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But... that's exactly how it works.

http://www.i-programmer.info/n...

Speculatively, a byte (for example) is fetched from restricted memory. Under normal execution, this would fail with an exception. But under speculative execution, this byte is returned, and then it's used as index to access unrestricted memory - which caches that position in unrestricted memory.

If the speculatively executed section had proper restrictions, it wouldn't have been able to access that restricted memory at all, much less use the result to access an indexed location in unrestricted memory and cache it.

Price and computational utility aside, they sound GREAT for researching how biological neural networks work.

I doubt that. This chip is designed to do fast and efficient matrix operations, which only work well if the neurons are in distinct and ordered layers. Biological brains don't do that . Also, biological brains learn by strengthening connections as they are used in a process very different from the backprop algorithm used in ANN, and it isn't clear if this new chip actually does any learning rather than just running a pre-programmed network.

We will learn much more about biological brains from projects like OpenWorm, which is an attempt to understand and emulate the brain of C. elegans, a nematode.

It is not clear that ANNs will be improved much by better understanding of BNNs. They work in different ways, and ANNs are much faster. You may be better than a computer at face recognition, but the computer is improving quickly and is WAY faster, scanning thousands of images per second.

Well, actual data say otherwise. If you've got some data that points to contrary trends, I'd be happy to take a look. The good news is that it's trending in the correct direction, albeit slowly.

If that's what you think, then your knowledge is about 7 years out of date.

You're telling me that only a year or so after Python 3 was released, most people were using it? Funny, that's not how I seem to recall things. Yes, there are tools like 2to3 (and even 3to2), but automated tools aren't magic, and can't fix everything.

Nearly all new Python development is done using Python 3, and this has been the case for many years now.

Well, yeah, no kidding. You don't have to worry about legacy code when writing something new.

Look, I've got nothing against Python - it's a great language. I'm certain Python 2 will be phased out completely at some point, but the point I was making was that the transition was a lot slower and more painful than most people anticipated. No need to get all defensive about it.

Quote from this judge from this same case before the appeal I believe
I have done, and still do, a significant amount of programming in other languages. I've written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times before. I could do it, you could do it. The idea that someone would copy that when they could do it themselves just as fast, it was an accident. There's no way you could say that was speeding them along to the marketplace. You're one of the best lawyers in America, how could you even make that kind of argument?

Why emphasize just coding when programming jobs may shrink?

While I agree that programming is decent entry-level job into other IT fields, I'm not sure the emphasis of IT teaching should be on coding. Structural factoring (basic normalization, redundancy identification), set theory, logic, general architecture (clients, servers, databases, networks, security) and so forth should also be part of such courses.

Even if you never code on the job, understanding the relationships between data elements and system parts is important for most office workers, from clerks to managers and most cubicle dwellers in-between.

As far as the programming part, one of the best intro teaching projects I've seen is to have students code up their resume and cover letter, and then use a list or database to populate the resume and cover letter template with destination information (company name, company contact, specialty, address, etc.)

Have a condition whereby if the company specialty is not known (blank), then a sentence(s) about interest in the specialty is bypassed from the result. Thus, they learn looping over data, and conditionals. While not intended to actually be used for job-hunting, it gives students a feel for the practical side of programming. (This is kind of like MS's Mail-Merge.)

But the "programmers" from the article don't get it either and even write 1111.1111 instead of 1.0000.0000

Wow, you're right. They even have a commemorative image. Fail. Double fail for mocking people who don't get it.
No wonder they feel the need for validation of their worth as a programmer.

I'm hoping that the authors of SharpDevelop can be persuaded to port their software to Linux. I suspect the major sticking point at the moment is WinForms - I think that's part of WPF. If WPF is not part of the open sourcing, then there's no way a port could be made without a UI rewrite. Research says (paraphasing a bit) MS flatly denies that WPF will leave Windows as that is part of the presentation of the OS.

Other projects written by the ic#code guys are SharpZipLib, SharpUsbLib, and ILSpy. I know I've seen SharpZipLib used in a very expensive bit of Oracle reporting middleware and a few other projects.

