Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 394 Editor's Choice: 41
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WTF?
[Read the article: Apple iPhone SDK prematurely declared great]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The battery life argument makes some degree of sense, but that decision should be left to the user, shouldn't it?
The OS isn't well suited to running multiple background processes? Are you kidding? It's FreeBSD, which I can assure you is absolutely exceptional at running multiple background processes - better than anything else that can run on computers costing less than 7 figures. That's one of the reasons Apple chose it as the foundation for OS X in the first place. After spending decades ignoring the very real problems with Apple operating systems (worse-than-Windows memory management, laughable networking capabilities), now the Apple-ites are conjuring non-existent shortcomings in a truly great OS to explain Apple policy.
It's a support issue. If they allow all developers to make full use of the OS, there is the potential that someone will do something stupid and/or malevolent. So Apple can either commit a lot of resources to vetting every app that anyone writes, or they can use less resources by allowing less access to low level functionality. It's a pretty safe bet that they will have some kind of diamond-crusted platinum partner program that allows companies to write really cool shit as long as they pay, covering the costs of the quality control that requires. And if there is a shred of the Old Apple left, they will give the Mozilla project (and other major open source projects) top level membership for free.
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Go with God
[Read the article: Hot off "The Wire"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The greatest show in the history of television is done.
The Sun story line made perfect sense to me. Too much attention was paid to Templeton because, well, too much attention was being paid to Templeton. By everybody. The paper made the corporate decision that the way to keep the profits flowing in the internet age was to wrote novels instead of news - Dickensian novels :) The real news people are expendable, but novelists are loved and cherished.
Marlo, whatever becomes of him, is in no way Stringer Bell. Bell was an educated thug who was never as smart as he thought he was, never smart enough to realize he shouldn't be left alone with Clay Davis, for example. Marlo is a tenth as educated but 10 times as smart. He knows he doesn't fit in the business world, and never will. Knows he can never trust Levy the way he trusted Chris and Snoop. And he probably knows he can never go back to dealing in Baltimore. But now he also knows that he still has what it takes to fight his way back to the top in another town. Maybe he'll turn up in Philly or Atlanta.
Daniels and Pearlman care only about themselves and each other now. Maybe that's all they ever really cared about. Smart. When Daniels said people he cared about could get hurt, the panic his ex showed when she realized she was not one of those people was some of the best acting of the season.
McNulty and Freemon will be fine. Jimmy will have trouble finding something to fill the hole in his life, but Landsman's words gave him the one thing he's been looking for this whole time - natural police, best there is. Freemon is going to have his pension and his hobbies and his young girlfriend. And they both know they did what had to be done, and the ends justified the means.
Bubbles was great. Dukie was sad. The scene where he wasn't allowed back in his middle school, the only place he was ever happy, was about as heartbreaking as seeing him with a needle. But I think the saddest ending of all may have snuck in there. When Griggs and Bunk are out there joking over the body, I'd swear that was Namond.
Prez has grown into teaching in a way he never could have grown into being a cop. Bunk is Bunk, always has been and always will be. Kima has turned into the cop she always thought McNulty was. Michael is becoming Omar (but I was waiting for Marlo to blow his brains out on the way out of the wheel shop). The Wire isn't over, but we won't get to watch it any more.
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Almost as shortsighted as we are
[Read the article: Meet Dextre, Canada's robotic space hand, eh]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wonder what percentage of their budget $300 million is? Wouldn't surprise me if it was about the same as what we spend on space. When technological advance slows to a crawl because we lack the metals to continue it, and Canada becomes overcrowded with refugees from whatever countries still haven't gotten a grip on population control by 2250 or so, they (and we) will be wishing they would have thought a little farther ahead.
Maybe if we start propagandizing the third world with videos of Doug and Bob McKenzie we can drive the Canadians to lead the next space race (because we are obviously not interested) so they can get the hell away from us.