It is functional at it's core but not purely functional. I could write purely functional code inside Scala, it is more difficult with Swift. Simple things like flow control in Swift is just that.... flow control.... not functions. if in Scala is a ternary function - similar to java ternary if - but more verbose. Switch - same. On things like optional values - I do not have access to map them to something else, I have to unwrap them using "if let" flow control structure. Swift could easily add most of these in effectively make Scala redundant, but as the designer of the language said.... it is not a priority at this time (aka don't count on it).
Yes, Scala is every bit object-oriented as Swift (actually more so since everything in Scala is an object, while in Swift the same cannot be said). I have NEVER heard Odersky admit Scala is a disaster. He has said that it needs a fundamental rethink as in make it simpler and moving things from core to non-core etc. All languages need that though. Java could really really use a rethink at it's core as well.... any aging language can. There are areas (edge cases) in Scala that are problematic. The compiling of the language is really slow. And of course the manufacture of the jvm has determined that they want to become a malware distributor....
What I am looking for is something along the lines of Scalas object-oriented / functional language balance in an LLVM based compiler -- that is cross-platform/open. Swift could easily get close enough if they wanted to. Scala can get there as long as they don't require exact language compatibility between the jvm version and an llvm offshoot.
There is a vast difference between an interpreted language such as Python and a low level compiled language when you are talking about "reference counting". With a language such as Python it is really still garbage collection.
With a compiled language on the LLVM (high level transportable assembly language which in turn is turned into machine code) it is not actually a thread running garbage collection in the background it is the Clang/LLVM compiler inserting "free" memory calls used as it goes out of scope. This is of course a little simplified, but there is a difference.
Apple had garbage collection (optional) for use in objective-C up until they started releasing iDevices where it becomes a zero-sum game when it comes to inefficiency. When you are talking about a computer plugged into the wall -- you won't notice if an application is consuming n% more energy or not. When you have a finite amount of battery power, it becomes noticeable (especially for the iDevices, but it has had a knock on effect with laptops). Apple has worked hard both in the core operating system on how it implements cpu cycles through it's scheduling to save energy on laptops and in the application development platform itself to squeeze just a little more out of the battery which allows the battery to be smaller or the amount of time the system can operate on battery.
When java and smalltalk were created, a garbage collector solved more problems than it created since no one worried about efficiency.... but platforms have changed since that time and efficiency has to enter the equation.
Swift is a nice language, I get the feeling the creator/driving force behind it wants it open-source cross platform -- but no commitment yet (and likely will not be for years until it has completely matured). The only issue I have with Swift is that it does not fully embrace functional programming and is really an object-oriented programming language at heart (with some functional niceties).... but then the language is designed for UI development and the UIs themselves are object-oriented.
I would really like some entity to get behind making an LLVM version of Scala -- or close to it (which would dump the JVM and of course the expectation of JVM garbage-collection).
I spent the last 45 minutes watching an introductory video on Rust and I believe it is a new exciting language that is badly needed. Yes there is a lot of language competitors out there, but most of those languages are higher level than C / C++. C / C++ have had very little competition in their end of the language spectrum. They are old, not very safe. Rust on the other hand is type/memory safe by default -- although you can run "unsafe" code within there by explicitly stating so and then the compiler relaxes the checking a bit (a reasonable compromise). Most people will not need much if any "unsafe" code to be performant.
The fact that there is another LLVM, cross platform compiler is also a plus for me.
That said, I don't write much C / C++ code because nothing I am writing needs it -- but those languages are still necessary (and very popular) so coming up with a newer competitor (not 40+ year old language)..... is great.... and exciting.
