“Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely” he wrote back. “In an ideal world, I’d even be able to graduate the price depending on duration of ownership, so users who picked up Tweetie 1 recently could get 2.0 for free.”

There you have it, the App Store does not have a way to give upgrade pricing. Was it that hard to come out and say that to begin with? I know the App Store is different than desktop environments, but why not say that stuff and prevent all this fuss? I would have gladly shut up about pricing had I known there was no way to change for upgrades other than charging the full thing. But there was nothing in the original blog post to indicate that issue, the blog simply said “It’s a new app and I feel I can charge this amount”.

So do I stand by my stances on developers needing to give discounts for upgrades? Yep. Do I stand by my dislike of having to pay $2.99? Nope. Do I think people need to be more open from the beginning? Yep.

Coming back is really an eye opening experience.

For one, more students have headphones and cellphones plugged to their ears when they walk around. I can remember the guys (or girls) who had portable electronics back in the day where the cool ones, not the normal ones.

Secondly, kids are assholes these days. I sat in this morning on two general history courses, and almost all of the students weren’t paying attention. I’m sure I did the same in class, but I sure as hell didn’t have a cell phone to text or a laptop to surf the internet during it. Kids brazenly did all of this stuff and the professor didn’t seem to care (note the class had about 20 students – small school).

Third the students who are there probably shouldn’t be. I talked to some of the students (guess I still looked cool enough to warrant even minimal attention). Most of them were complete idiots. Sorry to say. I’m hoping the caliber of students gets better this afternoon when I sit in on upper-level classes, but if the general classes are any indication they won’t. These kids had no clue what the classes they were in were actually about. Plessy vs. Ferguson in a general law class? Nah that’s not needed. Simon Bolivar in history of Latin America? Pfft, what’s he worth.

For the last five years I’ve been blindly donating to the college, but dear Lord, I think I need to spend more time here if I plan to donate in the future. Maybe I should hit up a kegger…

But again, when I buy tweetie 1, I buy support and enhancements. Atebits has put the last six months into developing Tweetie 2 not tweetie 1, so again, in effect those who bought it recently (or when it first came out) having been dealing with and using an undeveloped app (excluding bug fixes). Secondly to say he’s poured all his energy into it is correct, but where did the ideas, the ability, etc come from? Us who bought the first app and subsidarized the second’s development.

This debate (if one can call it that) is tainted by the price of the app, it’s 3 dollars get over it, but let’s expand the issue to a standard development platform. I’ve been developing a major upgrade to my windows (or mac) app for the last six months. I haven’t put any effort into adding new features to the current version because my time is being spent on the new one. Users are still buying the app and paying me for it even though I don’t support it. I release the new version and decide to charge the full price for the upgrade, would people bitch then? Wouldn’t they say “why no cheaper upgrade charge?”

This is all I’m saying, it’s not entitlement, it’s generally accepted principle, that has become tainted by the low price of the app. Ignore the price, and look at the practice of the developer and then ask if it’s right.

When I pay for an app I also pay for support and development of that app, no? If we all paid for tweetie one, but all the efforts of the developer were going into tweetie (he’s admitted that much), users have effectually been paying for an unsupported app for months now. The app hasn’t seen a major update in months (not even minor feature additions).

If we were subsidizing a new app by buying an unsupported one, why exactly are we paying for a new one?

Again this is a three dollar twitter app, so should it really be getting this much bitching? No not really, but it says a lot about the developer to do something like this. He admits he owes everything to the users, but still feels no remorse to stick it to them when he pads his earnings some more. How thoughtful indeed.

When I said charging for the app, I probably should have stated it differently. I don’t mind paying a reduced price for the upgrade (namely if the app is so new and is as good as people claim it is), I do mind paying the full price.

Why? Well for one, my buying of the app and recommending it to others supported the developer. If no one had bought tweetie 1 there would be no tweetie 2. Developers tend to think “Hey I developed the app, so you should pay me”, but I think they too often ignore the contributions their current users have given to them. I’m not against developers who remember the users, I’m against developers who ignore them.

And yes it’s only three dollars, and I spent more on food today than that, but it’s not the money it’s the principle. I can’t code (I graduated college with a liberal arts degree), so you’re right I don’t know all the details that go into coding an app, but I understand that as with anything it takes time and energy. Should you be rewarded for the excellent work? Of course, but shouldn’t we be thanked for our support and encouragement? Apparently not.

Every single other journalist understood that the statement was off the record and not to take it out of the room, but Terry the moron that he is, tweeted it:

Not only did Mr. Moron break every single journalism standard in the book, destroy the credibility of his network to hold confidential and off the records quotes secret, but he diluted a serious debate. People are now talking about the ‘jackass’ quote over Health Care or the interview itself, which is exactly what Obama said would happen.