Doubly true, we recently stuck a worm's brain in a robot body.

Wowowowow and a worm is way more complicated than an amoeba! Dr. Noe should probably stick to questioning his own existence.

A BBC BASIC line is limited to 256 bytes, including the line number. It is impressive to squeeze the whole game into that space. There's also a 140-byte Javascript version, also very impressive, though it has fewer features and doesn't have all the block types.

To avoid a contradiction and achieve Randall's intent, eliminate all winners from the set of losers:
In [293]: losers = losers - winners

The code on Norvig's blog is pretty interesting.
This one was worth my coffee break time today.

I might be missing something here, but the list of winners and the list of losers in US presidential elections both contain Richard Nixon. How can a regexp match ALL the winners and NONE of the losers in that case?

give him the code in x86 assembly :p, most probably if he is into hardware, he should get the information he seeks from this. If he complains that he doesn't understand because he doesn't code, then tell him that you do not design hardware equally, that is the best thing you can come up with. If all else fails and that you are willing to pimp your arrogance and ego for money, then write a simple perl parser that will parse your program and replace specifically where there are logical decision to their respective gates, http://www.chem.uoa.gr/applets/appletgates/Images/Image1.gif
I would also if i was to pimp out my arrogance and ego to gain money and succumb to doing something out of what i like to do to design an algorithm using gate, it would be no different than learning a new language, map out the if, add, sub, mul, (division gets a lil bit tricky), from that you can build anything, once you make this map, use a perl parser to parse your program as mentionned and make it generate it according to the map you made.

This might help also http://www.i-programmer.info/programming/hardware/4626-getting-started-with-digital-logic-logic-gates.html



:p am no electronic's person, but to solve any problem, a good background study is needed :p.

who knows, if you write it out and open source it out :p it might be of some use to someone else [the perl parser to convert a language to logic gates]!

iOS is just an unsophisticated version of Android.

I have to tend to agree. If it wasn't for all of the media hype, celebrity endorsements, and product placement. The iPhone would of been as popular as Zune. People are now just waking up the the fact that Apple simply isn't as robust as competitive handsets out in market.

The proof is that Android has just reached 1BN activations and makes up for nearly 80% of the smartphone market.

Give me a tablet with a Tiling Window Manager, so I can have multiple apps on-screen at the same time, with voice recognition that works and I'm gone. I would, no longer, have any need for a desktop or laptop computer.

I would like some more screen real-estate, though. A 7-inch tablet just doesn't cut it for me, and my eyes are too old to handle uber-high-resolution on a small screen.

Ubuntu already has the tiling window manager, but Android and iPad do not. And the voice recognition stuff is using desktop equipment. Yes, tablets are getting very interesting but they aren't ready to replace the desktop just yet. Another 12-18 months, though, you may be right.

Ah, my mistake. "use asm" is a proposed Javascript feature:

... asm.js, a strict subset of JavaScript that can be used as a low-level, efficient target language for compilers. The asm.js language provides an abstraction similar to the C/C++ virtual machine: a large binary heap with efficient loads and stores, integer and floating-point arithmetic, first-order function definitions, and function pointers.

http://asmjs.org/spec/latest/
Also interesting:

You could write your programs in Asm.js, but the idea is that you will use other languages that compile to Asm.js. This opens up the possibility of converting existing desktop apps to run in the browser. Emscripten, for example, is a compiler that converts the LLVM bitcode intermediate language to either JavaScript or the asm.js subset.

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/167-javascript/5694-firefox-runs-javascript-games-at-native-speed.html

That's misleading at best and outright false at worst. Microsoft has compiled 100,000+ WP7 apps in the cloud so that they work for WP8. So from the perspective of a WP7 dev, the apps run unmodified from their end and they don't have to put any effort towards modifying their app. They DO NOT have to worry about the 35+ "breaking changes" that you quote.

Yes, they do have to worry about that. You were actually just too lazy to read the rest of the linked Microsoft documentation (or the rest of my other very lengthy posts where I do all the cutting and pasting, and the highlighting in bold for you).

