Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 29th May 2011 21:29 UTC, submitted by teigetje
It turns out that a lot of people haven't been paying attention. Over the weekend, a story about how Microsoft is earning more from HTC's Android devices than from its own Windows Phone 7 sales spread all across the web, with surprised reactions everywhere. Anyone who has been paying attention to Microsoft's recent patent trolling regarding Android could've seen this coming.
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RE[3]: One of the many reasons ...
by jbauer on Mon 30th May 2011 08:29
in reply to "RE[2]: One of the many reasons ..."
Member since:2005-07-06
Windows hasn't essentially changed since Windows NT 3.5x, it still has the same problems it had back then which is what companies like Symantec and Kaspersky depend on to make their livings.
Well, Linux hasn't essentially changed since first created in 1991, it still has the same problems it had back then which is why only nerds and Microsoft haters want to use it.
See what I did there? We all can play bullshit games.
RE[4]: One of the many reasons ...
by bert64 on Mon 30th May 2011 10:00
in reply to "RE[3]: One of the many reasons ..."
Member since:2007-04-23
Linux is a simple design, its based on unix which is also a simple design...
Windows is _NOT_ a simple design, some say it was intentionally made over complicated and convoluted to prevent a repeat of the clones which were made of dos. The problems with such a complicated system are many, you have many complicated parts interdependent on each other which makes it very hard to update without breaking things (see the delays and being forced to start over with vista), you have security flaws embedded deep in the design which cannot be overcome without breaking compatibility (google: pass the hash), and the complexity often results in laziness (eg the permissions model for drivers is very complex so many third party drivers don't use it, on linux the permission model for drivers is the same as that for files - set permissions on /dev/whatever... and don't forget all the apps which wont run as non admin, or need nasty hacks to do so).
Keeping it simple is a great principle.
News
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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Member since:
2009-09-23
Do you also think that it's okay when US companies use loopholes in the US tax law and move most of their financial assets overseas thus avoiding having to pay US taxes which is one of the reasons the US has a record debt of 14 Trillion US Dollars now?
There is something like business ethics and I expect big enterprises to respect those like I respect research ethics as a scientist by not making data up, not harming any other human being etc.
Ethics is an important factor of a sound society and if everybody starts kicking those values, it is certainly not inevitable that new conflicts will arise (like the Gulf war and the oil for example).
Oh, yes, they seriously do.
Windows hasn't essentially changed since Windows NT 3.5x, it still has the same problems it had back then which is what companies like Symantec and Kaspersky depend on to make their livings.
Agree, quite a success. Even though Nintendo sold way more Wii consoles. And the Xbox has had so many technical issues (Red ring of death), that one might think the hardware design was created by a bunch of amateurs. Microsoft is just able to compete in this market, because they simply have the money to buy technology and companies like Kinect.
The webservers of the internet run more than 75% Linux or Unix and 93% the top500 computers run Linux as well. Even in the embedded and now smartphone market, Linux is the dominating operating system. Microsoft can't really compete here anymore. Windows Server especially fails on really big hardware (80 cores) [1] (link in German, sorry).
Come on, you sound like someone from their marketing division. Windows Phone 7 lacks a lot of features like multitasking, a modern and decent browser (note, they're still using something between IE6.0 and IE7.0 as their code base), a huge assortment of apps and many developers. According to latest Gartner studies, Microsoft has a market share of around 1.7% (IIRC), I don't know how anyone would consider that product successful. Yes, I know they're working on an update to bring all these features, but that won't come before next year IIRC.
And I am predicting that Microsoft is getting less and less important in the future. They have already lost leadership in all essential markets (servers, super computing, tablets, mobile phones, embedded) to the competition and it's just a matter of time when they will fall back on the desktop since most home users don't care what they surf the internet with and writing their documents with and so on. And companies like HP and DELL invest into alternative operating systems (webOS for HP, Ubuntu for DELL) or market their own (Chrome OS) which will weaken Microsoft's position in the desktop market further.
The PC market finally gets the competition back it once had in the 80ies which is a good thing in my opinion.
Adrian
[1] http://www.heise.de/ct/inhalt/2011/12/146/