Microsoft would love to pay Mozilla to replace Google with Bing. That's why Google were wise to extend their deal with Mozilla - I'm sure they considered MS stepping up if they didn't.
Firefox is not solely dependent on Google, as it has at least one other alternative sponsor.
As everyone's being so negative about this, I thought I'd throw in my 2c.
I quite like this idea, in fact I may well buy one. I'd never heard of it before today.
Reasons I'd buy it:
1. Form factor is neat and a sensible design (I'm tired of my big old clunky PC box taking up a lot of space).
2. I only use Linux, and the fact that someone's gone to the effort of ensuring everything will work for me is great. No hassle searching the net trying to work out which hardware to buy. I'm busy and this saves me time.
3. The price point is good. Macs might offer you a better price/performance ratio - but I don't care. I want something that is sufficient at a low price. This is 190 euros cheaper than a Mac Mini, so that is 190 euros saved. I don't care if it could have been more powerful for just a bit more cash. I also know exactly what hardware is in it, and it's been chosen by people thinking about more than margins (unlike Apple, who anecdotally at least seem to be very good at choosing hardware that breaks frequently).
4. I like the idea of the project and the fact that it gives money to the open source community.
My main criticism is that the hard disk size is a little small.
> Science shouldn't be "accorded automatic stature and respect" any more than politics should. There's no reason to trust a scientist any more than you'd trust your barber.
Is your barber trained in scientific enquiry? Are his opinions scrutinised by peer review?
I used to work on IBM mainframes four years ago and even then we were having trouble finding people with the right skillsets. Unbelievably, the vast majority of development was done in assembly and we used to train a group of graduates every year to keep the department ticking over on the programming side.
As you'd expect, the company ended up relying on a small group of people who knew the systems inside out, who had skills that were in short supply and we ended up contracting them on very high salaries whilst most of the code monkeys were paid poorly relative to a typical developer's salary.
At the time, I did suggest modernising to a Linux platform and using a high-level language but the vested interest was too great. You could see the skills shortage coming though, and there was one (disastrous) attempt to rewrite a large part of the system in Java - the team just ran out of RAM and processing power.
IBM's kit was incredible though. It was so reliable that when the company moved headquarters we had to call in consultants from IBM to make sure it was ok to shutdown. That is, *it had been so long since the mainframes had been rebooted - many years - that we had no idea if the programs in RAM were even stored on disk anywhere!*. Kudos to the IBM guys and our techies, they did get the system moved without a hitch.
> Really, what's the point of having windows not Maximized
If you have a nice large monitor, there are lots of uses for non-maximised windows. For example, editing the source of a Latex document whilst displaying the output PDF at the same time.
I didn't have a large monitor until earlier this year - and when I got it, I suddenly realised how important window management features like tiling can be, and how few features GNOME has that I need to organise them properly.
> Just to be pedantic for a second: Genetic Programming (GP) is a specific application of Genetic Algorithms (GA) where the solution space you are working with is executable programs (or algorithms). So GP is a subset of GA, the two are not interchangeable.
If we're going to be pedantic, then GP is not necessarily a subset of GAs. It depends on how you define a GA: usually a GA is an algorithm that operates on binary strings, and GP is an algorithm that most often operates on expression trees. However, in truth the definition of both is so vague that trying to draw distinctions between them is meaningless. Often the GA crowd will claim GP is a specialised variant of a GA, and the GP people will claim they can simulate any GA with a tree, so GAs are a subset of GP.
They both share much in common, originating in related research communities and major conferences such as GECCO, CEC, etc. incorporate work on both.
> To answer your question, GA is not more popular because for most real-world problems it's difficult to come up with a good solution representation (one that lends itself well to "breeding"). Though they have been used successfully for a long time in several different niches.
The truth is, GAs _are_ popular, but indeed for niche applications. Academic research on evolutionary algorithms is still quite intensive, but industrial applications usually lag behind and a lot of work isn't "headline grabbing". This work for instance, is quite a simple and effective application of an interactive GA, but it could have been implemented in the 1970s from an EC point of view (apologies to my friend, who works on one of these projects:-D).
