I agree - if we must have software patents, they should only be granted when pseudo code or real code is supplied with the patent. Anything with less than a few hundred lines of code (excluding comments) gets instantly discarded as obvious.
Ummmm... no, they've cheated in that screen shot by removing the (admittedly pointless) header above the list of files to compensate for the extra space taken up by the ribbon bar. We don't know whether the header is gone completely or if they changed a configuration option, but either way this is not a like-for-like comparison: there is less available space for the application.
I used the bloody ribbon in Outlook until I just couldn't stand it any more. Its the Exchange web interface for me now, which has the added advantage, in chrome at least, of using *much* less memory than Outlook.
That's as maybe, but we should be replacing that old Qt3 code anyway - and its something we can do now on the KDE4 frameworks. Do so may even give benefits and improvements to KDE4 beyond removing dependencies on obsolete libraries - the obvious one being less packages (think small form factor) once QT3Support is removed completely.
As far as I am aware, there is some activity to gradually work through the remaining QT3 dependencies and remove them.
You needn't be so specific in targeting the conservatives......The EU even do it with national referendums
The EU Parliament has had a right wing majority since 1999 and right wing president since 2004, so in this context the second Irish election was imposed by conservatives. You could argue that European Conservatives are somewhat to the left of US Democrats, I suppose...
In any case, I'm not sure I would equate a referendum with a scientific study.
Sorry, but we *do* have software patents again as far as I can tell. There was a brief spell between 2006 and 2008 when we didn't, but they are back and in full effect.
Quoting from
"...permitting claims to computer programs if claims to a method performed by running a suitably programmed computer or to a computer programmed to carry out the method were themselves allowable."
I am not a lawyer, but to me that means pretty much any software patent will be accepted provided the language of the patent is suitably constructed. This is similar, as far as I can tell, to the way that software patents became allowable in the U.S.
Sadly the software I'm talking does a lot of bit-packing to compress in-memory data. I've not analysed this code in detail, but I'm pretty sure that it makes too many assumptions. Annoyingly, in these days of giga-bytes of memory the whole memory packing stuff is probably completely unnecessary.
Oh well, I've moved on and it is someone else's problem now!
While this isn't only Microsoft's fault I think the Microsoft and Microsoft third parties have been complacent about the supremacy of the Intel architecture. Open source, conversely, has a complete software stack for many architectures - and most of that is written in C or C++! Why can't closed source achieve the same?
In any case, this article is about Intel scaring people away from ARM, and not really about Microsoft or its ecosystem at all.
Some of the legacy projects I've worked on would have a hard time supporting 64bit x86, never mind an architecture that changes the endienness. Yeah, yeah... you can say what you like - this software was written in the 90s for DOS and went through various 'upgrades' to get it working on Windows. People were 100% confident that the code would only ever have to compile for an x86 machine, so they simply didn't worry about it - even if they were aware that things like byte order or number of registers are not guaranteed. At this point the only sensible solution is to bin it and start again, but that's hard to sell to the management and customers in terms of cost and lead time.
Conversely, open source has a great history of supporting multiple architectures - that's why there is a complete software stack for ARM (and MIPS and PowerPC and...) more or less as soon as the hardware products hit the shelves.
tl;dr Yes, there are plenty of old but never the less very useful and actively used Windows applications that can't simply be recompiled for ARM.
When KDE is built for mobiles (or tablets) lots of stuff can be compiled out because its not necessary for the mobile platform. So, yes, in a sense there is such a switch...
I bet you 100% of users will tell the difference between the noise from a SSD and a HDD. This and a suitable (ARM?) passively cooled box would make an ideal media center/general browsing PC. I know that my laptop is eerily quiet now, and I wouldn't want it any other way. Ok, maybe I'm very sensitive, but I find the noise from HDDs incredibly annoying.
I'd also note that my old Dell laptop is pretty ancient - must be nearly 10 years old now. When I swapped the 60G HDD for a 60G SDD two years ago there was a noticeable jump in performance to the extent that I no longer anticipate replacing it until such a time as it breaks.
Isn't the guy who did that comparison involved with the open source h.264 codec? You could argue that he has some interest in h.264 being the dominant standard, and as such chose worst case video clips. Also, consider that improvements are still being made to vp8 (and h.264, I imagine). Is there a more recent test, preferably by someone with no vested interests in either codec?
And with good reason too: Google is being charged (probably a lot of cash) by MPEG-LA to use h264: h264 is *not* free for content providers. It is Google's right, and a duty to their shareholders, to find a cheaper alternative, and they have.
At risk of re-iterating the grand-parent: MPEG-LA is using its monopoly in video codecs to charge content providers large lumps of cash because no viable alternative was available - until just about now.
