Mike O'Connor › Comments

"That thing was way too thick to be an Apple tablet." - Mike O'Connor

"Actually this happened to my iPhone 3GS last month! I don’t know why it did that, and it ended up fixing itself, later that day. You can turn it off by holding both the Home button and the sleep/wake button at the same time. This will cause it to restart, but keep holding it PAST that and eventually it will plain old turn off. Later, you can tap Sleep/Wake to wake it back up. I did this a bunch of times and it woke up. Not much of an answer, but at least you can turn it off while its sick." - Mike O'Connor

"With all those apps, it's getting super hard to find the great ones. I think the more apps the better, but as the numbers rise it becomes more and more important to have good ways to search for and browse through apps. I think we need to see improvements in that regard when it comes to the App Store. I've placed four apps in the store. My first, EMailContact, was easy to find. My latest and best, Myallo HotList http://myallo.com/hotlist is very hard to find. It was a mere flash on the What's New page because so many apps are new each day. And getting reviews or mentions anywhere is tough for two reasons; reviewers are overwhelmed with apps, and the big companies now have aps, and they have PR departments, money, people and resources to push and advertise their stuff all day." - Mike O'Connor

"What's this about a Latitude rejection now?" - Mike O'Connor

"Shanelle, I am confident enough that they will find a way to reanimate your device on the spot that I would make the appointment, if it isn’t too long a drive to the Apple store." - Mike O'Connor

"Makes a nice blipvert." - Mike O'Connor

"Her prop works quite well... on most _other_ shows. Say "yes, proof of my opinion is right here" and then fumble around finding it, and the interviewer will almost always instantly move on to another subject, leaving the assertion unproven. Didn't work here, though. What a shame." - Mike O'Connor

"Suppose an app costs $10. The developer gets $7, Apple gets $3. Now if there is a refund, Apple pays the customer the $10 back. And, Apple charges the developer $10, not $7. Apple keeps their $3. So each refund puts the developer in the hole $3. If Apple pulls an app and a flood of people wants refunds, this can cost the developer lots of money through no fault of their own, while Apple keeps all the profit they made on the pulled app." - Mike O'Connor

"This ia all about... The Beatles. The idea of this change is to allow people to purchase a full album, and with it they will get as nifty a package of extras as you might get today from a DVD. The Beatles are, I think, insisting that the problem with selling their music is that several of their albums are concept albums that should be enjoyed as a whole. Pepper, of course, but Abbey Road is another example. Apple says ok, let us sell your music and we are thrilled to insure those albums are sold only as full albums with the new packaging and a set of exclusive extras (for a hefty price). Apple wants those Beatles! Expect one of the premiere albums in this format to be Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road." - Mike O'Connor

"I live on Long Island, about 25 miles East of Manhattan. The wind will blow a bit of dust this way after such a bomb. If you know what I mean." - Mike O'Connor

""The religion angle" also solved his problem with making medical claims. There were large lawsuits about that. Claims to cure things like cancer, blindness, deafness, and the common cold are in his "sacred scriptures" as Scientology call his writings. He was sued big time over this. The religion angle fixed it, because although you can not claim to cure disease using a device such as his "E-Meter". claims about miraculous healing are ok. The man was a genius and created the most successful scam of all time. E-Meters, now called "religious artifacts" still sell for thousands of dollars to followers, but every single one has a court ordered sticker saying the device by itself "does nothing". Whatta deal!" - Mike O'Connor

"Smart people get sucked into this scam because it is very, very finely honed and thought out. Things are revealed on what is called "the gradient". The very beginning concept is some fairly interesting pop psychology about things in your past affecting things in your present, combined with basic courses on things like effective communication. Only much later are you introduced to the fact that your past includes past lives, and the space alien thing takes years to reveal. By that time you are so far in and deeply committed, not to mention you have confessed everything you've ever done to these guys, that is beyond embarrassing to quit now. Most people go until they realize it's a scam, others go farther and manage to pull out despite the fear of losing their eternity, a few get too deep to leave. It's all fine with the Scientology organization. They have a no refund policy. And many people are hesitant to criticize something they were fooled about and spent thousands and thousands of..." - Mike O'Connor

"It was not introduced as a church. It's lowest concept of "engrams" was introduced as an interesting theory in one of the science fiction rags L. Ron Hubbard wrote for. Then it was a self-help book that made many medical claims. Then the book, and Dianetics courses he offered at very reasonable prices became his business. Only later did Hubbard hit on "the religion angle" as he called it, and even later, did he come up with his Xenu myth - people needed higher and higher level top secret concepts if he was going to charge them the big bucks. By hiding behind the First Amendment, he could avoid lots of criticism from people who didn't want to appear bigoted about a religion. And it made the whole scam tax free! And the courses, now called services, were still offered at very reasonable prices. What price eternity, after all? He gave fake collars to his course teachers, invented a cross symbol, and a catchy name that made it seem like a scientific religion. This is not a religion. It is..." - Mike O'Connor