You find most applications in the area of operations research. Slashdotters short on cash might be interested to know that a lot of time and money has been spent investigating EC for financial investment strategies, and indeed these are applied and used to make money. Any such application is going to be kept quiet, though:).
Incidentally, if you're interested in GAs check out Estimation of Distribution Algorithms, which are a very elegant idea indeed.
> At some point I'd like to design and run an algorithm that uses multiple children at once as a team, instead of just testing each one individually. Sort of like a raid, in WoW, except that the 'characters' would be selected randomly. I think this might be the next step up for genetic programming, because the high-value children would be better performers across multiple groups, not just alone, and it would eventually develop into a system that creates highly specialized individual components, and might discover new truths inside the approach.
Sounds like you're trying to design emergent behaviour amongst agents. A very well-established field, and a difficult thing to do. One approach is indeed to using evolutionary computation (Genetic Algorithms, Genetic Programming, Evolutionary Strategies etc.) to program the agents.
Lots of papers around on designing emergence, evolving agent behaviour etc. via Google.
Anyone with a need to create simple vector-based drawings should check out Inkscape. I use it for figures in presentations and for box diagrams in academic documents and have found nothing better. The finished product looks great.
It's also handy for editing PDFs after they are exported from R (Statistical Package). Often something you can't easily tweak in R can be fixed very quickly in Inkscape.
The best thing about it is the interface: very easy to pick-up, yet extremely flexible. A lot of thought has clearly gone into the UI design.
Corporations are run by people. People make the decisions.
Everyone has a responsibility to take into account the consequences of their decisions. You can't hide behind "I shot that person because it adds shareholder value" - you still shot the person. Nor does "If I hadn't shot them, Yahoo! would have done" wash - you still shot the person. You cannot separate what you do in your work role from your personal responsibility. It's still you, and it's still on your conscience. If doing the right thing means you get fired, live with it and find a different occupation. In many countries, we have the luxury of choice.
That said, some people (such as those at Google) have argued that censored access may be a limited force for good in China, which is better than no force at all.
Personally I don't agree with that argument but I understand it and they may be proven right in the long-term.
Can we apply this to "cloud" next? Having seen someone try to explain the difference between "cloud", "grid" and "cluster" the other day I think Inigo Montoya would agree.
I've been using Karmic since release on my laptop and desktop. Both work wonderfully - all hardware works perfectly (compare this to Windows 7 on my laptop: no audio, no accelerated graphics and no wireless). Only gripe so far is that I had to download proprietary stuff for my desktop wireless card, but I have to do that for each release and at least this time it was a painless experience (but did require using a shell).
The biggest thing of note is how much more responsive everything is. I don't know what changes have been made to the kernel, but the scheduling seems exactly right. The things I'm doing take precedence, as do those applications that need regularly CPU time, such as CD reading and audio.
Talking of which, the audio is completely fixed from my pov. Previously, I've had problems with stuttering under load, which was been blamed on poor configuration of Pulse Audio, but this seems to be eliminated now. The new audio settings app works great for me too, nicely sorting out my two sound cards, giving them sensible defaults and removing the clutter.
Boot time is much faster, as is shutting down. My laptop suspends correctly. All in all, I have no complaints. The O/S seems so polished now that I'm beginning to find myself criticising the applications more. It seems that Canonical are going to have to get involved at an individual application level if they are to take things further, as the desktop is looking great and prior to GNOME 3 I can't see how it can majorly improve.
Kudos to the Canonical team, I actually found 9.04 a bit disappointing, but they have clearly responded to feedback on Pulse etc. and delivered something great.
As other people have pointed out anecdotal evidence is quite meaningless, but from my experience at least criticism of this release compared to the previous just look like FUD.
This is a reply to the comments complaining about pay in academia. I'm familiar only with the UK system, so perhaps this doesn't apply to the US.
Yes, academic jobs aren't paid as well as industry. Yes, you can survive on academic pay, and quite comfortably. Yes, stipends for PhDs in Computer Science are plentiful in the UK and more than sufficient to live comfortably on (assuming you're not supporting a family, though I know people who are doing PhDs and have kids).
