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User: DrXym

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  1. Trojan horse on Microsoft Offers Pirates Amnesty and Free Windows 10 Upgrades · · Score: 1

    Windows 10 will be "free" the way some websites are free - basic functionality is free but there will be lots of annoying limitations and barriers throughout that encourage users to pay for a premium version or take out a subscription. You only have to look at previous Windows editions to see the sort of things they can gimp to encourage people to pay out more and I bet they go all out this time around.

  2. Re:I still don't know why ... on Nintendo Finally Working On Games for Smartphones · · Score: 1

    Apple have a big sack of money. I doubt they'd so much wish to "partner" with Nintendo as gobble them up and transform them into a brand. If not them, then Disney which has been on an IP buying spree for a while now.

  3. The OTA update is the clue on Elon Musk Pledges To End "Range Anxiety" For Tesla Model S · · Score: 1

    They intend to brick every Tesla. You won't be worrying about the range anymore because that car is never going anywhere ever again.

  4. This won't work on Is Microsoft Trying to Become "King of Search" With Cortana Strategy? · · Score: 1

    Google, Apple and Microsoft have the luxury of putting their own voice search directly into the UI of their respective operating system. If Microsoft produce a Cortana app then chances are they'll have to make do with wherever they can stick it in iOS / Android and whatever limitations it imposes on how it interacts with the rest of the system. e.g. setting reminders or whatever. I suppose Microsoft could write their own launcher for Android and integrate Cortana but they'd have to make their launcher pretty damned functional to attract people and at that point they're basically cannibalizing their own market.

  5. Re:HOWTO on How To Execute People In the 21st Century · · Score: 1
    Belief in Heaven and Hell is besides the point. There are certain people whom society must either to suffer to live in prison their entire life or execute them. They decide one or the other and needn't have anything to do with an afterlife or retribution therein.

    Personally I see absolutely nothing wrong with executing people providing their crimes, guilt and standard of evidence merit the ultimate sanction. That doesn't mean I see the US system as a role model for this because it is clear to even a casual observer that it is not.

  6. Re:I must be missing something. on Windows 10 Enables Switching Between Desktop and Tablet Modes · · Score: 1
    You can close tasks in several ways. 1 - you swipe the task from the left and then down (although this is a horribly clumsy), 2 - you can go to your desktop and rightmouse / long press the tray icon and choose close, 3 - if you have a mouse you can move it to the top edge of the app, a bar will appear and you can click the close button.

    So yes there are ways to kill apps although IMO none of them are very good. I would prefer a proper finger-friendly "running apps" screen where I can either flick them away or hit close. And Microsoft need to present apps, executables and services in a unified and coherent way from this screen.

  7. Re:I must be missing something. on Windows 10 Enables Switching Between Desktop and Tablet Modes · · Score: 1

    Gnome 3 is extremely customisable via extensions. It is more accurate to say the default experience is deliberately simple.

  8. easy on How To Execute People In the 21st Century · · Score: 1

    If a state is going to execute people then a firing squad is quite able to perform the task reliably and quickly. Hell, it doesn't even need a firing squad - guns can be preaimed and fired remotely with sufficient redundancy to ensure the outcome.

  9. Re:RTFA on Scotland Yard Chief: Put CCTV In Every Home To Help Solve Crimes · · Score: 1

    When you start calling people "sheep", "sheeple", "baaa" etc. you think you're being clever but you're coming away looking like a paranoid arrogant jerk who can't possibly accept another point of view. And I suspect that impression is well deserved.

  10. Re:And Dart? on Google's Angular 2 Being Built With Microsoft's TypeScript · · Score: 1
    Typescript is balls as a language (for all the reasons JS is) but it's succeeding probably because it's familiar to JS / AS devs and static typing is a good thing. So you can reuse existing JS code and there are TS definition files for most popular JS libs too. So better than JS but still suffering from many of the same issues - strict model, weird binding rules etc.

    What is ironic that the two leading JS replacements actually manage to be orthogonal - Typescript adds extra verbiage and Coffeescript attempts to strip out the verbiage.

