Obama Campaign, responding to John McCain’s attacks:
In the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to change the subject from the central question of this election. Perhaps because the policies McCain supported these past eight years and wants to continue are pretty hard to defend.
[...]
So at noon Eastern on Monday, October 6th, we’re releasing a 13-minute documentary about the scandal called “Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis” — it will be available at KeatingEconomics.com, along with background information that every voter should know.
I never thought I’d live to see this day…
(Read)
Forbes, on the piracy problem thats resulted from Spore’s DRM:
For many users, [the lack of DRM] made the pirated version more appealing than the legitimate one.
The scariest thing for me is that someday, EA’s DRM servers will go down, and after that, nobody will ever be able to install a copy of Spore again.
(Via Forbes)
The first time Palin ever left North America was last year. According to staff her itinerary included:
U.S. military installations or outposts in Germany and Kuwait, and that she had visited Ireland.
A Palin aide in Alaska had said Iraq was also one of the military stops on that trip.
Wow! Germany, Kuwait, Ireland and Iraq. It would be pretty unfortunate if that turned out to be a lie, considering how McCain blasted Obama for only making one (see also: more than zero) trips to Iraq this summer.
The Boston Globe, however, reported Saturday that in response to questions about the trip, Alaska National Guard officials and campaign aides said Palin did not go past the Kuwait-Iraq border.
In addition, campaign aides also confirmed reports to CNN Saturday that Palin’s time in Ireland on that trip had actually been a refueling stop.
In Palin’s defense, that refueling stop taught her more about energy than anyone else in America.
The Obama campaign’s response:
The McCain campaign said Gov. Palin opposed the bridge to nowhere, but now we know she supported it,” said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor in a statement. “They said she didn’t seek earmarks, but now we know she hired a lobbyist to get millions in pork for her town and her state. They said she visited Iraq, but today we learned that she only stopped at the border. Americans are starting to wonder, is there anything the McCain campaign isn’t lying about?
(Via CNN)
Thomas Ricker seems to think that jail breaking is becoming irrelevant.
While the DevTeam says that fixes are in the works, the growing list of useful applications in the AppStore coupled with the global retail availability of the iPhone (and lack of a 3G unlock) makes PwnageTool less and less relevant with each passing day.
And you know, I might have agreed until I saw this yesterday.
Today I finally got a reply from Apple about the status of Podcaster.
Apple Rep says: Since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes.
That’s right folks, it duplicates the functionality of the desktop version of iTunes.
Therefore, it was denied from sale in the app store.
As long as the AppStore is the only *official* way to get your application onto the iPhone, jail breaking will *always* be relevant.
iTunes 8 pwns PwnageTool
Podcaster Rejected From The AppStore
Mark Hopkins:
The response from our readers was mixed, and confusing at best. For some reason, what I said was seen as a call for censorship, and in the black and white world of the Internet these days, anything that can be construed as censorship is automatically evil.
I think freedom of speech means letting people say what they want, not necessarily being obligated to help them say it.
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1. Free Trials
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve paid money for an app and stopped using it within a day. There needs to be a way to try an application without buying it. This goes without saying.
2. Paid Upgrades
When it comes to updates on the AppStore, it’s free or nothing. Sure, you could submit the app as a new Application (i.e. have MyApp and MyApp 2 for sale), but that gets confusing since people can accidentally buy the old version instead of the new one, and you lose all of your data in the transition.
3. Discounts
With the AppStore you can’t give discounts to people, which means no promotions like MacHeist, no giving out apps to your friends, and no discounts for upgrades (that is, if they allowed paid updates).
4. Batch Purchasing
Many developers, (Apple included), like selling multiple licenses of a product together for a discounted price, like the MobileMe family pack. With the AppStore only the person who paid for the App can use it.
5.Business Purchases
Let’s say you work at a web hosting company and you decide that you want all of your IT staff to have SSH access to your web servers on the iPhone. Unless you have less than five people in your IT department, each person needs to buy the app with their own iTunes account. You can’t buy or install it for them. Look deep into the AppStore and you’ll see business apps selling for $80. These apps never had a chance because nobody’s going to ask their employees to pay $80 out of their own pocket.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not a freetard or anything. I think the AppStore is great, but I don’t think it should be the ONLY way to distribute apps on the iPhone. As the only way to get onto the iPhone, I’ve heard the same people criticize the AppStore for not being open enough, as well as for letting crap onto the store. The AppStore can’t be everything for everyone, which is why Apple needs to allow alternative distribution methods.
Just released. It’s all of the features of 2.0, with the stability and snappiness of 1.14
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the claim that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear bomb:
We are not working to manufacture a bomb. Nuclear weapons are so 20th century.
I heard they don’t have homosexuals in Iran either.
(Via Bloomberg)
It was the biggest earthquake in Los Angeles since 1987 with a magnitude of 5.4. You could feel it from San Diego all the way to Las Vegas. Wow.