Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 25th May 2012 14:55 UTC
James Hague: "But all the little bits of complexity, all those cases where indecision caused one option that probably wasn't even needed in the first place to be replaced by two options, all those bad choices that were never remedied for fear of someone somewhere having to change a line of code... They slowly accreted until it all got out of control, and we got comfortable with systems that were impossible to understand." Counterpoint by John Cook: "Some of the growth in complexity is understandable. It's a lot easier to maintain an orthogonal design when your software isn't being used. Software that gets used becomes less orthogonal and develops diagonal shortcuts." If there's ever been a system in dire need of a complete redesign, it's UNIX and its derivatives. A mess doesn't even begin to describe it (for those already frantically reaching for the comment button, note that this applies to other systems as well).
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RE[2]: Comment by Gone fishing
by Gone fishing on Sun 27th May 2012 22:16
in reply to "RE: Comment by Gone fishing"
Member since:2006-02-22
BTW what's with giraffe? (I'm not familiar with any specific blood vessel weirdness of this one / I'm lazy 
)
) I was being lazy too and miss remembering
I was thinking of the Recurrent laryngeal nerve, which starts in the brain goes down the neck goes round the aorta / subclavian artery (in the thorax) then goes all the way up the neck again. A detour of about 4 meters.
A bad bodge by any standards, the kind of thing that happens when things evolve and new features are added
RE[2]: Comment by Gone fishing
by kwan_e on Mon 28th May 2012 03:14
in reply to "RE: Comment by Gone fishing"
Member since:2007-02-18
The typical mammalian teeth are probably one of more frustrating baggages... I'm fairly certain that most of humanity would like to have a new set of teeth every dozen years to two decades, or so.
I like to think the reason why humans are so successful is because we were dealt a really crappy hand by natural selection. We have probably the least remarkable mammalian features - we're not strong, we're not fast, we're not fast breeders, we are not huge or tiny, we have average eyes, we have average smelling, we have average ears, we have a bad spine. And it's probably because of these crappy parts that we had to work really hard on cooperation and language and tools which increases intelligence to allow us to overcome our crappy bodies.
Features
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/16/13 9:29 UTC
The day has finally come: Google has started shipping Google Glass to the lucky few early adopters. Now that it's shipping, Google has also unveiled a lot more about the API and the specifications of the device itself. While the company had already given out substantial details at earlier occasions, there are still a few surprises here.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/15/13 22:44 UTC
Almost exactly three years ago, I wrote about why OSNews was no longer OSNews: the alternative operating system scene had died, and OSNews, too, had to go with the times and move towards reporting on a new wave of operating systems - mobile, and all the repercussions that the explosion of smartphones and tablets have caused. Still, I was wondering something today: why aren't we seeing alternative operating systems on mobile?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/14/13 18:22 UTC, submitted by MOS6510
You can say what you will about Windows Phone and Windows 8's Metro interface (I refuse to drop that name) - it's inefficient, unpopular, cumbersome, beautiful, ugly, organised, clean, limiting - but there's one thing we can all agree on: it's unique and distinctive. CNet has published a profile of Microsoft's Albert Shum, the man behind Metro, and he highlights what I think is at the very core of Microsoft's problems in mobile right now.More Features »
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The typical mammalian teeth are probably one of more frustrating baggages... I'm fairly certain that most of humanity would like to have a new set of teeth every dozen years to two decades, or so.
But no, our rodent-like distant ancestors at some point lost the ability to have more than two sets. And since it didn't matter in their very short lives anyway, didn't put any selective pressure, it stuck - eventually into times when, for some mammalian lineages, lifespans became quite a bit longer (even more frustrating: rodents, the contemporary mammals outwardly & in lifestyle most similar to those ancestors, they managed to bypass it with continuous growth) - by now, even if we'd manage to reinitialize leftovers of gene pathways responsible for further sets, the results would be probably... messy (with how our skulls evolved for 100+ million years without the need to accommodate more than two sets)
Damn entropy (and since we already mention things which are very unsettling to some people... ;p http://groups.google.com/group/net.origins/msg/ca73e0fd518a23f8?lnk... )
BTW what's with giraffe? (I'm not familiar with any specific blood vessel weirdness of this one / I'm lazy