GrandMasterBirt

Expressiveness is important. I remember many times reading logic and missing the little tinsy ! before a giant expression not making the quick flag in my mind raise indicating that this is a unless, not an if. In ruby the idea of the unless is not to save typing. In fact if !foo is easier to write than unless foo. However after a tad bit of getting used to it, you realize that it becomes immediately obvious when skimming the code what the operation is doing.

The idea is lets leave the brainpower for the hard problems, and not require you to use all that brainpower to figure out the plumbing.

Well explained. However many tools of ruby. Tools that we as good developers carry at the bottom of our toolbox for those rare cases where they make life a billion times easier, can also be tools of spaghetti. One of these is the ability to inject behaviors into a class. Its like adding to Array.prototype. The point is that just like a goto statement, it has a few legitimate uses, but most of the time leads to spaghetti code. I think every language has this, and there should be big flashing warnings when tutorials show this methodology stating that "use this only where appropriate, and it is usually only appropriate in these situations:..."

I've had motorola phones randomly call people. And not let me hang up my phone calls until I pull the battery. At least they didn't take 10 minutes to boot like the blackberry.

That is a dangerous statement dolinsky my man. That means that we should buy the phone only to realize we got a gimped device for the purposes of verizon deciding which software features to lock so they can charge us 10 bucks a month for each.

Um, is this more about gaming hardware issues, or the games themselves because we still have gamefaqs.com

Makes sense either chicken or egg came first. It does not matter but one definitely did, it is not a paradox though, theory of evolution solved that.

The truth is that the egg came first. I still hold that belief. The predecessor of the chicken had a mutated female which laid an egg which embodied the modern day chicken. The egg gave birth to the chicken, and thus the species evolved. However the female did not have to be a chicken. The only thing this theory proves is that the layer of the egg had to have the correct secretions, so it had to be a mutated female that created the species.

Wait hold up. Did anyone notice that if you increase the volume of sales the square cost goes up significantly? The number they gave $30 per trans avg + 4000 per month is the sweet spot. This is kind of bs. Oh and uncheck the iphone option and square sucks.

On the dual-boot to your hackintosh. Ah crap that does not seem to resolve the pirating problem. :)

The response to the itunes lover.... Seriously when we mention pirated music sells more, its because studies show that while pirating is up so are sales. In fact sales are higher now than when pirating was non-existent. There is very little corelation shown that pirating hurts music sales, and vice versa, so both arguments are kind-of equally valid. The music industry just wants every damn penny.

See the post about the Humble Bundle's pirating issue. The entire bundle of games could be purchased at 1 penny, yet people pirated, and often there are good reasons why someone will pirate vs buy.

And people wonder why the settlements/lawsuits demand so much money. Its not to recover costs but to deter. HOWEVER just like the death penalty, a deterrent that is not immediate, seen as unfair, and is extremely unlikely to happen to you, is not a deterrent at all.

The criticism to ars that I have is: Selling a rundown house is going to be an uphill battle, even if the plumbing is the most amazing in the city.

It could be as much as hiring more front-end developers and having those developers dictate how multitasking should work, etc.

Or in this case the 5th rev?

I dunno man, if I had an insane holodeck I am sure its better than not having one :)

I'd buy a holodeck even if 50% functional. I think as long as it does not kill me its good, eh?

However never buy in 6 mo is a fairly good soft restriction. You can probably wait 2 months and buy it. My rule is "don't give in to the hype".

I also have the same outlook as I did with the iPod. If it is expensive wait till there is some good competition because after some good competition it can only get better, or the competition will. No competition = shit products. Hence Pentium 4

I read the cached version. The damn form post was a flame war about how one dude can't stand consumer reports. Its amazing how well he baited people.

However if no more posts arise, that is a problem.

I love #9: You can't afford to make a mistake.

Look Steve Jobs has set up the chess board very well. He attacked in all the right places and his SPEED was incredible. By the time the market had any chance to react even slightly BOOM new revolutionary product. iPod finally got some competitors... BOOM iPhone. The tried this with the iPad but... not cheap enough means that Android can fill the needed gaps since android does not have the Apple Markup. As more and more developers flock to Android Apple will lose.

