I'm guessing the guy put his mp3 files in his public folder which is as good as sharing them on the web.

I have both devices and use them in completely different ways. The iPad is a poor book reading device but great for other things.

I can pick up the Kindle and use it just as I would use a paper book but I'd never use it to surf the web even if it was possible.

I'm struggling to see how Twitter is of any use in finding customers.

On the other hand spending on Adwords links me directly to people who are looking for my products. For me it is consistent, reliable, directly measurable and profitable.

I've had luck converting people tweeting about the problem my product solves to beta users. I'm sure it depends on who your customers are and how likely they are to express themselves on Twitter and other social media.

Apps as entertainment, for most of us probably the complete opposite of eating your own dog food.

Your dogfood can be in the back-end analytics systems you build.

This is so true, the constant churn of frameworks for desktop apps has left me very skeptical of anything they offer.

Every day America looks a less attractive place to visit or do business with.

Two stories:

1) Last week I got a wedding invitation from my cousin in Connecticut (well, a "Save The Date" technically. That seems to be a purely American invention, but seems roughly comparable to a wedding invitation in my Canadian eyes). This was on the same day I found out about these new "enhanced" patdowns.

2) My dad loves NASCAR, and his birthday is in February, right around the running of the Daytona 500. For years, I've wanted to take him there for his birthday. It's a whole week of different races, and I'm sure he'd love it. It appears I've waited too long / didn't get the money in time.

Two scenarios where I'd really like to visit the States, mostly for my dad. With these new "security" measures in place, however, there is no way I'm going to subject myself to such an ordeal just for a vacation. It might not necessarily be the sexual assault some people claim, but if my only option is to be either photographed nude or have some agent grabbing my junk, I'd rather just stay home.

Yes, America is off my list for the moment. I guess it's a luxury not everyone can enjoy. I'm starting to worry that my own country is moving in the same direction. It's not healthy that a government has so much control over it's people. They are there to serve the people, not the other way around.

I hate to agree with you but I do. If I were a foreigner arriving at JFK I would be inclined to turn around and not come back.

I make it a point to thank every tourist I come across for visiting. I also thank Americans from other parts of the country for visiting NYC. Meeting all kinds of people from all kinds of far away places is part of the fun of living in NYC.

Where have you people been living? Not in my America where people are groped, fondled, struck, shackled, beaten, stripped, locked up, and worse every day. And these are innocent people guilty of no crime. This has been going every day of this woman's life. Are you living in a bubble? Is this really the first time this woman has been patted down?

Probably more importantly not X11.

This is really Oracle's news rather than Apple's.

It's actually a more important announcement for Apple though in light of their stopping development of their own JVM.

This allows them to still be behind it without having to actually do the work.

If you're following the apple-java mailing list, you'll see this isn't the (supposedly) the plan. They're contributing eAWT and eIO to openJDK, plus assisting in writing a new OpenGL based Swing backend and Swing lightweight placeholders for AWT components.

To quote Mike Swingler (Apple java engineering): "Cheers all, we look forward to working with you in public!"

Sounds like the plan is to continue Apple's work as part of a respected open source project. Compared to developing in secret like they have been, what's not to like about that?

It also means one bug repository, instead of two. Bugs can now (or soon) be filed against OpenJDK, and not in Apple's radar bugbase.

That is exactly why she was asking for references and why you shouldn't give them to a recruiter, only to the employer.

If Panic and Omni find that all they have done is reduce their revenue by 30% then they won't stay long. I'm not at all sure the extra volume will be enough to offset the cost, especially if the store becomes full. It is going to be interesting.

Your ignoring the other things you get from the app store. You need to compare the 30% cut apple takes off the top to the possible increased volume of sales, the money saved from not having to host the app yourself or having to run your own payment system. Apple is not just taking 30% off the top to just to be greedy, it is more of a payment for the service they are providing.

If you have anywhere near a reasonable volume your payment processing shouldn't cost more than a few percent, nowhere near 30%.

Hosting costs aren't going to go away, you will still need a web site, you might be able to save a little download bandwidth but that hardly breaks the bank nowadays.

I don't think Apple are being greedy, I'm sure that is a reasonable reflection of their costs, I just wonder how it will add up for developers like Panic or Omnigroup. If their volumes double then it makes sense, if they only increase slightly or not at all then it doesn't.

I think that's entirely the wrong way of looking at it. This removes payment processing, download costs and (critically) installation support and serial number issues hassles.

But that isn't really what you're paying Apple for. You're paying them for the creation of a new market that may (or may not) be better for you. Discovery (formerly marketing) is going to largely be their thing. Customer education will become standardized. Trust - they will teach people that apps are safe and hassle free to install & uninstall. They will teach consumers what an app is.

This will probably amount to far more then an increase/decrease in sales. It will determine which apps succeed and fail. These will be different from the winners and losers in the existing, "natural" market. It will determine aggregate demand for apps. This will also be different. It will affect consumers' expectation for what an app should be. For example, I think that learning curves will need to be reduced. The concept of learning software will be reduced.

A lot of existing software (the big names: MS Office, Adobe CS, etc come to mind immediately) probably won't fit into the app mold comfortably. Developers will have strong incentive to create apps that do. It will be interesting how much software can be "apps."

The app store only increases your sales by any significant amount if you get featured by apple or you break into a top 100 list. Now a days, to reach the top lists and to show up on apples radar, you need some sort of external marketing and exert a downward pressure on your prices. If your going to do external marketing you might as well try selling through a more profitable venue.