The French will be quite annoyed if you get rid of caps lock as their numbers are all in the shift position making caps lock pretty much mandatory if you are entering long numbers.
He claims that he tried to, but the prosecutor in Sweden wouldn't let him or even agree to a meeting with him or his lawyer. Eventually he asked the prosecutor if he could leave the country, she gave the all clear and he left.
Most desktop systems may have WINS installed, but those oh so important servers probably don't (why on earth would google install samba on all its linux boxen, for example?). Besides, you've somewhat glossed over the issue with "Write a resolver that mimics WINS to the client and then behind the scenes use a modern P2P encrypted network." That's the hard bit - whether its DNS or WINS resolution is a mere technical detail. Building a system that can provide reliable, quick and above all *trustworthy* resolution over p2p is difficult. I hope he/they can find a way, but I doubt that they will.
This is a classic race to the bottom scenario: unless every country has the exact same tax regime, the argument that there should be lower taxes will remain - right up until there is no tax at all, and thus no - or very limited - government; a complete privatisation of the state. That may or may not be a good thing, but this also extends to 'hidden' taxes, like keeping a safe working environment, paying a fair wage and so on.
Really? This seems very unlikely as there is no mention in the license and the repository is a SQL Server database. Even if this were true, Subversion is a technology that is in decline. DVCS offers substantial advantages.
"I'm really not sure where all the TFS hate comes from."
It comes from using SourceSafe, Subversion, ClearCase and, more recently, Git. Doesn't stand up to any of them except possibly SourceSafe - though that's hardly a great accolade.
"It's heavily integrated with VS..."
And that's part of the problem. What if I don't/can't use VisualStudio? For example, our database design is done in Erwin. The hoops we have to go through to make sure that TFS doesn't get its knickers in a twist! Maybe its because Erwin generates binary files (TFS sends the whole file not diffs, which makes the whole thing even slower than it is normally). In contrast, Notepad++, WinMerge, File Explorer and even VisualStudio seamlessly integrate with Tortoise/SVN making my workflow seamless and painless. The difference between the two is striking. Another example: We generate SQL scripts from Erwin and then check these scripts into TFS. When TFS sees that these files have changed (even though it is usually just the date stamp that has changed), it will download all the SQL scripts (there are lots of them!). For some reason this process takes 10 times longer than a normal refresh - I can wait 20 minutes for it to complete, instead of about 2 minutes. Why does it even need to download the files that are the same except for the date stamp? 20 minutes x once a week x a four year project... Wow, what a waste of time!
"Check out/check in seems like a tedious process"
Check out/Check in IS a tedious process when you realize its completely redundant. TFS has an option to remove this requirement, however management seems to think this is a good idea as 'it helps avoid merges'. Face/Palm. Case in point: Our developers are split across two sites, and I often fly between them. While working on the Subversion based project, I worked on the plane. My workflow was essentially uninterrupted. Now I'm working on the TFS based project, I am forever having to bring up file explorer to change Read/Write permissions. If I want to add a file to a project... well, its easier to wait until I arrive at my destination. With a DVCS my workflow would be *exactly* the same - and I'd even have a full history of all the files!
"There is no integration with Windows Explorer."
Yes, there is if you install the TFS Power Tools. I don't recommend it though as it seems to screw the performance of Windows.
TFS is not a source control system, its a developer control system designed to allow middle management to fiddle with security, lock files and generally dick about with the development process. If you really want that kind of functionality, I'm sure there are better ways. Avoid at all costs.
Not the GP, but as someone who has used several VCS, I have to say that there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING to like about TFS. Its nearly as bad as VisualSourceSafe, and I'm not joking when I say I think they built a.Net service to wrap a VSS back-end. Besides the god-awful performance (it is sloooooow), you can't work off-line (which is great, because TFS will often stop working), the user interface is random and inconsistent (some places will let you view a file's history, others won't for example). It has an obsessively complex security model that, no doubt, keeps middle management feeling all warm and fuzzy - but often breaks. The integration with Windows File Explorer is bat-shit-crazy and SLOOOOOW. The whole system seems to try and track all local changes, in real time, and fails - editing a file with notepad instead of in VisualStudio/TFS will confuse the hell out of it. Getting latest version doesn't always get the latest version - we've got used to using 'force get latest' and risking over writing local changes. And that's before you consider that the technology, even if it worked well, is a decade or more out of date! Oh, and as an added bonus, your code and history gets locked up in a proprietary format. Avoid at all costs.
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I agree - if we must have software patents, they should only be granted when pseudo code or real code is supplied with the patent. Anything with less than a few hundred lines of code (excluding comments) gets instantly discarded as obvious.
We though I might change with Cameron. Well, it didn't.
Speak for yourself, but while I hoped it would change with Blair, but I have no delusions about Cameron.