"People need to understand that Scientology is not a religion. It is a straight out money scam. It only uses "the religion angle", to quote founder L. Ron Hubbard, because it is a near-perfect shield to hide the scam behind. He first tried to make it self-help, then medical, that got him in trouble, then hit the religion angle. Decades later, look how well that has worked - people are afraid to touch it, because they don't want to be anti religion and do want to be pro freedom. Hubbard was a genius to hide his money scam behind the cloak of religion. It's the most successful money scam of all time." - Mike O'Connor

"Because you are choking or have an asthma attack or are in allergic shock or there is a burglar in the next room." - Mike O'Connor

"I'm sure that the new house on the property will itself be unique and, someday, historic." - Mike O'Connor

"Most overnight sensations take a lifetime of work." - Mike O'Connor

"It's a win-win. If they had won, they could say that even a judge in these organizations saw the light, and if they lost, it is a perfect case for appeal." - Mike O'Connor

"When is the iPhone version coming out?" - Mike O'Connor

"I liked Speed Racer. It clearly was strictly going to be an eye candy movie, and I got that. Plus I'm a fan of CG. Finally, Christina Ricci had an interesting hairstyle. :)" - Mike O'Connor

"I'm showing my age, but JAWS 3-D has got to the the worst! It literally jumps the shark! And for "honorable" mention - Poltergeist III..." - Mike O'Connor

"When you submit your app, it does go into a black hole and you have no idea when it will get approved, but when you submit, you can specify a date that it should appear on the store. As long as your app does happen to get approved before that (adjustable) date, bingo! You can spring it into public view on the day you planned." - Mike O'Connor

"When you submit your app, it does go into a black hole and you have no idea when it will get approved, but when you submit, you can specify a date that it should appear on the store. As long as your app does happen to get approved before that (adjustable) date, bingo! You can spring it into public view on the day you planned." - Mike O'Connor

"That is basically true but in Apple's defense that is how they do their alpha testing. They make some software internally, then invite a company or two that they can trust to keep their trap shut (which unfortunately tends to be the big corps) to work on the new, very very buggy stuff, very closely. Then when they have it at beta stage they let in the rest of the developers. Annoying to me since I'm not a big corp, but I guess I understand." - Mike O'Connor

"Apple will give out a new SDK and tell developers to make sure their apps work with different screen sizes. No hardware will be announced, but we will see the software foundations. Copy/Paste, the Push system, other stuff. I think we will see a new phone in Summer, a "NetPad" tablet later, but OS 3 should get on our current iPhones fairly soon. I predict a flat device that runs OS 3, accepts a finger and stylus that interprets handwriting, and Bluetooth keyboards and mice. I predicted a 7.75" screen, but rumors are talking about 9.75". Many details are in my blog article at http://www.myallo.com/blog... ..." - Mike O'Connor

"Given the current rumor of Apple ordering 10″ screens, my device goes from being able to fit into a suit jacket pocket to making it as unwieldy as a book or clipboard. A main use I see for such a device is as a second screen to another computer. Imagine the thing running Apple Remote Access. A manager or teacher could roam the floor, his device becoming the primary, secondary, or mirrored screen of any computer in the place, to control, observe, or collaborate. Or you could travel far away and remotely access your home or office computer over WiFi and the Internet on something as light as a clipboard. I see Apple Remote Access on a NetPad device as its killer app. Of course there are tons of other uses, from a MacKindle to a super duper iPod…" - Mike O'Connor

""Whatever the motivation may be, at least in the field of literary endeavor, the interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry. Accordingly, an author's decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.... "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.... It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation-and their ideas from suppression-at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the..." - Mike O'Connor

"Tv is one third commercials. One third! That's a huge problem. Have many fewer, more expensive commercials. Such commercials can be more expensive because with many fewer of them, more people are going to sit through them. In the longer run, the key is customization. Of the dozens and dozens of commercials you see in a day, how many even remotely apply to you? Are you really about to buy a car, do you really need heart medicine, female or male-only products when you are a male or female? Not only do sellers not care if you see those non-applicable commercials, they would be overjoyed if they could only show them to their actual target audience. And we as viewers would be happier is more of the commercials actually had something to do with us. In the next few years it will become technologically possible to target TV ads much more directly, showing different ads to different households during the same broadcast. Sort of like when you view a web page these days, you might see a..." - Mike O'Connor

"As a longtime Mac person, the tabs make sense to me. A tab _is_ a title bar! The title of the page is in the tab. And when you have a window with tabs, you have a window that has multiple titles. If you think of needing multiple titles in the title bar, and some ways to manipulate the content of those multiple views, the UI of the tabs, I mean divided titlebar does make sense, in the Macintosh way." - Mike O'Connor

"A standard Scientology tactic is to insert a nutcase in a discussion, plus a person apparently unsuccessfully trying to calm the nutcase. The purpose is to take all serious discussion off the track and to discourage those reading the discussion from continuing with it, hoping they will dismiss the whole thing as a bunch of nuts. You'll see this mysteriously happening in every discussion. Cult members have this as their actual job. The tactics of the cult are fascinating, I encourage people to read up on this global scam hiding behind the cloak of a religion." - Mike O'Connor