And no, saying that you can recompile something doesn't mean that it's going to run as well as it did before, or even run at all.

Again, how different is a WP7 dev's situation with WP8 coming with the Android dev's situation with a new version coming?

My original point was that Microsoft claimed it was going to be so much better than Android for developers because it was going to handle fragmentation the right way (not like Google).

And what does Microsoft do?

On almost day 1, it turns around, and actually does it much-much worse than Google, thereby burning most of its early adopter developers. And please don't just take my word for it, ask your friends who actually developed for Windows Phone 7.x. If one of them is willing to speak up here to share what happened, I'm actually willing to completely shut up about it.

I know what I'm saying actually runs contrary to what Microsoft does normally on the Desktop. In the past, Microsoft has done extremely well maintaining backward compatibility whenever it could. This time, they did try, but they just ended up upsetting their WP7 developer base.

http://www.i-programmer.info/professional-programmer/i-programmer/4402-the-astonishing-tale-of-wp8-compiling-100000-apps.html

Don't you even read the articles you link to? The 5 articles you linked to all predate the migration, and besides, the last article you selected makes even this point:

[...]

Do you really want a third party compiling your app?

How can you be sure it will work?

A brand new compiler, running in the cloud, compiling 100,000 apps and doing the job correctly - first time?

And without even a public beta of the compiler?

This is beginning to sound like real magic not just stage magic.

The chances of creating a compiler that can do this job correctly are small. Even if the compiler is 100% perfect at its task, things still don't always work.

Consider if any app has a process that is based on any timing loop or delay. As the resulting code runs at a very different speed, even if the compiler was 100% perfect there would still be apps that didn't work as originally designed.

You also have to ask why is this a cloud compiler?

The best reason I can think of is that by making it in the "cloud" they can avoid having to make it available to anyone else.

That is, not only will you not have to be involved it is absolutely impossible for you to be involved.

That is, Microsoft will not be putting this tool into your hands.

So why exactly is Microsoft taking on this very difficult task just to make your apps go a bit faster?

The most likely reason is that Microsoft is taking a very different route to getting WP7 apps running under WP8 than simply bundling Silverlight and XNA subsystems. The compiler is most likely not only doing the job not only of speeding up WP7 apps but making them into WP8 apps.

This is potentially and even more difficult task than just creating a simple compiler.

Microsoft haven't said that this is what the compiler does but suppose it j

Just to be clear, I said that WP7 [apps] won't run [unmodified] on WP8. Yes, that's correct. I still stand by the original gist of that claim.

That's misleading at best and outright false at worst. Microsoft has complied 100,000+ WP7 apps in the cloud so that they work for WP8. So from the perspective of a WP7 dev, the apps run unmodified from their end and they don't have to put any effort towards modifying their app. They DO NOT have to worry about the 35+ "breaking changes" that you quote.

Again, how different is a WP7 dev's situation with WP8 coming with the Android dev's situation with a new version coming?

http://blogs.windows.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2012/04/05/windows-8-and-the-windows-phone-sdk-pt-2.aspx

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/windows-phone-8-whats-microsofts-developer-story/12353

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-windows-phone-8-finally-gets-a-real-windows-core/12975

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-details-its-strategy-for-compiling-windows-phone-apps-in-the-cloud-7000007185/

http://www.i-programmer.info/professional-programmer/i-programmer/4402-the-astonishing-tale-of-wp8-compiling-100000-apps.html

Based on this article it would seem you are misinformed about a few of your comments http://www.i-programmer.info/news/87-web-development/5365-microsoft-goes-its-own-way-with-webrtc.html

At least point to something relevant: Sorting algorithms as dances.

Legally, the prosecution did not commit any error in law and, if they had discretion to prosecute or decline prosecution, it's hard to make a case that they made an error in judgment.

Parliament, representing the people, did their job as the law reflected social norms of the time and it did not violate any "basic rights" of Englishmen as they were understood at the time.

What is needed in this an any other situation where a government, representing the people and acting in good faith, acts in a way that a future generation realizes is just plain wrong, is an apology from the current government "on behalf of" is predecessor and the people it represented.