A manager needs to be stupid not to realize this kind of proof of concept.
You do realise this is HP we are talking about here?
Ummmm... no, they've cheated in that screen shot by removing the (admittedly pointless) header above the list of files to compensate for the extra space taken up by the ribbon bar. We don't know whether the header is gone completely or if they changed a configuration option, but either way this is not a like-for-like comparison: there is less available space for the application.
I used the bloody ribbon in Outlook until I just couldn't stand it any more. Its the Exchange web interface for me now, which has the added advantage, in chrome at least, of using *much* less memory than Outlook.
That's as maybe, but we should be replacing that old Qt3 code anyway - and its something we can do now on the KDE4 frameworks. Do so may even give benefits and improvements to KDE4 beyond removing dependencies on obsolete libraries - the obvious one being less packages (think small form factor) once QT3Support is removed completely.
As far as I am aware, there is some activity to gradually work through the remaining QT3 dependencies and remove them.
You needn't be so specific in targeting the conservatives... ...The EU even do it with national referendums
The EU Parliament has had a right wing majority since 1999 and right wing president since 2004, so in this context the second Irish election was imposed by conservatives. You could argue that European Conservatives are somewhat to the left of US Democrats, I suppose...
In any case, I'm not sure I would equate a referendum with a scientific study.
Sorry, but we *do* have software patents again as far as I can tell. There was a brief spell between 2006 and 2008 when we didn't, but they are back and in full effect.
Quoting from
"...permitting claims to computer programs if claims to a method performed by running a suitably programmed computer or to a computer programmed to carry out the method were themselves allowable."
I am not a lawyer, but to me that means pretty much any software patent will be accepted provided the language of the patent is suitably constructed. This is similar, as far as I can tell, to the way that software patents became allowable in the U.S.
Sadly the software I'm talking does a lot of bit-packing to compress in-memory data. I've not analysed this code in detail, but I'm pretty sure that it makes too many assumptions. Annoyingly, in these days of giga-bytes of memory the whole memory packing stuff is probably completely unnecessary.
Oh well, I've moved on and it is someone else's problem now!
While this isn't only Microsoft's fault I think the Microsoft and Microsoft third parties have been complacent about the supremacy of the Intel architecture. Open source, conversely, has a complete software stack for many architectures - and most of that is written in C or C++! Why can't closed source achieve the same?
In any case, this article is about Intel scaring people away from ARM, and not really about Microsoft or its ecosystem at all.
Some of the legacy projects I've worked on would have a hard time supporting 64bit x86, never mind an architecture that changes the endienness. Yeah, yeah... you can say what you like - this software was written in the 90s for DOS and went through various 'upgrades' to get it working on Windows. People were 100% confident that the code would only ever have to compile for an x86 machine, so they simply didn't worry about it - even if they were aware that things like byte order or number of registers are not guaranteed. At this point the only sensible solution is to bin it and start again, but that's hard to sell to the management and customers in terms of cost and lead time.
Conversely, open source has a great history of supporting multiple architectures - that's why there is a complete software stack for ARM (and MIPS and PowerPC and...) more or less as soon as the hardware products hit the shelves.
tl;dr Yes, there are plenty of old but never the less very useful and actively used Windows applications that can't simply be recompiled for ARM.
When KDE is built for mobiles (or tablets) lots of stuff can be compiled out because its not necessary for the mobile platform. So, yes, in a sense there is such a switch...
*Wooosh!*
"95% of users can't tell the difference"
I bet you 100% of users will tell the difference between the noise from a SSD and a HDD. This and a suitable (ARM?) passively cooled box would make an ideal media center/general browsing PC. I know that my laptop is eerily quiet now, and I wouldn't want it any other way. Ok, maybe I'm very sensitive, but I find the noise from HDDs incredibly annoying.
I'd also note that my old Dell laptop is pretty ancient - must be nearly 10 years old now. When I swapped the 60G HDD for a 60G SDD two years ago there was a noticeable jump in performance to the extent that I no longer anticipate replacing it until such a time as it breaks.
Much as I am a fan of open source, isn't that just a variation of the 'broken window' fallacy?
I was following you until it got to the T chord - I've no idea what the fingering for that is on the guitar!
Isn't the guy who did that comparison involved with the open source h.264 codec? You could argue that he has some interest in h.264 being the dominant standard, and as such chose worst case video clips. Also, consider that improvements are still being made to vp8 (and h.264, I imagine). Is there a more recent test, preferably by someone with no vested interests in either codec?
And with good reason too: Google is being charged (probably a lot of cash) by MPEG-LA to use h264: h264 is *not* free for content providers. It is Google's right, and a duty to their shareholders, to find a cheaper alternative, and they have. At risk of re-iterating the grand-parent: MPEG-LA is using its monopoly in video codecs to charge content providers large lumps of cash because no viable alternative was available - until just about now.