The end result is not going to "fragment" memory, it is about when and how memory management is done. Unfortunately for the sake of allowing programmers not to know what they are doing or what is going on they implemented garbage collection in object oriented languages like Java, which is generally fine in server applications that run in a VM.... but it has a cost to doing that. A better compromise (IMHO) is "Automatic Reference Counting" which is done at compile time and does not have to be programmed cluttering up your application..... BUT you have to be aware of memory management (which is a good thing for programmers to have to know) and not program cylindrical references where both references are strong. Best of both worlds (for the most part) without the unpredictable and resource "hungry" garbage collection running in the background. The side benefit is that you have C/C++ efficient code that can be compiled down to the machine level and not run in a vm
There are generally three options available:
Manual Memory Management:
- Cons:
1. Pain to code having to write code that does memory management and just adds extra bulk to a program
2. Easy to make simple mistakes that cause the system to crash or become unstable
- Benefits:
1. Instantly freed objects
2. Predictable behavour
3. Smooth Performance
Garbage Collection:
- Cons:
1. Garbage builds up
2. Nondeterministic
3. Performance stutters
4. Extra CPU cycles taken to have a process run in the background kicking in (drains battery on portable devices).
Benefits:
1. Development Ease
2. Don't have to understand Memory Management
3. Reduces Crashes
Automatic Reference Counting:
Cons:
1. Have to be aware of memory management and not program cylindrical references where both are strong references (actually have to understand what you are doing).
Benefits:
2. All of the Benefits AND Cons from the other two memory management schemes
3. "garbage" collection / memory management is inserted at compile time and is not a background thread running on your device.
So they basically selected a bad datatype and wrote a very inefficient program to handle manipulation of data and they use that as the basis to say that memory was the issue. The issue was programming without thought to what the computer was actually doing. Is this what these two Universities are teaching their students? Were they being purposely bad programmers to prove a point?
God help the world if these people ever have to program efficiently....
I find a number of facts to be in basic conflict in the report. Most developers can't make a living through the app store, yet they are afraid of Apple for some reason - even though they cannot make a living.
First the App store makes it fairly simple for every tom, dick and harry to write an app and put it on the store shelves. They don't need to package it, they don't need to setup their own web-sales site.... The problem is that you have a bunch of app developers that think if they write some small app that a trail of customers will beat a path to them and buy it, they think that any stupid app will make money. A lot of small apps will drive down prices for those apps, the smaller the easier to make the app the more competition.
I remember 30 years ago that there were many substantive applications to do some basic functionality... word processing. I don't know how many different ones were created, but there were quite a lot. I know my father had 9 installed on his Windows computer just to compare them himself (head of an institution) to see which ones were any good. Most of those companies went bankrupt quickly - even though there was substantive (much much more than most apps in the store) development put into them. Unfortunately the current generation seems to think they are somehow privileged and if they write something they should be able to make a living at it... it is not the way the world works. You have to compete, you have to invest time developing an app that you are passionate about, you have to risk losing time/money on the venture. You have to market your own app outside of the store, and you have to differentiate your product from all others. If you are really lucky and you do all those things correctly, then maybe you can be one of the few that can turn it into a viable business.
What it strikes me is that there are a lot of cry babies out there that either have not invested enough or have enough skills to make a go of it. Apple does not owe you anything -- it is up to you to market it. You have to approach it like Apple would which means you have to differentiate your product and worth more to people to buy it than the other products -- even if the other products are lower priced.
All the app store did was give you a place where someone can enter the credit card and buy it.... Apple does not owe you anything.
As far as developers being afraid... guess what.... it is not that much different than normal business.... When I do business I don't go out of my way to stab companies that I am working with -- it is just not good business. I usually approach it with two faces.... one for when I am dealing directly - where I am more honest and then one that is a public face where I don't air any dirty laundry because it is not good business.
The construction site across the road from me probably employs 10x the labour (or more) than one in North America because of the availability of low cost labour making it affordable. That means that as labour became less affordable in North America it became redundant but efficiencies.
"you refer to jobs being made redundant. i don't believe plumber, carpenter, or surveyor have gone out of style since the days of the roman empire, and i don't see robots mixing and hauling concrete at the work site more cheaply any time soon"
Construction is not done the same way, and it will move even more towards prefabrication in the future. The old skills of carpentry are long gone for the most part.