Parliament can and should come out and say "Many years ago, our country adopted laws and policies which we now know were morally wrong. We apologize for those acts. We cannot undo all of the wrong that was done, but this is what we are doing...." followed by specific details such as nullifying criminal convictions, etc.

By the way, the text from the pardon refusal (taken from here) says

Vee vere juust follow-enk oorders!

Legally, the prosecution did not commit any error in law and, if they had discretion to prosecute or decline prosecution, it's hard to make a case that they made an error in judgment.

Parliament, representing the people, did their job as the law reflected social norms of the time and it did not violate any "basic rights" of Englishmen as they were understood at the time.

What is needed in this an any other situation where a government, representing the people and acting in good faith, acts in a way that a future generation realizes is just plain wrong, is an apology from the current government "on behalf of" is predecessor and the people it represented.

Parliament can and should come out and say "Many years ago, our country adopted laws and policies which we now know were morally wrong. We apologize for those acts. We cannot undo all of the wrong that was done, but this is what we are doing...." followed by specific details such as nullifying criminal convictions, etc.

By the way, the text from the pardon refusal (taken from here) says

rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times

While I agree about never returning to those times and I agree that the past cannot be fully "put right," I disagree that no action is better than partial action. There are no doubt some people who are alive today who would personally benefit from such a pardon. There are also descendants who would benefit in intangible ways from a pardon of their now-deceased family member. Society also benefits when governments admit and, when possible, take action to correct mistakes.

Why IOS? How about tablet apps in general. After all, the tablet market is already evenly split between IOS and Android. Next quarter, it is probable that Android will definitively take the lead, particularly with the lukewarm reception for the iPad mini versus strong products from Google and Amazon.

Another view and more info: A New Chromebook - Is This The Tipping Point? http://www.i-programmer.info/news/126-os/4963-a-new-chromebook-is-this-the-tipping-point.html

I wrote that on my phone. I do recall reading an MSDN blog that XNA was not supported but checking more carefully it seems that MS have said it is on WP8 as you say.

But it's a legacy API which will not be extended. And you can't have XNA applications in the Windows Store

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bobfamiliar/archive/2012/08/01/windows-8-xna-and-monogame-part-1-overview.aspx

Since Windows 8 is built on the strong foundation of Windows 7, any app built for Windows will run in the Windows 8 desktop environment. This includes apps based on XNA, Win32, .NET, WPF, Silverlight, etc.

Windows 8 also introduces a new type of app called a Modern UI Style App for developers that wish to make their app available in the Windows 8 Store, for free or for sale. Using Visual Studio 2012, you have a language choice of C++, XAML with C#, VB or C++, or HTML5/JS to create a Metro Style App.

Using the XNA Framework is not a choice for building a Metro Style App. Official Microsoft guidance on game development is documented here. The recommended way to build highly immersive games on Windows 8 is to use HTML5/JS, XAML/C#, XAML/VB or C++ and DirectX, all great choices. But if you have been developing with XNA and have an existing code base, your only option it would seem is running as a desktop app.

This is where MonoGame comes inâ¦

Now I'm sure you going to say this still fits in your "with some tweaks" clause. I'm not sure that is good enough to be honest. Did Win32 applications need "some tweaks" in the move from NT4 to Win2k to XP to Vista to Windows 7? Up to Vista introduced UAC they did not. Even untweaked you could right click on them and Run As Administrator in Vista.

Now look at the mess they've created in mobile. Even if WP7 applications all run on WP8 - and that is not something we know yet - the fact remains that Microsoft told people to rewrite all the C++ code in C# with WP7. And now with WP8 they're heavily hinting that if you want to use the new features you should be using WinRT from C++, not C#.

Also if you look at leaks of the WP8 SDK it doesn't contain XNA.

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/189-windows-phone/4559-windows-phone-8-sdk-leaked-no-javascript-apps.html

This seems to confirm the suspicions that, with WP8, Silverlight and XNA are no longer supported for future and on-going projects. This means that WP7.1 Silverlight/XNA apps are legacy apps Microsoft wants the way of the future to be WinRT, whether it is on the desktop or the mobile.

