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User: ChunderDownunder

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  1. Re:So, like Lisp on Dart Is Not the Language You Think It Is · · Score: 2

    I was going to say BitC but that language evolved away from s-expressions to something more Haskelly.

  2. Re:rather have money on Do Developers Need Free Perks To Thrive? · · Score: 1

    Cutting fizzy sugar water may make a difference to one's waistline, perhaps.

  3. Re:Nice. on Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority · · Score: 1

    Pasty Aryans aren't my fancy but whichever corner of the globe one visits there are to be found affluent well educated lonesome frauleins who find English-speakers uncouth.

    Pragmatically, learn German? :)

  4. Re:Indonesian, Korean and french on Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority · · Score: 2

    Our former, deposed, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd bignoted himself by declaring himself fluent in Mandarin. Needless to say, as PM he gave a few scripted speeches in the language, appearing prominently on the TV.

    But when push came to shove, Beijing told him to get stuffed in terms of foreign policy, so a fat load of good his supposed fluency did him.

    You'll hence probably find the average Australian is quite sceptical of the motives for this legislation. Learning languages is a good thing in itself but still... With Rudd still as a member of the government, the policy seems motivated by appeasing his supporters more than simply learning an Asian language for the greater good.

  5. Re:English... on Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority · · Score: 1

    Even so, your average Brazilian child will be taught Spanish as a foreign language in order to participate in trade with neighbouring countries (MERCOSUL).

  6. Re:Some Asian languages are more equal than others on Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority · · Score: 1

    It's important to the identity of the people of Timor Leste. For nearly 300 years they were under the Portuguese flag until the estado novo collapsed and the Indonesians invaded soon afterwards. Rightly or wrongly, the government has reasserted its Lusophonic identity, making Portuguese again an official language alongside Tetum.

    As for not being able to "do it themselves", since independence in 2002 they've relied economically on benefactors such as its neighbour Australia and the UN to provide aid. With Portugal suffering under austerity and Brazil itself an "emerging nation", only the committed from those nations will cross oceans to volunteer their time as native teachers.

    I could teach English or I could (after some training) teach both. You might say my dreams of volunteering are fanciful but 'gap year' participation is a more concrete response than just buying their coffee. Is it any more fanciful than Germans (whom I knew) teaching English as volunteers in Peru?

  7. Re:Exactly Backwards on Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority · · Score: 1

    We read and write the Queen's tongue to a high level of mutual intelligibility.

    I cringe more that the world is learning "American" as a second language and having to re-educate them that there's a 'u' in colour, an 'i' in aluminium and theatre, kilometre etc.

  8. Re:Meanwhile in Quebec... on Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority · · Score: 1

    It's a difficult accent, to be sure. To an untrained ear it sounds little like the language I waded through as a teenager.

    During my travels through western europe, I found french canadians to be a darn friendly bunch - compared to other north americans. :) They were fairly accommodating in switching to English in a glorious Canadian accent...

  9. Re:Learning is great on Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority · · Score: 1

    Russian was taught at my school during the 80s. It dropped fairly quickly from the Australian curriculum after Gorby was deposed by Boris and the Berlin wall was torn down.

    Arabic is taught downunder but generally to Muslim kids in Islamic schools.

  10. Some Asian languages are more equal than others on Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority · · Score: 1

    So, I'm semi-fluent in Spanish and I wrote to my federal politician about incentives for learning Portuguese - no response.

    Who will teach the people of Timor Leste their own official language? Certainly not interested volunteers from Australia.

  11. Re:Charge in 5 seconds on Charge Your Cellphone In 20 Seconds (Eventually) · · Score: 1

    We need a secondary battery to 'sleep' a device, so that you can rip out the main battery without powering on and off. :)

  12. Re:Won't help with 'to-the-metal' apps on Intel Rolls Out "Beacon Mountain" Android Dev Platform For Atom · · Score: 1

    I thought the issue was that developers had written asm to extract maximum performance from the CPU. With the inference that shoddy programmers wouldn't cleanly decouple arch specific code.

    If it's arm-specific C code then intel just needs to supply the header files and reverse engineer the libraries to link against.

    Of course app vendors need to see a financial benefit in porting.

  13. Re:Something is wrong on Bill Gates Regains the Position of World's Richest Person · · Score: 1

    In 'legacy' software, sure.

    But isn't that one of the selling points of Win8 apps that they'll run independent of resolution on phones, Win RT tablets and desktops?

  14. Re:Irrelevant? on Ubuntu Developers Revisit Replacing Firefox With Chromium · · Score: 1

    Some of us are lazy to do a fresh install.

