HTML5 and JavaScript is pretty damn fast these days, it even outpaces Flash in some areas.
There's even a x86 emulator written in JavaScript. Sure it's not as fast as native, but these apps are not particularly latency-sensitive (arguably an audio library is the most timing-sensitive). Sure, native is faster, but who really uses native code (assembly) outside the codec, compiler or embedded spaces anymore?. Everything else is just differing layers of abstraction.
What kind of "security" would be circumvented by installing a different web brower? Especially when IE, especially 6, is by far the most-exploited/exploitable browser still in common usage
network management/usage policies
Policies that restrict the use of browsers to IE6 (or 7) are, if not anal, misguided at best and harmful at worst.
AFAIK, Chrome doesn't need admin access to install or run, it installs to the current user's %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local directory. But yes, it may be against company policy, depending on how anal admins/management are about how users use company computers.
I know IE9 and 10 have a "compatibility mode" for sites like that. I don't know about IE8, though. Although that's only an issue if you're stuck on XP... which you very well may be, if work-critical web apps only work in 6 or 7.
Not on this MacBook Pro. It is not user serviceable. It uses proprietary screws, the RAM is soldered to the motherboard, the battery is glued in place and the "hard disk" is also proprietary but also the only upgradeable part (apart from possibly the WiFi/Bluetooth module)
In short, RTF iFixit Article.
I'm believe that the upgrade to 16GB or RAM is $200. That's around $60-$70 more than buying 2x8GB RAM sticks for an ordinary user-upgradeable notebook.
I agree. How do you discover what the hot corners do? How do you shut down (and why is it in Settings?) How do you close apps? (Admittedly, Metro apps that aren't in the foreground don't use any resources, but that's beside the point) How do you get to the "All Apps" listing? (aka what remains of the old start menu)
You used to need a kernel with a realtime patch to get that, not ure if you still do. Even so, I believe the audio lag is caused by there not being any real time audio APIs available in Android. Something like JACK (which is itself just a layer over ALSA, I believe) may not port particularly well to android, I haven't really looked into it. Also, using a JIT and GC add additional unpredictable delays to execution, which make it harder to get right, too.
The tiles update with your data and if every app you use sits on your start screen with your data on it and you have to go back to the start screen for everything anyone in the room can see your personal data.
There's a button to clear the live tiles and disable updates, if it bothers you
Right-click in the bottom-left corner (the "start" button) in desktop mode. That menu contains many useful shortcuts. That menu and the new task manager are so amazing that I won't be sad to move on from Windows 7, although I still use Win7 on my desktop because the hot corners are really not very usable in multi-monitor environments at the moment.
Only if you consider "decent" to be "better than Google Translate" because that's the only good thing I can say about CR subs. Their lazy, and sometimes baffling, attempts at "localization" just get on my nerves. For example, translating "What?" as "WTF"
In Windows 8, all metro-style apps are supposed to be able to run in "sidebar" mode, too. Sure it's not a "window", but I actually like the tiling effect, so perhaps I'm just weird.
The workaround for this bug might be that the compiler has to put a nop at the start of all function epilogs
More likely it'll be "fixed" in microcode and made available in a firmware update by motherboard manufacturers. It's a fairly small subset of all available CPUs.
I'm not sure how prevalent this is, but I'm Australian and my University's internet access is really not bad, most of the time. Things that I've run into that don't seem to work:
Incoming connections (all PCs on the network have public IP addresses)
Skype is extremely unreliable (probably due to the above)
Bittorrent
Apart from these, most things seems to work fine (inlcuding VPNs, so the list is largely irrelevant). ITS only seem to take notice if you transfer multiple gigabytes (>~2GB) within a day without a good reason, and send a warning before taking any further action.
If you only mean that applications shouldn't be allowed to name their files "*.exe" then yes, that would certainly be possible, but that wouldn't solve the problem. Especially on non-Windows platforms where filename doesn't determine whether or not a file is executable.
So you control which applications can set the "executable" flag.
e.g. applications shouldn't just be able to even get a directory listing on the user's files unless the user specifically allows for that
The problem is that this means any app that wants to access any data needs to ask for permission to do so. I don't see how prompting users for permission for every app that wants permission will help. I expect most apps to require at least the ability to read and write their own files to a location the users has access to from other apps, and properly managing which files/directories which apps can access seems to me like it would become incredibly convoluted and difficult to manage (from the user's perspective) incredibly quickly. Not that it couldn't be done, it would just be hard to make it usable and not a nuisance.
The "bouncing icon" works if you're starting exactly one app, any more and it becomes useless again. The bouncing icons on the dock in OSX is a really good solution to the problem, as is Unity's similar "glowing icons".
