seclorum

Yeah, that doesn't make sense to me either. Especially since the entire point of the recent changes to iOS is precisely to get everything on-screen handled by the GPU, in the first place ..

Its no less terrifying than the fact that the US gov't can send you off to a top secret location for whatever reason it feels is an appropriate reason, whatsoever, and you will be left there without recourse or access to any Internationally-recognized forms of justice ..

I'd like to answer the question. The answer to the question is: "because OS vendors have stopped doing their job".

Have you not noticed that the OS no longer provides the features of an Operating System? Wouldn't a "true OS vendor" have added peer-to-peer and file-sharing-across-multiple-networks/nodes to their feature set by now?

What I think has happened is that the OS vendors: Microsoft, Apple, and to a much lesser extent, the Linux crowd - have forgotten that they, themselves, define what the "OS" is, but it is the users who require it.

Why on Earth some OS vendor hasn't solved this mid-80's problem of network file sync, is simply this: there is no profit in it. In short, the bugs and holes in featuresets provided by the current OS vendors have been filled in by an industry far too furiously devouring itself to care that they've gone off-task.

The fact is, we should've had DropBox -like features integrated into our OS's, already. We should definitely have had Bittorrent-sync like features, implemented already. We should definitely be demanding these sorts of features from the OS vendors - but do we?

The answer is, no. We don't. Because, every 5 years or so, newcomers to the computer scene, the teenagers of the now who will be the next-bright-new-thing of the morrow, fail to keep up with the state of the art just well enough that they end up re-inventing the very thing that their much-hated "prior generations" have been, literally, on the cusp of inventing .. for years.

So yeah, we have this situation because there is no longer a 'true OS' out there in the world, but rather 'front-ends to a business model'. Maybe that will change, who knows, but I bet that before it does, the words "operating" and "system" will have to suffer a bit of re-definition, here and there. Or wait, maybe that is exactly the problem ..

I'm curious - as a long-time Ubuntu user who is totally resisting any effort to switch to Unity - how does one 'learn' the menu functions available for a new app with the HUD? I don't know anything about it, but is it possible still to see all the menus/submenus with the HUD somehow, or does one have to poke with the app to see the menus? As a naive outsider looking at Unity, I'm not sure I find the appeal of the HUD to be applicable .. maybe as an experienced user you could bridge this gap for me?

Well, next time you walk into a stinking hot concrete bunker, say to yourself "I wonder if I know what the word radiation means, hmmm.."

Concrete is radioactive, I'm reminded of this fact when I go into a concrete parkhouse and feel the heat, and I don't particularly care if its hot due to radiation or hot due to heat energy from cars being stored - either way, the darn places are uncomfortable and I avoid them.

I'm not particularly bothered if I'm "wrong", its just a cute thing to say .. "oh, its so radioactive in here, lets get out.."

Yes, quite:

http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q1543.html

And:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concret...

I haven't been seriously thinking about it, like I said it was just a fancy, not a seriously considered notion, and anyway it nevertheless resulted in a healthier response: I void driving, and thus parking, and thus parking in concrete structures.

What an amazing bit of work .. I hope to have one of these things when the time is right. The inclusion of the FPGA onboard makes a lot of sense, and would be a real selling point, in my opinion, for a lot of hackers. I can think of an endless vista of applications for that FPGA .. wow! An Amiga in your laptop! :) Hope I can qualify for one when the time is right!

I've always thought it was because concrete is slightly radioactive, personally. Rightly or wrongly so, its been yet another reason to avoid the oil-debt and walk, or cycle, to work.

I agree that we could all do with a little less idol worship, but I think that what javajosh pointed out is also very important.

We have all been conditioned to use dialectic materialism as a means by which to argue - and THIS is the issue. There is a third way in this debate - and that is, continue to discover the crimes of the US Military Industrial complex, enlighten the people, and remove the criminals from power before it is too late.

Going back on forth on the "rightness/wrongness" of this whole situation is exactly what the powers that be expect, and depend on in order to continue to be able to operate in full view. Abandon the synthesis/anti-synthesis method in this debate, people.

Remember: what he revealed so far is just the tip of the iceberg. There are far more heinous secrets to be revealed, and we would all be better off - US Citizen, or not - if these secrets were finally pulled out into the open and made available for The People to understand.

I hope that in the future states of the Earth, they teach disinformation and doublespeak detection/eradication techniques to the teenagers of the tomorrow. It sure would help to know thats going to happen..

The problem is that not only have a lot of them been there long enough to qualify for US citizenship, but they've experienced enough torture and fundamental violation of their human rights that they also qualify as avid haters of America and its citizens.

So the US has created a monster, and is not willing to let that monster live in its neighborhood, and nobody else wants it either, so .. there they stay.

