Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 29th Jan 2010 16:26 UTC
Microsoft presented the results for its second quarter of the 2010 fiscal year yesterday, which ended on December 29 2009. As it turns out, thanks to sales of Windows 7, Microsoft experienced a record quarter, which is especially welcome after the previous two lacklustre ones. It sold 60 million Windows 7 licenses during this record quarter.
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Member since:2005-07-06
I never have to waste time virus scanning, defragging or re-installing from scratch to maintain stability or performance.
i have an info for you:
every fs fragmentates over time
the question is only: do you handle defragmentation as a planned task like in ntfs or as a background task like in reiser
Member since:2007-07-13
"I never have to waste time virus scanning, defragging or re-installing from scratch to maintain stability or performance.
i have an info for you:
every fs fragmentates over time
the question is only: do you handle defragmentation as a planned task like in ntfs or as a background task like in reiser "
Firstly, the word is "fragments" not "fragmentates". Yes, every filesystem fragments over time. For some it affects performance badly, for others, not enough that you have to worry about it (except if you are squeezing every last drop out of a high performance systems, or your desktop runs lousy without it).
Member since:2008-06-02
Apologies for the flood of posts. I never have to waste time virus scanning, defragging or re-installing from scratch to maintain stability or performance. So I'm a bit bored with my other reliable virus-free desktops. Perhaps I should go and use my Windows desktops a bit more to liven things up.
Yes, as a non-Windows user I'm sure you have much more productive ways to use your time. Like fighting with NDIS wrapper because Linux is too insignificant for wireless hardware makers to support. Or sitting idle while waiting for a replacement Mac motherboard because you can't just go buy a new one at Staples, unlike every other computer around.
Member since:2007-07-13
"Apologies for the flood of posts. I never have to waste time virus scanning, defragging or re-installing from scratch to maintain stability or performance. So I'm a bit bored with my other reliable virus-free desktops. Perhaps I should go and use my Windows desktops a bit more to liven things up.
Yes, as a non-Windows user I'm sure you have much more productive ways to use your time. Like fighting with NDIS wrapper because Linux is too insignificant for wireless hardware makers to support. Or sitting idle while waiting for a replacement Mac motherboard because you can't just go buy a new one at Staples, unlike every other computer around. "
In my country (near Antartica) you can get Macs everywhere (although we have no iStores). So you are rather wrong.
Member since:2006-06-04
Yes, as a non-Windows user I'm sure you have much more productive ways to use your time. Like fighting with NDIS wrapper because Linux is too insignificant for wireless hardware makers to support. Or sitting idle while waiting for a replacement Mac motherboard because you can't just go buy a new one at Staples, unlike every other computer around.
I really don't want to get caught up in these silly arguments, but . . . NDISwrapper? When I bought my laptop a couple of years ago it had the wifi gubbins installed under XP (I deliberately chose not to buy Vista) and it took me a full month to get the thing working with my (also brand new) wifi router. This a RaLink wifi card with native (for XP) RaLink software.
In contrast, Mandriva 2007 came out about the same time, I installed it in the ext3 partition previously occupied by MDV 2006, and guess what? Worked first time, "out of the box". Never had any trouble with it at all. Now it has MDV 2010 with KDE 4.3.x and KDE is also working fine (although some of you may recall how long and loudly I used to complain about it).
Perhaps some distros don't work so well with wifi but Mandriva cannot be accused of not working on the problem. Clearly not all distros are created equal - but that knowledge does not appear to prevent unfair or illogical comparisons.
News
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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Member since:
2007-07-13
It is interesting that Microsoft's overall balance sheet has not been that flash in recent years and they've resorted to ditching staff. They've been making fantastic profits but also sold off investments to prop up their share price. It is interesting their share price has not been moving much - which means sharper financial minds than ours decided to invest elsewhere.
Microsoft is not going away, just as IBM is huge and isn't either. It's just that there will not be another "Golden Age" for MS as there was in the 90's when they were growing and were dominating the developer thought-space. Being a Windows-only user in this day and age (of Google's web, and Apple's devices) seems slightly quaint.
Edit: Apologies for the flood of posts. I never have to waste time virus scanning, defragging or re-installing from scratch to maintain stability or performance. So I'm a bit bored with my other reliable virus-free desktops. Perhaps I should go and use my Windows desktops a bit more to liven things up.
Edited 2010-01-29 23:49 UTC