Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 25th Jun 2012 09:50 UTC
I'm very thankful for Danny Sullivan writing this article, because it touches upon a subject I've increasingly been frustrated with: the inflation of the term 'hands-on'. Hands-on used to mean that a journalist, blogger, or reviewer got to properly use a device to get some sort of first impression, usually guided by some words from the manufacturer. These days, however, it seems as if even merely getting a glance at a device is regarded as a 'hands-on'.
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RE[2]: first drive = road test?
by mistersoft on Mon 25th Jun 2012 17:13
in reply to "RE: first drive = road test?"
Member since:2011-01-05
RE[2]: first drive = road test?
by zima on Wed 27th Jun 2012 17:26
in reply to "RE: first drive = road test?"
Member since:2005-07-06
It's Pinifarina, not "Pininferro", BTW.
"Pininfererro" - and I guess it was supposed to be a pun at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrero_SpA
I can't really see where Italian production (concentrating mainly on the entry-level and exclusive luxury segments) can be compared to German production
Are you sure you're not out of this world? There are plenty enough of lower-segments Opel and VW cars. Also SEAT and particularly Skoda, really. Not really worse than their family saloons, just smaller and more popular.
RE[3]: first drive = road test?
by winter skies on Sat 30th Jun 2012 09:08
in reply to "RE[2]: first drive = road test?"
Member since:2009-08-21
"It's Pinifarina, not "Pininferro", BTW.
"Pininfererro" - and I guess it was supposed to be a pun at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrero_SpA
I can't really see where Italian production (concentrating mainly on the entry-level and exclusive luxury segments) can be compared to German production
Are you sure you're not out of this world? There are plenty enough of lower-segments Opel and VW cars. Also SEAT and particularly Skoda, really. Not really worse than their family saloons, just smaller and more popular. "
I'm sorry, I should have written Pininfarina, it just contains too many "n"'s.
There are _three_ independent premium automakers in Germany (BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi (part of VAG)); Volkswagen is near-premium, a step above generalist automakers, so - while it can be said it competes with Fiat and the likes - its cars are slightly more expensive and better engineered/built. Alfa Romeo wuold be VW's competitor in the Fiat management's hopes. [ http://wot.motortrend.com/alfa-romeo-may-build-luxury-flagship-base... ] Being left with just two models in its lineup, it's struggling.
This leaves out Fiats, competing with Opels, Seats, Skodas. Seats and Skodas are virtually the same and can be considered good-quality, slightly cheaper VW's, while Opel is the European arm of GM, an American company. Fiat covers the A, B, C segments [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_Car_Segment ] and is slowly selling a rebadged Dodge Journey as its D-segment offering. The Italian company is relevant when it comes to citycars and superminis, but not for larger cars. 500, Panda and Punto are good, long-lasting cars.
I'd just like to know what's your reference market, as this will surely influence your perception of the issue.
I just wanted to say that
- Italian small cars are not rusty POSs
- there's virtually no larger Italian car on the market, except for luxury production.
So I wonder what the original poster was referring to when he wrote about "Italian rustbuckets" comparing them to German cars.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
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.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
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.
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.More News »
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2009-08-21
OT: If you're talking about Italian supercars, well, you're completely out of this world. They're not competing with German-engineered premium saloons or SUVs. If you're talking about Fiats and modern-day Alfas, they are not even sold in the US and they don't even always get enthusiastic reviews in their motherland. Not that they'd deserve them, anyway.
I can't really see where Italian production (concentrating mainly on the entry-level and exclusive luxury segments) can be compared to German production, excluding Porsche and some really expensive BMWs or Mercs, which can be considered Ferrari and Maserati competitors.
It's Pinifarina, not "Pininferro", BTW.
Anyway, I usually follow sites such as autoblog.com or jalopnik and I've never noticed what you're complaining about.