11 Apr 2010
China reports first trade deficit in six years

This is news and no mistake!...

China recorded a $7.24 billion trade deficit in March, the General Administration of Customs announced Saturday, according to state media Xinhua News Agency.

(link) [CNN]

11:56 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Fiber Event 2010

Well, it's over and done and another year - and despite good weather and a two day stand by our booth, we actually didn't do much better than last year. The crowds were even thinner.

What saved the day was Lorraine's already skeined yarn, and some junk fleece we sold at $10/bag. Without those it would've been a complete waste.

Of course, due to the event and good weather here, we actually have about half the flock sheared already, and all of our inventory is sorted and priced (which explains the lack of posting here the past week or so). And we got some excellent feedback on our breeding program, about which I'll have more to say later. So it wasn't a complete loss. But it does give me pause to wonder if the so-called economic recovery that's allegedly underway is just a figment of somebody's imagination...

11:48 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

New iPhone Developer Agreement Bans the Use of Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone Compiler

Wow. Just wow. The new language in Apple's dev license for the iPad and iPhone has this gem:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

Basically, this not only shoots Adobe's product in the head, it gets Lazarus, Embarcadero's forthcoming multiplatform products, and a whole slew of other potential and existing compilers and cross-compilers. It's got a lot of developers really pissed off, and as the news spreads, even more will decide that it's simply not worth developing for a platform with such capricious and obnoxious "rules". It's as though Apple was intent on returning to the 90's, when developers spurned the Mac because of it's arcane OS idiocy and did nothing but Windows work instead. That really worked for them then - and it'll work about the same way now.

I'm big on property and ownership. Apple's shenanigans prove that you really don't own anything anymore, we're all just renting or leasing.The last time this was the case on Planet Earth, they called it the Middle Ages, and they called the renters and lessees "serfs". It'll be interesting to see how long our new medieval times last.

What Apple doesn’t want — and as we see now, is not going to allow — is for anyone other than Apple to define the framework for native iPhone apps. What Apple is saying here is, if you’re going to write a native iPhone app, then you need to target our platform; if you want to do something else, then target the iPhone with an optimized web app. I.e., the iPhone OS supports two software platforms: Cocoa Touch and the web. Apple isn’t going to let anyone else build a meta-platform on top of Cocoa Touch.

(link) [Daring Fireball]

09:03 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link