When I finish my PhD, I think I will be disappointed with my financial reward if I get an academic research position. The salary will likely be about 29 000 UKP and I'd expect a lot more in industry. Having done 7 years of full-time education to get there, it won't have been financially beneficial to do so, and I don't feel "valued" by society for the skills I have learnt and the dedication I have shown.
Lots of talented people do go to industry, or more likely merchant banking, for the money.
However, I don't think we lose much by these people making that choice. In academia, you have to be self-motivated, have a passion for learning and prioritise academic integrity, creativity, freedom and the ideals of aiding progress and contributing to society in a long-term and abstract way over making money. I'm not saying making money is inferior to research: but academia is not about money. I'm quite happy for people to go chasing large amounts of cash in stressful and (in my opinion) less fulfilling careers - they free up space for me in academia.
Please, don't make excuses about not being able to live on academic salaries (at least in the UK). A professor might earn 60-80 000 UKP and that is plenty to bring up a family. Consulting can bring much more.
Academic life has many benefits other than your wage - flexibility, increased holiday, freedom, prestige etc. They count for a huge amount.
Working in academia can be a greatly rewarding experience, the money is sufficient, and this if reflected by the continuous stream of talented individuals applying for PhDs and research positions. If you want higher salaries, then please make that choice without complaining that academia should pay more to tempt you away from other options.
I used Red Hat / Fedora from 1998 to 2007, when I switched to Ubuntu.
The difference at the time was not too great, but I disagree about the package managers. yum was a pain in Fedora - so slow, unresponsive and the GUIs were terrible. Ubuntu's package manager GUI, about to be majorly upgraded, is comparatively wonderful.
RS
I'd like to add that Linux users can run Picasa under Wine and it works perfectly (in my experience). It's also provided completely pre-packaged and installed like a charm on Ubuntu. The only downside is that some of the fonts don't look as nice as native applications. It's much, much faster than equivalent GNOME applications such as f-spot, is more robust and scales better.
EDF schedulers are usually employed in real-time systems, and those are predominantly embedded systems. They are simple to understand and analyse, such that engineers can have high confidence that all hard real-time tasks will meet their deadlines.
Generally speaking, it is not useful for much else - you wouldn't want it in a desktop PC, for example. This is because the priority of a task is determined by its deadline in EDF and not other important factors such as the actions of a user. We like responsiveness in our desktops, and EDF is not sophisticated enough to provide it.
Seriously people, is there anyone that doesn't think this is one of the most brilliant pieces of ironic viral marketing?
This discussion is all over the web, the print press and radio. It's absolute genius. Almost everyone knows there is a new version of windows coming out. Many will watch the video, which mentions various aspects of Windows 7.
Presumably, the comments on YouTube were disabled in order to preserve the ambiguity of the video.
If you haven't watched the whole clip, it becomes more obvious towards the end. The dead giveaway is the "can you believe they've left the launch of windows 7 to us" etc. quote.
Kudos to MS, this puts even Apple's marketing in the shade.
It seems MS will not be able to fully admit the ad is ironic now, as they'd make a lot of journalists look quite foolish.
I agree the charts are poor. What about the fact that the axes don't necessarily start at 0? This can be misleading, in that a small difference can be made to look much more significant. Broadsheets in the UK do this all the time.
One point... red-green colour blindness is quite common, so if we're being pedantic you'd probably want to avoid using them for contrast. Problem with colour-coding is also deciding what is "good" and "bad", which is making a subjective judgement.
Don't you think the confusing naming is deliberate?
Long-term strategy must be to build a brand. A few years down the line:
"I use Chrome to surf the internet" says person in electronics store. "Oh, you'll love this phone/pc/tv/netbook/washing machine, then... it has Chrome OS".
Anyone that doesn't know Turing's life story should definitely read:
Alan Turing: the Engima by Andrew Hodges.
It's a great book.
Alan Turing did great, great, things for Britain and the world.
He was one of the most important figures in defining the outcome of WWII.
