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User: niff

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  1. Some products get cheaper, some get more expensive. Happens all the time in any shop.

    This smells like a commercial for Amazon, sneaked in as "news for nerds".

  2. So the chrome downloader will look like chrome?

    Thanks for that smooth user experience, Microsoft.

  3. There's only two things I hate in this world. on First 3D Printed Houses For Rent Will Be Built In the Netherlands This Year (qz.com) · · Score: 1

    People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.

  4. I have an Echo Plus at home, and after one hour of trying to make it sing or say funny things the enthusiasm quickly wears off.

    Nowadays I mostly use it to read the time when I'm in a hurry. That's it.

    Maybe 1500 fresh engineers will result in something more useful.

  5. It depends on The Future of Free and Open-Source Maps (emacsen.net) · · Score: 1

    The quality of the data is very much dependent on volunteers. In the Netherlands, the data is actually pretty good and detailed.

    Certain details are in the map that HERE/TeleAtlas/Google/Waze don't have, like pedestrian tunnels, paths in woods, animal-crossings, etc. There are many people keeping things up-to-date.

    But, if you're somewhere in a third world country, outside of a city, chances are higher that your road is missing or incorrect.

  6. Re: This doesn't look like it replaces WinAmp. on Plexamp, Plex's Spin on the Classic Winamp Player, Is the First Project From New Incubator Plex Labs (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Every time somebody wants to "improve" winamp they add extra windows, useless art and make it slower to start.

    Even the winamp guys themselves fell for that trap. I never used the media management stuff nor the modern skins.

  7. There goes the 1% market share that Windows Phone had...

  8. Re:Obligatory on Android Now Supports the Kotlin Programming Language (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 2

    Xamarin lets you cross-compile when needed, but you cannot link or directly call Xamarin libraries from Java or Objective-C applications.

    That's a show stopper for us, because it means that your C# lives entirely in its own universe, without being able to interact properly with other libraries and services.

    In my experience, locking yourself into Xamarin works out great for small applications. In the same way that Dreamweaver worked great to design simple web pages. It's fast and brilliant, and it doesn't require you to learn about platform details.

    It looks like a productivity booster at first, but when you become more serious you'll run into annoying problems that cost more than maintaining two code bases.

  9. If you've set up proper backups, this shouldn't make anyone sweat too much.

  10. Not every day on The Real Reasons Companies Won't Hire Telecommuters (oreilly.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Working at home every day is not efficient if you're into software development for example.
    In one whiteboard session with some coworkers you get more done than by e-mail for two weeks.

    But there are tasks that require absolute concentration if you want to get the best results, like designing and implementing a complex algorithm, or fixing a complex bug.

    My days in the office are mostly filled with meetings, Skype calls with the offshore team, writing e-mails, etc. I work at home one day per week, and that's the day that I usually get most programming work done. It allows me to focus for a couple of hours without being disturbed.

    The only real alternative to working at home is working really late. Arrive at 11:00 and leave at 20:00. Most coworkers are probably gone around 18:00, which leaves you with two hours to get some real shit done.

  11. Re:Dear ISIS.... on ISIS Supporters Abandon U.S. Encryption Tools As Apple-FBI Fight Rages · · Score: 1

    ROT13 is considered to be unsafe. Nowadays it's best to go for ROT26...

  12. Statewide encryption protocol on Dutch Government Backs Strong Encryption, Condemns Backdoors · · Score: 1

    After somebody pointed out the problems with rot13 encryption, the Dutch settled for double rot13 (rot26) encryption.

  13. Re:Wow ... on Gene Amdahl, Pioneer of Mainframe Computing, Dies At 92 (nytimes.com) · · Score: 2

    As far as In know, SABRE still runs on System/360 today.

    It was created in the 50's, migrated to System/360 in the 70's, and is still the central system where all bookings of all airplanes are registered, and where travel agents from everywhere in the world can check for availability, make reservations, etc.
    The main interface is a console. I've seen several attempts to create GUI's but they can't fully replace the efficient text-based interface that exists to enter commands and see results.

    If you ever fly on a plane, your booking went through that system, no matter where on this planet you live, or where you went.
    There's an impressive number of transactions going on in that system, with lots of clients and lots of data in there.

  14. What could possibly go wrong?

  15. Bing? on This Isn't the First Time Microsoft's Been Accused of Bing Censorship · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does anyone actually use it?

  16. Re:because on Ask Slashdot: Why Are We Still Writing Text-Based Code? · · Score: 1

    Quicksort was an example of something simple, that wouldn't be very efficient to implement using a non-text language.

    Anyway, kids nowadays with their fancy languages and 800MB frameworks. They have a ".sort()" routine built in and immediately think that anyone writing those 10 lines to suit their specific situation is doing something deeply wrong. :-)

  17. because on Ask Slashdot: Why Are We Still Writing Text-Based Code? · · Score: 2

    Just try to write a quicksort routine using any non-text-based programming language.

    Or try to describe a 10 line shell script using UML.

    You'll find out that text-based code is actually quite efficient.

  18. Re:Tip of the day on Belief In God Correlates With Better Mental Health Treatment Outcomes · · Score: 1

    'heroin" is called "heroine" in Dutch, but I actually do recommend using both.

  19. Tip of the day on Belief In God Correlates With Better Mental Health Treatment Outcomes · · Score: 1

    I've heard that heroine is also very good at masking problems.

  20. Re:McPaint source code on What Early Software Was Influential Enough To Deserve Acclaim? · · Score: 1

    Both written in Pascal, with some Assembler. It's still quite readable for software from that time.

  21. Good riddance on Official Support For PHP 4 Ends · · Score: -1, Troll

    still, let's have one minute of silence for this tragic death...

    *FARTS*

  22. Re:Let's hope you're evaluating REAL REAL fast on Delphi For PHP Released · · Score: 1

    Make sure to have "Teach yourself PHP in 24 hours" ready.

  23. Re:Your app on Delphi on Delphi For PHP Released · · Score: 1

    You're totally missing the point about RAD.

    If you want performance and hardly any overhead, then go down a few layers of abstraction and code in assembly.

    Even your example needs a lot of bloat to show a simple text on the screen:
    An Operating system, a web server, a browser, a network, an entire PHP module, etc.
    That's a lot of overhead just to get a simple text on your screen.

    The point is that you, as a developer can do things faster using RAD. The underlying layers will take over part of your work as a developer, resulting in faster development time (improving maintainability and scalability), sometimes at the cost of performance.

    In the real world development time is often more expensive than hardware upgrades to compensate for non-optimized code.

  24. Firefox only on In-Depth ajaxWrite Review · · Score: 1

    ajaxWrite only works in FireFox, which partly defeats the purpose of having it in a browser.

    The main page showed me a link where i could download firefox.

    If i can download something of that size, and if i have sufficient privileges to install such software, i'll just install a proper text editor.

  25. Re:So Bush was right about something... on China Prepares to Launch Alternate Internet · · Score: 1

    I think he meant "Intelnets"