The French will be quite annoyed if you get rid of caps lock as their numbers are all in the shift position making caps lock pretty much mandatory if you are entering long numbers.
He claims that he tried to, but the prosecutor in Sweden wouldn't let him or even agree to a meeting with him or his lawyer. Eventually he asked the prosecutor if he could leave the country, she gave the all clear and he left.
Most desktop systems may have WINS installed, but those oh so important servers probably don't (why on earth would google install samba on all its linux boxen, for example?). Besides, you've somewhat glossed over the issue with "Write a resolver that mimics WINS to the client and then behind the scenes use a modern P2P encrypted network." That's the hard bit - whether its DNS or WINS resolution is a mere technical detail. Building a system that can provide reliable, quick and above all *trustworthy* resolution over p2p is difficult. I hope he/they can find a way, but I doubt that they will.
This is a classic race to the bottom scenario: unless every country has the exact same tax regime, the argument that there should be lower taxes will remain - right up until there is no tax at all, and thus no - or very limited - government; a complete privatisation of the state. That may or may not be a good thing, but this also extends to 'hidden' taxes, like keeping a safe working environment, paying a fair wage and so on.
"TFS is based on SVN. Really."
Really? This seems very unlikely as there is no mention in the license and the repository is a SQL Server database. Even if this were true, Subversion is a technology that is in decline. DVCS offers substantial advantages.
"I'm really not sure where all the TFS hate comes from."
It comes from using SourceSafe, Subversion, ClearCase and, more recently, Git. Doesn't stand up to any of them except possibly SourceSafe - though that's hardly a great accolade.
"It's heavily integrated with VS..."
And that's part of the problem. What if I don't/can't use VisualStudio? For example, our database design is done in Erwin. The hoops we have to go through to make sure that TFS doesn't get its knickers in a twist! Maybe its because Erwin generates binary files (TFS sends the whole file not diffs, which makes the whole thing even slower than it is normally). In contrast, Notepad++, WinMerge, File Explorer and even VisualStudio seamlessly integrate with Tortoise/SVN making my workflow seamless and painless. The difference between the two is striking. Another example: We generate SQL scripts from Erwin and then check these scripts into TFS. When TFS sees that these files have changed (even though it is usually just the date stamp that has changed), it will download all the SQL scripts (there are lots of them!). For some reason this process takes 10 times longer than a normal refresh - I can wait 20 minutes for it to complete, instead of about 2 minutes. Why does it even need to download the files that are the same except for the date stamp? 20 minutes x once a week x a four year project... Wow, what a waste of time!
"Check out/check in seems like a tedious process"
Check out/Check in IS a tedious process when you realize its completely redundant. TFS has an option to remove this requirement, however management seems to think this is a good idea as 'it helps avoid merges'. Face/Palm. Case in point: Our developers are split across two sites, and I often fly between them. While working on the Subversion based project, I worked on the plane. My workflow was essentially uninterrupted. Now I'm working on the TFS based project, I am forever having to bring up file explorer to change Read/Write permissions. If I want to add a file to a project... well, its easier to wait until I arrive at my destination. With a DVCS my workflow would be *exactly* the same - and I'd even have a full history of all the files!
"There is no integration with Windows Explorer."
Yes, there is if you install the TFS Power Tools. I don't recommend it though as it seems to screw the performance of Windows.
TFS is not a source control system, its a developer control system designed to allow middle management to fiddle with security, lock files and generally dick about with the development process. If you really want that kind of functionality, I'm sure there are better ways. Avoid at all costs.
Not the GP, but as someone who has used several VCS, I have to say that there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING to like about TFS. Its nearly as bad as VisualSourceSafe, and I'm not joking when I say I think they built a .Net service to wrap a VSS back-end. Besides the god-awful performance (it is sloooooow), you can't work off-line (which is great, because TFS will often stop working), the user interface is random and inconsistent (some places will let you view a file's history, others won't for example). It has an obsessively complex security model that, no doubt, keeps middle management feeling all warm and fuzzy - but often breaks. The integration with Windows File Explorer is bat-shit-crazy and SLOOOOOW. The whole system seems to try and track all local changes, in real time, and fails - editing a file with notepad instead of in VisualStudio/TFS will confuse the hell out of it. Getting latest version doesn't always get the latest version - we've got used to using 'force get latest' and risking over writing local changes. And that's before you consider that the technology, even if it worked well, is a decade or more out of date! Oh, and as an added bonus, your code and history gets locked up in a proprietary format. Avoid at all costs.
I really am regretting ever creating a Facebook account. If things carry on in this direction, I shall delete the thing soon.