Sometimes I wish I lived in Europe where a 2 week vacation is not considered a bad thing.
Two weeks? Four weeks in the summer, one around February and another at Autumn (and, depending on your job, you can either take the latter two then or combine them with your summer vacation). And the time between xmas and new year is pretty much dead business-wise, so at least at our company everyone "works at home" then (basically answering emails if needed, nothing else). I can't imagine having only two weeks, let alone less.
In a way, that is already happening - 4.2 features "quick settings" which have been around for ages in TouchWiz, for example. Whether vanilla Android does it better than Samsung is debatable, but personally I don't mind that such features can go "upstream".
WRT to the article - I haven't got a Note, but I have multi-window support on my stock (international) S3, and mostly it is a gimmick. It doesn't offer the "cascade view" as in TFA, but you can have two apps side-by-side. And unless doing very much of copypasteing, there's no point to it. However, I really don't see how this functionality fragments Android. It's not like any apps I run require the functionality, most will simply be hindered by the lack of space.
Uhh, what? Care to elaborate? I'm not saying JS is perfect, far from it; strict mode helps a bit to get rid of some of the retardness. But once you wrap your head around scoping/hoisting (which is odd, granted, if coming from a language with a C-like syntax) it's not that bad, quite expressive at times even.
Now by adjusting $base-color border and header colors are changed as well. And this is a very trivial example - if you write CSS even semi-professionally I suggest you look into it. The documentation (as always) is not the best available, but IMHO the framework is very much worth learning/using.
the way JSON stores represents dates is just aweful
Full of awe? Anyway, as per the spec, dates are not supported as a value. Some implementations incorrectly use something like "new Date(2013, 0, 7)" to store dates, but this is officially not sanctioned and might not work as intended. But really, if you are storing dates in JSON (or anywhere else where a native date object is not available), there's only one format. You can sort by it in the string form, and get a date object simply by using new Date(isoStr).
You shouldn't modify the built-in objects if you're building a framework or something to be used by other people; however, in my opinion modifying some of the objects is fine for internal use (not modifying the Object prototype though, that's plain evil). So to get a C#-like string formatting (nothing fancy, just replacing {0} with the first argument, {1} with the next and so on), try:
String.prototype.format = function() {
var formatted = this.toString();
for (var i = 0; i < arguments.length; i++) {
formatted = formatted.replace(new RegExp('\\{' + i + '\\}', 'g'), arguments[i]);
}
return formatted;
}
And then '{0} {1}'.format('Hello', 'world') returns... well, I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out.
No one has anything as flat and integrated as the Touch Cover. No one. The Android tablets that do have kick stands are not the full width of the device; they're like little arms that extend, which prevents them from being useful in your lap, unless there is a newer Android tablet that I haven't seen, but I believe none of the mainstream ones have them built in anyway.
There you go. It's not that new either. Now, granted, the keyboard dock is not as flat as the Touch Cover, but a) it has a built-in battery, extending the battery life to about 16 hrs (depending on your usage, obviously), b) it has a full-sized SD card slot in addition to the microSD slot on the tablet itself, and a full-sized USB port, and c) you can use it like a regular laptop, choosing how much you want to tilt the display. Oh, and the display is 1920x1200 IPS+ (the "+" in there means it can be used in pretty much direct sunlight, it's really really bright if needed).
In fact it is. With an enterprise signed app, you can put an IPA file anywhere you like, and have someone just point any iOS device at it to download and install. There is no need to know the device UDID ahead of time.
I'm aware of this as we are developing an iPad app at the moment, but it's not really the same is it? I mean, should there be a new version of the app, the users must download the new version (and know about its existence in the first place). As far as I can tell, this "private app store" allows notifications of updates like Google Play does. This really doesn't concern us as the actual iOS app changes very seldom, we're able to update the data separately (TouchDB <-> CouchDB rocks), but I think the Google approach here has some merit.
