ITWire: "Linux users can, at times, be the worst kind of ingrates, whining and complaining about what they perceive as missing features in a free operating system. My advice to all such whingers: spend 10 days using the latest version of Windows and you'll realise that you are living in a world of relative bliss."
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Member since:2005-12-15
Member since:2006-04-21
It's not about ignoring Windows. It's about people writing the useless articles with the sole purpose in my view to start arguments, and how sites such as this constantly post them.
This is not OSBlogs.com, it's OSNews.com.
OSNews has its faults, but let's face it, the criticism people like you sling at it would make any reasonably independent observer suspect that if you were to take over editorship, a more reasonable name for it would be "OSBendOverBackwardsAndLetMickeySoft-
TakeMeUpTheAssPropaganda.com".
Like it or not, whilst non-Microsoft products/OSes have their faults, so do Microsoft products.
Member since:2007-01-27
An operating system is only important as far as necessary applications run on it. If there are applications running on Linux or Mac OS X that do all that's needed, that's nice. If not you can run Windows in a virtual machine and run those applications there, particularly with 3D graphics virtualisation coming of age.
What's really happening now is that functionality gaps are being closed very quickly so that in fact Windows is indeed becoming redundant and it can and will be ignored because of a lack of usefulness, maybe not as fast as Linux fans would like but still it's happening.
No Windows is running here at all and probably never will be anymore, at least on physical hardware. Not because I hate Microsoft or something but weighed against the alternatives it comes out last.
I still have a Windows XP SP2 virtual machine though to test if the cross-platform software I wrote on Linux/BSD/Solaris also works on Windows. It's just that it's almost never powered up.
So my development process is not exclusive of Windows at all, rather inclusive. Windows is just not a preferred platform for deployment and that's what makes it unneeded. Can you tell me how many Windows developers are able and willing to make their software run on Linux and Mac OS X?
"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.
"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.
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."
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."
"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."
"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.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."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.
"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."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.
Member since:
2005-07-06
You can't ignore Windows even if you're a hardcore linux/mac user. Windows has a huge market share, so it is an important OS, no matter how bad we think (know) it is. Software development depends on this, web development depends on this (remember, most of those users still use IE), security of many many machines/servers, other operating systems are in some way forced to make some features similar to Vista available if they want non-geeky users to addopt their product, ... Again, you can't ignore it.