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User: hanwen

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  1. Re:Why? Patents. on Google Is Apparently Ready To Buy Smartphone Maker HTC (cnbc.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Motorola had significant cash and tax offsets, making the effective price about $ 3bn.

    see https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Google-buy-Motorola-for-12-5-billion-and-sell-it-off-for-2-91-billion :

    "And what of Google’s supposed $10bn loss? It’s a misreported myth calculated by subtracting Motorola’s $2.91bn sale price from its $12.5bn purchase. What it misses are the $3.2bn Motorola had in cash, $2.4bn saved in deferred tax assets and two separate Motorola unit sales totalling $2.5bn in 2013. Factor in Lenovo’s purchase against roughly $2bn of Motorola losses during Google’s ownership and Google has still only paid $3bn for what it retained: $5.5bn worth of Motorola patents and the company’s cutting edge research lab."

  2. Re:Gut reaction? on Python Creator Guido van Rossum Leaves Google For Dropbox · · Score: 1

    The problem is that changes happen in the base libraries, and it's up to the maintainers of the base libraries to fix up their clients. This means people from outside the Python project have to fix up your code. For code written in Python, without type annotations and without a compile step, this generates much more overhead for the maintainer.

  3. Re:Gut reaction? on Python Creator Guido van Rossum Leaves Google For Dropbox · · Score: 2

    AFAIK, nobody ousted Guido from the company, and he was just looking for something new.

    At Google, Python is popular for all kinds "operations" scripts, eg. scripts that help start up production jobs, or interact with version control systems. For production systems (ie. user-facing systems), it is not popular, since its performance sucks, and python programs are fragile. More complex programs have tons of dependencies, and other teams change dependencies from under you all the time. With a dynamic language like python it is hard to verify that such changes do not break things.

  4. Re:Reading too much into the cover of The Economis on Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Place To Relocate? · · Score: 1

    There is a lot of corruption in Brazil, but it happens in the private/public atmosphere (cooperations paying politicians, politicians awarding contract to cooperations, much like the US). I have lived in Brazil for 5 years and never had to bribe anyone.

  5. Re:Has anyone embedded Guile? on Guile Scheme Emacs-Lisp Compatibility Matures · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't recommend it as a scripting language to other projects, though.

    The API is not very good, and the release pace has been glacial.

     

  6. Re:Rube Googleberg Machines? on Go Version 1 Released · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I write both Go and C++ at google. Sadly, Rob Pike's joke has a definite core of truth: writing C++ code at google is extremely time-consuming and difficult to get right because it has to be multi-threaded and asynchronous.


    Long compile times is more of a build system problem than a compiler problem, IME. Of course, lots of people have broken build systems, and compile the same things over and over again ...

    Well, our in-house developed build system is the best I've ever seen, and probably the best in the industry. Read more about it here. Even with all the niftyness of a thoroughly correct build system and a data-center sized ccache, it still sucks.

    Go is definitely awesome, and I recommend everyone to set aside the gripes with the syntax and learn it. I guarantee you that you'll be pleasantly surprised.

  7. Re:It's still too slow, despite what he says. on Van Rossum: Python Not Too Slow · · Score: 1

    The original poster works at google (like me). We have lots of cores, and something that works quite like hadoop.

  8. Re:Here's how it works: on Dutch ISPs Refuse To Block Pirate Bay · · Score: 2

    I just read the entire verdict, and it seems that BREIN had a solid case and the judge understands what is going on: the law says intermediaries to infringement can be ordered to stop services that are used to infringe. BREIN showed convincingly that TPB is overwhelmingly used to share copyrighted content illegally, and that its include large numbers of Ziggo and XS4ALL customers, and conversely that TPB has little use beyond sharing content illegally.

    As a small ray of light: BREIN tried to get reimbursed for EUR 150,000 of lawyer fees, but the court decided that the ISPs themselves did not break the law, so the sum was reduced to a standard one of EUR 2000.

    The real question is what will happen if many other sites like TPB spring up, or if the distribution moves to a model that also decentralizes the indexing of torrents. Then, at some point, having a rights society issue URL and IP blockades will become plain censorship, and it would be unclear how judges would rule.

  9. Re:And what happens is this on Google, Microsoft In Epic Hiring War · · Score: 1

    Hi there,


    You say Google is data driven? Then why not use the available data about a candidate's past?

    I work for google, and interview on a regular basis. I am a huge fan of using data of a candidate's past: for open-source projects, I clone the repository and browse through patches, for example. I like this, because real work covers a depth that a 45 minute interview cannot.