He was one of the few mathematicians responsible for inventing the computer, both in laying foundational theory and physically engineering them.
He published insightful papers and commentary, across a wide range of topics, that are still relevant today. For example, in my PhD thesis I am citing a paper of his that is cited in pretty much every major text in my field (evolutionary computation). The field has only really existed since the 1970s, 20 years after his death, yet Turing foresaw its potential.
I know that some people will be dissatisfied with the fact that the apology might seem empty, or it is one of a million apologies that should be made, but I think it's important to recognise what an exceptional man Turing was and just how pivotal he has been in our history. To apologise would be to recognise our gratitude for his achievements, as well as the dreadful mistakes that were made at the time.
If we don't recognise the errors we have made in the past, then I see no reason to imagine we are any different from those in power back then. I think that at least some people want to correct past mistakes.
I've had the same experience as justkeeper... nice choice of the phrase "cold start". The iPhone was clocking away, unresponsive and slowly getting warmer and warmer... fortunately, the battery died before it caught fire;-)
I wouldn't call them "posers", but having an emotional liking or disliking for a language usually betrays an inability to select languages appropriately as needed. Let go of your anger.
Java is a fantastic language - as borne out by its huge take-up and popularity. It addresses many, many, issues with C++ and provides true portability and good performance. The language design and Sun's hard work allows for a plethora of development tools that aren't possible to implement in C++ without huge amounts of work and/or efficiently.
I wouldn't touch Java for low-level development, but "hating Java" is just ridiculous. It's just a language, like the gazillion others out there, and happens to be one that has proven to be particularly useful and well-designed (ok, so it's not as idealistic as Ruby or Smalltalk, but it is a pragmatic compromise for its time).
Slashdot Mirror
Are there no (straight) female slashdot readers? Anyone else dislike the implicit bias in this story?
Microsoft would love to pay Mozilla to replace Google with Bing. That's why Google were wise to extend their deal with Mozilla - I'm sure they considered MS stepping up if they didn't.
Firefox is not solely dependent on Google, as it has at least one other alternative sponsor.
RS
As everyone's being so negative about this, I thought I'd throw in my 2c.
I quite like this idea, in fact I may well buy one. I'd never heard of it before today.
Reasons I'd buy it:
1. Form factor is neat and a sensible design (I'm tired of my big old clunky PC box taking up a lot of space).
2. I only use Linux, and the fact that someone's gone to the effort of ensuring everything will work for me is great. No hassle searching the net trying to work out which hardware to buy. I'm busy and this saves me time.
3. The price point is good. Macs might offer you a better price/performance ratio - but I don't care. I want something that is sufficient at a low price. This is 190 euros cheaper than a Mac Mini, so that is 190 euros saved. I don't care if it could have been more powerful for just a bit more cash. I also know exactly what hardware is in it, and it's been chosen by people thinking about more than margins (unlike Apple, who anecdotally at least seem to be very good at choosing hardware that breaks frequently).
4. I like the idea of the project and the fact that it gives money to the open source community.
My main criticism is that the hard disk size is a little small.
RS
To quote one of my (vastly intellectually superior) colleagues:
"I've never met a meta that I couldn't meta more."
RS
> Science shouldn't be "accorded automatic stature and respect" any more than politics should. There's no reason to trust a scientist any more than you'd trust your barber.
Is your barber trained in scientific enquiry? Are his opinions scrutinised by peer review?
RS
I used to work on IBM mainframes four years ago and even then we were having trouble finding people with the right skillsets. Unbelievably, the vast majority of development was done in assembly and we used to train a group of graduates every year to keep the department ticking over on the programming side.
As you'd expect, the company ended up relying on a small group of people who knew the systems inside out, who had skills that were in short supply and we ended up contracting them on very high salaries whilst most of the code monkeys were paid poorly relative to a typical developer's salary.
At the time, I did suggest modernising to a Linux platform and using a high-level language but the vested interest was too great. You could see the skills shortage coming though, and there was one (disastrous) attempt to rewrite a large part of the system in Java - the team just ran out of RAM and processing power.
