tychobrahe

What's up with this massive chip in your shoulder?

For fucks sake, why don't we get rid of those anti-Apple (slowpoke) and anti-Google (chugger) types? This is getting ridiculous...

> I believe you're pretty offended though.

And so are you, it seems... ;)

EDIT: Since you cherry-picked my points and completely ignored what I tried to say in order to attack me, I'll just repeat what I wrote, since it's what I would reply anyway.

    Trying to put all the blame on Steve Jobs' shoulder, right after his death, is horrendous.

    ...made much much difference in those two specific areas than most things Stallman did lately.

    Granted, he never open sourced the whole operating system, but why would he? To see Apple collapse again while Dell/HP and others strive? What's the point? Then we start all over again? We'll have open-source chips manufactured by 2 or 3 companies? What's the fucking point?

Nope, I didn't. Actually the issue was getting the correct packages from apt-get. DLL hell all over again. In the end I simply formatted the machine with a non-stable version and the drivers installed as expected. Easy peasy.

EDIT: But that wasn't the point. The point is that those kinds of problems still happen with Linux, but only sometimes, with specific distros in specific gear, but when they don't happen (such as with Ubuntu 99% of the time) Linux gets praise and adoption from non-techies.

Ever heard of "blame the game, not the player"? Trying to put all the blame on Steve Jobs' shoulder, right after his death, is horrendous.

Steve Jobs wasn't the enemy of freedom RMS paints him as. That he personally wrote letters against DRM on media-stores and against the closed-platform called Flash asking everyone to favor HTML5 made much much difference in those two specific areas than most things Stallman did lately.

(Funny, reminds me that that FOSS advocates here on NH are okay with Android prolonging Flash's life and using closed-source software only as a means to gain market share)

Granted, he never open sourced the whole operating system, but why would he? To see Apple collapse again while Dell/HP and others strive? What's the point? Then we start all over again? We'll have open-source chips manufactured by 2 or 3 companies? What's the fucking point?

Seriously, I'm tired of Stallman's half-assed socialism. It's an offense to me. You don't destroy capitalism by destroying companies, or people. You destroy capitalism by destroying the core of it...

Hey, NH, I'm not the poster, but why is this being down voted? Linux being easier to use and easier to maintain isn't something we all could benefit from?

And for fucks sake, don't say "it's FUD". I had a hard time installing drivers for an NVidia graphic card this month in Ubuntu's latest stable version, running in Dell workstation. I could even put out some videos.

I'm tired of people who had difficulties with Linux being called liars and getting down votes here.

Linux is great, but it's not finished yet. There's room for improvement. (Same with Windows. Same with OS X).

Way to split hairs and miss the point, huh?

But that sorta proves his point. Linux isn't good to normal people today just because it's full of geeky magic dust. It is good today because it "Just Works™".

> You occasionally drop a few hundred lines of code on github and then think you are a contributor to Free Software?

Yes I do. Github being is so successful these days is proof that FOSS matters. FOSS is not only about kernels, compilers and emacs. Those things were just the start.

Being able to use a fully open stack from the bootloader to the javascript library and be as productive as with closed platforms means a lot, and it owes not only to FSF's activism, but also to the software community.

Rails wasn't born out of the desire of spreading ~free software~ ideals. It was born out of the desire of changing the world of web development. And why is it open source, then? Because it was the best option, and still is. A community was born around it and the results are as good (or better) than anything a company could make just by hiring.

Today, with things like GitHub, the barriers to free software are pretty much gone. Everyone can contribute. This is infinitely better than Stallman's 'cathedral'. I can not only look at, thinker and modify somebody else's code: I can effectively give back to the creators in a matter of seconds, and then, suddenly, I become one of the creators myself.

Seriously, your post full of fallacies.

Everyone is free to criticize Stallman on this point. Don't try to invalidate their criticism just because they haven't written a GCC or an Emacs.

