded.

There are some very serious arguments to be made to the effect that Apple's iOS platform has created an effective infrastructure for censorship. This is demonstrated most strikingly in my opinion by the adult app purge that sex educator Violet Blue documented (nsfw link: http://www.maclife.com/article/feature/apps_and_men). If you want to understand how censorship can happen, look at what is done with sex.

Given that, I don't see it as hyperbolic or insulting to point out the irony in Apple moving from invoking 1984 to attack competitors to building an architecture unprecedented in its capacity for censorship and control. While I don't know if the Xoom ad is that highbrow, the serious argument has been made by others, and it's clear that Motorola is capitalizing on that line of discussion.

And what of Linux, and its variants like Android or MeeGo?

I get really tired of people saying that the patents on H.264 are a "red herring." How is open source software like Firefox supposed to use H.264 if they have to pay massive licensing fees? That enforcement thus far has been weak to non-existent doesn't imply that it will continue to be so in the future.

I like the idea implicitly communicated that there's almost a shopping list of assignments, and each one carries an XP value; if you're not doing so well, then with that kind of a system you can correct that by working harder to learn the subject matter. Obviously, there's problems, such as enabling a brute force strategy for getting good grades, but I'd be interested to see how well a quest list approach to grading would work in comparison to a sequential assignment style.

Sweet that you shared that link using secure.wikimedia.org. I'm glad that others are using HTTPS where they can!

Good intentions can't justify abuse, and I don't know of a better for a pattern of calling one's child "garbage":

  Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful
  to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect.
  It worked really well.

A bit limited, no? Obviously, no taxonomy of sex or gender will ever be completely satisfactory, but {unknown, male, female, not applicable} is missing some fairly obvious and useful additions, such as hermaphroditic and transgendered. I should have hoped that a standard taxonomy for gender would at least have a catch-all like "other;" "unknown" and "n/a" are not good catch-alls, as both make definite claims which may not be true for other genders.