The teach by topic sounds more like streaming at an early age. China does that because they cannot afford to give all students the same level of "higher education" so they stream people out earlier into more "technical vocations" earlier. This leads to a less flexible society that will not be able to adapt in the future. What you teach in school to some 15 year old may not be valid skills when they are 26. Teaching all the "subjects" to people in a "Cafeteria Services" program in an integrated way may seem like you are teaching them in a way that interests them, but in reality you are really streaming people at an early age into being a "cafeteria servant" and when those jobs are made redundant... so are most of those kids cum adults.
If you work in a large enterprise you will likely buy equipment that is certified to run on the OS that you are running, they will not go out and buy the newest -- hottest hardware which has not been certified to run it and replace the operating system with Windows 7. You will avoid the newest technology that is not certified by the manufacturer to run Windows 7. What the consumer buys and what the enterprise buys will not likely be the same hardware in all cases.
Xp was kept alive through Vista.... until Windows 7....
Windows 7 has been kept alive through Windows 8, 8.1 and Windows 10 is coming out in a matter of months.
This is the new Windows, get use to the new Windows if you want to continue using Windows....
Me, I stopped using Windows in 2007 and never looked back (other than the work computer which is Windows - but it is not my choice).
No new machines are being sold with Windows 7, although Enterprise is free to install Windows 7 on Windows 7 compatible hardware - but hardware/laptops not aimed for business may not be supported going forward. Laptop aimed at business will probably not be the leading edge hardware -- at least when it comes to Windows 7 installations.
Windows 7 days are past....
OS X Yosemite still supports my 2008 Mac Pro (with upgraded video cards ATI 5770).
There is a cost to trying to support legacy software written 10+ years ago..... The operating system has to jump through hoops and keep old obsolete code for APIs that have long been deprecated - it bloats the operating system, often turns operating system code into spaghetti and limits the operating system moving forward -- it also is ripe as a security threat. Most of the software usually works, there sometimes is one or two applications that were programmed using already deprecated APIs that need to be updated.... but then I seem to remember the nightmare that was Windows XP apps on Windows 7 because of the improvement in security. You even had them creating a virtual XP support to handle old programs - which in itself did not always work.
I have used VMware and not had an issue with networking - I can configure it many different ways.... the preferred way is just making it on the same network as the main computer (so if I use 10.1.1.11 for OS X, I use 10.1.1.12 for Windows).
As far as bare metal, that might be the case if you were gaming -- or -- a database (though I run an oracle database in my vmware)..... but if you are actually needing bare-metal for gaming - I would recommend getting a computer that is specialized (with better gaming hardware) than a mac.
Personally, I multi-task and booting solely into Windows would be extremely annoying to me.
This story will apply to not just Apple laptops, but quite a few new laptops going forward. For hardware (including drivers for all the devices built into the motherboard) it makes economic sense to build and test new drivers that are Windows 7 compatible since there is a large pool of people using Windows 7 on desktops that may buy the hardware as an upgrade. For laptop specific hardware for new laptops there is no upgrade market and all new laptops must be sold with Windows 8.1+. It does not make sense to build and test Windows 7 drivers for these devices since there is no real market to speak of. Be it new Apple laptops or other manufactures laptops, new hardware for laptops just will not have the drivers. Just testing a new driver costs millions of dollars. Apple has dropped Windows 7 support in bootcamp for new hardware. It does not make sense for Apple to invest millions of dollars to write and test drivers for hardware that has no hardware support for Windows 7.
"ActiveX is a software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly in the context of the World Wide Web. It was introduced in 1996 and is commonly used in its Windows operating system. In principle it is not dependent on Microsoft Windows, but in practice, most ActiveX controls require either Microsoft Windows or a Windows emulator. Most also require the client to be running on Intel x86 hardware, because they contain compiled code."
HTML5 is a standards based format, so is CSS. JavaScript has been standardized in the ECMAScript language specification.
