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User: YU+Nicks+NE+Way

YU+Nicks+NE+Way's activity in the archive.

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  1. Re:how useful is DHT? on Zvents Releases Open Source Cluster Database Based on Google · · Score: 1

    In my thirty-plus years in the industry, I have seen a disk drive which could support transactional storage. The notion that you're going to write data in a manner which is more reliable than the underlying store is laughable. Even if you check the integrity of the underlying record, how do you know that your integrity check actually tested against the data you'll return next time? You don't; all you know is that the odds that you get back something else are negligibly small -- not zero, but low enough that you can neglect them, just like the word says.

    ACID and transactional reliability are useful features of a system, but they are not magic pixie dust which prevents data loss or corruption, and they are not the only way to minimize data loss and corruption. It may be, for instance, that you'll get better reliability out of your system through simple replication -- which has the automatic advantage of making your data easy to geo-replicate.

  2. Deal shows the Valley is losing on Yahoo Deal Is Big, but Is It the Next Big Thing? · · Score: 1

    Like the DC political Village, the Valley is largely a creation of its own press corps. In buying Yahoo, Microsoft, the perennial outsider has decided to spend the money necessary to grab a real beachhead in northern California, which will, in the long run, allow it to compete directly against the Silicon Valley incumbents for talent. Microsoft's benefits, for instance, make those of any of the big (or small) Valley corporations look like trash, and their salaries are quite competitive.

    I'm betting that MS expects that presenting their own services under the Yahoo label will take away the stigma of the Microsoft brand, while making the Yahoo brand more competitive. Since Microsoft's web offerings have a generally superior user interface to those Yahoo presents, that's likely to be true. It's an audacious plan, and it's far from the move of a failing behemoth that's being presented.

  3. Re:What did you say? on Microsoft's Biggest Threat - Google or Open Source? · · Score: 1

    Of course the work could have been done -- for what it's worth, the "openness" of the underlying platform has nothing to do with that fact. The question was whether doing it would have impacted profitability, and the answer to that question is "yes".

  4. Re:What did you say? on Microsoft's Biggest Threat - Google or Open Source? · · Score: 1

    So you want us to believe that releasing products at the same time would make Google less profitable? I can't speak for the GP, but the answer to your question is "yes".

    It's expensive to build a product for any OS. It's particularly expensive to build a native product for Linux, due to the different metaphors which different GUI's expose. (To pick a simple one: does activation track mouse, as in classic X, or does activation follow selection, as in modern Linux GUIs?) The company would need to dedicate software engineers to building that version. Engineers able to make it at Google are a scarce resource, so reallocating them to build tools for Linux would take resources away from search, ads, or other profitable ventures..
  5. Re:Good and bad news on GNU Octave 3.0 Released After 11 Years · · Score: 1

    The existence of an explicit delimiter allows Emacs (or VS or Eclipse or ...) to highlight the corresponding opening delim in algol-syntax languages. Python? Not so much.

  6. Re:Good and bad news on GNU Octave 3.0 Released After 11 Years · · Score: 1

    Noting makes up for the need to figure out exactly how many spaces I need to tab out to get out of a given block. And I write lots of Python, and pressure other people to use it when appropraite.

    But undelimited loops? Yeah -- stupid.

  7. Re:Do no Evil? on FTC Approves Google-DoubleClick Deal · · Score: 1

    For what it's worth, the slogan "don't be evil" is really a shorthand for one of the Ten things Google has found to be true (number 6), which actually reads "You can make money without doing evil."

  8. Re:Sony on Toshiba Builds Ultra-Small Nuclear Reactor · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well, we had a box. We dug up our beloved granny's casket, and reused it.

  9. Re:Get real... on PlayStation 2 Game ICO Violates the GPL · · Score: 1

    You have NO obligation to the owner of the copyright IF you meet the terms of the license
    Puppy, you need to go read the definition of a contract. That is what a contract is.
  10. Re:Get real... on PlayStation 2 Game ICO Violates the GPL · · Score: 1

    Um...hello? The GPL is either a contract or a grant; there's no third option. If it were a grant, then there could be no expectation of returned value (that is, no demand for reciprocity); there could only be a request for reciprocity. That's not how the FSF has treated it; they have threatened to sue on many occasions. That being the case, yes, it is a contract.

  11. Re:as much as I dislike Vista on Vista Makes CNET UK's List of "Worst Consumer Tech" · · Score: 1

    I know I do. The one thing I wish that Microsoft did was let UAC override last for "a while", like the fifteen minutes that sudo lasts on Ubuntu. Yes, it's a security hole through which one can drive a truck -- but, then again, so is the actual dialog.

