As it turns out, Google's idea of silently and automatically updating web browsers for security's sake is actually a pretty darn good idea - Chrome is pretty much always up-to-date. Microsoft agrees with this, and has announced it's going to automatically update Internet Explorer on Windows XP, Vista and 7.
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Member since:2007-04-25
We have (tens, hundreds of?) thousands of web developer who have spend millions of hours working around "bugs" in IE. And it's probably the least pleasant part of our job (well... maybe trying to sell our services is worse).
And why? I strongly believe that all these "bugs" are a result of a conscious decision to make IE render pages differently than all other browsers. It pays off to disobey standards when you have a 90% monopoly (like they used to) - a large number of "web developers" didn't even check their sites in other browsers. And it's the other browsers that looked bad, not IE. Just like Open/Libre Office pays for MS fscking up efforts to establish a common document format. How many times have you heard that OpenOffice sucks because it messes up MS Office documents?
So, to sum up - incompetent managers rely on technology from an evil company and hire incompetent developers. Why the hell am I to pay for it???
Member since:2009-08-18
Most problems with IE (especially past 7) is a result of sloppy web developers, some who don't understand why the browser has problems rendering pages when they put block elements within a inline element.
IE7 can be a PITA with absolute and relative positioning if you aren't careful, but static positioning it is largely fine.
Member since:2007-09-06
I agree that killing off the more incompatible IE versions is a good thing. IE6 is a horrible mess for any web dev to have to support.
http://www.ie6countdown.com/
Interesting that I got modded down for suggesting users review updates before isntalling. I can't really take the modding system seriously though. Meh.. can't please everyone.. even with solid recommendations for practicing safe hex. 
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
"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.
"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."
"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."
Member since:
2007-09-06
Places that rely on an IE6 only webapp probably already have system updates turned off. They'll likely be feeding updates in from a WSUS or similar appliance after vetting the patches.
It also depends on how the update is fed in too though. Will IE have it's own internal update mechanism or will it actually become a required update through the monthly Windows Update site.
Given Windows update history; it shouldn't have automatically installed updates in the first place really. Notification of available updates; sure. Maybe even download updates and let the user decide when to install. Fully automatic updates lead to things like the programming abortion known as Microsoft Office File-Validation plugin not to mention the PowerPoint update which broke PowerPoint's ability to open saved files.