An interesting NYT Bits blog entry covers Opera's mobile browser. Buried in the middle of the article is this quote: "Opera's engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won't let the company release it because it competes with Apple's own Safari browser." It also talks about Opera on the Wii and browsers in cars. A good read. My Take: But back to the iPhone. As tempted as I am to just shrug it off, since Apple is free to run its App Store any way it pleases, as an enthusiastic iPhone user, I think Apple is shooting itself in the foot here, as it is with all the "competitive" apps being rejected. Apple does stand to lose some Google revenue by letting people use other browsers, but they have much more to gain by unleashing the creativity of the developer community and giving them the freedom to improve or replace core iPhone functionality. Hopefully competition from Android forces them to wake up.
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Member since:2006-03-22
I'm surprised that your views are so one-sided (considering recent world events). So, Socialism never works, even though your government is nationalizing financial institutions left, right and centre (Freddie Mac, Mannie Mae, etc etc).
Yep, it's clear that market economies are better...until they f#&k things up and go running to the government for a hand-out.
Live by the sword...and then go and hide behind mom when things get too tough.
Member since:2005-07-06
If you dig deeper in the cause of the economic situation in the US, you'll find it was government regulation that caused it. One of the causes (there are many) is the quota that was placed on Freddie Mac and Mannie Mae to give out loans to people who normally wouldn't be given loans so lower income families could have a piece of the American Dream. Sounds good in theory but it didn't really work out. The the problem right now is people think it was deregulation that caused this issue and that false logic is going to make it worse.
Sorry for the side track...
Member since:2007-01-22
Member since:2008-10-30
Well said NiceGuyEddie. The media has been feeding us so much crap that we miss the forest for the trees.
There is nothing free-market about FNMA (Fannie Mae) and coercion by justice dept. for banks to make sub-prime loans. The US Banking and mortgage institutions are not market economies because the central bank wields so much control over them and has sole control over the money supply. Fannie/Freddie are also competing with government sponsored advantages against private banks so they can take more risks than private banks can. The banks should be left to fail. Murray Rothbard and Henry Hazlitt have both written great historical pieces that helped me get my perspective straight.
But I digress... As for OperaMini, Apple is missing the boat on this but they should be free to do whatever they want because it's their product and no one else can say anything about that. If one doesn't like it, they are free to associate with any other they wish.
Ciao,
A liberal democratic republican (lower case)
Member since:2005-07-27
Member since:2008-10-30
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Member since:
2005-11-10
Right because government control works so well everywhere it's ever been tried. There is a reason Socialist countries like the USSR and China under Mao fail and collapse on themselves because governments are incapable of doing much of anything correctly. Market economies are better, including those severly hampered by regulation like every economy currently in existence. Please realize that there does not exist a single country in the world with a free market economy because they are all mixed economies now minus a few socialist relics like Cuba and North Korea. Although even those countries keep themselves from starving through black markets in basic products and services. If you want to understand why government does not work I suggest you read Socialism by Ludwig von Mises written in 1922 which accurately predicted why and how the Soviet Union would collapse economically. It also explains what function prices perform in the economy.
You know you don't have to buy Apple products. There are a lot of alternatives out there. I don't buy Apple products and I get along just fine.