Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 15th Feb 2013 10:40 UTC
"Since I left my job at Amazon I have spent a lot of time reading great source code. Having exhausted the insanely good idSoftware pool, the next thing to read was one of the greatest game of all time: Duke Nukem 3D and the engine powering it named 'Build'. It turned out to be a difficult experience: The engine delivered great value and ranked high in terms of speed, stability and memory consumption but my enthousiasm met a source code controversial in terms of organization, best practices and comments/documentation. This reading session taught me a lot about code legacy and what helps a software live long." Hail to the king, baby.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.More Features »
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2011-01-28
moondevil,
"Actually when I think about optimizing compilers, I am thinking about Portland Group, Intel and Codeplay compilers."
Intel's is the only one I've used, but that might have been five years ago. The other two don't offer versions for the public. Codeplay's website seems to indicate they specialize with game accelloration on cuda and PS3.
"I don't do any low level programming myself since around 2000, so in a way I am also curious how the reality is."
I wish i could say I did it professionally, but I don't. I just do it for my own pet projects. Not long I managed to beat the GMP arbitrary size arithmatic library on divisions for lengths of around 4 words. I was a bit surprised since my algorithm is straitforward (though it did require inline assembly optimization). I want to confirm that my results are valid in the general case on multiple machines. Also I need to confirm that GMP was in fact using it's fastest algorithm; GMP does automatically choose between many of them so maybe the selector was poorly tuned.
It would be very interesting to see whether the assembly optimizations could be eliminated under ICC, maybe I'll give it a shot. This is all on the back burner now since I only get paid to do web stuff.