The thing is that Apple makes it's money in a correct way. Just use our damn products because our hardware is where the money's at. Apple does not have the insane-o license checking for their operating systems, a battle that microsoft is fighting, and an uphill battle it is. They make 40% on iMac, 22% on iPhone, they don't care about the rest, the rest is to boost these numbers.

The problem was that a mistake was made. The iPad is too expensive and there is no iPad lite. If there was a 300 dollar iPad and a 500 dollar one, then android would have gotten shot in the kneecaps and would be dragging it's useless bottom across the moble battlefield... Apple tried the leap of iPod -> iPhone -> iPad, but the last leap was not as grand.

Yet they did succeed in one area. MS is dead. We are just waiting for the vultures. Unless Steve Jobs switches to Microsoft, all hope is lost. Why? Because windows is irrelevant. Windows 7 is CATCHING UP to Mac OS. And that is the CORE of Microsoft. MS Office is available on mac yet again, Steam (games) just moved to mac and is promoting mac development. Pretty soon people will simply jump ship with MS. Now apple does not allow Mac OS to be installed on non apple machines because... 40% of their revenue is in the apple hardware. If Mac OS was released as available on all hardware, nobody would by mac hardware... its expensive. We can't all afford the apple premium. It'll be the super upper class hardware that dell offers, but it's not. Apple will be forced to make up profits on the iPad/iPod/iPhone sales, which it can't. So apple does the right thing: Compete on less fronts with vendor lock-in.

O well. Farewell Microsoft, we hardly knew ye. All Hail Google.

Damn, ok so basically we just silenced the 503 rumor and replaced it with 8800 copies. That is an even bigger flop because now its not a rumor. Unless they sold over 100,000 items they are fucked.

Yes please compare apples to apples. Claiming that iPhone did not support something for only a year is BS because thats how it launched. what about multi-tasking? Oh iPhone didn't support that for a couple of years only.

GRANTED that iPhone is first-to-market and actually created the market, so they get the brownie points because there was nothing even close available. Now if you want to compete with the iPhone to any extent you MUST compete with the iPhone of today, not the iPhone of 1G.

Funny those people I know have blackberry bolds.

In any case the market still exists but more importantly is that the sidekick had instant messaging, apps, games, etc. You cant sell to kids and not have games.

Wow. Amidst tons of Android phones coming out which are not brain-surgery to set up, and the sidekick still going kind-of strong... MS Releases the most feature-missing phone possible. 503 copies though. That is not bad... that is "lets close shop" embarrassing.

I have to say, I am not impressed with the article... "Perpetual Flight?" I say yes you can probably fly this airplane forever until a motor breaks or something BUT there is a big difference between a single pilot airplane that takes a team of people to ensure it does not have the wings scratched and a commercial airliner that runs on solar. While the airliner is awesome if we can pull it off, I would not be surprised if we were 20-50 years away from that.

Friends don't point friends to horrible aggregation news sites.

I don't doubt the iPad's capabilities, but I still dislike false advertising (of course they will claim that the image is not real just like all the camera ads on TV, "not actual images from in the camera")

Ok hold up. There is a BIG difference between TARGETED attacks like the one described and security holes. A targeted attack like the one described will work on ANY system PERIOD. Hell he may as well have had his bank accounted hacked and complained to citi/chase/ing/etc. The point is such hacks are bogus when it comes to "hacking facebook."

However such things are still useful since HE will be targeted if people really want to hack FB. So then vuala they found a employee who is a vulnerability and thus will try to close that hole.

I am more interested in hacking facebook from a pure-user perspective. Getting information from a random user. See how far it can be taken. That is more interesting. Saying that "if someone waiting to get hacked got hacked, then a random joe will definately get hacked" is bogus. This sort of targeted attack will get through most secure networks period.

I think the point is that certain core aspects of erlang are not a 1:1 port between the 2 VMs. BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN that erlang cannot be implemented on the jvm, you just trade off one set of tricks for another. As long as the language is not compromised.

