That said, your second point is exactly right. It's in nobody's interests (except these three shareholders) to put Microsoft in the hands of these asset stripping vampires.
Exactly. If MBA suits can destroy the company that invented modern technology why should BG let them into Redmond? Whatever you think of his products and actions, would you let an MBA take ownership of your code?
Seriously though, Unity has a steep learning curve but once you're used to it it is a lot better than hierarchical menus. The HUD (click on 'Alt') is very powerful, and customisable, just takes a while.
I managed, (after a lot of late night coffee and bad language) to get Kubuntu 13.04 installed on an old PowerMac G5. What amazes me is that even though there isn't even 2D graphics support, KDE Live Plasma Desktop (thanks to Qt) still manages beautiful, smooth desktop effects - even transparency, with little cpu overhead. I have run Enlightenment on PowerPC machines in the past and this was also pretty nice on the eye-candy.
For me the bigger mistake that Canonical made was to drop official support for Unity 2D (written in Qt) when keeping it as a fallback would have kept a lot of old (mostly PowerPC) machines running a nice OS.
I wrote the code for the patch to fix Unity 2D's colour rendition on PowerPC (It was an endian problem). I was quite proud of that...
Personally I DO like Canonical's direction. I see exactly the same kind of ill-informed hate on/. for Unity that I see for Metro, and from the same people who've not spent more than a few hours using them (and starting with a negative attitude at that.)
Unity is an amazing product, it is visually beautiful, my Mac uber-fanboy flatmate was fascinated by it and it's perfectly obvious to a 'granny' that you click on the buttons to make stuff happen and they soon get the hang that you click on the top button to find stuff.
The real beauty of Unity though is how it works for power users with the keyboard. How many of you know about click/hold the super key? How many know about the HUD? Click on Alt in any app and see what happens. Unity at the start was a pure desktop solution, the touch stuff was added later because a lot of the ideas translated . Once you get used to it it is brilliant
I've pretty much always had a Linux box somewhere in my den but only yesterday I set up my new, main dev machine as pure Ubuntu 13.10 booting from UEFI off a SSD and running Mir
If it weren't for Canonical making Ubuntu such a polished distro I would probably be dual-booting Win7 or 8 and some-other-linux and mostly only ever booting to Windows.
I look forward to spring each year for the fresh stinging nettles to brew up a gallon of nettle beer Surprisingly bitter and strong, but very good out of the fridge on a warm evening!
I can say that smartphone use while driving is a disease that warrants draconian measures. I can't tell you the number of times I've been run off the road recently by _teenage girls on bicycles_ staring at their iPhones, oblivious to the other bikes, cars articulated lorries (US: semis) and _trains_ they happily ride past. This is quite apart from young mothers in 4x4s, 'dudes' in WVs and bankers in Porsches driving well over 200 kmh. It needs to earn the social stigma of drunk driving and worse, and quickly.
No offense intended! I agree that anybody involved in a complex task, such as you describe, needs to have the whole picture in his/her brain to be able to work on it. In fact I was thinking about how I used to spend my time before there were computers to program? (yes, I'm that old!) and what did 'geeks' do in past centuries? Well, the answer is maths. Pen and paper stuff, but still problem solving and the same issue: that you have to hold it all in your head at once to be able to work.
No, developers are the most visible part of a class of workers who need total concentration on a task for a long period to make progress. You need at least 15 minutes to fully pick up where you left off in any half-complex program. You need to have up-to-date working copies of all the APIs you're using and your own classes in your brain before you can start breaking and improving anything. A 'quick word' from my manager means I waste this 15 minutes for a ten second question... My best work is only ever done in an empty office at night.
I keep most of my coding for my own self-employed projects because I know that no manger would ever let me work how I want to. I can spend a week mulling over a problem, every waking and sleeping hour and the solution will come to me while I'm jogging or eating or on the can and it will take an hour of coding and twice that testing/debugging. It might only be ten lines of code but it will be something that gives me a glow inside of something being properly right.
My point is that coding is a creative process; an art, if you like. Who cares how long Leonardo took to paint the Mona Lisa?
For me there are two features of WP8 that differentiate it from iOS and Android. The first is the live tiles, much hated in Windows 8 but actually work very well on a phone. My weather app shows hourly forecasts on the lockscreen and then daily on the live tile. My 'me' tile shows me all social interactions, finance tile my stock values etc. etc. The second feature is the ability to pin almost anything to the start screen: A song; a contact, which works as a live tile showing interactions with that person, a boarding pass, a website, a weather forecast for a city, Best public transport connection to a location.