Otherwise, you're entirely correct and this all obviates the need for a "busy" cursor, other than to indicate "you can't interact with this right now", which is its real purpose anyway.
TBH, this is (thankfully) gradually going away. Many games allow you to skip the intro splash screens after the first run (and have for some time) or turn them off completely. Ones I can think of off the top of my head: Dragon Age (and II) and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Skyrim has a single 3 second splash screen (for Bethesda and nothing else).
I think Intel/AMD/nVidia are finally realising that most people don't give a shit if you sponsored this game, they just want to play it
A skeleton launch image will also put your brain in the model of the app sooner than a splash screen will. Such that you're thinking about what your first interaction will be earlier.
This sounds right. I can see why it might be a good idea
If you have splash screens on start up, the experience will be randomly different. Sometimes you'll get the splash screen, and sometimes you won't. That's bad.
What's bad is inconsistent behaviour. If splash screens were a standard thing, would they be perceived differently? Perhaps, but I don't think it would be ideal
A "busy" pointer doesn't always tell me which application is "busy". For example, I open a hypothetical 3D modelling application and open a large N*10^15 poly model in said app, and while it is loading (running maximized) I open a hypothetical image editor to do some texture work. In this situation the "busy" pointer is displayed but I have no idea whether it is the 3D modelling app or the image editor that is causing the cursor to show "busy". Until one application finishes its task, I have no idea whether either app is locked up or if the image editor is even starting.
I don't need a splash screen because I know (through the blinking HDD LED) that the application is running and I wait for it.
My laptop does not have any indicator lights (apart from the power LED), so I cannot do this. It is really not good practice for a program to give no feedback to a user when it is "busy" (users tend to think it has "crashed" or not received their input when it gives no feedback, as you mentioned), hence splash screens.
Which phone are you referring to? This lawsuit is to do with the software on the Galaxy Nexus, where the hardware looks quite dissimilar to the iPhone.
there is probably a limited, if any, ability to transfer the game to another device
If it uses Origin (which is does, in this case), it can (like with Steam) be installed on any number of devices, as long as you remember your account details
Slashdot Mirror
how do you use Javascript to write a fast, efficient signal processing application?
Audio Data Library
How do you write 3D graphics in HTML5?
WebGL
things like image processing
Aviary
HTML5 and JavaScript is pretty damn fast these days, it even outpaces Flash in some areas.
There's even a x86 emulator written in JavaScript. Sure it's not as fast as native, but these apps are not particularly latency-sensitive (arguably an audio library is the most timing-sensitive). Sure, native is faster, but who really uses native code (assembly) outside the codec, compiler or embedded spaces anymore?. Everything else is just differing layers of abstraction.
likely circumventing security
What kind of "security" would be circumvented by installing a different web brower? Especially when IE, especially 6, is by far the most-exploited/exploitable browser still in common usage
network management/usage policies
Policies that restrict the use of browsers to IE6 (or 7) are, if not anal, misguided at best and harmful at worst.
AFAIK, Chrome doesn't need admin access to install or run, it installs to the current user's %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local directory. But yes, it may be against company policy, depending on how anal admins/management are about how users use company computers.
I know IE9 and 10 have a "compatibility mode" for sites like that. I don't know about IE8, though. Although that's only an issue if you're stuck on XP... which you very well may be, if work-critical web apps only work in 6 or 7.
Not on this MacBook Pro. It is not user serviceable. It uses proprietary screws, the RAM is soldered to the motherboard, the battery is glued in place and the "hard disk" is also proprietary but also the only upgradeable part (apart from possibly the WiFi/Bluetooth module) In short, RTF iFixit Article.
I'm believe that the upgrade to 16GB or RAM is $200. That's around $60-$70 more than buying 2x8GB RAM sticks for an ordinary user-upgradeable notebook.
It really isn't very discoverable or intuitive
I agree. How do you discover what the hot corners do? How do you shut down (and why is it in Settings?) How do you close apps? (Admittedly, Metro apps that aren't in the foreground don't use any resources, but that's beside the point) How do you get to the "All Apps" listing? (aka what remains of the old start menu)
None of these were intuitive or easy to find.
You used to need a kernel with a realtime patch to get that, not ure if you still do. Even so, I believe the audio lag is caused by there not being any real time audio APIs available in Android. Something like JACK (which is itself just a layer over ALSA, I believe) may not port particularly well to android, I haven't really looked into it. Also, using a JIT and GC add additional unpredictable delays to execution, which make it harder to get right, too.
There is SharpDevelop...