IBM's kit was incredible though. It was so reliable that when the company moved headquarters we had to call in consultants from IBM to make sure it was ok to shutdown. That is, *it had been so long since the mainframes had been rebooted - many years - that we had no idea if the programs in RAM were even stored on disk anywhere!*. Kudos to the IBM guys and our techies, they did get the system moved without a hitch.
RS
> Really, what's the point of having windows not Maximized
If you have a nice large monitor, there are lots of uses for non-maximised windows. For example, editing the source of a Latex document whilst displaying the output PDF at the same time.
I didn't have a large monitor until earlier this year - and when I got it, I suddenly realised how important window management features like tiling can be, and how few features GNOME has that I need to organise them properly.
RS
> I know someone that finished reading the Internet.
Don't worry, I'm sure the blog coverage of his achievement will keep him busy for years to come.
> Just to be pedantic for a second: Genetic Programming (GP) is a specific application of Genetic Algorithms (GA) where the solution space you are working with is executable programs (or algorithms). So GP is a subset of GA, the two are not interchangeable.
If we're going to be pedantic, then GP is not necessarily a subset of GAs. It depends on how you define a GA: usually a GA is an algorithm that operates on binary strings, and GP is an algorithm that most often operates on expression trees. However, in truth the definition of both is so vague that trying to draw distinctions between them is meaningless. Often the GA crowd will claim GP is a specialised variant of a GA, and the GP people will claim they can simulate any GA with a tree, so GAs are a subset of GP.
They both share much in common, originating in related research communities and major conferences such as GECCO, CEC, etc. incorporate work on both.
> To answer your question, GA is not more popular because for most real-world problems it's difficult to come up with a good solution representation (one that lends itself well to "breeding"). Though they have been used successfully for a long time in several different niches.
The truth is, GAs _are_ popular, but indeed for niche applications. Academic research on evolutionary algorithms is still quite intensive, but industrial applications usually lag behind and a lot of work isn't "headline grabbing". This work for instance, is quite a simple and effective application of an interactive GA, but it could have been implemented in the 1970s from an EC point of view (apologies to my friend, who works on one of these projects :-D).
You find most applications in the area of operations research. Slashdotters short on cash might be interested to know that a lot of time and money has been spent investigating EC for financial investment strategies, and indeed these are applied and used to make money. Any such application is going to be kept quiet, though :).
Incidentally, if you're interested in GAs check out Estimation of Distribution Algorithms, which are a very elegant idea indeed.
RS
> At some point I'd like to design and run an algorithm that uses multiple children at once as a team, instead of just testing each one individually. Sort of like a raid, in WoW, except that the 'characters' would be selected randomly. I think this might be the next step up for genetic programming, because the high-value children would be better performers across multiple groups, not just alone, and it would eventually develop into a system that creates highly specialized individual components, and might discover new truths inside the approach.
Sounds like you're trying to design emergent behaviour amongst agents. A very well-established field, and a difficult thing to do. One approach is indeed to using evolutionary computation (Genetic Algorithms, Genetic Programming, Evolutionary Strategies etc.) to program the agents.
Lots of papers around on designing emergence, evolving agent behaviour etc. via Google.
RS
>> Do you per chance work for the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia?
Well, those outliers really do make my figures look messy...
Anyone with a need to create simple vector-based drawings should check out Inkscape. I use it for figures in presentations and for box diagrams in academic documents and have found nothing better. The finished product looks great.
It's also handy for editing PDFs after they are exported from R (Statistical Package). Often something you can't easily tweak in R can be fixed very quickly in Inkscape.
The best thing about it is the interface: very easy to pick-up, yet extremely flexible. A lot of thought has clearly gone into the UI design.
RS
Corporations are run by people. People make the decisions.
Everyone has a responsibility to take into account the consequences of their decisions. You can't hide behind "I shot that person because it adds shareholder value" - you still shot the person. Nor does "If I hadn't shot them, Yahoo! would have done" wash - you still shot the person. You cannot separate what you do in your work role from your personal responsibility. It's still you, and it's still on your conscience. If doing the right thing means you get fired, live with it and find a different occupation. In many countries, we have the luxury of choice.