Android 'widgets' give you something of the live tiles function but nothing like so elegantly. iOS gives you nothing.
The overwhelming majority of the US market has completely ignored it... FTFY
Seriously, there is a pretty strong 'fanboi' base in the rest of the world. Why not try it for yourself? The phone that is really helping the sales figures for MS/Nokia is the Lumia 520, which you can get for GBP140 SIM-free in the UK and for GBP90 on PAYG deals. In the US I've seen reports it can be bought for $60 with a mail-in rebate. That's my monthly coffee budget. It has pretty decent specs (dual-core 1GHz, 512MB RAM 480p screen) and it has some nice high-end features like the screen you can use with gloves on, a micro SD slot and you can even 3D print new covers using files from Nokia. In most of the world, a Nokia/Microsoft phone has a lot more kudos than a Chinese landfill Android. And because WP8 doesn't need massive power/resources to run smoothly it offers 90% of iPhone functionality at 10% cost.
I've had several Windows Phones (Bought, I'm not a shill) and without the Nokia Apps they're...meh, ok... the Nokia apps make all the difference. 3D Maps, full turn by turn satnav, 'DLSR-like' camera control, DNLA server, free streaming music, etc. etc...
I agree. I have a Lumia 925 and it is a joy to look at, hold and use. The only place WP8 is not catching on is the USA. It's number 2 in India, Latin America and Russia and growing in Europe. 77% year on year growth. Ask yourself "Why a coloured plastic iPhone and why an iOS with flat graphics? Where have I seen those ideas used before?"
for the same reason, i thought nokia's decision to go WP was a good idea. of course hindsight is 20/20).
Depends what you mean by "Nokia." The smartphone division has a better chance of surviving in some form than Blackberry does; the sales may be similar in number to Blackberry's but the sales growth especially for the cheaper models like the 520 is healthy and positive.
So long as Microsoft don't follow their usual form and crush the new acquisition through mismanagement or plain stupidity.
Carry whatever tech you want in your backpack (I do) but the thing on your wrist should be mechanical and made in Switzerland or you'll never get either a girlfriend or a job. Nothing that a tech company makes will ever be as beautiful as this
Slashdot Mirror
Who modded this down? It's exactly right
As a result, he is odds-on favourite to become the new CEO
That said, your second point is exactly right. It's in nobody's interests (except these three shareholders) to put Microsoft in the hands of these asset stripping vampires.
Exactly. If MBA suits can destroy the company that invented modern technology why should BG let them into Redmond? Whatever you think of his products and actions, would you let an MBA take ownership of your code?
Seriously though, Unity has a steep learning curve but once you're used to it it is a lot better than hierarchical menus. The HUD (click on 'Alt') is very powerful, and customisable, just takes a while.
For me the bigger mistake that Canonical made was to drop official support for Unity 2D (written in Qt) when keeping it as a fallback would have kept a lot of old (mostly PowerPC) machines running a nice OS.
I wrote the code for the patch to fix Unity 2D's colour rendition on PowerPC (It was an endian problem). I was quite proud of that...
Unity is an amazing product, it is visually beautiful, my Mac uber-fanboy flatmate was fascinated by it and it's perfectly obvious to a 'granny' that you click on the buttons to make stuff happen and they soon get the hang that you click on the top button to find stuff.
The real beauty of Unity though is how it works for power users with the keyboard. How many of you know about click/hold the super key? How many know about the HUD? Click on Alt in any app and see what happens. Unity at the start was a pure desktop solution, the touch stuff was added later because a lot of the ideas translated . Once you get used to it it is brilliant
I've pretty much always had a Linux box somewhere in my den but only yesterday I set up my new, main dev machine as pure Ubuntu 13.10 booting from UEFI off a SSD and running Mir
If it weren't for Canonical making Ubuntu such a polished distro I would probably be dual-booting Win7 or 8 and some-other-linux and mostly only ever booting to Windows.
Yeah, sorry for the joke. There are now some great beers to be had in the USA. Even the now ubiquitous Samuel Adams is a pretty good staple.
Ah, obviously you're American. In Germany we have alcoholic drinks that taste good
I look forward to spring each year for the fresh stinging nettles to brew up a gallon of nettle beer Surprisingly bitter and strong, but very good out of the fridge on a warm evening!
If you've never ridden a motorcycle in a full year's worth of weather then your traffic skills are nothing like as good as you think they are.