    As for Dart, I think Google spooked devs by intending to add a Dart VM to Chrome. Even if it could compile into JS, it sent the message that their intention was to replace JS with this other thing or run the two side by side. It's not the first time a company has tried to do this - VBscript in IE was another example.

  11. Re:JavaScript framework du jour on Google's Angular 2 Being Built With Microsoft's TypeScript · · Score: 1

    It's not a complete loss. Virtually all of these frameworks are doing the same damned thing and implementing the same damned patterns just with different code. And underneath Angular or WhateverReplacesIt will be the usual heap of JS libs - JQuery, Underscore, Backbone et al. So knowledge is transferable even if AngularJS stops being fashionable.

  12. Re:RTFA on Scotland Yard Chief: Put CCTV In Every Home To Help Solve Crimes · · Score: 1

    You clearly have some issues you have to sort out. Starting with your critical thinking skills.

  13. It's incredibly easy on Watch an Original NES Run Netflix · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just fake it. Start by lying you have an unmodified NES and go from there.

  14. Re:RTFA on Scotland Yard Chief: Put CCTV In Every Home To Help Solve Crimes · · Score: 1

    It's not being "dumb" it's called reading the article and interpreting the comments in context.

  15. Re:Let me guess on Google Introduces Freon, a Replacement For X11 On Chrome OS · · Score: 1

    In the X Window System core protocol, only four kinds of packets are sent, asynchronously, over the network: requests, replies, events, and errors.

    That whole request / reply bit sailed over your head I see. The wire might be asynchronous but Xlib, the library that virtually all client code uses is filled with synchronous code that sends the request and waits for the reply. e.g. call XGetWindowAttributes and it will block until the response comes back.

    There have been attempts to use xcb instead which is an async API but it turns out writing async code is hard, particularly when dealing with legacy code and an arcane windowing system that sends out a storm of messages. It's not hard to find xcb backend projects that have floundered.

    It is called a pixmap.

    A pixmap is not a surface. A surface is a texture under the management of a GPU (or software emulation of a GPU). X has no concept of surface. It is damage based windowing system. Hence the reason for extensions to work through this.

    I am not crying. In fact, I am happy with X. I just point out that I don't see how Wayland has *anything* to offer for a desktop user. Not even performance. But it has disadvantages: And breaking compatibility is most serious one. XWayland only solves one direction (running X clients on Wayland) and not the other (running Wayland clients on X). Finally, there are already mobile devices with Wayland without XWayland, e.g. Jolla. It breaks compatibility with the excellent N9, which is really stupid.

    If you don't see why it has anything to offer I suggest you look at the Wayland website where it explains in detail why X is broken. If virtually every X developer can see the need then I don't see why others can't.

  16. Re:Yeah but..... on Google Announces Android 5.1 · · Score: 1

    the "space" it's eating is completely unusable for any other purpose. the binary exists in /system which is a read-only partition. that's why you can't physically remove the APK.

    The point is that partition would be 30MB smaller if it didn't contain the Facebook in the first place. Throw in twitter, some crappy mobile office suite, some antivirus software, some cloud save service and a bunch of other junk and it might be closer to 100MB of wasted space.

    no you don't see above.

    Yes it does. 30MB masked out and another 30MB+ for the replacement. That's just one app that I assume most people would keep.

    the existence of an APK installed into /system has zero impact on your manufacturer's ability to roll an updated ROM. it has everything to do with the customizations they make to the firmware itself.

    Of course it does. The network operator (or whomever they contract to support their phones) have to receive a (tested) firmware update image from the manufacturer, extract it, throw in all their own changes & apps, compress it, test it again, and roll it out. That could add weeks or months to the process. It quite obviously requires more effort to test, and it reduces the chances that you'll get updates at all - perhaps Vodafone or whoever only supports a phone for 18 months even if the manufacturer is pushing out more updates or security fixes.

  17. Re:Let me guess on Google Introduces Freon, a Replacement For X11 On Chrome OS · · Score: 1

    First, one can extend X11 fairly easily, this has been done in the past. Second, X11 already has asynchronous IPC.

    First, you don't extend X, you work around it and leave one more bit of dead code to be maintained forever. Second, it is not async.