Notice how its written that in Erjang you just use shared variables to pass messages between two processes VS copying messages. There you go. If the VM handles thread safety for you, then what do you care that the variable is shared vs not shared or mutable vs not mutable (in the underlying vm)? Shared just means better performance. Wasent the whole point of erlang to let your VM handle sharing vs copying and isolating processes; while you code multi-processing, erlang uses whatever it wants for efficiency.

Its simple actually...

1) Apple was first-to-market. And I don't mean the iPhone. The iPod was when apple just used a rocket booster to jump ahead of the game, and finally their steam is running low.

- The iPod was revolutionary. - The iPod was never quite cloned "correctly" there was more to the iPod than meets the eye. By the time Apple removed the DRM restrictions it was too late for consumers, Apple had already made a dent in the market which others could not recover from. - When everyone finally caught up to the iPod... poof there goes the iPhone again darting apple ahead of the game. For at least 2 years before again anyone even came close. - The iPad is another attempt to do the same, but by now it did not dart them as far as the iPhone did. The competition is now riding on unicorns and are hard to out-meneuver.

2) Apple literally filled the void of the tech industry. The void was in usability. It was simple, give users a very friendly UI, and lets do away with core concepts we find important but most don't. I don't know how to explain "files" to my grandfather. He asks me "will my programs be there when I leave home with my laptop?" I tell him yes and no. You need an internet connection because to him his "programs" are the websites he visits. He can't even grasp the concept of moving files from hard disk to usb flash drive. To him "files" are mythical unicorns. And I see this from many people, he is just the best example. Apple is trying to cater to the audience of people who are completely lost with computers by making computers behave like "real" objects are inside them. The ipad is a great example because it makes things tangible. A child can understand it.

The point at the end is this: Apple never had "features" they had "usability". OSX is a great OS because it combines user friendliness with unix. That is why developers love it. Hey I can't get over how awesome it is that uninstalling an application is dragging it from applications to trash (just got a mac). And to top it all off its quite easy to find all configurations and such for any installed application. On top of it all I don't feel like I need to re-install mac osx every 6 months like I had to with windows xp. AND to make it even better their keyboard shortcuts are a perfect fit for a laptop keyboard without having to resort to a lack of home/end/page up/page down keys. I swear check out those 4 frequently used keys layout in ANY pc laptop. It is insanity. Look at mac, the defaults are made so that you can use the say layout/combinations everywhere, brilliant!

In the end apple is running out of steam. I think they will level out in a year or two taking their place as the new Microsoft of the industry (which is fine). I just wish macs were not so f-ing expensive. I mean I feel like I am getting inappropriately touched by Steve Jobs every time I add more ram to my order.

It is quite incredible with it's speed. I just might become a believer :) Firefox is plagued by performance problems on linux (at least for me). To be honest compared to chrome FF is pretty sluggish feeling. But Opera "feels" faster than chrome :) Its impressive.

The truth is that libraries provide a means to rent FREE or almost free books. Without a requirement to have an ipad or ebook reader, or anything. Don't close them, in fact open more in poor neighborhoods.

If you want to reduce number of libraries, get iphone/android/ebook reader/pc/mac/etc apps that work like a regular library would work: The library has a license to rent out x number of books, you "rent" the book digitally, use it, "return" it which allows someone else to rent it. Would be nice if google did that since google already scanned all them books.

Ever have a root canal with no pain killers? And you complain about drills, HA!

I'm assuming that treatment is slow. So a big cavity can maybe take too long to regenerate (a year?) which means that many won't be willing to live with the pain while the tooth heals vs waiting it out and having a brand spankin' new tooth.

Honestly, the drill does not bother me whatsoever. After a bad root canal and someone fixing it up after an infection, drills are like walking through rainbow fields with unicorns and happiness.

However the potential of this is amazing. There are other implications of fillings. If you keep getting fillings in the same tooth, eventually you will need a root canal which means... a dead tooth, which is bad. However this will make your tooth regenerate meaning that there is no filling and thus the hole never gets "deeper" approaching your root. This will not only eliminate the drill for small holes but can potentially reduce the total number of necessary root canals. Maybe long-term treatment could cause teeth to completely regenerate, maybe pain for a year, but pain for a year for a completely healed tooth is worth it vs fillings which are a patch-up. Can't wait till this is a reality.