Insurance increases can be considerable and ongoing (not one time) [it can add up to thousands of dollars per year].
But the real deterrent is loss of points leading to suspension or loss of license.
You really want to stop something, take their license away for incremental amounts of time.
Demerit points are much more of a deterrent to things like speeding in Canada (speeding while going at the same speed as traffic although is typically not enforced as speeding - i.e. normal speed on 401 is about 120 - 130 while the posted limit is 100....)
Caught for speeding 16+km and you lose 3 points, insurance goes up... and if you repeat you have to go to an interview... and at 15.... poof goes your license.
It is not considered a currency -- or you would run afoul of other law.... and it is not a security otherwise they would have run afoul of reporting / tax regulations....
Not an appeals court, that is several levels up. It may already be too late since you might be required to post a bond in the matter of 100s of millions of dollars while you are appealing - which in many cases force the company into settlement talks since that may not be affordable.
There should be a specialized court which handles patent cases right at the beginning of the process. Decisions would still be able to be appealed through the appropriate channels.
WIth Nuclear, Hydro, gas and coal you generate the amount of electricity that you expect the demand to be. The only time I ever had a problem with this type of power in Toronto is when a grid failure shut down the nuclear reactors and they had to do a cold restart. A once in a lifetime event. Rolling blackouts like what you mentioned often come from the lack of investment in generating supplies for the growth in usage (in addition to peak demand due to heat waves etc.). That type of blackout does not happen except when you have mismanagement in the grid or if you make it impossible to build new generating capacity.
When you talk about things like solar or wind -- your generation is not driven by demand.... you could have even a constant demand but if you have days without wind or a drop of 50%, or you need power at night when the sun goes down..... You still need generation capacity to fill that lack of power. People don't just cut back when the wind drops, they don't shut off all the lights at night..... they need a predictable amount of power. Solar and wind cannot produce that. You can build banks and banks of very expensive battery backup for when the grid fails (in my case locally it shuts off for 5 minutes every few days) if you are a company, but usually that is a stopgap measure that then for prolonged power outages switches over to gas generating backup generators (or some other fuel like that). This is the type of backup generating capacity for wind and solar - but no-one ever mentions it because it is a dirty little secret. They have mandates to buy power from home solar setups, they have to buy it whether there is a demand or not..... but there is no penalty if that same house which is on the grid fails to deliver power when people need it.... so there is a hidden subsidy of the grid supplier to buy backup power to supply both you and that house when the sun doesn't shine.
On top of the normal maintenance etc., the problem with the current crop of "renewable" energy is you cannot count on them producing enough energy when you actually need it. You may be able to count on a mean or average amount, but consumption is more of a constant. You have to have backup power (non-renewable) or very expensive storage systems to provide power when the wind dies down (or sun goes down, etc.) or you end up with rolling or regional blackouts when you don't have the power available. Those backup sources require maintenance and upkeep as well as the renewable energy.
When you hear puffery about how much the renewable energy will save - they tend to omit those backup plants etc. My father was given the option of "paying for" wind power in a coastal area or just the grid power.... when I mentioned that the electricity goes on the same grid and you don't get what you pay for (someone else might) and the cost of having someone else use the power that you are paying more for.... he opted for the normal power grid power. Without subsidies, it was more expensive.
They have to take the patent cases out of the regular court system where places like east texas can be used to load the dice. Maybe create a federal patent court that specializes in patent cases would do the job - so you cannot shop for the best venue.
They also have to make the plaintiff pay court costs for failed lawsuits plus maybe 10% of the claimed damages which would be split between the defendant and the courts/government. They also have to tighten up what is patentable, and for the most part software should not be patentable - it should be copyrightable only. Anything that is used for interoperability (APIs, interfaces and languages should be excluded).
Slashdot Mirror
There was a link on another webpage that pointed to that server in the first place.
Not only the most insecure set up, but he already had links to that insecure setup.
