January 2010
17 posts
1 tag
Unlock-in
One of, if not the biggest criticism of iPhone OS which holds weight is that of Apple’s tight control over the App Store. Without submitting to the App Store approval process, qualifying as (and paying to be) a registered developer, or jailbreaking your device, you can’t install applications of your own devising.
For the majority of people using iPhone OS, this doesn’t present a practical...
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How I think background apps will work on iPhone...
Applications may include a UIless daemon. This would be subject to specific approval from Apple, and be categorised by what it does (for example, plays audio, receives time-sensitive notifications [e.g., VoIP incoming call alerts], transfers files).
There would be explicit user authorisation for keeping a daemon running once an app terminates: similar to the “Do you want to allow Fred’s App to...
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“Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially...”
– Two words: Get. Fucked.
(From The Guardian, hat tip to Charlotte Gore)
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“I imagine it would be like in the movie “The Magnificent Seven”....”
– John Gruber describes how he would, if elected to manage the project, assemble the team of area leads for Lettters.app.
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Virtualized MySQL Faster
rentzsch:
I have an Xserve that’s still on 10.4. It runs a web app with a typical MySQL database backend. Both on metal.
This morning the DB got so slow that the app server started returning “timed out” error pages.
Ungood.
So I dumped the database, created a new Debian VMware instance and loaded up the data. I ssh port-forwarded metal’s 3306 to the new VM and restarted the apps.
...
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Hey Adobe, Microsoft, Parallels, VMware Fusion:
Mac Dev Center: File System Overview: Where to Put Application Files:
It is important to remember that the user domain (/Users) is intended for files created by the user. With the exception of the ~/Library directory, your application should never install files into the user’s home directory. In particular, you should never install files into a user’s Documents directory or into the...
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sobering
souplines:
GDP of Haiti: $8.5 billion. Goldman Sachs bonus pool: $20 billion.
Crikey.
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Okay, so here's a little story
redcloud:
Let’s say your wife leaves you. And let’s say your son is with you 5 days out of 7. And let’s say your wife applies for some form of public assistance in the state of Arizona while she’s living with her family and working through whatever psychological issues she might be struggling with, and not working. And since you are both basically uninsurable, given your pre-existing...
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Fun Things I Wrote A Long Time Ago
Once upon a time, about 2002ish, I think, I was doing a lot of work with x86-based embedded systems. Set-top boxes, that sort of thing.
One weekend, I sat down and ported NetBSD’s ELF ld.so to be a standalone Multiboot-compliant executable.
It worked like this: in GRUB’s menu.lst, you’d specify this port of ld.so as the “kernel”, and then the actual operating system kernel as the first...
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“The fact that a believer may be happier than a skeptic is no more to the point...”
– George Bernard Shaw (via amprebel) (via atheistramblings) (via thecakeisalie) (via redcloud)
Apple and Red Cross accepting Haiti donations via... →
mrgan:
Apple and the Red Cross worked together to create a frictionless way to donate to the Haiti relief effort through iTunes. Click the link (or hit the iTunes Store on your own) and pick your amount - that’s it.
Everyone donates more when it can be done in fewer steps, using an existing, trusted payment system. Any company sitting on such a system has a responsibility to make things like...
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My iPlayer statistics dump
This is a dump from my iPlayer database, which more or less tracks the BBC TV we watch in this house. It’s not completely accurate, but it’s not particularly inaccurate, either. The ‘pid’ is the Programme ID, which can be plugged into /programmes, while ‘brand’ and ‘series’ are extracted from the programme’s metadata.
The data runs the beginning of the year...
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BBC 'must end obsession with targeting under-35s'... →
davelee:
This stuff winds me up. ‘Snog, Marry, Avoid’ is just harmless fun - and quite entertaining. If anyone touches ‘Pod’ I’m going after them.
I could care less about “Snog, Marry, Avoid”, but really… I’m 29. My wife is 31. 80% of the domestic TV output we watch is broadcast by the BBC. Very little of it is the supposed “under-35 target” material. Is Strictly? I’d be surprised if its...
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Imagine a perfect world
…well, as far as intellectual property was concerned.
Consumers obeyed the letter of the law.
Companies made clear the what consumers could and couldn’t do with CDs, DVDs, etc.. Not in the fine print—unmissable.
Do you think anybody would actually buy anything, given what you’re technically not permitted to do over here? No ripping. No lending to a friend for a week. You know the score.
I...
2 tags
The Mac IDE I want
I’m not going to attempt to justify all of this, because every developer who’s been around the block more than a couple of times has utterly different ideas about this. What I do know is that, right now, this doesn’t exist and I want it to.
Basic layout. A window per project, similar at a superficial level to Coda. File browser in the sidebar (rooted on the project path), editor in the main...