I have an SIII (the international version, so the specs are slightly different, your experience might differ) and got the JB update at the end of October, and really, I see very little difference. Some animations are different, but despite "project butter" I don't find it to be any snappier. Not less either though. The only really noticeable difference is Google Now - which at least for me is rather useless, it tells me the best route to home (but I use public transport) and tells me with navigation info when to leave for a hockey game (I loaded an ical file for the team I follow into my personal calendar), but very seldom do I watch the games in the arenas, I prefer the comfort of my own couch (the beer is cheaper as well).
I prefer Gimp, mostly due to the fact that I've used it more and prefer to work with Linux whenever possible (Gimp without a decent WM/under Windows is not that nice); at any rate, I'm far more proficient with it than I am with Photoshop. That doesn't change the fact that the files I receive from ad agencies are PSDs, and while Gimp supports the format up to a point, it really doesn't. So yes, there are people that actually need Photoshop - in my case it's a glorified image viewer really (splitting layers into PNGs and working with Gimp from there), but still I'd be really pissed off if I couldn't run it, even for such a tiny purpose. While I am a huge fan of free (as in speech) software, "recompile and go" is not always an option.
WRT divxfinland.org, when I've tried their subtitles, if found the quality to be quite on par with the professional subtitles found in TV / movies. Yes, there are some amateurish mistakes every now and then - I don't bother to correct them as they can be rather hilarious, but it's not like the official ones don't suffer from those (there are some famous examples, like "the odds are against us" becomes "Oddit ovat meitä vastaan" - that is, the people/species called Odds are against us. Mind you, this was Star Trek, so it's not entirely unreasonable to assume some odd-looking aliens being called Odds, but still). I've also found the community can be very creative with word plays as well - obviously they're never translated word-to-word, but sometimes very funnily referencing local events/places/people.
But one case where I've found the community subs to exceed the commercial ones consistently are dates and numbers. And this is an issue I've never really understood, one would think this is such a fundamental part of any language that a professional translater would never get these wrong. But it's far too common to see something like 13 being 15, or Tuesday being Wednesday, or something similar. Boggles the mind. The amateurs do a far better job in this regard.
The site was founded in 2003. At the time, it (and XviD) was quite popular. I suppose it would be something like MKVFinland.org now, but as people are already used to the name, why bother.
Reading comprehension FAIL. You seem to have missed the point of the message I replied to, which implied that Apple was first in introducing a high PPI phone. Which is false. And FWIW I don't think Apple has cracked the software issue, simply doubling (or quadrupling really) the resolution is hardly an elegant solution. I think Android does this better, the apps on Infinity (1920x1200) look pretty much the same as they do on the original Transformer (1280x800), that is, the physical dimensions are the same, but everything is crispier on Inifinity.
The iPhone had, as the first smartphone, a high enough PPI that you can't distinguish between pixels
Well, this phone doesn't quite match the "retinaness" of the latest iPhones (the definition seems to be pure marketing; my Transformer Infinity is not as high-PPI as the "new iPad", but according to Apple's official gospel whether a display is retina or not is both a factor of DPI and viewing distance - and I use mine almost always docked, and it has a higher PPI than the retina MacBook, so arguably it's more retina), but still manages a respectable PPI of 313. In 2007. How do you like them apples?
Actually, if you listen to the end of the album very closely (you might need to turn up the volume), there's a person saying "There is no dark side of the Moon really... matter of fact it's all dark."
The weirdest thing for me is that these patents wars are also fought in Europe, where software patents aren't recognized.
National patent offices have different rules, but the European Patent Convention prohibits patenting software "as such" - the wording is very vague, and very trivial software patents have been issued. However, their enforeability remains quite uncertain and depends on the nation/court.
The US/LTE version has 2GB RAM and a dual-core processor, the international version has 1GB RAM and a quad-core processor. This being slashdot I haven't read TFA, but at least the summary seems slightly confused in this regard.
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes I wish I lived in Europe where a 2 week vacation is not considered a bad thing.
Two weeks? Four weeks in the summer, one around February and another at Autumn (and, depending on your job, you can either take the latter two then or combine them with your summer vacation). And the time between xmas and new year is pretty much dead business-wise, so at least at our company everyone "works at home" then (basically answering emails if needed, nothing else). I can't imagine having only two weeks, let alone less.