It is functional at it's core but not purely functional. I could write purely functional code inside Scala, it is more difficult with Swift. Simple things like flow control in Swift is just that.... flow control.... not functions. if in Scala is a ternary function - similar to java ternary if - but more verbose. Switch - same. On things like optional values - I do not have access to map them to something else, I have to unwrap them using "if let" flow control structure. Swift could easily add most of these in effectively make Scala redundant, but as the designer of the language said.... it is not a priority at this time (aka don't count on it).
Yes, Scala is every bit object-oriented as Swift (actually more so since everything in Scala is an object, while in Swift the same cannot be said). I have NEVER heard Odersky admit Scala is a disaster. He has said that it needs a fundamental rethink as in make it simpler and moving things from core to non-core etc. All languages need that though. Java could really really use a rethink at it's core as well.... any aging language can. There are areas (edge cases) in Scala that are problematic. The compiling of the language is really slow. And of course the manufacture of the jvm has determined that they want to become a malware distributor....
What I am looking for is something along the lines of Scalas object-oriented / functional language balance in an LLVM based compiler -- that is cross-platform/open. Swift could easily get close enough if they wanted to. Scala can get there as long as they don't require exact language compatibility between the jvm version and an llvm offshoot.
There is a vast difference between an interpreted language such as Python and a low level compiled language when you are talking about "reference counting". With a language such as Python it is really still garbage collection.
With a compiled language on the LLVM (high level transportable assembly language which in turn is turned into machine code) it is not actually a thread running garbage collection in the background it is the Clang/LLVM compiler inserting "free" memory calls used as it goes out of scope. This is of course a little simplified, but there is a difference.
Apple had garbage collection (optional) for use in objective-C up until they started releasing iDevices where it becomes a zero-sum game when it comes to inefficiency. When you are talking about a computer plugged into the wall -- you won't notice if an application is consuming n% more energy or not. When you have a finite amount of battery power, it becomes noticeable (especially for the iDevices, but it has had a knock on effect with laptops). Apple has worked hard both in the core operating system on how it implements cpu cycles through it's scheduling to save energy on laptops and in the application development platform itself to squeeze just a little more out of the battery which allows the battery to be smaller or the amount of time the system can operate on battery.
When java and smalltalk were created, a garbage collector solved more problems than it created since no one worried about efficiency.... but platforms have changed since that time and efficiency has to enter the equation.
And it went so well that these operating systems are still around today.... BTW which operating systems are we talking about?
Swift is a nice language, I get the feeling the creator/driving force behind it wants it open-source cross platform -- but no commitment yet (and likely will not be for years until it has completely matured). The only issue I have with Swift is that it does not fully embrace functional programming and is really an object-oriented programming language at heart (with some functional niceties) .... but then the language is designed for UI development and the UIs themselves are object-oriented.
I would really like some entity to get behind making an LLVM version of Scala -- or close to it (which would dump the JVM and of course the expectation of JVM garbage-collection).
I spent the last 45 minutes watching an introductory video on Rust and I believe it is a new exciting language that is badly needed. Yes there is a lot of language competitors out there, but most of those languages are higher level than C / C++. C / C++ have had very little competition in their end of the language spectrum. They are old, not very safe. Rust on the other hand is type/memory safe by default -- although you can run "unsafe" code within there by explicitly stating so and then the compiler relaxes the checking a bit (a reasonable compromise). Most people will not need much if any "unsafe" code to be performant.
The fact that there is another LLVM, cross platform compiler is also a plus for me.
That said, I don't write much C / C++ code because nothing I am writing needs it -- but those languages are still necessary (and very popular) so coming up with a newer competitor (not 40+ year old language)..... is great.... and exciting.
