Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 21st Jul 2012 23:06 UTC
Okay, so this is entirely new to me. Sparrow 
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RE[5]: Comment by sicofante
by marcp on Tue 24th Jul 2012 09:07
in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by sicofante"
Member since:2007-11-23
Hello again,
As I already said I do realize I generalized the problem. However, the real issue remains unsolved: we have NO access to proprietary code. Nobody can see if it's really good, or if it's just a badly written code.
How would you measure code quality if you don't have an access to the source? DO you want to judge upon such factors as "stability"? Well, this can be accomplished by using dirty hacks, tricks inside the code. Everything runs just fine, but the code is NOT good, which is something you should already know as an OpenBSD user [I am an OpenBSD user and OpenBSD [3rd party] software developer myself, so I thought we should share the same point here].
As of the other things you mentioned: I do not say that every proprietary code developer writes "crap". I just say we have no ways to see what's the real value of proprietary code.
Bye and sorry it it makes you angry. That was not the point. It was and is all about access, knowledge and quality.
RE[6]: Comment by sicofante
by lucas_maximus on Tue 24th Jul 2012 10:42
in reply to "RE[5]: Comment by sicofante"
Member since:2009-08-18
As I already said I do realize I generalized the problem. However, the real issue remains unsolved: we have NO access to proprietary code. Nobody can see if it's really good, or if it's just a badly written code.[/quote]
TBH all that matters to a user that it works as advertised aka to requirements. The development team is the only people that should be worried about code quality as bad code costs the business development time.
It is also rather trivial to see how a program works (profiling, tools such as wireshack, to how a program is working behind the scenes).
[q]How would you measure code quality if you don't have an access to the source? DO you want to judge upon such factors as "stability"? Well, this can be accomplished by using dirty hacks, tricks inside the code.
TBH all that matters to a user that it works as advertised aka to requirements. The development team is the only people that should be worried about code quality as bad code costs the business development time.
It is also rather trivial to see how a program works (profiling, tools such as wireshack, to how a program is working behind the scenes).
[q]How would you measure code quality if you don't have an access to the source? DO you want to judge upon such factors as "stability"? Well, this can be accomplished by using dirty hacks, tricks inside the code.
I don't have to measure code quality, I am the user not the development team.
Everything runs just fine, but the code is NOT good, which is something you should already know as an OpenBSD user [I am an OpenBSD user and OpenBSD [3rd party] software developer myself, so I thought we should share the same point here].
I might be a user but I do not believe in an extreme philosophy that all code my be open and one cannot judge quality unless we can see the complete source code.
As of the other things you mentioned: I do not say that every proprietary code developer writes "crap". I just say we have no ways to see what's the real value of proprietary code.
You said it was crap code and they will be sued and a lot of other nonsense.
Bye and sorry it it makes you angry. That was not the point. It was and is all about access, knowledge and quality.
You are taking things to an extreme, it doesn't help anyone. Sorry what you have is a belief.
I will keep on saying it, open source isn't magical bullet. It works for some projects and companies ... others it would kill their business model.
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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Member since:
2009-08-18
He just generalized every developer that doesn't release their the source code as money grabbing scum.
Sorry, I think that is incredibly rude and not representative of that work producing products and doing our best to write quality software against red tape, deadlines and mismanagement.
So I think it is an epic fail, because he simply believes we are not dedicated. I have myself walked out of a room in front of management because I believe in doing things right, I almost lost my job on that occasion.
I have seen developers work all nighters to get a product that works well, and they write bloody good code.
So don't f--king tell me I am doing some drumbeat about proprietary software.
Quite frankly it is f--king insulting, how you guys speak about developers like myself.
As for me being a fanboy, I actually buy OpenBSD releases, used to be a Linux Admin and now a web developer (first PHP and now ASP.NET) and currently learning Ruby on Rails ... :|
Edited 2012-07-23 21:28 UTC