Isn't it funny how many people using alternative runtimes seem to say "I can fully understand why they would ban Adobe/Flash but why on earth would they also ban my favorite runtime"?
Apple didn't make this move because they have some irrational religious hatred against Adobe. They are just betting that a tight control over the technology by which people produce applications for their mobile platform will be advantageous to them. They are fully aware that this is bad for people who have bet on using different technology and I guess is that they just don't care the tiniest bit.
this is bad for people who have bet on using different technology
Absolutely true.
An intersting thing is that I, and I'm sure quite a few others, would never have guessed that language choice was a "bet" (at least, not this kind of bet, anyway).
Neither would I. When analyzing risk, there is also always the risk that you didn't recognize something as a risk at all. Maybe this is the Black Swan event (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory) of mobile application development... Unlikely but disastrous at the same time...
Oh boy... It took years for me to convince several companies Java is not the only language that can turn out "enterprise level" applications...
No doubt, but that's a different kind of "bet" (I briefly alluded to it in my original comment). There's naturally the bet that the language might not be around in 2 years, or that the language isn't capable enough to do what you need it to do, or that the language is too niche for XYZ Corporation's programmers and finding other programmers might be hard[1].
But that's a completely different kind of bet from "I wonder if this very popular and capable language will be against the arbitrary and ever-changing rules."
The former is quite practical. The latter shouldn't have to be a concern.
[1] Off-topic, I recently had this debate with a guy I'm going into business with, in which I was trying to convince him Erlang is a viable language. He's more of a business-financial-type and was concerned with the proverbial "what happens if you get hit by a bus." While I understand his concern, eventually he, correctly, resigned the programming stuff to me, where it belongs :)
Monotouch is not an alternative runtime - it is compiled code. There are alternative runtimes out there such as for lua etc (there is also an LLVM compiled version too).
This is a good example of what is still utterly wrong today with HTML/CSS implementations. I appreciate the work and the fact that it is shared with the public. The fact that you still have to deal with this sort of markup in 2010 is really sad.
Basically, they reserve the right to ban any sort of DSL/runtime/engine application architecture. Imagine you are building adventure games (like Money Island). You'd have a game engine and a domain language in which you describe the game. The beauty of this is, you don't have to rewrite the engine every time you finish a story for a game, you just write in your DSL. The same holds for a range of other applications such as travel guides, recipes for cooking... How can you be sure where they draw the line between data and code?
Well, it probably just depends on whether it comes from an Adobe tool or not. Let's see who's next.
Interestingly, it says
"The new class action goes beyond Google’s Library Project, and includes Google’s other systematic and pervasive infringements of the rights of photographers, illustrators and other visual artists."
I wonder what else they may be filing suit over... Image search?
I think, when trying to help someone, asking for more context is a good thing. The examples that are given in the article are often things that arguably sound a bit more complicated than necessary (writing a windows app in assembly). Thus, the question is a valid way to establish a bit of context and by no means an implicit denial of the validity of what is being asked. "Because I want to know how it works" or "because I have reason to believe it is the only way it will work/be fast enough" are good replies and the whole thing leads on to a nice discussion (No not an exchange of tweets, a real discussion!)
Were the homework assignments of a type were using a computer to prepare them would actually help? Did the computers include the appropriate software that was needed to do the homework? Had the homework to be submitted in paper form and did the computers come with printers?
The homework assignments are not described, but given that many students do not have computers, it is reasonable to assume that the assignments at least did not require computers. The computer vouchers came with free "educational software", but few households installed it, and essentially no one spent time using educational software, in either group. Printers are not mentioned.
99 bucks to get your company name and a piece of clip-art? I think people who go for this just don't deserve any better.
One should probably just automate this. Pay $20 to istockphoto for a piece of vector art and put the company name beside it. That's an easy made $79. So if easterbunny inc. needs logo, just license http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-illustration-11054108-rabbi... and you're done. The quality would be comparable to those logo templates.
Many people obviously have started to believe that a logo is a bit of illustration plus your name.
Great idea. automate it. And while you are at it, throw in a styesheet/template for my website that matches the automatically generated logo, maybe charge me an extra $20 for that. Especially if I could easily tab through possibilities to see what they look like, that'd be pretty useful for us fashion challenged.
... by users that have managed to master entirely text-based editors like emacs or vi to a degree that allows them to still be as productive as their brethren who moved on to slicker IDEs :)
Apple didn't make this move because they have some irrational religious hatred against Adobe. They are just betting that a tight control over the technology by which people produce applications for their mobile platform will be advantageous to them. They are fully aware that this is bad for people who have bet on using different technology and I guess is that they just don't care the tiniest bit.