I can say that smartphone use while driving is a disease that warrants draconian measures. I can't tell you the number of times I've been run off the road recently by _teenage girls on bicycles_ staring at their iPhones, oblivious to the other bikes, cars articulated lorries (US: semis) and _trains_ they happily ride past. This is quite apart from young mothers in 4x4s, 'dudes' in WVs and bankers in Porsches driving well over 200 kmh. It needs to earn the social stigma of drunk driving and worse, and quickly.
Bombardier
No offense intended! I agree that anybody involved in a complex task, such as you describe, needs to have the whole picture in his/her brain to be able to work on it. In fact I was thinking about how I used to spend my time before there were computers to program? (yes, I'm that old!) and what did 'geeks' do in past centuries? Well, the answer is maths. Pen and paper stuff, but still problem solving and the same issue: that you have to hold it all in your head at once to be able to work.
If this is news to you, you must be new here...
I keep most of my coding for my own self-employed projects because I know that no manger would ever let me work how I want to. I can spend a week mulling over a problem, every waking and sleeping hour and the solution will come to me while I'm jogging or eating or on the can and it will take an hour of coding and twice that testing/debugging. It might only be ten lines of code but it will be something that gives me a glow inside of something being properly right.
My point is that coding is a creative process; an art, if you like. Who cares how long Leonardo took to paint the Mona Lisa?
For me there are two features of WP8 that differentiate it from iOS and Android. The first is the live tiles, much hated in Windows 8 but actually work very well on a phone. My weather app shows hourly forecasts on the lockscreen and then daily on the live tile. My 'me' tile shows me all social interactions, finance tile my stock values etc. etc. The second feature is the ability to pin almost anything to the start screen: A song; a contact, which works as a live tile showing interactions with that person, a boarding pass, a website, a weather forecast for a city, Best public transport connection to a location.
Android 'widgets' give you something of the live tiles function but nothing like so elegantly. iOS gives you nothing.
Dear fucking Christ!! Lotus Notes!! I've turned down work specifically because I'd have to use that abhorrent POS. What the hell are you thinking?
I liked CE, I still use an iPaq with CE 2003SE. Nothing is supported anymore, of course, but it runs Python 2.5 and the HP48 emulator.
As mine is already, but it won't cost $60...
...after I read some Neal Asher books. Truly and utterly horrifying, and very believable.
The overwhelming majority of the US market has completely ignored it... FTFY
Seriously, there is a pretty strong 'fanboi' base in the rest of the world. Why not try it for yourself? The phone that is really helping the sales figures for MS/Nokia is the Lumia 520, which you can get for GBP140 SIM-free in the UK and for GBP90 on PAYG deals. In the US I've seen reports it can be bought for $60 with a mail-in rebate. That's my monthly coffee budget. It has pretty decent specs (dual-core 1GHz, 512MB RAM 480p screen) and it has some nice high-end features like the screen you can use with gloves on, a micro SD slot and you can even 3D print new covers using files from Nokia. In most of the world, a Nokia/Microsoft phone has a lot more kudos than a Chinese landfill Android. And because WP8 doesn't need massive power/resources to run smoothly it offers 90% of iPhone functionality at 10% cost.
I've had several Windows Phones (Bought, I'm not a shill) and without the Nokia Apps they're ...meh, ok... the Nokia apps make all the difference. 3D Maps, full turn by turn satnav, 'DLSR-like' camera control, DNLA server, free streaming music, etc. etc...
Go figure...
I agree. I have a Lumia 925 and it is a joy to look at, hold and use. The only place WP8 is not catching on is the USA. It's number 2 in India, Latin America and Russia and growing in Europe. 77% year on year growth. Ask yourself "Why a coloured plastic iPhone and why an iOS with flat graphics? Where have I seen those ideas used before?"
Slashdotter 1: "Your religion is stupid and your god is all wrong!"
Slashdotter 2: "Good point, dude. I'll switch..."
Slashdotter 1: "Your distro is stupid and your display server is all wrong!"
Slashdotter 2: "DIE, DIE, DIE IN ETERNAL TORMENT!!!"
for the same reason, i thought nokia's decision to go WP was a good idea. of course hindsight is 20/20).
Depends what you mean by "Nokia." The smartphone division has a better chance of surviving in some form than Blackberry does; the sales may be similar in number to Blackberry's but the sales growth especially for the cheaper models like the 520 is healthy and positive.
So long as Microsoft don't follow their usual form and crush the new acquisition through mismanagement or plain stupidity.
Carry whatever tech you want in your backpack (I do) but the thing on your wrist should be mechanical and made in Switzerland or you'll never get either a girlfriend or a job. Nothing that a tech company makes will ever be as beautiful as this