In a way, that is already happening - 4.2 features "quick settings" which have been around for ages in TouchWiz, for example. Whether vanilla Android does it better than Samsung is debatable, but personally I don't mind that such features can go "upstream".
WRT to the article - I haven't got a Note, but I have multi-window support on my stock (international) S3, and mostly it is a gimmick. It doesn't offer the "cascade view" as in TFA, but you can have two apps side-by-side. And unless doing very much of copypasteing, there's no point to it. However, I really don't see how this functionality fragments Android. It's not like any apps I run require the functionality, most will simply be hindered by the lack of space.
My "smart" TV runs Linux, and Netflix, just fine.
I know, typo on the Internet, hilarious. (comma is the correct syntax)
inability to manipulate object prototypes
Uhh, what? Care to elaborate? I'm not saying JS is perfect, far from it; strict mode helps a bit to get rid of some of the retardness. But once you wrap your head around scoping/hoisting (which is odd, granted, if coming from a language with a C-like syntax) it's not that bad, quite expressive at times even.
More like constants, I wasn't being clear enough. With Compass I can do something like (as a contrived example):
$base-color: #aaa;
$border-color: darken($base-color, 20%);
$header-color: lighten($base-color: 20%);
Now by adjusting $base-color border and header colors are changed as well. And this is a very trivial example - if you write CSS even semi-professionally I suggest you look into it. The documentation (as always) is not the best available, but IMHO the framework is very much worth learning/using.
the way JSON stores represents dates is just aweful
Full of awe? Anyway, as per the spec, dates are not supported as a value. Some implementations incorrectly use something like "new Date(2013, 0, 7)" to store dates, but this is officially not sanctioned and might not work as intended. But really, if you are storing dates in JSON (or anywhere else where a native date object is not available), there's only one format. You can sort by it in the string form, and get a date object simply by using new Date(isoStr).
I find CSS to be quite lacking. Lack of variables for one is very irritating. Thank $DEITY for Compass.
You shouldn't modify the built-in objects if you're building a framework or something to be used by other people; however, in my opinion modifying some of the objects is fine for internal use (not modifying the Object prototype though, that's plain evil). So to get a C#-like string formatting (nothing fancy, just replacing {0} with the first argument, {1} with the next and so on), try:
String.prototype.format = function() {
var formatted = this.toString();
for (var i = 0; i < arguments.length; i++) {
formatted = formatted.replace(new RegExp('\\{' + i + '\\}', 'g'), arguments[i]);
}
return formatted;
}
And then '{0} {1}'.format('Hello', 'world') returns... well, I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out.
No one has anything as flat and integrated as the Touch Cover. No one. The Android tablets that do have kick stands are not the full width of the device; they're like little arms that extend, which prevents them from being useful in your lap, unless there is a newer Android tablet that I haven't seen, but I believe none of the mainstream ones have them built in anyway.
There you go. It's not that new either. Now, granted, the keyboard dock is not as flat as the Touch Cover, but a) it has a built-in battery, extending the battery life to about 16 hrs (depending on your usage, obviously), b) it has a full-sized SD card slot in addition to the microSD slot on the tablet itself, and a full-sized USB port, and c) you can use it like a regular laptop, choosing how much you want to tilt the display. Oh, and the display is 1920x1200 IPS+ (the "+" in there means it can be used in pretty much direct sunlight, it's really really bright if needed).
In fact it is. With an enterprise signed app, you can put an IPA file anywhere you like, and have someone just point any iOS device at it to download and install. There is no need to know the device UDID ahead of time.
I'm aware of this as we are developing an iPad app at the moment, but it's not really the same is it? I mean, should there be a new version of the app, the users must download the new version (and know about its existence in the first place). As far as I can tell, this "private app store" allows notifications of updates like Google Play does. This really doesn't concern us as the actual iOS app changes very seldom, we're able to update the data separately (TouchDB <-> CouchDB rocks), but I think the Google approach here has some merit.