That said, some people (such as those at Google) have argued that censored access may be a limited force for good in China, which is better than no force at all.
Personally I don't agree with that argument but I understand it and they may be proven right in the long-term.
Great quote.
Can we apply this to "cloud" next? Having seen someone try to explain the difference between "cloud", "grid" and "cluster" the other day I think Inigo Montoya would agree.
I've been using Karmic since release on my laptop and desktop. Both work wonderfully - all hardware works perfectly (compare this to Windows 7 on my laptop: no audio, no accelerated graphics and no wireless). Only gripe so far is that I had to download proprietary stuff for my desktop wireless card, but I have to do that for each release and at least this time it was a painless experience (but did require using a shell).
The biggest thing of note is how much more responsive everything is. I don't know what changes have been made to the kernel, but the scheduling seems exactly right. The things I'm doing take precedence, as do those applications that need regularly CPU time, such as CD reading and audio.
Talking of which, the audio is completely fixed from my pov. Previously, I've had problems with stuttering under load, which was been blamed on poor configuration of Pulse Audio, but this seems to be eliminated now. The new audio settings app works great for me too, nicely sorting out my two sound cards, giving them sensible defaults and removing the clutter.
Boot time is much faster, as is shutting down. My laptop suspends correctly. All in all, I have no complaints. The O/S seems so polished now that I'm beginning to find myself criticising the applications more. It seems that Canonical are going to have to get involved at an individual application level if they are to take things further, as the desktop is looking great and prior to GNOME 3 I can't see how it can majorly improve.
Kudos to the Canonical team, I actually found 9.04 a bit disappointing, but they have clearly responded to feedback on Pulse etc. and delivered something great.
As other people have pointed out anecdotal evidence is quite meaningless, but from my experience at least criticism of this release compared to the previous just look like FUD.
RS
This is a reply to the comments complaining about pay in academia. I'm familiar only with the UK system, so perhaps this doesn't apply to the US.
Yes, academic jobs aren't paid as well as industry. Yes, you can survive on academic pay, and quite comfortably. Yes, stipends for PhDs in Computer Science are plentiful in the UK and more than sufficient to live comfortably on (assuming you're not supporting a family, though I know people who are doing PhDs and have kids).
When I finish my PhD, I think I will be disappointed with my financial reward if I get an academic research position. The salary will likely be about 29 000 UKP and I'd expect a lot more in industry. Having done 7 years of full-time education to get there, it won't have been financially beneficial to do so, and I don't feel "valued" by society for the skills I have learnt and the dedication I have shown.
Lots of talented people do go to industry, or more likely merchant banking, for the money.
However, I don't think we lose much by these people making that choice. In academia, you have to be self-motivated, have a passion for learning and prioritise academic integrity, creativity, freedom and the ideals of aiding progress and contributing to society in a long-term and abstract way over making money. I'm not saying making money is inferior to research: but academia is not about money. I'm quite happy for people to go chasing large amounts of cash in stressful and (in my opinion) less fulfilling careers - they free up space for me in academia.
Please, don't make excuses about not being able to live on academic salaries (at least in the UK). A professor might earn 60-80 000 UKP and that is plenty to bring up a family. Consulting can bring much more.
Academic life has many benefits other than your wage - flexibility, increased holiday, freedom, prestige etc. They count for a huge amount.
Working in academia can be a greatly rewarding experience, the money is sufficient, and this if reflected by the continuous stream of talented individuals applying for PhDs and research positions. If you want higher salaries, then please make that choice without complaining that academia should pay more to tempt you away from other options.
RS
I used Red Hat / Fedora from 1998 to 2007, when I switched to Ubuntu. The difference at the time was not too great, but I disagree about the package managers. yum was a pain in Fedora - so slow, unresponsive and the GUIs were terrible. Ubuntu's package manager GUI, about to be majorly upgraded, is comparatively wonderful. RS
I completely agree with the comments on Picasa.
