Glad to see this. If Mozilla started chasing corporate then it would be necessary for me to switch browser. I've stuck with them through the misconceptions about memory from people who don't understand how memory management works. I've put up with slightly worse performance and standards support for enabling features I actually use like ad block.

However I would never tolerate kowtowing to the mishmash of nonsense that is corporate IT. I don't use IE for exactly this reason.

The simple truth is that if corporations need consistent behaviour they should not be using web apps to begin with.

That is the other problem. Every database is a mash of semi intentional subtle incompatibility with the standard and a host of non-standard features. When an ORM comes along many try to expose the non-standard features that make sense in some way but end up needing a custom solution for each DB (see how you do an auto sequence ID for an entity bean between Postgres and MSSQL).

So you have a semi portable layer interfacing with a semi portable environment.

The ability to buy non-standard screwdrivers does not justify the use of non-standard screwdrivers where a standard is just as good.

The "standard" you're referring to is simply not as good. Older screw heads are dated designs that are more likely to strip out than a torx or hex design. They're mostly still in use because the benefits of being common outweigh the downsides for many applications, especially in materials like wood that are more forgiving.

Torx is an accepted standard (just not one commonly found in homes.)

Lots of manufacturers use torx screws in locations where there is very little chance a home user will ever see them. They do it because it makes for a better product initially and easier repair by a professional later on.

...but the pentalobular screws in question are not standard 6-pointed Torx screws.

You're right. I was thrown off by the message higher in this thread that called them Torx screws. These are not Torx, they're pentalobes, and yeah, it's a non-standard by any reasonable measure.

That said, I'm still not agreeing with all this carping. You buy a product that's not advertised as having user-serviceable parts inside, then complain it's hard to service. I don't see folks complaining that the inside of their Android phone or Dyson vacuum are hard to hack, and that's what the iMac is equivalent to - it's an appliance. You trade away the flexibility of a desktop form factor for the coolness of the all-in-one.

Those are standard screwdrivers.

This is how I imagine the story playing out: Someone at Apple thought it would be a good idea to have fewer of those cases where someone cracked open his laptop for fun and ruined it and then was bitterly disappointed when Apple wouldn't fix it on warranty. That's a lot less likely to happen when nobody has the correct screwdriver just in the basement and has to order it from somewhere.

Whether that's the right or a useful thing to do I don't know but it's also no big deal.

Yeah the fact it forces you to buy their absurdly marked up HDDs is just a convenient side effect.

It is also a little more complicated than that. The corporations are themselves uncooperative. They have broken the system by extending it beyond its basic intent for increased profit. They further seek to use the spectre of piracy to give them greater profit levels. Such as the establishment of taxes on CDRs in some nations which is given to the supposed losers.

Actually we know for a fact such a limit exists. There are physical limits on how much energy can be extracted from a certain mass.

Yeah what this really needs is a bot block filter service where bots that do not conform to expectations can be bulk banned. It is too much effort to do this manually but a larger service can work.

MS (and possibly Nokia) probably wanted an early public commitment. People were pronouncing WP7 dead on arrival. The Nokia announcement puts real weight behind the platform.

In short by kicking up a fuss then they have killed the DOA claims. It means more people will have been looking at the platform. If they had delayed until now more mind share would already be locked into Android or iPhone. Unless a major player made a lot of noise about WP7 nobody would bother learning to develop for it.

Everything is an abomination until you learn how to use it.

The difficulty with loop is it takes something trivial and makes it more complex than it needs to be. Simple things are not simple. Complex things are rare and loop doesn't simplify them enough.

That might be true. It is indeed complex if you look at the BNF in the hyper-spec. (http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/m_loop...)

If you ignore the hyperspec, however, and get a feel for it by looking at examples and writing code using it, it becomes quite simple. It is very useful when you are translating C or Java code.

(http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/doc/cl/loop.html)

I find it quite readable in comparison to many of common lisp alternatives for iteration. And I kind of disagree that simple things aren't simple.

For example: (loop for i from 0 below 10 do ...)

Is pretty much the simplest construct that you normally need. Granted, I would likely just use dotimes in that case... but lets say you are iterating between 5 and 15, dotimes becomes unwieldy, where the for loop is pretty much the same code with the numbers changed.

(loop for i from 5 below 15 do ....)

Now try incrementing by 2

(loop for i from 5 below 15 by 2 do ....)

compare to the similar do* code

(do* ((i 5 (+ i 2)))

    ((>= i 15))

  ....)

kind of a toss up to me.

Not that I don't understand your point... in fact, as little as a year ago, I felt that way too... but I have since changed my mind.

My current preference is to use do* if writing a macro that needs iteration, and to use loop when I am doing something similar to a list comprehension or array traversal.