I’ve also seen a number of discussions on Eric Raymond’s blog, Armed and Dangerous, about his feelings on the Android vs. iPhone. Being the chief apologist for Open Source, Eric feels that ultimately, Android, built on an open source stack, will win over iPhone, with Apple’s tight control. His latest is here.

Be sure and read, at least scan, the comments in these posts, as sometimes they are more entertaining, and occasionally more insightful than the original article.

I spent a number of years using Linux as my primary desktop. I found it to be stable and reliable. But any time I had to add a new application or upgrade an application, I found myself in no man’s land. Sometimes it worked like clockwork. Other times, I found myself on an upgrade hell, trying to find all the packages necessary to make the new or upgraded application work. I got tired of spending the time making the machine work, instead of using it. For some people, that’s the fun, for me, it wasn’t.

By that time, Mac OS X had established itself as a viable contender, so I switched back, and haven’t looked back since. I do believe that Linux is usually the right answer on the server, however. On the desktop, I need something that I can count on.

So where am I going with all this? Well, I think that neither all open, nor all closed are the right answer. A business has to do what’s necessary to be profitable.

Turns out that at least by some measures, Apple is more open than Google. In fact, Google Chrome is based on WebKit, an Apple open source project.

And Google is more closed than people realize. Nobody knows what Google’s algorithm for pagerank is, let alone seen the code for it. Google’s two sources of income are search and advertising, which they hold very close to the vest.

Apple and Google both give away things that help drive business to their primary revenue sources. In Apple’s case, it’s their hardware. In Google’s case, it’s their search and advertising.

In the long run, there will continue to be both open and closed technologies. And that’s the way it should be.

Update: John Gruber has this post today on Daring Fireball. He discusses the Android vs. iPhone, and the all-out war that has broken out between Apple and Google. Both companies emphasize what they do best and what the other does poorly.

The other interesting thing here is the other actors in the smart phone market. Specifically, Microsoft, who seems to have lost completely in the mobile space.

Technorati Tags:
Development, iPhone, Apple, Google, Android

Better, I think, to make a difference and run the risk of failing sometimes, of being made fun of, and yes, appearing arrogant. It’s far better than the alternative.

If we are to make a difference, we have to take risks, including the risk of sounding arrogant at times.

Technorati Tags:
Seth Godin

One side comment in that post relates to the carrying capacity of the planet, along with a comment on population limits.

The earth has a carrying capacity, certainly. It might change as a result of technology (we know how to grow food more efficiently than we did a century ago) but in any moment of time, there’s a limit beyond which degradation kicks in. I don’t think many would say that we currently have a people shortage. (Impossible to pull off, but worth considering: what if we skipped a growth cycle in the population and everyone in a generation had just two kids? Or even one…)

China has been trying the one child per family for some time now, even using draconian measures to enforce it, and now they’re faced with the problem of not enough young people to support their aging population.

I’ve also been told that every man, woman and child on the planet could have an eighth of an acre in the state of Texas, and leave the rest of the world blank. Not suggesting that that is something to do, or that an eighth of an acre is enough to live on, but it does illustrate the real size of the population. We don’t really suffer from too many people, just too many people in some crowded areas.

Technorati Tags:
politics, Seth Godin, population

Point Inside maps indoor spaces. At launch, we have nearly 400 malls around the United States and Canada mapped. Not only do the sites have maps, helping you to find the nearest restroom, ATM, or the store that you’re looking for, but it includes promotions from our partner retailers.

Technorati Tags:
iPhone, Point Inside, Mall Maps

This is an important point for NASA as well. They started down the path with Constellation, to build huge rockets to go to the Moon in an unsustainable way, much like we did in the 60’s. Apollo on steroids they called it. But costs escalated, making it even more unsustainable, and schedules slipped, yet they insisted on continuing down that path. Even though, if they’d followed Congressional mandates, they had a more sustainable and reliable choice in buying launches to orbit from the commercial sector.

Why is it more reliable? To start with, following the NASA approach of having only one rocket to get to orbit, when (not if) an accident happens with that rocket, you ground the fleet and lose access to space for about two years (Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia all created about a two year stand-down, give or take a bit). With the commercial fleet, there would be up to four different rides into space, on four different launchers. So while one stands down to fix it’s problems, you’ve still got other options.

Technorati Tags:
Development, NASA

Gray text means the test hasn’t run.

Yellow text means the lower level tests had mixed results.

Red text means the test failed, and green text means the test passed.

The actual tests need to have a lower level view that shows specific data about the test. Pressing any test cell causes the test to execute. If you select the cell in the first or second image above, the tests below that get executed.

There’s a color issue with going back up the chain. The first image is gray because I pressed the cell in the second image. Going back to the first view, the color isn’t updating.

So there is more work, but I’m going to proceed with this. In the future, when I have some time, I’m going to work on making this an open source package for others to be able to create acceptance testing of iPhone applications.

Technorati Tags:
Development, iPhone, Point Inside, Fitnesse

Here is an example:

I could use Google maps, but Google is all about downloading from the web, not caching on the device. Since there is no connection to the internet in much of the areas we are mapping, dynamic downloading won’t work. The trail will need to be downloaded first.

on edit: This may be the last update here for a while, as my PointInside project is starting to move, so I’ll be focusing my development time there now.

Technorati Tags:
Hieroglyph Spring, HikeSuperstitionMountain, Superstition Mountain

Part of this effort involved creating a sample application (SimpleSampleMap) for the route-me project. This application acted as a base to develop HikeSuperstitionMountain from. Now working on adding the ability to select the trailhead markers and open a UIWebView that displays information about the trailhead, and the trail(s) that start from that location.

.

Technorati Tags:
HikeSuperstitionMountain, iPhone, route-me

Currently I have the application using route-me, an open source mapping project designed to provide map data, currently from OpenStreetMap project. We may change to another source before submitting to the AppStore, as the Open Street Maps data does not include the wilderness area.

I am also currently showing the trailheads on the map, which you can see in the image I’ve linked to below:

Technorati Tags:
iPhone, Superstition Mountain, HikeSuperstitionMountain

The Republicans didn’t do too well, but this level of spending by the Democrats (starting with the 08 budget year by the way) is beyond irresponsible.

(via Instapundit and Transterrestrial Musings)

Technorati Tags:
democrats, Economics, politics