The tiles update with your data and if every app you use sits on your start screen with your data on it and you have to go back to the start screen for everything anyone in the room can see your personal data.
There's a button to clear the live tiles and disable updates, if it bothers you
Right-click in the bottom-left corner (the "start" button) in desktop mode. That menu contains many useful shortcuts. That menu and the new task manager are so amazing that I won't be sad to move on from Windows 7, although I still use Win7 on my desktop because the hot corners are really not very usable in multi-monitor environments at the moment.
The translations are decent quality
Only if you consider "decent" to be "better than Google Translate" because that's the only good thing I can say about CR subs. Their lazy, and sometimes baffling, attempts at "localization" just get on my nerves. For example, translating "What?" as "WTF"
Actually, it's 1MB
Indeed. It's 1MB of RAM, in fact.
In Windows 8, all metro-style apps are supposed to be able to run in "sidebar" mode, too. Sure it's not a "window", but I actually like the tiling effect, so perhaps I'm just weird.
The workaround for this bug might be that the compiler has to put a nop at the start of all function epilogs
More likely it'll be "fixed" in microcode and made available in a firmware update by motherboard manufacturers. It's a fairly small subset of all available CPUs.
I'm not sure how prevalent this is, but I'm Australian and my University's internet access is really not bad, most of the time. Things that I've run into that don't seem to work:
Apart from these, most things seems to work fine (inlcuding VPNs, so the list is largely irrelevant). ITS only seem to take notice if you transfer multiple gigabytes (>~2GB) within a day without a good reason, and send a warning before taking any further action.
If you only mean that applications shouldn't be allowed to name their files "*.exe" then yes, that would certainly be possible, but that wouldn't solve the problem. Especially on non-Windows platforms where filename doesn't determine whether or not a file is executable.
So you control which applications can set the "executable" flag.
e.g. applications shouldn't just be able to even get a directory listing on the user's files unless the user specifically allows for that
The problem is that this means any app that wants to access any data needs to ask for permission to do so. I don't see how prompting users for permission for every app that wants permission will help. I expect most apps to require at least the ability to read and write their own files to a location the users has access to from other apps, and properly managing which files/directories which apps can access seems to me like it would become incredibly convoluted and difficult to manage (from the user's perspective) incredibly quickly. Not that it couldn't be done, it would just be hard to make it usable and not a nuisance.
The "bouncing icon" works if you're starting exactly one app, any more and it becomes useless again. The bouncing icons on the dock in OSX is a really good solution to the problem, as is Unity's similar "glowing icons".
Otherwise, you're entirely correct and this all obviates the need for a "busy" cursor, other than to indicate "you can't interact with this right now", which is its real purpose anyway.
TBH, this is (thankfully) gradually going away. Many games allow you to skip the intro splash screens after the first run (and have for some time) or turn them off completely. Ones I can think of off the top of my head: Dragon Age (and II) and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Skyrim has a single 3 second splash screen (for Bethesda and nothing else).
I think Intel/AMD/nVidia are finally realising that most people don't give a shit if you sponsored this game, they just want to play it
Two important parts of your post:
A skeleton launch image will also put your brain in the model of the app sooner than a splash screen will. Such that you're thinking about what your first interaction will be earlier.
This sounds right. I can see why it might be a good idea
If you have splash screens on start up, the experience will be randomly different. Sometimes you'll get the splash screen, and sometimes you won't. That's bad.
What's bad is inconsistent behaviour. If splash screens were a standard thing, would they be perceived differently? Perhaps, but I don't think it would be ideal
A "busy" pointer doesn't always tell me which application is "busy". For example, I open a hypothetical 3D modelling application and open a large N*10^15 poly model in said app, and while it is loading (running maximized) I open a hypothetical image editor to do some texture work. In this situation the "busy" pointer is displayed but I have no idea whether it is the 3D modelling app or the image editor that is causing the cursor to show "busy". Until one application finishes its task, I have no idea whether either app is locked up or if the image editor is even starting.
I don't need a splash screen because I know (through the blinking HDD LED) that the application is running and I wait for it.
My laptop does not have any indicator lights (apart from the power LED), so I cannot do this. It is really not good practice for a program to give no feedback to a user when it is "busy" (users tend to think it has "crashed" or not received their input when it gives no feedback, as you mentioned), hence splash screens.
Which phone are you referring to? This lawsuit is to do with the software on the Galaxy Nexus, where the hardware looks quite dissimilar to the iPhone.
there is probably a limited, if any, ability to transfer the game to another device
If it uses Origin (which is does, in this case), it can (like with Steam) be installed on any number of devices, as long as you remember your account details