I have an SIII (the international version, so the specs are slightly different, your experience might differ) and got the JB update at the end of October, and really, I see very little difference. Some animations are different, but despite "project butter" I don't find it to be any snappier. Not less either though. The only really noticeable difference is Google Now - which at least for me is rather useless, it tells me the best route to home (but I use public transport) and tells me with navigation info when to leave for a hockey game (I loaded an ical file for the team I follow into my personal calendar), but very seldom do I watch the games in the arenas, I prefer the comfort of my own couch (the beer is cheaper as well).
I prefer Gimp, mostly due to the fact that I've used it more and prefer to work with Linux whenever possible (Gimp without a decent WM/under Windows is not that nice); at any rate, I'm far more proficient with it than I am with Photoshop. That doesn't change the fact that the files I receive from ad agencies are PSDs, and while Gimp supports the format up to a point, it really doesn't. So yes, there are people that actually need Photoshop - in my case it's a glorified image viewer really (splitting layers into PNGs and working with Gimp from there), but still I'd be really pissed off if I couldn't run it, even for such a tiny purpose. While I am a huge fan of free (as in speech) software, "recompile and go" is not always an option.
WRT divxfinland.org, when I've tried their subtitles, if found the quality to be quite on par with the professional subtitles found in TV / movies. Yes, there are some amateurish mistakes every now and then - I don't bother to correct them as they can be rather hilarious, but it's not like the official ones don't suffer from those (there are some famous examples, like "the odds are against us" becomes "Oddit ovat meitä vastaan" - that is, the people/species called Odds are against us. Mind you, this was Star Trek, so it's not entirely unreasonable to assume some odd-looking aliens being called Odds, but still). I've also found the community can be very creative with word plays as well - obviously they're never translated word-to-word, but sometimes very funnily referencing local events/places/people.
But one case where I've found the community subs to exceed the commercial ones consistently are dates and numbers. And this is an issue I've never really understood, one would think this is such a fundamental part of any language that a professional translater would never get these wrong. But it's far too common to see something like 13 being 15, or Tuesday being Wednesday, or something similar. Boggles the mind. The amateurs do a far better job in this regard.
The site was founded in 2003. At the time, it (and XviD) was quite popular. I suppose it would be something like MKVFinland.org now, but as people are already used to the name, why bother.
I prefer this version
You have a great idea for making TV shows and movies about Asimov's Foundation series? Sorry, you can't, his widow won't let you.
While I agree on principle, sometimes it's a good thing.
Another one for me - the ability to drag-and-extract a single file from Ark to Konsole. But I agree, KDE4 is currently way past KDE3.
Reading comprehension FAIL. You seem to have missed the point of the message I replied to, which implied that Apple was first in introducing a high PPI phone. Which is false. And FWIW I don't think Apple has cracked the software issue, simply doubling (or quadrupling really) the resolution is hardly an elegant solution. I think Android does this better, the apps on Infinity (1920x1200) look pretty much the same as they do on the original Transformer (1280x800), that is, the physical dimensions are the same, but everything is crispier on Inifinity.
The iPhone had, as the first smartphone, a high enough PPI that you can't distinguish between pixels
Well, this phone doesn't quite match the "retinaness" of the latest iPhones (the definition seems to be pure marketing; my Transformer Infinity is not as high-PPI as the "new iPad", but according to Apple's official gospel whether a display is retina or not is both a factor of DPI and viewing distance - and I use mine almost always docked, and it has a higher PPI than the retina MacBook, so arguably it's more retina), but still manages a respectable PPI of 313. In 2007. How do you like them apples?
Actually, if you listen to the end of the album very closely (you might need to turn up the volume), there's a person saying "There is no dark side of the Moon really... matter of fact it's all dark."
You seem to be trying
The weirdest thing for me is that these patents wars are also fought in Europe, where software patents aren't recognized.
National patent offices have different rules, but the European Patent Convention prohibits patenting software "as such" - the wording is very vague, and very trivial software patents have been issued. However, their enforeability remains quite uncertain and depends on the nation/court.
If I challenged you to come up with a big name Scandinavian movie director, could you do it?
Ingmar Bergman? Lars von Trier?
The US/LTE version has 2GB RAM and a dual-core processor, the international version has 1GB RAM and a quad-core processor. This being slashdot I haven't read TFA, but at least the summary seems slightly confused in this regard.