2008 – Page 13

August 4, 2008

No room for losers

I know I have this sick sense of “justice” – regardless, this just made me smile.

A South Korean man won his appeal against a one-year jail term for assisting in a suicide by throwing a lighter to his gasoline-soaked rival in love.

The Seoul appeal court reversed a lower court ruling, saying that the 30-year-old man had not believed the ex-lover of his girlfriend would actually set light to himself.

Last September, the former boyfriend had stopped the couple in their car after dousing himself in petrol, threatening to kill himself if she did not get out.

The defendant then threw him a lighter, saying: “Go ahead and kill yourself,” the news agency said.

from Reuters

I say good on ya mate! Am I evil?

August 3, 2008

Reserving judgment

Initially, my first reaction to this post was: No, no! Fucking NO!

But then I remember the time Cydia first came out, and I thought it would be unfair to judge Installer 4 negatively when it’s just doing exactly what Cydia had done back then. As such, I decided to reserve judgment and see where all this takes us.

I do, however, want to state my disappointment in the “scene.” Why can’t these guys just get along and fucking collaborate? Unless Installer 4 can guarantee that it will have a better distribution backend than APT then I really see no point why they even have to give an alternative to Cydia. Eye-candy/ease of use, while certainly appreciated, isn’t critical; a proper backend implementation is always more important for stuff like this.

This isn’t the desktop arena; these types of scenarios are bad for the scene because it dilutes the collective integrity of the community… even if it’s masquerading as “giving the users more choices.”

I believe I already gave my opinion on the matter in a fairly recent post, but let me expound.

August 1, 2008

Some more OSX tips

Here are some more tips for OSX – mostly for personal consumption but who knows, someone might find a use for them as well.

Also some iPhone hacking tips at the end. The discussion of the moral implications related to the subject will be saved for a latter post 😉

August 1, 2008

Regarding Gruber and MagicPad

Gruber Said:

Regarding MagicPad, the upcoming iPhone notes app with text selection and copy/paste, a few readers have emailed to point out that Safari uses double-tap-and-release (tap, up, tap, up) for zooming, whereas MagicPad is using double-tap-and-hold (tap, up, tap, drag) for selection — and that so therefore there isn’t any conflict between those two gestures.

I just don’t see how typical iPhone users could be expected to make that distinction. On the Mac, double-clicking in text means “select this word,” whether you release the button after the second click or not. Single- vs. double-tapping is complicated enough for most people; double-tap-and-hold vs. double-tap-and-release would be baffling.

Is he serious? I’m beginning to think this is one of those I’ve-already-been-corrected-but-just-have-to-continue-arguing-just-to-make-it-seem-like-I-still-make-sense arguments.

Don’t get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for the guy as far as UI design goes – but seriously, this is just ridiculous.