Are you saying that companies have a right to distribute their work, for profit, unlimitedly? Regardless of how dangerous, addictive, financially ruinous, or socially destructive it is?
All governments restrict certain behaviors: alcohol (dui, public intoication, etc.), drugs(prohibition, prescription only), gambling.
Now, it’s fair to say that doing those, and doing them as much or as long as you like, is an inalienable right-like “expression”-is absolutely a position you can take. But all countries seem to agree that we shouldn’t do certain things, at least not to excess.
No, the inalienable right to publish creative works without the government forcing you to add or remove content or features.
If they didn’t protect this in the United States, your iPhone would have an FBI backdoor in it as of the last iOS update. It does not, because there are some people in the US who still believe that the government does not have the right to serve as your product manager or editorial board.
This is an interesting distinction. I wonder how, or if, China’s regulations would differ if it were free (freedom and/or beer). But, I think a country has a certain right to regulate when it comes to commerce, especially foreign commerce.
More importantly we live in times were companies are much more efficient at exploiting human weakness.
They do it faster and at larger scales than ever before. There is hardly time for even experts to react to what they are seeing unfold, forget governments.
In the past the only thing that did damage this fast was disease. Anything moving "too fast" through a population without anytime to understand the negative effects should be treated the same way we counter viruses or nuclear chain reactions - with control rods and quarantine periods.
Ancient Greece had a couple major festivals of Dionysus in which it was perfectly acceptable behavior to get roaring drunk and stagger crazily through the public square. You weren't expected to do this, but you could. (One or two times a year.)
It makes me curious whether having the rare festival allowing the activity might make it easier to get everyone not to do it the rest of the year.
We agree, and we're developing apps for Android as well. Unfortunately it seems that Google conditioned people for those first few months that ALL apps should be free. Now when someone charges $.99 they complain endlessly with comments like: "Great app, but not worth paying for. 1 star."
It's really troubling to see people viewing our (hackers) work this way.
I think the problem is uncertainty. I know what I'm going to get when I buy a beer. When I buy an app I might be spending $4 for something that turns out to be worth exactly $0 to me. The people reluctant to gamble $4 per hand are being smart, not cheap. If I could try an app for a week and then pay or lose it I'd probably by ten times as many apps.
Sure, but people rent movies for $4 without knowing if they'll like it, based solely on reviews. They buy wine they've never had before for $5 or $10. They order food for $5 or $10 or $50 from restaurants they've never been to before. People will even spend $50 or $60 on a game they may or may not like, as long as it's for their computer or their console and not their iPhone. Life is full of uncertainty like that, and most of it costs way, way more than any iPhone applications do.
My point is that people who wouldn't balk at spending that kind of money on something else that they may or may not like/use will freak out about an iPhone app that costs that much, and I really don't think there's any rational reason for it: it has nothing to do with uncertainty or expected value, but rather people have just been conditioned to expect that apps are free or $0.99 because the app store is flooded with those apps (just like people expect web-apps to be free just because lots of other web-apps are free), and that's a shame since it makes it that much harder for all the developers that are working on making great applications.
I do think there's some truth in what you're saying. I also think you're wrong that iPhone apps are comparable to known quantities like renting movies, food, or games.
If I rent a big budget movie (which is what most people do rent) I know that I'm going to get 2 hours of entertainment. I may not love it, but at least I got 2 hours of entertainment value from it. If I order food I at least get full. If I buy wine I get buzzed. If I buy a bad iPhone app it might only take me two minutes to realize I just completely wasted my money it and delete it (or just never use it).
30 seconds? Really? I'm surprised. On our development phones it took 10 - 15 seconds.
Although OCR is something we're looking at it on the phone, although you probably wouldn't be happy with how long you'll have to wait for THAT to complete.
From the article you submitted: "The application then takes around thirty seconds to process the image, correcting for any issues with lighting, color, and even perspective (if you initially took a photo of your document at an angle, the final image will look as if it was taken front-on)."
