flydog

DAalseth said:

rob53 said:

We want our constitutional rights to privacy, whether some people think we have them or not.

When Judge Robert Bork was nominated for the Supreme Court he was asked about a right to privacy. He said that there was no constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy. He didn’t say in relation to this or that issue. There was none at all, period. When questioned further on this point he doubled down on that assertion. Now Bork did not make it to the Court, but several of his law clerks and students have made it into Federal courts and I think at least one has made the high court as well. 

Yes Virginia, there IS a deliberate and coordinated war on the right to privacy. 

hydrogen said:

Microsoft is the perfect illustration of the fact that if you enjoy a monopoly, you do not care about your customers, and can just pretend to innovate, keeping eternally your product basically unchanged.

MplsP said:

I think the only thing readers here would care about is when MS will finally get around to making a functional ARM version of Windows. Given their history I’m betting it will be at least 5 years...

EsquireCats said:

You know Apple must be onto a winner product when the FUD articles come out. It was the same b/s when the Apple Watch was being written up as a target for thieves because the sports band is easy to remove.

The report is b/s for a variety of reasons:

• The majority of stalking crime involves persons who are known to each other. However to stalk with a tracking device requires a stalker to get close enough to personally install it on the victim which isn't feasible. If the stalker knows the victim's location then tracking with an electronic device isn't the problem. In the hypothetical situation where the victim doesn't know the stalker, the same issues apply: getting close enough, and having already known the victim location. (Whereby the stalker can just follow the victim anyway.)
• The device works best when placed in the open. This is why the accessories are all designed to leave the tracker exposed. One can't install the device to something like the underside of a car and expect it to work, the device is still limited by EM physics.
• The tracker itself is linked to the owner. Stalking with this is like leaving your ID at a crime scene.
• It's a highly publicised tracking device and alerts the victim, while being trivial to disable. Anyone that finds it will know what it is, especially when it's beeping at them.
• If the software is smart enough to notify the user about being followed, it's smart enough to not publish that location.

So stalking isn't the issue with this device, the issue with this device is that if an item is intentionally taken/stolen the tracker can be easily disabled. So it makes sense to attach it to low value items such as keys. For more expensive items the route is either an accessory that gives the tracker permanence or purchasing items which already include the hardware (such as the VanMoof bikes and most Apple devices.)

Side note: It would only be "inexpensive" if it didn't require a $600 iPhone just to get started.

InspiredCode said:

In reference to my other comment, the limitation that cross-wallet content has to be lower then IAP content I think was actually in attachment 2 of the developer agreement. This agreement contains additional rules above the App Store review guidelines. I couldn’t find it, so I think Apple may have removed it in the last year. I know this was present previously. 

Apple has both the developer agreement and the store review guidelines that both apply. They conflict all over the place and there is no language as far as I’m aware to say one supersedes the other.

Additionally, Vbucks might not be allowed by a number of rules that forbid in-app currency. For example, this one from the developer agreement:

 2.1 You may not use the In-App Purchase API to enable an end-user to set up a pre-paid account to be used for subsequent purchases of content, functionality, or services, or otherwise create balances or credits that end-users can redeem or use to make purchases at a later time.

The review guidelines say this which contradicts:

• Any credits or in-game currencies purchased via in-app purchase may not expire, and you should make sure you have a restore mechanism for any restorable in-app purchases.

This is just one example. The Apple terms are full of contradictions which is something developers complain about since nobody knows what is and isn’t allowed or might be allowed one day but not the next.