    Unfortunately, besides open-source work, the only source of data usually is hearsay from the candidate himself, a source which often is somewhat biased.

  10. Re:OT: How to build an trustable voting machine on Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested In India · · Score: 1

    If the a test were to be applied, it should rather be to votees, so they actually have notions of economy, science, history, etc. That would keep people like G.W. Bush out of the office.

  11. Re:More Details on the Unauthorized App Store Code on Kmart Briefly Offers $149 Android Tablet · · Score: 1

    You can still buy the N1

    http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/08/nexus-one-developer-phone.html

    It's $529 plus the (IIRC) $25 sign up as android developer.

  12. Re:is waterboarding next to get the info? on FBI Failed To Break Encryption of Hard Drives · · Score: 1

    What now happens is that the megarich hire lawyers to appeal court decisions ad-nauseum, staying unpunished until their crimes expire. Justice becomes class-justice. Punishment is only for those that cannot afford lawyers, and innocent will still suffer, it's just that the innocents are always poor.

  13. Re:Wrong dictionary. on FBI Failed To Break Encryption of Hard Drives · · Score: 1

    Maybe it would be

        CALABOCAGALVÃO

    ?

  14. Re:is waterboarding next to get the info? on FBI Failed To Break Encryption of Hard Drives · · Score: 1

    I just find it hard to believe that after the government tortures you that they are going to let you invoke any laws on your side. I think that the CIA has taught them different.

    You are assuming that The Governments is an organ to work in a coordinated fashion: tens of thousands of people all working in perfect harmony to execute vile plans against the people; a borg of sorts.

    The reality is that there are hundreds of different sub-organs each with their own agendas, that together form The Government. The law allows for many layers of appeal, and the judges in Brazil are independent to apply that law as they see fit. If a lawyer can show procedural faults, the suspect will be acquitted or at least can evade incarceration in freedom until the crime 'expires'.

    Han-Wen
    (not brazilian, but living there)

  15. Re:Windows Only on Google Releases Chrome V2.0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am using the Linux version on a daily basis. It is usable, and the speed blows FF3 firmly out of the water, to the point that I don't want to go back to FF. Of course, it does crash every once in a while, and there are many rough edges.

  16. Re:What about me ? on EU Data-Retention Laws Stricter Than Many People Realized · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There was a case of the Dutch internet provider Xs4all suing the government, to be reimbursed for the storage costs that resulted from this legislation. They lost.

  17. Re:Stupidity. on IBM Withdraws $7B Offer For Sun Microsystems, Says NYT · · Score: 1

    you are confusing google and microsoft.

  18. Re:Product Manager, not Project Manager on Gmail Marks Five Years In Beta · · Score: 1

    In addition, Google generally does not have project managers.

  19. Re:Slap on a sticker saying... on How Do I Make My Netbook More Manly? · · Score: 1

    At google, we actually have promo stickers saying "My other computer is a Datacenter."

  20. Re:Afghanistan in Perspective on UK Court Rejects Encryption Key Disclosure Defense · · Score: 1

    How about:

    5. Move US military presence out of Saudi Arabia?

    The original motivation for Bin Laden to go after the US was their continued presence in the Holy Land (ie. Saudi Arabia) after the 1st Iraq war.

  21. Re:V8 and Dalvik on Google Chrome, the Google Browser · · Score: 1

    There is a google office in Aarhus, http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=intl.html&jobslc=denmark

  22. Re:Direct debit on Pitfalls of Automated Bill Payment · · Score: 1

    As far as I know, for opening an account, banks in the NL need you to be there, show official ID (passport) and have a proof of having a Dutch SSN.

  23. Re:The worst part on DHS Allowed To Take Laptops Indefinitely · · Score: 2, Informative

    You don't get it. The TSA is supposed to keep terrorists from boarding the plane. This article is about the custom officials who are trying to keep "terrorist information" out of the US.

    To experience this, you need to enter the US from a different country, and look sufficiently suspicious.

  24. Re:Misunderrtanding the problem set on Modern LaTeX Replacement? · · Score: 1

    There are also various limitations of TeX itself, but they are less serious (lack of support for non line-oriented layout, page breaking that only looks ahead 2 pages, etc.)

    The Luatex effort looks promising: it's funded, and the authors have a clue; they're the guys behind ConTeXt a TeX style like LaTeX, but more geared towards using PDF (interactive) features.

  25. Re:Software is math on Modern LaTeX Replacement? · · Score: 1

    What is software other than applied finite mathematics executed by a machine?

    What else is mathematics than a bunch of programs in a language for inferencing theorems?

    Han-Wen
    (MSc. in mathematics.)