Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 6th Jan 2012 10:06 UTC
And so the smartphonification of the general purpose computer continues. This time around, though, it might actually be for the better. Microsoft has detailed two new features in Windows 8: refreshing and resetting your computer. Reinstalls will be a thing of the past.
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RE[8]: Microsoft, we build operating systems ..
by XenonXZ on Mon 9th Jan 2012 10:34
in reply to "RE[7]: Microsoft, we build operating systems .. "
Member since:2011-05-25
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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....continued....
Oh and my little 'trick" is simply that, a trick I use to make sure i never have to mess with a machine again. the simple fact is I can slap an AV on a Windows box along with dragon or Firefox or anything other than IE and it'll be going a decade from now with NO tinkering. Can you say the same?
Yup, indeed you can. However the OS wouldn't be up to date, but then neither would your Windows box if you did what you were suggesting.
It has nothing to do with being a fanboy of anything,
So why the unbalanced opinion? At least I've admitted the negative aspects of Linux, you seem completely blind to the negative aspects of Windows.
And which market specifically is that which the "Linux community" (which please bare in mind is so massive that there's different facets for different niches) does not understand?
Your comment is such a sweeping generalisation that I could be here all day debunking such nonsense.
All of my hardware works out of the box and I never check for Linux compatibility. I will admit that my first laptop had issues with it's graphics chip and wireless chipset (largely because ASUS, in their infinite wisdom, re-branded the chipsets so the generic drivers -which should have worked- didn't recognise the hardware. In fact Windows wouldn't recognise the same hardware out of the box either. But that's neither here nor there as the end result was the same). That's the only hardware I've ever struggled with in 10 years of Linux.
In all honesty, I have genuinely had just as much hardware go undetected in Windows as I have in Linux: Graphics chips that go undetected; soundcards and so on (just have a read through nerd forums and see the number of "Windows is not detecting xyz" thread to see my point). Windows is far from perfect on the driver front.
In fact, while we're talking about the n00bs, installing drivers can be a complete nightmare for them (particularly if they lose the driver CD supplied with their hardware). At least with Linux, virtually everything is detected and installed out of the box (bar closed binaries, but many of the n00b-focussed distros include simple GUI tools for switching between propitiatory and open drivers - tools which include downloading the drivers for you for added simplicity).
Again, I'm not trying to boast that Linux has better / easier to manage hardware support than Windows does. They both just work differently so I acknowledge the differences and the pros and cons they bring. Where as people like yourself can't see past the Windows ecosystem and thus assume that MS has developed the only working solution (which, quite frankly, is a narrow-minded attitude to have).
Expanding my point a little, many of the problems I've seen with Windows users condemning Linux is the complete ignorance towards it. They want Linux to behave like Windows and then complain when it doesn't. It's akin to buying an Android handset and demanding it function like Win Phone 7 or buying a PS3 and expecting it to play Xbox games.