Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 13th Jul 2012 23:39 UTC
Ars Technica is running an interesting article about the Mail application on Windows 8. It's one of the first party Metro applications, and Ars' conclusion is that it's really, really not up to snuff - it can't even compare favourably to the mail application on Windows Phone. The sad thing is, however - this applies to virtually all Metro applications.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
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.More News »
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2009-09-23
First sentence directly being an insult, yay, that's how we start arguments.
Works without problems. You just have to provide the dynamic libraries it was specifically compiled against. Same on Windows with the DLLs.
SDL and Qt are not operating system APIs. "
True. But they are competing with APIs from Microsoft like DirectX, MFC and Win32 and they are gaining more and more market share due to their cross-platform compatibility.
Valve just hired the lead developer of SDL.
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2223/_index.htm...
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/MapKit/Refere...
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Cocoa/Referen...
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#qa/qa1342/_index.html
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#qa/qa1679/_index.html
I can list much more if you wish, specially the NeXTStep APIs no longer available.
Deprecating parts of the API while providing good documentation on these changes is a very good thing.
That is GNUStep, not Cocoa, with lots of missing functionality. "
I didn't claim that. However, GNUStep does allow to run many MacOS applications on Linux. It is demonstrated by the guy in the talk.
Anyone with a decent experience developing software across multiple operating systems, knows that Microsoft world is quite bearable, when compared with many of the commercial enterprise systems available. "
There aren't really any other commercial platforms left. Alpha, Solaris, HP-UX and so on don't really exist anymore.
Different teams, even working in different buildings. "
This doesn't justify anything. It works for Apple and it works at Google. Microsoft is just incredibly bad in this regard.
Heck, they don't even know how to read out the home directory on MacOS X using an environment variable, they always assume your home directory is in /Users (try using Microsoft software for MacOS X with a case-sensitive filesystem).
The same platform lockin like any other commercial vendor. "
No. http://opensource.apple.com/
Great! Where I do buy such hardware with Linux? "
What is your problem? Most ARM devices shipped nowadays run Linux. Just use your favorite internet search engine and you will be happy.
What are your developer credentials to talk about stability of operating system APIs?
Are we going to compare penis lengths now? This is not how you're going to win an argument. It's like saying "My parents are richer than yours, so I must be right!"
You can argue whatever you want, but Microsoft is doomed to decline in the future (just like ATARI or Commodore). Just have a look how many companies are jumping the Linux bandwagon. Valve, being probably one of the most important game publishers, is hiring Linux developers like crazy. And even Microsoft itself contributes lots of code to the Linux world (Skype 4.0, Hyper-V).
I feel really sorry for people who are so attached to Microsoft that they're even willing to waive for features and usability when switching from Windows 7 to the awkward Windows 8.
Adrian