    I'm still using the same HD I ripped out of a dead laptop from 2008, originally running Intrepid.

    raring's KDE runs well enough that I don't care to upgrade to vanilla debian testing.

  15. Re:Well... this is going to be awkward... on Ubuntu Developers Revisit Replacing Firefox With Chromium · · Score: 1

    Does the PDF viewer run acceptably fast on a modern machine?

    I'm running a 9yo machine and pdf.js takes forever to render. When Okular is embedded (kparts integration), it's snappy.

    pdf.js might be a good choice on Windows where you have that Adobe monstrosity updating itself every few days (I have used sumatra in the past) but KDE's viewer runs faster on old Linux desktops. :-)

  16. Re: Fine by me on Ubuntu Developers Revisit Replacing Firefox With Chromium · · Score: 1

    We had that approach back in the 90s with Metacrawler, which at the time aggregated better search results than, say, DEC's altavista.

    Then Google showed up...

    Privacy concerns aside, does DDG deliver 'better' search results than what caused Metacrawler to bite the dust?

  17. Re:how will this be funded? on Ubuntu Touch: The Other Linux OS For Your Phone · · Score: 1

    Presumably they'll create an appstore and encourage porting of Qt apps from Symbian/Meego/BB10 (however few in number)

  18. Re:great news for the environment on Engineering the $325,000 Burger · · Score: 1

    Cattle do belch methane and there have been studies to select low emission pasture.

    But agreed, climate change has been written off as a vegan socialist conspiracy by various conservatives and the suggestion that we should eat meat from a science lab only fuels that belief.

    On the other hand eating less beef and feasting on animals with, from the grazing perspective, a lower carbon footprint (e.g. goat curry, kangaroo steaks) mightn't be such a bad thing for the environment.

  19. Re:Should I throw up now? on Engineering the $325,000 Burger · · Score: 1

    puss?

    We're eating cats now?

  20. Re:crappy hardware on Real World Stats Show Chromebooks Are Struggling · · Score: 1

    Typing depends on the model. The keyboard on my 12" laptop (Core 2 Duo) isn't that much smaller than a full-size.

    The key-width (from Tab to Enter) measures 27.5cm. On my regular keyboard, it's 28.5cmThere's no numeric keyboard, and the arrow and home/end keys are squished/missing but after gaining muscle memory, it's not an unpleasant experience - e.g. individual keys for the alphabet aren't too shrunken - less than 1mm smaller for each key.

    As for the screen, I suspect your netbook is 600 pixels high, i.e. deliberate obsolescence. Most chromebooks ought nowadays come with WXGA (1280Ã--768) - where 1024x768 has been the 'standard' screen size for over a decade.

    Don't equate a 4 year old atom with a crummy CPU, keyboard and screen against all small form factor machines.

  21. Re:Doing better than.. on Real World Stats Show Chromebooks Are Struggling · · Score: 1

    End user personal desktops, sure.

    But Chrome OS is targeted to corporates that have flocked to web-based intranet applications because of the reduced maintenance.

    e.g. complex installation of registry settings, third party component dependencies, group policy, configuration of network resources, firewall issues, requiring a particular version of the JRE or .Net runtime on client desktops, security implications - these are all reduced if the interface is the browser.

  22. Re:Sorry, but... on KDevelop 4.5 Released · · Score: 1

    C-x M-c M-butterfly ?

  23. Re:Qt Creator. on KDevelop 4.5 Released · · Score: 1

    VS and Xcode dominate their respective platforms, obviously.

    Eclipse grew out of a Java IDE to become something of a universal platform. The env for Java excels but 'foreign' languages not to the same level of polish. (e.g. I've tinkered with scala and jruby)

    So yeah, more power to an IDE tailored to getting the fundamentals of barebones C++/KDE done well.

  24. Re:Afraid of change on Eric Schmidt: Google Glass Critics 'Afraid of Change,' Society Will Adapt · · Score: 0

    Can an iPad make phone calls? Does an iPad fit in a jeans pocket?

    Does an iPad include developer tools to self-host development?

    It's a niche and as someone with smartphone, laptop and desktop I have enough technology in my life.

  25. Re:Afraid of change on Eric Schmidt: Google Glass Critics 'Afraid of Change,' Society Will Adapt · · Score: 1

    Bulltish.

    My local cinema still instructs people to turn off before entering.

    With 'flight mode' accessible from the power menu, not disabling calls is still plain rude in 2013.

    If you must be on call, sit near the exit and set it to vibrate only.