Don't worry though, a lot of the Gitmo detainees know the situation is dire, and thus: the hunger strike. For some of them, death will be the only escape.

Shaders.

Apple haven't done anything with iOS 7 that I can't do with MOAI. (http://getmoai.com/) By taking this direction, they've given me even more reason to ignore their Native GUI frameworks and continue to focus on implementing a clean, usable GUI using non-native (read: 100% cross platform) technologies.

I think this is a good thing, personally. I don't see any reason to write code specifically for iOS any more, when I can, just as easily, declare a similar GUI function in a language that will work on all platforms.

OpenSCAD: http://openscad.org/

Its about as close to being a "3D Postscript" as you could find these days ..

It means you can solve this problem and don't have to use it as a reason not to have a successful project.

Likewise! For me, it was MOAI: http://getmoai.com/

Since I became a Lua programmer, I really can't stand any other languages, and I've rapidly switched to it for my scripting needs. Tables are just soooo lovely. ;)

Bah! Why is it bad and why must it die? Please add content to this discussion - I don't agree with you, but maybe you can convince me. Try it.

>>>>Its very nice to have a simple programming language and API available with things like Webkit and Mozilla browsers, but that still puts too much power in the hands of a few companies, and locks us into particular implementations, and also traps us within the browser. Programmers and businesses do need easy-to-use, cross-platform and cross-device APIs and programming languages. I think we can port a lot of the Web APIs to a language-neutral, binary-neutral, implementation-neutral semantic representation. Dump as much of the unnecessary complexity from Web APIs as possible.

Well, this is exactly why I am a huge fan of technologies like MOAI (http://getmoai.com/) where the VM is under the control of the implementor, whose efforts to put the working VM on Platform-[X] results in a single codebase that will run on all Platform[s]. In my opinion, it pretty much matches your requirements, from the simple language, easy to use API, and more importantly: control over the host environment.

The only issue is that competence in MOAI in developing a cross-platform truly 100% compatible code base means you have to scale your attention from the up-front App, down to the lower-level host code. Or else. But thats 100% of the fun, imho ..

Note that this is just one of many such solutions to the issues you describe, and it is indeed a fertile playground for anyone with as much affinity for Lua - and similar tools - as one must have, to suffer the platform wars pleasantly, these days ..

Means nothing to me what you personally do for a living. I'm pretty sure there are aparatchik sales people, or at least I'm quite confident I might've dated a few, admittedly rare, in my youth..

Karma is not a dialectic, as if there is a synthesis/anti-syntheis position from which to posit the workings of Karmic responses.

At the essence of anyone who wishes to live a better life, is responsibility. Karma is a cultural mechanic by which we humans can discuss the phenomenon of responsibility in a manner which, while it may be broken or incomplete, has indeed - by simple stint of communication - resulted in many an individual, family, group of people, improving their lives.

A little more consciousness of the responsibility of the individual to interact with the wider universe, is all one can truly hope to 'gain' from a Karmic point of view.

Just so its clear, I don't think Karma as you understand it is necessarily complete, or at least you cannot apply the dialectic materialist point of view, if you think you 'get' Karma.. imho, of course.

It is a useful response because it allows for the solution to these sorts of things to occur: continued discussion of the need to enlighten oneself, and be aware of the lies of the world as they are told. An apology is not the last step, merely the first, in amending the situation .. and thus a continued dialog is of use.

Whats the matter with building a Toll-Free Bridge once and forgetting about the problem forever?

http://cocoadev.com/wiki/HowToCreateTollFreeBridgedClass

The Communist party for years discussed ways of turning American high society into Communists, whether they liked it or not, or .. at least Socialists, if but a little more willingly. It didn't matter to the Communists if it was called Communism; what they wanted was to get the actions of American society in alignment with Communist goals, whatever the terminology used to describe it.

This was a very big deal. In the 50's. So, maybe we're seeing the shock-wave of these efforts, in the culture and manners of the current suite of politicians and other cultural leaders promoting the ways of the new Socialist order. Whether they like it or not. (cf: FoxNewSpeak, et al.)

You could use the same definition on software developers, too.

Just the fact that the US President can order an extra-judicial killing of any US citizen, if he deems it fit, should be enough to raise your ire, citizen. With such tyranny allowed, justice is no longer possible in US society.

Right, because the United States justice system works so well when its (the US) ass is on the line. Just ask this guy:

http://www.saveamericafoundation.com/2013/06/21/top-us-journ...

The argument goes: you are using public networks over which you have zero control, so there is no expectation whatsoever of any privacy, at all.

It is not at all shallow, but rather quite representative of the thinking of the period in which it was written, and in that light should definitely be considered a valid endeavour.

But, are you not at the very least intrigued by the irony in your expression of political correctness? This is, after all, newthink.

Great - that looks like exactly what I need to get myself educated on the subject - really appreciate the great response, thank you!