    Again: bullshit. X11 can do take advantage of the hardware in exactly the same way as Wayland

    Sorry you're lying. X11 has no concept of surfaces. The only way of taking advantage of the hardware is to write an extension that composites the scene for X11 and hands it back to X11 to page flip. So X11 is just a 3rd wheel that involves extra context switches for no reason at all.

    I don't want RDP. RDP is not compatible with X. RDP is also a propriertary protocol fron Microsoft with a core standardized by the ITU. I sure hell to not want this as a replacement for X.

    Oh boo hoo then implement something else.

    Yes, implement X. Then come back.

    Run X over wayland if you're so desperate for some crappy broken network protocol. VNC, RDP and others are more efficient.

    I am not playing games. I want my new applications to work with old display servers and old applications to work with new servers.

    And Wayland stops you how? Run X11 over wayland and stop crying.

  18. It's pointless to ban them anyway on UK Parliament: Banning Tor Is Unacceptable and Technologically Impossible · · Score: 1

    Just leave it alone and think of the bounty of intelligence you will harvest - infiltrate or set up some phony jihadist / paedo / drug & weapons dealing / carding sites and wait for the perps to come to you.

  19. Re:Yeah but..... on Google Announces Android 5.1 · · Score: 1
    Disabling isn't the same as removing. It's still there, unnecessarily eating up space. Worse than that, if you do use that app you will incur a double penalty as soon as you install an update. So that Facebook baked into your phone might eat up 30MB of space and then you get hit for another 30MB+ in the r/w partition when an update arrives. So if you don't need the app it wastes space and if you do need the app it wastes space. So why bother in the first place?

    And of course all that baked in crapware means you won't be getting firmware / security updates for your phone in a timely fashion, if ever.

  20. Re:Yeah but..... on Google Announces Android 5.1 · · Score: 1
    Google should do is change the terms so certain apps *must* reside in a read/write partition and *must* be removable from the device. Not just hidden but completely removable. That would include every carrier app which is normally redundant and broken anyway. I would include some of Google's own apps in that category - GMail, Chrome, G+, YouTube etc - basically any app that resides on top of the handset OS as opposed to being part of it should be removable by the user. Not just hidden - removable.

    Apart from that choice is good. Personally I prefer the vanilla experience, or the CM one (which is a relatively light enhancements). The worst replacement I've seen is the one from Huawei which decided that the all apps view and the personizable desktops should be combined into a single thing creating the most unusable experience I've seen in any smart phone.

  21. Re:Yeah but..... on Google Announces Android 5.1 · · Score: 1

    Android did the skeumorphic thing first. If anything iOS is aping Android these days with stuff like skeumorphism, swipe down notifications etc.

  22. Re:RTFA on Scotland Yard Chief: Put CCTV In Every Home To Help Solve Crimes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Talk about paranoid. The guy just wants people to install cameras that actually get clear enough shots to ID a perp. It isn't about mass surveillance in the slightest.

  23. Five months? on Solar Impulse Plane Begins Epic Global Flight · · Score: 2

    That's a really long time whether it is solar powered or not. If they're waiting for windows as the article says it suggests this plane runs a serious risk of having the crap kicked out of it by the weather when it attempts to fly certain legs.

  24. Re:Let me guess on Google Introduces Freon, a Replacement For X11 On Chrome OS · · Score: 1, Insightful
    You can't "improve" X11 without making it not X11. e.g. make IPC async and it's not X any more. And at that point you may as well ditch the lot and write it properly, taking advantage of the hardware that every modern PC has to render a desktop decently locally first (the common use case) and taking advantage of existing remoting tech to take care of the uncommon use case. And that's what Wayland does - it describes a protocol for a client application to talk directly with a window manager that cuts X11 out of the picture.

    Weston already demonstrates built in RDP support. It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine VNC or other protocols appearing in time to serve different remoting scenarios. I'm sure that unless you're expecting to play video or games in realtime they would suffice and if you are expecting to play video or games in realtime there are better ways to do those things already.

  25. Re: YANIH on Google Introduces Freon, a Replacement For X11 On Chrome OS · · Score: 1

    Even Microsoft supports git these days through Visual Studio and its online team foundation server backend. That should say something.