So, yes, I am part of free software, but I don't want anything to do with FSF or Stallman. I want to win this open vs closed fight by fighting with my code. Not by pissing on someone's grave.

I believe smcfancontrol installs its kext by demand from inside the Cocoa App. I don't know how it's done (I only do UNIX stuff on my Mac =/) but I believe it changes the .kext owner and invokes kextload. You can 'sudo' from inside a Cocoa App by using AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges:

http://michaelobrien.info/blog/2009/07/authorizationexecutew...

About PKGs: I think that they're okay, but, historically, they're maligned for being "black boxes" that install files all over your system. App files, OTOH, are (99% of the time) clean, live on /Applications, and sometimes use ~/Library.

Why do we care so much about genius scientists but dismiss genius dilletantes?

Also, why do we have to dillute our opinion on people and reduce them to the stereotypes? Is it something we do just to feel better?

Saying that Steve Jobs was just a salesman is as incorrect as saying that Edsger Dijkstra was just an arrogant man. I'm sorry, but both were MUCH more than that.

No, it doesn't.

This is impacting news for our industry. Also, it's NH's way of saying goodbye. Please, don't try to ruin this. Don't worry, it will all go away in a few hours.

Just go out and take a walk if this affects you negatively.

I know how you feel.

Last time my manager asked me to come up with a simple test for interviews I added a question with code and asked what it was: a bubble sort in C#. No one got it right, not even a "it sorts the array".

> Like pay them a lot of money

Highly unlikely, considering Apple's complete lack of interest in licensing or having a clone market.

I'd say that the sum is bigger than the parts when it comes to copying products. One or two things would be perfectly okay, everyone does that, in every market, but the accusations range from the packaging and peripherals to the core product and its interfaces... Sure you can split hairs and stuff, but it's not that simple.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most of those complaints related mostly to the SQL generation rather than the "mapping" part?

I find that the problem when discussing ORMs is that we gave them two completely different responsibilities: generating queries and mapping the results... In fact, those two are already separated in Rails (AREL?).

I don't see much of a criticism to the mapping part (and the benefits given to you in form of validation/metadata/migration/schema versioning)... In fact, unless you're going to access the records directly via the database driver API (giving way to hideous coding), you'll probably reinvent the wheel or do the O-R mapping by hand to fill POCOs/POJOs/etc, as I've seen on so many enterprise projects (in different levels of elegance).

But then, again, somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.

Judging from the advertisements in local phone stores here, I'd say that Samsung and Motorola appeal much more to the young folks, while HTC is more of a premium brand for executives and uber-geeks who want to fiddle with the bootloader.

I think Apple is still sort of both... it still has the "cool" factor inherited from the iPod. But I know a bunch of 13, 14 year old kids (I work at an university, and we have a school) who have iPhones, and not one who owns an Android.

But YMMV

C'mon let's be fair here... What Gruber said was that "the right way to do things" depends on whether the person is writing for Apple or for Microsoft, and he (as punctuated by the "To me") doesn't feel like MS's way is the right way.

The whole article was about how different expectations are, and the process... oh, and, ironically, both user bases are equally passionate.

I'm sorry, where do you get that? I never had a problem with iPhones, nor know anyone who ever did, except for a cracked screen or another. No antenna-gate here either. C'mon...

On the other hand, I have a 3RL'd XBox which was promptly replaced with a newer one, since it's still an amazing product and have some friends who had the same problem.

Isn't it too early for that? Given the number of developers working with Microsoft's ecosystem, I don't think it will be long until they have a market as big as Apple's or Google's when it's released.

I think that WP7 wasn't a hit because MS made terrible partnerships and became a second-class OS vendor to everyone but Nokia, but I belive that the tablets will give MS more independence, will bring other makers to the table, and it will change. They're just late to the party.

Looks like it. Seems like it's a war where everybody wins.

EDIT: But yeah, I don't think they're giving up completely on Flash, considering we'll still need it for some things until pure HTML5 doesn't cover all corners.