The best you can do is to use the upgrade option, but you cannot upgrade XNA based apps just WP7 Silverlight apps. For XNA apps all you can do is to continue to work on them as WP7.1 apps. Some of the XNA framework is available for use in your brand new WP8 app, however.

So maybe the old apps will run on WP8 but only in legacy mode and the APIs will not be extended. And MS are heavily promoting Direct X and C++ as the way to write new stuff.

It's still a mess.

Right. It would be interesting if we could use something like this to train Photoshop filters to get closer to the result we want...

On a side note, one of the example photo conversions on page 7 of the PDF (or here from the third link) has the i-programmer writer commenting "I can't help but think that the bird looks a lot like something from Angry Birds...". That's not an accident: the original source image is this photo of a red cardinal bird, which was photoshopped by DeviantArt user mohamedraoof to look like a "Natural Angry Bird". All three images, the original photo, the deviation, and the sumi-e version look very nice in their own way.

From TFA (p.2):

All Udacity courses are free and will remain free, it is the certification, or level of certification which will eventually cost money.

(this excerpt was from 2nd page, about half way down in the question: The recent Forbes Magazine’s article title on Udacity read “$100 for a masters degree” is that a reasonable estimate ? )

This is cool because the material will be available even to very cash poor people, and I will likely look into classes here I'd never think about paying for at a conventional school.

jellomizer wrote:

The only way you can get $100 for a degree in education is to mass produce it. Pre-Recorded Lectures, Online articles, Mutable choice tests, all done online. Now granted some colleges nearly teach like that, a professor with a well practiced rehearsed lectures, then you do you multiple choice tests, then you got your class credit...

btw, JM: I agree with your points about delivery & cost cutting. When the Khan Academy has come up past discussions, people often talk about the idea of "flipping classes" so lectures are on the students time and class sessions are collaborative help sessions roughly like you describe (e.g. hybrid).
All very cool, I'm excited by the potential this offers.

jellomizer wrote:

While you may learn, and can get accreditation. It creates a culture of mediocre education. This takes out some of the human elements that are both good and bad. If you are able being able to be noticed by a professor and working with them on his research, having your work properly critiqued. When I went to college for Computer Science, I came in already knowing how to program, and I was working programming, but I wanted to learn more then just the core requirements, I wanted to learn the nuances. While some students in my class who passed they got the basics, I was able to use education and the work directly with my professors to hone my skills and make me better. I know I used up more then $100 expense on my education.

However I think a hybrid approach would be a good match. There are some classes, that I didn't like spending thousands of dollars on, just because I had to take them, I would much rather pay a lower rate, and take the mediocre online class to get the credit, and save some money. But save the classes I am actually interested in with live people and professors.

Just wonder how useful iris scans are going to be: http://www.i-programmer.info/news/149-security/4278-irises-change-over-time-problem-for-biometric-testing.html

Do me a favor and look at the previous record holder in close detail and tell me that microsoft actually did anything other than buy the record...

Microsoft actually did something other than buy the record.

im just disgusted at microsoft buying the top then everyone is like wow they are doing something when in realty they are doing very little.

Sorting at that scale is fundamentally an i/o bound problem; and distributed sorting is bound by communications between the nodes. Scaling the problem up to more computers makes the problem HARDER, precisely because of intercommunication requirements.

You said it yourself - Microsoft had "Crazy interconnects"
You can't just buy those. They had to invent them.

Here's a much better link than the full article.

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/197-data-mining/4257-new-minutesort-record-set-by-microsoft-research.html

have a look at http://www.i-programmer.info/news/177-windows-8/4198-mozilla-microsoft-is-blocking-browser-choice-again.html which attempts to explain it.

Kinect 3D Full Body "Hologram"

See: http://www.i-programmer.info/news/112-theory/4090-the-physical-travelling-salesman-challenge.html for a short explanation of why its different.

Python is a good choice because it offers an interactive interpreter prompt. Or better yet, see if you can acquire the (Javascript) interactive programming tools by Bret Victor, featured in his CUSEC 2012 talk.