I'd like to add that Linux users can run Picasa under Wine and it works perfectly (in my experience). It's also provided completely pre-packaged and installed like a charm on Ubuntu. The only downside is that some of the fonts don't look as nice as native applications. It's much, much faster than equivalent GNOME applications such as f-spot, is more robust and scales better.
RS
EDF schedulers are usually employed in real-time systems, and those are predominantly embedded systems. They are simple to understand and analyse, such that engineers can have high confidence that all hard real-time tasks will meet their deadlines.
Generally speaking, it is not useful for much else - you wouldn't want it in a desktop PC, for example. This is because the priority of a task is determined by its deadline in EDF and not other important factors such as the actions of a user. We like responsiveness in our desktops, and EDF is not sophisticated enough to provide it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earliest_deadline_first_scheduling
RS
Seriously people, is there anyone that doesn't think this is one of the most brilliant pieces of ironic viral marketing?
This discussion is all over the web, the print press and radio. It's absolute genius. Almost everyone knows there is a new version of windows coming out. Many will watch the video, which mentions various aspects of Windows 7.
Presumably, the comments on YouTube were disabled in order to preserve the ambiguity of the video.
If you haven't watched the whole clip, it becomes more obvious towards the end. The dead giveaway is the "can you believe they've left the launch of windows 7 to us" etc. quote.
Kudos to MS, this puts even Apple's marketing in the shade.
It seems MS will not be able to fully admit the ad is ironic now, as they'd make a lot of journalists look quite foolish.
And no, I am not being ironic!
RS
I agree the charts are poor. What about the fact that the axes don't necessarily start at 0? This can be misleading, in that a small difference can be made to look much more significant. Broadsheets in the UK do this all the time.
One point... red-green colour blindness is quite common, so if we're being pedantic you'd probably want to avoid using them for contrast. Problem with colour-coding is also deciding what is "good" and "bad", which is making a subjective judgement.
RS
Don't you think the confusing naming is deliberate?
Long-term strategy must be to build a brand. A few years down the line:
"I use Chrome to surf the internet" says person in electronics store. "Oh, you'll love this phone/pc/tv/netbook/washing machine, then... it has Chrome OS".
"I'll take that one, the Chrome thing."
Result: Google is King.
RS
Anyone that doesn't know Turing's life story should definitely read:
Alan Turing: the Engima
by Andrew Hodges.
It's a great book.
Alan Turing did great, great, things for Britain and the world.
He was one of the most important figures in defining the outcome of WWII.
He was one of the few mathematicians responsible for inventing the computer, both in laying foundational theory and physically engineering them.
He published insightful papers and commentary, across a wide range of topics, that are still relevant today. For example, in my PhD thesis I am citing a paper of his that is cited in pretty much every major text in my field (evolutionary computation). The field has only really existed since the 1970s, 20 years after his death, yet Turing foresaw its potential.
I know that some people will be dissatisfied with the fact that the apology might seem empty, or it is one of a million apologies that should be made, but I think it's important to recognise what an exceptional man Turing was and just how pivotal he has been in our history. To apologise would be to recognise our gratitude for his achievements, as well as the dreadful mistakes that were made at the time.
If we don't recognise the errors we have made in the past, then I see no reason to imagine we are any different from those in power back then. I think that at least some people want to correct past mistakes.
I've had the same experience as justkeeper... nice choice of the phrase "cold start". The iPhone was clocking away, unresponsive and slowly getting warmer and warmer... fortunately, the battery died before it caught fire ;-)
I wouldn't call them "posers", but having an emotional liking or disliking for a language usually betrays an inability to select languages appropriately as needed. Let go of your anger.
Java is a fantastic language - as borne out by its huge take-up and popularity. It addresses many, many, issues with C++ and provides true portability and good performance. The language design and Sun's hard work allows for a plethora of development tools that aren't possible to implement in C++ without huge amounts of work and/or efficiently.
I wouldn't touch Java for low-level development, but "hating Java" is just ridiculous. It's just a language, like the gazillion others out there, and happens to be one that has proven to be particularly useful and well-designed (ok, so it's not as idealistic as Ruby or Smalltalk, but it is a pragmatic compromise for its time).
Less Java-bashing please Slashdot.