greg uvan

Call me a free market guy, but this just sounds like straight up censorship. I'm from Canada, and the Canadian gov't pulls the same crap. It's nominally to protect Canadian artists and workers. But it makes me angry that there is content that is on the internet, technically available globally, that we cannot access for political reasons. It's also infantalizing of the Canadian population. A) That we can't decide for ourselves what we'd prefer to watch, and spend our money on what we actually want to spend our money on, and B ) That Canadian artists can't compete on a global scale. Yes they can. If a Canadian production is good, people everywhere, including in the US, will lap it up, not because there is some law forcing them watch it, but because it's great content. So, governments should stop treating us like children, and let us spend our money to watch whatever we want. And if that content is coming from America, then, that's where it's coming from. </rant>

MacPro said:

greg uvan said:

I actually avoid Google as much as possible. I have about 250 Google owned domains listed in /etc/hosts that point at 127.0.0.1. The idea of using a Google owned webbrowser, where every keystroke and every click could in theory be mined by the great all-seeing eye, just makes me sick.

Care to share that section of your host file?  I'd love to paste it in.  I already have a few in but not a large list.

Here, I made a github repository for them for you, (for everyone.)

This one lists over 200 domains for blocking Google, but you can still use google.com for search, in a pinch.

https://github.com/gnacu/hostblocking/blob/master/google

And this one, for extra measure, lists 895 for blocking Facebook. Another worthy endeavor. Word of warning, Instagram embeds around the web stop working. If you still want these, you'll have to selectively remove some of these entries. 

https://github.com/gnacu/hostblocking/blob/master/facebook

It's funny, and Samsung is completely shameless. 

However, it doesn't have anything to do with "class" that Apple doesn't mock Samsung in its ads. It's just classic marketing, when you're ahead of the competition, you never mention the competition. Samsung is behind Apple (on certain metrics, not all) and the advertising paints a picture of Samsung as the scrappy underdog taking on the Apple Goliath. When Apple was the underdog of the PC world, they had absolutely no issue, it certainly wasn't inhibited by their class, running comparison ads against PCs and Windows.

If Samsung weren't running these dumb comparison ads to Apple, we'd wonder what was wrong with their marketing department. 

The logical inconsistencies don't matter that much from the advertising perspective. It's just a gimmick, most people aren't paying attention to whether Samsung sells dongles on their website.

I tried to use it, and then didn't find it interesting or compelling and would stop using. Then I'd read an article mentioning it, and go, "Oh yeah, why aren't I using that?" Then I'd check it out, see a few new posts from some artists, think, oh neat. Then I'd stop using it again.

I don't know 100% why that is, but, part of it is that I only care to follow a few artists, and they don't post all that often, so there was no reason to check every day. And no notification of new content. And the enthusiasm to check would just drain away until I wasn't looking at it at all. I imagine my experience was common, if others even tried as hard as I did to find it useful.

News that it's going away is not the least bit surprising.

avon b7 said:

I'm for choice in distribution models and less power for store controllers.

I'd like to see developers have the option to opt out of the App Store if it suits their needs and for Apple to have less say on what is 'acceptable' or not. Likewise, choice would then extend to the end user.

I don't understand why there is any anti-trust in cases like this, when Android exists. Microsoft was under scrutiny because they were so dominant by market share. Everyone who buys an iPhone knows that they have to use the App Store to get apps. And everyone knows that, they can either jailbreak (if they so please, there are even services that will do it for you), or they can buy one of many many android phones that are just fine, and that don't have the same app store restrictions.

It just feels like everyone who buys into Apple, either as a consumer getting an iPhone, or an app developer making an app for iPhone, they go in with their eyes wide open. Everyone since the dawn of the App Store has known that it's the only shop for apps, and that Apple charges developers a percent. If you look at the Mac side of things, the "pass-on" has always been obvious in iOS. A Mac App bought outside the store is often less expensive than the same Mac App bought in the store. Obviously, because of pass-on.