An 11 year old can learn from books, too--that's how I learned when I was 11 (most of the books in the library were about BASIC, I thought "integer" was pronounced "inte-geer", and I didn't know that other languages existed for about a year.). But I'm not sure it's necessary in the internet age.

Some have suggested C... give me a break. I started using C when I was 13 and hated it compared to BASIC. I mean, there's no function to read a single key without reading a whole line? No function to check if a key has been pressed? No function for changing the text color or drawing stuff? What's this pointer nonsense? Why do I have to wait for it to "compile" and "link"? I use C++ routinely now, but it's not for beginners.

Some days ago this was discussed here. The video, even if very long,is incredible interesting
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/112-theory/3900-a-better-way-to-program.html

Carnegie-Mellon has dropped OOP from their CS requirements

Wow, and they are replacing it with imperative & functional programming.

I think it is a crime to let people out of CS school without knowing Java/C++ in this day and age. OOP has issues (I still think OO is a cult :) but you have to realize that there are a lot of practical and theoretical work done in OOP.

Also I was taught some functional programing in C. You don't really need a special language. Teaching someone Standard ML is a waste of their time when you could be teaching the same concepts in a more popular language.

It is like teaching short story writing in Western Innovative Tibetan rather than English, French, or Chinese.

According to this article: http://www.i-programmer.info/news/81-web-general/3895-google-insists-on-google-wallet.html

1. Developers outside the US are exempted
2. Google Wallet charges a float 5%, Paypal charges $0.30 + 2.9%. Google Wallet is only more expensive if your app costs > $14.28. Considering the prices of most Android apps, I'd say calling Google Wallet "costlier" is a downright lie.

1. Read everything Douglas Crockford has on his JavaScript website. Use his jslint program. Down the road, read the code of his jslint program, I suppose. Buy and read his book. It's also available for the Kindle. Read the whole book twice. Basically, the lesson is don't make JS try to be Java, it only causes headaches.

2. Get a good JavaScript book for the language itself, this listing of JavaScript book reviews recommends the Wrox book, but I haven't read it, I use the 6th edition of the Flanagan book. See the link.

3. It's a language that, along with HTML and CSS, needs you to have a great memory or a good IDE that will prompt you for the allowable names. You can get a version of Eclipse pre-built for JavaScript, and you can get the Active State Komodo Edit program, both free. They say the Komodo IDE is even better, but it's expensive and probably not as complete as the (free) Eclipse.

4. You can get a version that runs on your desktop like a shell or perl/ruby/python will, but it isn't necessary. I know you can easily get a version of Mozilla SpiderMonkey that will do that.

5. Don't use the double-equals comparison operator, it's too confusing. Use the triple-equals operator ( "===" ), it's a pain to type but it's more straightforward.

6. Be wary form whence you copy. There's a lot of terrible code out there.

7. Use jQuery after your first two or three practice web pages, and after you've got CSS under control. This means also get a good CSS book. I guess start with the 'Lie and Boss' book, even though it's old.

AI at the Crossroads - predicting who is going to run a red light

So you believe. http://www.i-programmer.info/news/91-hardware/1586-secret-debug-registers-in-amd-processors.html

They were saying "no win32" originally:

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/126-os/3048-windows-8-the-developers-take.html

The final nail in the desktop coffin is the news that the Arm version of Windows will not support desktop applications. So if you want to write an app and you want it to work on any version of Windows then it has to be a Metro app.

Slowly we have to transition from Win32, .NET and Silverlight to HTML/XAML built on top of WinRT.

But I think they are now saying that win8's desktop tile will be on ARM tablets. But who knows! I think we'll have to wait and see.

I agree on gnome, I'm enjoying gnome-shell a lot, so far.

Here, here, here and here. Yep folks, unfortunately I'd say he really is dead :(

considering they neutered html5's portability to other os's.
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/126-os/3055-winrt-the-new-windows.html
"Admittedly you can now use HTML and JavaScript to create the same sort of application but it isn't clear why you would want to. The JavaScript that you have to write isn't like any JavaScript you would write anywhere else because of the need to call so many internal system methods. This isn't standards-compliant HTML5/CSS/JavaScript but a custom environment. In short, your Windows HTML5 apps will work on Windows 8 and nothing else unless you customize them heavily."

which leaves all other os's out cold, again. yes we still do.