The end result is not going to "fragment" memory, it is about when and how memory management is done. Unfortunately for the sake of allowing programmers not to know what they are doing or what is going on they implemented garbage collection in object oriented languages like Java, which is generally fine in server applications that run in a VM.... but it has a cost to doing that. A better compromise (IMHO) is "Automatic Reference Counting" which is done at compile time and does not have to be programmed cluttering up your application..... BUT you have to be aware of memory management (which is a good thing for programmers to have to know) and not program cylindrical references where both references are strong. Best of both worlds (for the most part) without the unpredictable and resource "hungry" garbage collection running in the background. The side benefit is that you have C/C++ efficient code that can be compiled down to the machine level and not run in a vm
There are generally three options available:
Manual Memory Management:
- Cons:
1. Pain to code having to write code that does memory management and just adds extra bulk to a program
2. Easy to make simple mistakes that cause the system to crash or become unstable
- Benefits:
1. Instantly freed objects
2. Predictable behavour
3. Smooth Performance
Garbage Collection:
- Cons:
1. Garbage builds up
2. Nondeterministic
3. Performance stutters
4. Extra CPU cycles taken to have a process run in the background kicking in (drains battery on portable devices).
Benefits:
1. Development Ease
2. Don't have to understand Memory Management
3. Reduces Crashes
Automatic Reference Counting:
Cons:
1. Have to be aware of memory management and not program cylindrical references where both are strong references (actually have to understand what you are doing).
Benefits:
2. All of the Benefits AND Cons from the other two memory management schemes
3. "garbage" collection / memory management is inserted at compile time and is not a background thread running on your device.
So they basically selected a bad datatype and wrote a very inefficient program to handle manipulation of data and they use that as the basis to say that memory was the issue. The issue was programming without thought to what the computer was actually doing. Is this what these two Universities are teaching their students? Were they being purposely bad programmers to prove a point?
God help the world if these people ever have to program efficiently....
I find a number of facts to be in basic conflict in the report. Most developers can't make a living through the app store, yet they are afraid of Apple for some reason - even though they cannot make a living. First the App store makes it fairly simple for every tom, dick and harry to write an app and put it on the store shelves. They don't need to package it, they don't need to setup their own web-sales site.... The problem is that you have a bunch of app developers that think if they write some small app that a trail of customers will beat a path to them and buy it, they think that any stupid app will make money. A lot of small apps will drive down prices for those apps, the smaller the easier to make the app the more competition. I remember 30 years ago that there were many substantive applications to do some basic functionality... word processing. I don't know how many different ones were created, but there were quite a lot. I know my father had 9 installed on his Windows computer just to compare them himself (head of an institution) to see which ones were any good. Most of those companies went bankrupt quickly - even though there was substantive (much much more than most apps in the store) development put into them. Unfortunately the current generation seems to think they are somehow privileged and if they write something they should be able to make a living at it... it is not the way the world works. You have to compete, you have to invest time developing an app that you are passionate about, you have to risk losing time/money on the venture. You have to market your own app outside of the store, and you have to differentiate your product from all others. If you are really lucky and you do all those things correctly, then maybe you can be one of the few that can turn it into a viable business. What it strikes me is that there are a lot of cry babies out there that either have not invested enough or have enough skills to make a go of it. Apple does not owe you anything -- it is up to you to market it. You have to approach it like Apple would which means you have to differentiate your product and worth more to people to buy it than the other products -- even if the other products are lower priced. All the app store did was give you a place where someone can enter the credit card and buy it.... Apple does not owe you anything. As far as developers being afraid... guess what.... it is not that much different than normal business.... When I do business I don't go out of my way to stab companies that I am working with -- it is just not good business. I usually approach it with two faces.... one for when I am dealing directly - where I am more honest and then one that is a public face where I don't air any dirty laundry because it is not good business.
The construction site across the road from me probably employs 10x the labour (or more) than one in North America because of the availability of low cost labour making it affordable. That means that as labour became less affordable in North America it became redundant but efficiencies.