"Hackers gonna hack!" :D

I love the whole tone of the article and how Brendan Eich is painted as the hero. Because he is. He managed to make a language that, despite its simplicity, is still in its peak after 16 years of heavy mainstream usage.

I discovered functional programming because of JavaScript (via Joel Spolsky, in 2006!!) and I must say something: Thank you Brendan.

Yep, you're right!

"The concept behind the XMLHttpRequest object was originally created by the developers of Outlook Web Access (by Microsoft) for Microsoft Exchange Server 2000." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest

Ridiculous indeed.

People think that Apple did a lot of things on the iPad, but all they did was removing the pen, removing some useless physical buttons, using a tailored touch-oriented OS instead of adapting one from desktop computers, bootstrapping this operating system on years of success of the one for phones, using a single sheet of glass instead of plastic screen + plastic bezel, using the internet for app and media distribution, cutting corners to provide a midrange-laptop instead of costing an arm or a leg...

Don't forget how much they disappointed their geek fan base when they announced that their tablet was just a "bigger iPhone" instead of a "smaller iOS". And that's where Android wins: Android managed to actually change the opinions of geeks.

Seriously, Apple did some breakthrough changes. Android follows suit. Those lawsuits might piss you off, but give credit where credit is due.

Hasn't things been always like this? People would complain that Macs were too expensive, wouldn't run most apps/games, that the iPod had DRM, that the iPhone had no SDK, that you had to code only in Obj-C (section 3.3.1, dropped).

In the past, people would try to come up with arguments as to why Windows is better, and ran more games. Today it's all about Android.

It really makes me cringe that some people buy Android because it's "not Apple" rather than because there's amazing Android devices out there.

(Disclaimer: I own an iPad, a Xoom and some Macs)

This blog post completely misses the mark. This kind of thing should be downvoted into oblivion.

The blog post basically bashes NH, then accuses Apple of destroying Microsoft and says that Microsoft should team up with Android.

I've never seem such a huge chip on the shoulder...

Actually, in the line you quoted, he's saying we need more academics (instead of amateurs) to solve the P =? NP problem, not to build decentralized social networks.

If the patch contains good code/documentation, doesn't break anything, works as supposed to do and is relevant to the direction of the project, I can't see why it wouldn't be approved.

If my patch conflicts with the direction of the project, I can just fork.

And no, I never tried because don't have a device running 2.x. I could try contributing to Honeycomb (since I happen to own a Xoom). Is there any repo I could clone containing Honeycomb? (honest question)

> This is why Microsoft have lost their way. Instead of focusing on their own products and innovation, they try to make money through other less honorable means.

Actually, Microsoft is innovating very much. They probably have one of the best (as modern/stable/useable) development environments and ecosystems. Their research is putting out great code and great products at a very fast pace. Plus, F#, a new-ish language, just entered TIOBE and it's the top functional language. WP7 and Windows 8 are huge leaps forward, and that's a great feat considering they're not copying Apple at all. Hell, most of the time I wish Apple would copy some things from WP7 and Windows 8.

Innovation isn't lost at all. It's just that Android isn't the underdog anymore. Microsoft is.

I, for one, welcome Microsoft, our new underdog.

EDIT: I know meta-posts aren't well regarded here, but why the downvote? I wasn't bashing Microsoft, or Android for that matter, and even provided some opinion as to why Microsoft hasn't ceased innovating (I could go on, btw). By calling it the "underdog" I don't think I'm being offensive, please, sorry about that plea, but I'd like to know...

Yes. Pretty much anyone can contribute. Your patches just have to go trough an approval process. It is complex and takes time, but of course it is possible.

I've been reading your comments for some time and you seem to have serious anger problems when the subject is Apple. Also, you're very disrespectful to Apple users, bringing the topic even when it has nothing to do with the company. I seriously recommend a psychiatrist or counselour. Apple/Google are not religions, my friend!!!