I think that the idea that these fashions will catch on to stop day to day facial recognition quite reasonable. See: CV Dazzle

Mostly a stupid article written by a guy who is mostly clueless. I love statements such as:

Try using DirectX 10 or later from C# for example.

Was this supposed to be something hard to accomplish or has the guy never heard of XNA Game Studio?

I love it. Check out the By line on the article, and then the page on Meet the Team

Ian Elliot

Specialist subjects: JavaScript, web programming, .NET programming

As a freelance consultant Ian is used to meeting challenges in a range of arenas and using all the tools and skills a programmer has in their armoury. He has written numerous articles for VSJ mainly on web development.

So, he's NOT a DirectX expert? Javascript is listed first? I call bullshit that he ever even tried to interop on DirectX.

"Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language" link

is this the end of .NET?

A QUOTED MISTAKE FROM SAID ARTICLE:

"Before .NET Windows was a crude platform with an extensive and very idiosyncratic API that you could really only work with via C or C++. " - Dumping .NET - Microsoft's Madness Written by Mike James http://www.i-programmer.info/professional-programmer/i-programmer/2591-dumping-net-microsofts-madness.html

Ahem: BULLSHIT - You could EASILY call the Win32 API from VB (declare directive, sort of like a pragma), Delphi (directly available OR you could define an extern lib to call any API from it), OR variants of C/C++ (same as with Delphi) & more... and, it was FAR from "crude" or difficult.

(Using the Windows API? Quite EASY actually! It's the "foundation blocks" of Windows itself!)

APK

P.S.=> Please, slashdot: Get EDITORS who know what they're about in programming - such a person would have caught that before you put this up (thanks)!

... apk

QUOTED MISTAKES FROM SAID ARTICLE:

"Before .NET Windows was a crude platform with an extensive and very idiosyncratic API that you could really only work with via C or C++. " - Dumping .NET - Microsoft's Madness Written by Mike James http://www.i-programmer.info/professional-programmer/i-programmer/2591-dumping-net-microsofts-madness.html

Ahem: BULLSHIT - you could call the Win32 API from VB (declare directive, sort of like a pragma), Delphi (directly available OR you could define an extern lib to call any API from it), variants of C/C++ (same as with Delphi) & more... and, it was FAR from "crude" or difficult.

Using the API? Quite EASY actually!

APK

P.S.=> Please, slashdot: Get EDITORS who know what they're about in programming - such a person would have caught that before you put this up (thanks)!

... apk

And Windows 7 does a defrag automatically! See : http://www.i-programmer.info/news/149-security/2352-hiding-data-in-disk-fragmentation.html for some of the problems.

Kinect has competitors. One done with (Open Source) software and an IPhone also produces impressive results:
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligence/2310-predator-better-than-kinect.html

Neither the Kinect nor XBox will cause investors to love Microsoft. Just as well there are still loyal fanbois who have blinkers on to what is going on outside of Redmond. The rest of us see Microsoft in a similar way to IBM; big, bloated, and not going away anytime soon, but not exciting either - it's just not in their corporate DNA to make a radical change (the 'addiction' to the Windows/Office cash-cow ensures this).

It's not just the reduction in the price you also get special offers and the inital offers include $10 off a gift card and $10 ebook credit and so on... http://www.i-programmer.info/news/152-epub/2279-kindle-with-ads-is-that-a-good-bargain.html Its more like Kindle with coupons!

By "in common usage" you mean it is improperly implied to be so by people like this so they can make lame, butthurt-filled rants against Microsoft, right?

Not supporting WebGL is a real problem ... The same think happen back when SVG was introduced and IE not supporting it held back the use of 2D graphics in web pages for 10 years. Now MS is with SVG in IE9 i.e. 2D graphics but it is repeating history with WebGL and setting back 3D web page graphics in exactly the way it did with 2D! See the link in the post threat to web development