As such Terry’s white house press passes should be revoked and he should be fired by ABC, an apology isn’t enough to cover up stupidity of this magnitude.

I can only hope Mr. Moron (yes I’m spelling the name wrong on purpose) never finds work in the journalism field again (should he be fired from ABC – which probably won’t happen because none of the executives have balls to do it).

If you agree with this please RT this post with the hashtag #firemoran, and encourage your friends to spread the word.

Now I’m not sure how he got the name, whether he found the person who had Jason, asked nicely and got it, or if Twitter gave him special treatment. I assume twitter did the latter, and I’ve asked Jason to comment, but he hasn’t (If you know for sure comment).

Either way, if twitter did in fact delete or free up an account and turn it over to him, I’d like to ask them some questions. Namely why Jason is given a free pass, but I’m forced to sit through a month plus of support to find out they don’t do what they just did for him.

So can I have the account? Or do we have to offer money to ev or biz to get stuff? (Maybe they want a blowjob in which case they can keep the account)

His wordpress blog has been hacked at least twice, which prompted him to say he doesn’t trust it. That’d be a far assessment, if Robert didn’t do the real world evaluate of leaving the house unlocked. He didn’t upgrade his blog (“It breaks stuff”), and if he didn’t upgrade you think he actually took the time to delete the default admin account? He also didn’t do the simplest of things, something every geek tells their friends to do, BACK IT UP.

Scoble switched away from wordpress.com because he wanted to play with the toys that come with a self hosted wordpress blog, but he obviously was too busy friendfeeding to bother taking care of his home. He left the doors open and a big “HIT ME” sign on it, and the hackers walked right in and stole stuff. He then blames wordpress and walks away to continue his blowharding ways, leaving the clean-up to his employer.

Robert may talk the talk but he sure as hell doesn’t walk the walk. Severe Tenderness on Friendfeed sums it up very very well when he says:

WP calls you "technical evangelist", Robert. When you say «Yes, I didn’t have a backup. I should learn to do backups» I call you a media whore. Nothing TECH-NI-CAL, just bulled ego. Learn Security, Performance, Reliability, you ignorant piece

One such example is this post from a few days ago: 14 Alternative Browsers That Aren’t IE 6. Ignoring the fact that Mashable is now apparently taking credit for starting the IE 6 must die campaign; the post provides 4 mac-only alternatives (and one linux one to be fair), for a browser that was never released on that platform! Or why is Internet Explorer 8, the obvious alternative for Internet Explorer users buried under Firefox, Safari (a browser which loses a lot of functionally on the windows platform) and Google Chrome?

This is just another example of Mashable playing up the sure fire page views card by crediting a pointless list post.

Side Note: This is the exact reason why I refuse to write for a paying blog. Being forced to write a post quota leds to shit like this.

The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish.

- Unknown

I’m gotten tired of it. Some people are intellects, some are okay, but most are plain stupid (and I’m sure people think the same of me). I’ve grown tired of yelling and pointing out how what Obama is doing now falls in line with what Bush/Cheney did for 8 years, but having it always fall on deaf ears.

So I’ve decided to quit. You have yours I have mine. I’m willing to think and talk (and some of you are too), but you sit on your stool and blabber endlessly failing to think or reconsider.

Obama was born in the US, Medicare is universal health care and hasn’t killed anyone, Obama doesn’t want to hijack your PCs with cars.gov. People use buzzwords like fascism and socialism without understanding. That is what I’ve come to see mainstream conservatism as in the time I’ve written and blogged. Conspiracy ridden, racist, and stubborn.

As a closing salvo, to meet my idea of a true liberal (equality, intellect, understanding), I’ll admit a few things about Obama.

1. The Obama administration is not the one I voted for. I voted for change and got a president who continues the policies of Bush/Cheney when it comes to terrorism (i.e. Sentence first then verdict). Obama is wrong on so many levels there

Obama has issues. Take this picture (I hate to link to it, but I will nonetheless):

To quote American Thinker;

Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this trio, helps the handicapped  Professor Gates down the stairs, while Barack Obama, heedless of the infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of self-defined racial profiling, strides ahead on his own. So who is compassionate? And who is so self-involved and arrogant that he is oblivious?

Are all of Obama’s actions and policies right? No, no one is right 100% of the time. The issue here is that many democrats and Obama are willing to work things out, instead the conversation is bogged down by irrelevant and pointless conversations.

Hey maybe Obama was born in Kenya, so what. The constitution and the natural born citizen requirement was done to prevent King George or other British officials from becoming president and turning over control to Great Britain. I think it’s safe to say that’s no longer an issue (besides some wanted to let Arnold be president)

Maybe the current health care bill isn’t the right one, but is putting people who need medical care in the hands of corporations working solely for profit right either?

Now I’ll depart, you may carry on with your discussions and ramblings, as that is your Constitutional right.