"you refer to jobs being made redundant. i don't believe plumber, carpenter, or surveyor have gone out of style since the days of the roman empire, and i don't see robots mixing and hauling concrete at the work site more cheaply any time soon"
Construction is not done the same way, and it will move even more towards prefabrication in the future. The old skills of carpentry are long gone for the most part.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Only so many jobs for each of these professions. In addition construction is even more cyclical than many other jobs out there - feast then famine.
The teach by topic sounds more like streaming at an early age. China does that because they cannot afford to give all students the same level of "higher education" so they stream people out earlier into more "technical vocations" earlier. This leads to a less flexible society that will not be able to adapt in the future. What you teach in school to some 15 year old may not be valid skills when they are 26. Teaching all the "subjects" to people in a "Cafeteria Services" program in an integrated way may seem like you are teaching them in a way that interests them, but in reality you are really streaming people at an early age into being a "cafeteria servant" and when those jobs are made redundant... so are most of those kids cum adults.
If you work in a large enterprise you will likely buy equipment that is certified to run on the OS that you are running, they will not go out and buy the newest -- hottest hardware which has not been certified to run it and replace the operating system with Windows 7. You will avoid the newest technology that is not certified by the manufacturer to run Windows 7. What the consumer buys and what the enterprise buys will not likely be the same hardware in all cases.
Xp was kept alive through Vista.... until Windows 7.... Windows 7 has been kept alive through Windows 8, 8.1 and Windows 10 is coming out in a matter of months. This is the new Windows, get use to the new Windows if you want to continue using Windows.... Me, I stopped using Windows in 2007 and never looked back (other than the work computer which is Windows - but it is not my choice). No new machines are being sold with Windows 7, although Enterprise is free to install Windows 7 on Windows 7 compatible hardware - but hardware/laptops not aimed for business may not be supported going forward. Laptop aimed at business will probably not be the leading edge hardware -- at least when it comes to Windows 7 installations. Windows 7 days are past....
OS X Yosemite still supports my 2008 Mac Pro (with upgraded video cards ATI 5770). There is a cost to trying to support legacy software written 10+ years ago..... The operating system has to jump through hoops and keep old obsolete code for APIs that have long been deprecated - it bloats the operating system, often turns operating system code into spaghetti and limits the operating system moving forward -- it also is ripe as a security threat. Most of the software usually works, there sometimes is one or two applications that were programmed using already deprecated APIs that need to be updated.... but then I seem to remember the nightmare that was Windows XP apps on Windows 7 because of the improvement in security. You even had them creating a virtual XP support to handle old programs - which in itself did not always work.
I have used VMware and not had an issue with networking - I can configure it many different ways.... the preferred way is just making it on the same network as the main computer (so if I use 10.1.1.11 for OS X, I use 10.1.1.12 for Windows). As far as bare metal, that might be the case if you were gaming -- or -- a database (though I run an oracle database in my vmware)..... but if you are actually needing bare-metal for gaming - I would recommend getting a computer that is specialized (with better gaming hardware) than a mac. Personally, I multi-task and booting solely into Windows would be extremely annoying to me.
This story will apply to not just Apple laptops, but quite a few new laptops going forward. For hardware (including drivers for all the devices built into the motherboard) it makes economic sense to build and test new drivers that are Windows 7 compatible since there is a large pool of people using Windows 7 on desktops that may buy the hardware as an upgrade. For laptop specific hardware for new laptops there is no upgrade market and all new laptops must be sold with Windows 8.1+. It does not make sense to build and test Windows 7 drivers for these devices since there is no real market to speak of. Be it new Apple laptops or other manufactures laptops, new hardware for laptops just will not have the drivers. Just testing a new driver costs millions of dollars. Apple has dropped Windows 7 support in bootcamp for new hardware. It does not make sense for Apple to invest millions of dollars to write and test drivers for hardware that has no hardware support for Windows 7.
"ActiveX is a software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly in the context of the World Wide Web. It was introduced in 1996 and is commonly used in its Windows operating system. In principle it is not dependent on Microsoft Windows, but in practice, most ActiveX controls require either Microsoft Windows or a Windows emulator. Most also require the client to be running on Intel x86 hardware, because they contain compiled code." HTML5 is a standards based format, so is CSS. JavaScript has been standardized in the ECMAScript language specification.