  12. Re:Office Live Documents? Hmm... on Microsoft Faces Fight Against Online Office Rival · · Score: 1

    Budweis is the German form of the name of a city in Bohemia, and "Budweiser" is the generic term assigned to a style of beers first produced there.

  13. Re:Just Look At The Xbox Fiasco For Why on Why Microsoft's Zune is Still Failing · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Oh, look, it's the Sony troll!

    No, seriously -- this guy shows up on any thread where he can talk about how badly the 360 is doing, and spreads whatever this week's SonyFUD is.

  14. Re:Office Live Documents? Hmm... on Microsoft Faces Fight Against Online Office Rival · · Score: 1

    Nonsense. Here, do the following test: go to Google News, or any other searchable aggregator, and find every use of the words "Windows" (or "windows") in a French or Belgian paper that did not refer to Microsoft Windows in the year prior to the date of Microsoft's filing.

    You will find none whatsoever.

    Now, try to invalidate a trademark when mark holder comes in with that bit of evidence (replicated in television scripts, radio scripts, advertisements, and other publications.) Wear earmuffs, though, since the laughter of the judges at your claims will probably hurt your ears.

    Now...do the same thing for Dutch. Get back to me if you find any examples.

  15. Re:Office Live Documents? Hmm... on Microsoft Faces Fight Against Online Office Rival · · Score: 3, Informative

    Lindows won in the United States, but lost in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, etc. Microsoft had Robertson by the balls, and he knew it, so he took the "settlement" (which was essentially a capitulation on his part) and got while the getting was good.

  16. Re:So... on Maryland To Tax Custom Programming and Computer Services · · Score: 1

    Well, yes, but...the reason it isn't taxed at point of sale is because the resulting income is taxed (pretty steeply, FWIW). It's only in low income tax states (like my home state, FWIW, so I'm advocating that my own taxes be raised) that a professional services tax makes sense.

  17. Re:first psot!!! on Google's Open Source Mobile Platform · · Score: 1

    By that standard, then, we should be seeing a slough of malware for Windows Mobile phones, too -- they're every bit as open (in this sense) as Android. We haven't.

    No, the WSJ author is an idiot on this.

  18. Re:I doubt it will be viable in notebooks on Ultracapacitors Soon to Replace Many Batteries? · · Score: 1

    Weight. Ultracaps are incredibly light compared to batteries with the same charge capacity, meaning no more seven pound "portables".

    I'd trade more frequent charges (each taking a couple of minutes, total, due to the advantageous storage properties of a cap) for that.

  19. Re:Not sure about this... on MS, Mozilla Clashing Over JavaScript Update · · Score: 1

    That isn't how I read the block -- the whole problem is the "an ES4 implementation...must be told which dialect--ES3 or ES4--it is looking at". That says to me that old pages will need to be changed to specify their (older) dialect.

  20. Re:Not sure about this... on MS, Mozilla Clashing Over JavaScript Update · · Score: 1

    That would have made sense, wouldn't it? Shame that the committee requires something else to preserve the old-style behavior.

  21. Re:Not sure about this... on MS, Mozilla Clashing Over JavaScript Update · · Score: 1

    Oh? Show me where that is said, would you?

  22. Re:Not sure about this... on MS, Mozilla Clashing Over JavaScript Update · · Score: 2, Informative

    Are you trying to tell me that the addition of new reserved words to a language is a "small" change? [(ee the ES4 overview for details.) Particularly when those reserved words are common terms like "cast"? Sorry, but that's major breakage, and not a small matter. If the default were to behave exactly as ES3 or ES4 interim, and the new restrictions only applied then, it might be a justifiable change -- but that is explicitly not what the overview says.

    Sorry, but this is BS.

  23. Re:Not sure about this... on MS, Mozilla Clashing Over JavaScript Update · · Score: 1

    But that's exactly what Wilson is saying -- leave ECMA 3 as it is, broken and all, and add something new.

  24. Re:Why supercomputers? on Handheld Supercomputers in 10-15 Years? · · Score: 1

    In fact, the term became functionally useless a few years ago when a second tier computer manufacturer started advertising that its newest product would technically be illegal to ship to certain countries. The various first tier manufacturers had been producing machines with those qualities for years.

    Back then, though, we called them "3d graphics cards".

  25. Re:Plugging the analog hole on Bridgestone Shows Off Ultra-Thin, Full-Color e-Paper · · Score: 1

    Well, actually, if the resolution of the scanner/copier was not significantly greater than that of the display. But it's a good point, all the same.