DevTopics is a high-level and sometimes satirical look at software development and computer technology. DevTopics is written by Tim Toady, the founder of Browserling Inc, a cross-browser testing company. When we occasionally dive into the details, it's usually about C# and .NET programming. (More)
UPDATE:Google has restored Thomas’ service and data. It turns out that Google had a very good reason to suspend Thomas’ account. However, Google will be reviewing its policies to hopefully be more transparent and allow for appeals.
Thomas Monopoly is having a really bad week. Thomas (real name Dylan M.) was a Google fan: he owned Google stock, paid for Google storage, and had moved nearly his entire digital world to the Google cloud. Then Thomas allegedly did something wrong, and Google terminated his digital life.
Google accused Thomas of violating its Terms of Service and apparently killed his entire online presence. Thomas lost his website, email accounts, banking info, student records, 7 years of correspondence, 4,800 photographs and videos, 200 contacts, 500 articles saved for scholarship purposes, Google Voice messages, all his bookmarks, documents, backups, calendar with doctor’s appointments and important meetings, community calendars, medical records, and some very important notes.
SUSE, an Attachmate Business Unit, and Xamarin, a startup co-founded by Mono legend Miguel de Icaza, are partnering to provide continued support for Mono, the open-source .NET Framework. The agreement grants Xamarin a broad, perpetual license to all intellectual property covering Mono, MonoTouch, Mono for Android, and Mono Tools for Visual Studio. Xamarin will assume support for these products and continue to develop and sell them. Existing customers can purchase upgrades. Priority support is also available for an extra fee.
Xamarin’s immediate plans for both MonoTouch and Mono for Android is to make sure that the major bugs are fixed. I just received notification today that a critical bug open in MonoTools since last October has finally been assigned to be fixed. This is excellent news for .NET developers and provides further evidence that .NET isn’t dead. Xamarin provides the best way to build fast, native .NET apps on iOS and Android.
I saw the James Cameron movie Titanic again the other night. In the scene shown above, the band plays on with grace and dignity, while the ship slowly sinks, and all hell breaks loose around them.
That’s when it hit me: .NET developers face a similar fate. Do we ride Microsoft .NET to the bottom of the icy Atlantic, or try to jump on one of the HTML5+JavaScript lifeboats? Or perhaps more likely, .NET isn’t really sinking after all, and this controversy is just another molehill made into a mountain by the frenzied blogosphere.
DotNetBaby says, “I’m an expert on sucking, and I can assure you that C# doesn’t suck.”
YourLanguageSucks is a wiki on theory.org that lists reasons why the most popular programming languages suck. There are long lists of reasons why Java, JavaScript, C++ and PHP suck. But the list for C# is very short:
Supports ‘goto’.
Two distinct sets of collections: non-generic and generic. Stack and Queue have the same name in both their generic and non-generic flavors, but then we have Hashtable (non-generic) and Dictionary (generic).
The first reason is easy to discount: just avoid using goto! The second reason is valid, but not really an issue if you use only generic collections, as I do.
But the immediate future is not looking good for Windows Phone. The most recent data from comScore shows that Microsoft’s share of smartphone subscribers is only 6% and continues to fall. Whereas Android’s share is 38% and rising at a fast clip. Apple’s 27% share of smartphone subscribers is also growing, though at a slower rate.
The Android explosion is not all bad news for Microsoft, however. MobileCrunch reports that Microsoft is earning 5 times more revenue from its patents on components of the Android operating system than it is from Windows Phone. That’s $150 million from Android versus $30 million from Windows Phone.
The main challenge of Paired Programming is deciding which developer gets to drive the computer. Looks like these fellas have figured out a work-around:
Microsoft will soon be launching an approved Windows Phone unlocking service as part of ChevronWP7 Labs. This allows developers to immediately launch apps on the Windows Phone 7 platform, without waiting for official Microsoft approval. This also allows users to run these “homebrew” apps on their Windows phones.
The ChevronWP7 service will require developers to pay a small fee via PayPal to offset costs, but it should be much less than the $99 annual fee to release apps in the WP7 App Hub.
ChevronWP7 comes with Microsoft’s full blessing and support, which means homebrew apps shouldn’t break in future Windows Phone updates. Microsoft should be commended for opening up Windows Phone 7. This leaves Apple as the only smartphone developer that does not officially support homebrew apps.
Oracle’s relationship with the open-source community has been rocky at best.
Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in 2009, which also gave Oracle control of the open-source Java programming language. Which Oracle promptly used to sue Google over its use of Java code in the Android mobile operating system.
“During the integration meetings between Sun and Oracle where we were being grilled about the patent situation between Sun and Google, we could see the Oracle lawyer’s eyes sparkle,” wrote Java co-creator James Gosling.
In spite of having a decade head start with Windows Mobile and the Pocket PC, Microsoft somehow completely missed the initial smartphone wave and is now playing a desperate game of catchup.
Apple released its first iPhone in 2007, essentially defined the smartphone ecosystem, and jumped to an impressive early lead. But with a more open platform and cheaper hardware, Google Android has grabbed a commanding 35% share of smartphone subscribers. Apple is holding flat around 25%.
Microsoft entered the smartphone market late in 2010 with Windows Phone 7 (WP7), which was already generations behind competing platforms and lacked key features like copy/paste and multitasking. WP7 is also incompatible with previous versions of Windows Mobile, so existing users have no allegiance to the new Windows phones, and hence are just as likely to switch to iPhone or Android. As a result, Microsoft’s share of the smartphone market is only 8% and dropping.
In January 2011, well-known computer hacker George “GeoHot” Hotz discovered and published the keys to the Sony PlayStation 3 game console. GeoHot had previously cracked the iPhone, allowing users to “jailbreak” their phone and run any software they want.
Crack Goes the PS3
Around the same time, another hacker group fail0verflow had also cracked the PS3 and released tools that enabled users to install the Linux operating system on the PS3. The capability to turn the PS3 into a regular Linux computer was a favorite among geeks and hackers. Sony originally provided this feature, but later angered the hacker community when it turned off the feature in 2010.
GeoHot took it to the next level and released the PS3’s “root key.” This key authorizes hackers to run essentially any software on the PS3. And a root key is nearly impossible to change without breaking all existing PS3 software. Hence, GeoHot permanently and publicly cracked the PS3 platform.
