neonfunk

Wow. I would love to see a technical write-up about how they generate these documents. (I assume they're programmatically generated...?) How do they get around issues of font licensing? (Where do the font file themselves come from?) Really, really cool.

I'll bet people are only interested in this because it (Flash on Android) was originally described as running "flawlessly". If they had just described it as alpha (and realistically, buggy), this would be a non-story.

It's from David Carr's NYT op-ed: "... and regardless of how the law shakes out, the optics are horrible for Apple." So I think in that context it means "how it appears" vs. "how it is".

... for you. (I ought to have said, "less worrisome for me."). The thought that the operator could just look up from their screen, after "looking in my pants", so to speak, is what feels awkward to me.

One way they could make it less worrisome for passengers is to have the room where they view the body scans separate from the room where the scanner is. From the images I've seen, it doesn't seem like you'd be able to recognize a person from their body scan -- I suppose unless they had a very, shall we say "shapely", body.

They would risk their department's integrity for the sake of popularity?

Yes, I'm being a gruber apologist, but that post was written days ago, before the raid. If anything, I think that there was a raid vindicates gruber's sense that this is serious business, and that the police are treating it as such.

Didn't he/she know the engineer's name? And have his facebook profile?

Why, it's a bizarre tale of sordid intrigue, of course!

In terms of appearances, the DA pursuing criminal charges is the best possible outcome for Apple. They get the satisfaction of seeing Giz and/or the "thief" scrutinized for their actions without risking the fallout of aggressively pursuing them with a civil suit.

Substantively, I admit not understanding the legal intricacies.

Gotta love the competitive spirit... Now if only their other services would offer such "human" support, as opposed to the maddening, hair-pulling, teeth-wrenching -- yes -- god-questioning expereience it is trying to contact Checkout or AdWords support. (Don't get me wrong -- these are great products when working proper -- it's just when they aren't working, and I'm giving them $500/mo., it seems reasonable that I would be able to talk candidly with someone.)

You're right, I don't think apple is that interested in devs' profitability, or for that matter, app store profits. But I also don't think they have any incentive to actively harm devs' chances of being successful... It's the "don't want them to profit" part that I can't understand. Maybe "don't care"... But "don't want"?

There were several free apps in the top-grossing list last time I checked. And I think ad profits are worth mentioning. iAd is a pretty significant investment on Apple's part... not that they aren't hoping to profit from it -- but the more devs profit, the more they profit -- I think that's the real point. To say they "don't want" devs to profit confuses me.

I don't think the IIB post is partisan.

This author says, "they emit almost completely clean CO2 (note that bar global warming, CO2 isn’t considered harmful)" ... To my ears, that's a major understatement ("bar global warming"). I'm almost inclined to think it's more partisan than the original post, to be so dismissive of climate change.

But beyond that, the point that seems most incongruous is the suggestion that because volcanos emit a more explicitly toxic gas (S02) that we shouldn't have an awareness of our own emissions and their effect on the environment. By comparing it to a volcano's emissions, I am simply impressed by the scale.

I think you really have to read into this to derive a moral/political statement. Nobody is trying to hide the effects of S02.

I mean, I totally hear the point about the importance of a "computer defense department", especially in the context of the recent shots fired between google and china... But to conflate explicitly-installed software that allows admins to watch peoples' screens and monitor their activity with the existence and everyday use of devices like the iphone and kindle seems like a stretch. I think if anything, the case with this school will bring more attention to the issue -- and with any luck -- greater understanding.

So, wait: you think it should have been rejected for not following UI conventions?

My first thought is that plenty of games have UIs built from scratch. I think the conventions are just that: conventions.

Looking at my comment again, I think you're right. I'm succumbing to the same cheap temptation. Morals for me intertwine much more with politics than with tech -- and I feel strongly enough sometimes that I can't contain myself. How to constructively debate with people who seem as if in another world? That I would even say that surely indicates I haven't figured it out yet; it seems impossible that we could see things so differently -- it's almost painful to think about.

It's exactly this kind of sarcasm I avoid when replying to someone I disagree with (HN has definitely helped me mature comments-wise). It antagonizes the opposite party, preventing a rational debate.

There are plenty of smart people who disagree with you. Assuming the answer is obvious harms your argument. (I have a personal exception for tea baggers.)

Not to mention, you can't ignore a notification so you can look at it later... It's either view or dismiss.

I do the exact same thing with multiple sites, using Asual's address plugin (which I love, btw... it also integrates with G Analytics perfectly). The only difficulty I have is getting people to use the non-hashed links instead of just copying what's in the address bar. Google treats all of the hashed links as the same link (everything up to the hash mark).

The other problem is people end up copying URLs like: http://alikewise.com/Profile/FounderGuy/Book/42#/Book/43

(edit: I noticed your site automatically forwards to the hashed version, which I also considered -- but it breaks the back button!)

I am very confused with all of the rhetoric going around. His post was one of the more substantial explanations I've seen on HN. (And of course, the resulting comment thread here is usually very helpful in parsing this kind of debate.) "We all know it was intended to mess with the competition" -- sure; but you wouldn't be here if you didn't want to go more in depth.

"I’m not arguing that it’s anything other than ruthless competitiveness."

Seems more like an explanation of their motivations rather than a defense.

Not to be a Gruber apologist.

The lack of a CPTableView is why I ultimately decided not to use Cappuccino for a back-end project I was working on recently; looks like the wait was worth it -- what a beautiful implementation.

The article underestimates kids -- but the sentiment is understandable given the short history of computing. These guys witnessed the birth. Now things are vastly improved, just like how you open the hood of a car and it looks like an amorphous plastic object ("Back in my day, you could see how everything worked."). So while I enjoy the nostalgia, I suspect kids will be tinkering far into the future. That kids have the web to learn from is still amazing to me (I can't imagine programming without it) -- and it is itself a great platform for tinkering.

Isn't that jumping the gun a bit? It's really hard to predict what context this was designed for, but I very much doubt it will apply to the existing hardware/software model.