Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 28th Jan 2010 18:09 UTC
Yes, yes, I apologise. After Kroc's story earlier today, and together with this one, we now have three stories in a row on the 
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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- It can't run OSX apps, but those aren't really meant to work well on netbooks either
What about other tablet/slate PCs though?
As this device is competing with them too.
(netbooks have even lower res screen and are much slower).
I think you've been looking at the bottem end of the market too much.
There's plenty of devices out there that can easily output 1024x768 and has the same screen size.
If you venture out of the "netbook" classification a moment but continue to look at simular devices then you'd see there's even more to choose from with devices as powerful as laptops but at the same dimensions (or marginally bigger) as netbooks.
It is less capable, but netbooks don't really run "real" apps like photoshop or visual studio or heavy games well.
Tablet and Slate PCs do though.
And there is a whole golf of applications between photoshop and whatever social networking frontends are popular on the iPhone.
One of my closest mates does ALL of his web development on his netbook.
My missus uses hers to write up lesson plans for the classes she teaches (if she tried to do that on a touch screen she'd quickly throw the device out of the window!)
The iPad can run apps for most things most people do better than any ($300-$1200) netbook (i.e. reading websites, with easy zoom and changing of orientation for the small screen, or going though tons of photos or emails with a multi touch screen instead of an unusable mini trackpad)
again, at a much higher price and again, your vastly under estimating what many people DO do on their netbooks.
- It doesn't fit in your pocket, but its small enough to hold without feeling that you're lugging a laptop in your palm
So where are you going to put it when you're not holding it?
In a bag? Oh well, you may as well have taken a proper fully functional (albeit compact) PC then.
- The device is a portable computer/media device, with a eBook feature.
You can read eBooks on netbooks and tablets/slates if you wanted to.
Most people don't though because backlit screens are a PITA compared to eInk or real printed media.
Good touch screen keyboards are not bad as they may seem.
touch screen keyboards are TERRIBLE. They're not even a close approximation to a hardware keyboard.
No matter how big you make the graphics, it's still not tactile. And that will always be their fundamental downfall.
Software keyboards are also a good way to induce RSI or other typing injuries as there's no cushion for your finger tips
The sole reason I didn't buy an iPhone was because I just couldn't get to grips with it's keyboard.
I don't look at the keyboard as I type normally, so why should I have to on my mobile devices just because Apple have an inherent disliking of buttons?
Extra stuff to carry around. I've already addressed this point and why it's impractical.
It's not the size that matters - it's the fact that it's tactile.
You can feel your way around the keys and instantly know when you've missed a button or can feel where your hands are on the keys (as in which letter) without having to look down every 5 seconds.
I don't read much - so personally no. But I'm not Kindles target audience either.
You're forgetting about the Android eBook readers
Desirable if you take form over function. Personally I don't. Personally I was hoping for something special but this isn't it.
Personally, I think the tablet market is still wide open.