Insurance increases can be considerable and ongoing (not one time) [it can add up to thousands of dollars per year]. But the real deterrent is loss of points leading to suspension or loss of license. You really want to stop something, take their license away for incremental amounts of time.
Demerit points are much more of a deterrent to things like speeding in Canada (speeding while going at the same speed as traffic although is typically not enforced as speeding - i.e. normal speed on 401 is about 120 - 130 while the posted limit is 100....) Caught for speeding 16+km and you lose 3 points, insurance goes up... and if you repeat you have to go to an interview... and at 15.... poof goes your license.
It is not considered a currency -- or you would run afoul of other law.... and it is not a security otherwise they would have run afoul of reporting / tax regulations....
Not an appeals court, that is several levels up. It may already be too late since you might be required to post a bond in the matter of 100s of millions of dollars while you are appealing - which in many cases force the company into settlement talks since that may not be affordable. There should be a specialized court which handles patent cases right at the beginning of the process. Decisions would still be able to be appealed through the appropriate channels.
WIth Nuclear, Hydro, gas and coal you generate the amount of electricity that you expect the demand to be. The only time I ever had a problem with this type of power in Toronto is when a grid failure shut down the nuclear reactors and they had to do a cold restart. A once in a lifetime event. Rolling blackouts like what you mentioned often come from the lack of investment in generating supplies for the growth in usage (in addition to peak demand due to heat waves etc.). That type of blackout does not happen except when you have mismanagement in the grid or if you make it impossible to build new generating capacity. When you talk about things like solar or wind -- your generation is not driven by demand.... you could have even a constant demand but if you have days without wind or a drop of 50%, or you need power at night when the sun goes down..... You still need generation capacity to fill that lack of power. People don't just cut back when the wind drops, they don't shut off all the lights at night..... they need a predictable amount of power. Solar and wind cannot produce that. You can build banks and banks of very expensive battery backup for when the grid fails (in my case locally it shuts off for 5 minutes every few days) if you are a company, but usually that is a stopgap measure that then for prolonged power outages switches over to gas generating backup generators (or some other fuel like that). This is the type of backup generating capacity for wind and solar - but no-one ever mentions it because it is a dirty little secret. They have mandates to buy power from home solar setups, they have to buy it whether there is a demand or not..... but there is no penalty if that same house which is on the grid fails to deliver power when people need it.... so there is a hidden subsidy of the grid supplier to buy backup power to supply both you and that house when the sun doesn't shine.
On top of the normal maintenance etc., the problem with the current crop of "renewable" energy is you cannot count on them producing enough energy when you actually need it. You may be able to count on a mean or average amount, but consumption is more of a constant. You have to have backup power (non-renewable) or very expensive storage systems to provide power when the wind dies down (or sun goes down, etc.) or you end up with rolling or regional blackouts when you don't have the power available. Those backup sources require maintenance and upkeep as well as the renewable energy.
When you hear puffery about how much the renewable energy will save - they tend to omit those backup plants etc. My father was given the option of "paying for" wind power in a coastal area or just the grid power.... when I mentioned that the electricity goes on the same grid and you don't get what you pay for (someone else might) and the cost of having someone else use the power that you are paying more for.... he opted for the normal power grid power. Without subsidies, it was more expensive.
They have to take the patent cases out of the regular court system where places like east texas can be used to load the dice. Maybe create a federal patent court that specializes in patent cases would do the job - so you cannot shop for the best venue. They also have to make the plaintiff pay court costs for failed lawsuits plus maybe 10% of the claimed damages which would be split between the defendant and the courts/government. They also have to tighten up what is patentable, and for the most part software should not be patentable - it should be copyrightable only. Anything that is used for interoperability (APIs, interfaces and languages should be excluded).