I think this is something specific to where you've worked, I've never heard of a company where all IT decisions go to popular vote amongst the techies, most places have IT managers who make such decisions and it really then comes down to an objective decision if competent, a biased decision if incompetent or outright corrupt.
People with specialist knowledge in the realm of the decision in question may get asked their opinion or it may get passed down to them, but popular vote as a strategy for IT decision making, wtf? That's a bad idea precisely because some people will be more knowledge and more objective than others, better to have those managing the department and making the decisions than letting every monkey with a screwdriver and a stick of RAM have their input unless they genuinely have something helpful to add.
Frankly I think this is EXACTLY what it's about. For the most part:
People doing C are old school skilled developers.
People doing C# are professional developers or hobbyists with a genuine interest in programming.
People doing Javascript are the average Joes in the street who just built their first HTML page and want to know how to make a hover button or whatever but really just aren't interested in programming in general.
Bit late to this discussion, but the 360 made enough profit to cover up the entertainment division's losses on the XBox programme back around the start of 2010.
A large part of this was having 20 million+ people paying £30 - £40 a year for the pure profit machine that is XBox Live, not to mention that XBL shows ads on top so they get ad revenue for it too. This + the high attach rate for the 360 allowed them to achieve profitability enough to cover past losses relatively quickly this console cycle, even with the $1bn write off for the RROD fiasco.
"There's another reason though why we might see Apple let up to some extent - with Steve gone, Tim Cook seems like a guy who would be less passionate about suing other companies."
You reckon?
Apple only stepped up the litigation game when Jobs stepped down back in January, that's when they really took off with it. I'm actually concerned now Steve has gone despite Steve's anger towards the competition that this is more Cook's strategy, it just seems odd it started to head this way as soon as Cook started running things day to day and has escalated more and more the closer Jobs got to his death bed and hence the less involvement he was able to have with the company.
There may be quotes now saying Jobs wanted to kill Android and such and an angry man he may have been, but he wasn't stupid - I can't say I ever liked Jobs but he didn't do what he did by thinking litigation was the solution to everything, he did it by pursuing strong product design and marketing. Cook? I'm not so sure, I get the feeling the litigation route is his favoured option because under him innovation has plummeted and litigation has rocketed.
"There should be options in the OS to disable the windows key when full-screen applications are running"
What? any programmer worth his salt can do this.
If it's not done in a game it's because the game's developers made the concious decision that people want to be able to get out of their games and jump to the start menu to do something else, we did after all change to multi-tasking operating systems for a reason.
"but MS continually just releases a crap of DRM they call GFWL with no "features" a gamer would ever possibly use)."
Other than an excellent system for inviting friends into games, managing voice chats and so forth? I agree it needs some work, but it's got some nice features without a doubt which they've carried over from XBL.
You've still completely missed my point despite me stating it 3 times now.
Someone pointed out that there are further costs to developing for iOS. I pointed out that it's also worth factoring in the cost of hardware as it'll be relevant for many developers too, nothing more, nothing less. I don't disagree it's not a steep amount, but the hardware investment is enough to put some people off if not because of cost but because they're not interested in getting used to a new language on a new OS on a new piece of hardware that they have to integrate into their existing setup. I wasn't originally making any comment as to whether it's a big deal or not, just adding to the discussion the point of hardware costs. You're going on about the $99 fee now however, and I'm not sure why, I've never made any dispute about that - you seem to be carrying your discussion of that to this thread from other defensive posts you've made about it in other threads. I think you're right, $99 by itself is no big deal if you already have a Mac. I've spent more on individual pieces of content for applications before.
FWIW, you don't really need full Visual C# (Windows Phone doesn't use C++) to develop for Windows phone, the free express version does the job and is still a fuller featured IDE than most other offerings it competes with. The more expensive versions contain tools that are more suited to large team environments and large enterprise projects than anything else.
I don't hate Apple either, I'm a lead developer at a firm that develops for many platforms and the iPad is a prominent platform for us right now and we've developed some very succesful applications for the military amongst other clients, but I also think their developer support is the least promising and they show no sign of boosting developer support, they by and large have the weakest longer term outlook right now and have no one to blame but themselves because they've had such a strong position to continue to push forward from. Windows Phone is much nicer and friendlier to develop for than the other two platforms, whilst Google do an excellent job of making sure you can use their tools and deploy to their platform for little cost and with no hassle, you've got a lot of freedom too when working with their platform to do some pretty innovative things that Microsoft and Apple's walled gardens prevent.
But hey, call everyone who dare suggest Apple isn't perfect a hater if it makes you feel better. I'm sure it'll get you far and will help resolve all of Apple's problems.
You stated that if someone can't afford the cost they shouldn't be developing. That implies you recognise the cost exists, hence, you agreed with my point - that the additional cost exists. The addition of your opinion was merely that you think the cost is not a problem, not that it doesn't exist.
Are you now saying the majority of developers (bare in mind Mac marketshare) don't in fact have to buy a Mac to develop for iOS with Apple's 1st party tools?
Let's be honest, in your rage to ensure no one dare post something without response that could be even slightly construed as bad about Apple you rushed to disagree with me and state how the cost of Apple hardware was no big deal, even though that wasn't really my point.
This is really the problem with being a fanboy, you can't look rationally at anything that's said, you have to jump off the wagon and lunge for the jugular if there's even a hint of negativity to your pet brand.
Still, it provides good amusement for people like me watching you make a fool of yourself completely contradicting your own point because you failed to miss the original point in the first place in your bout of defensive fanboyist rage.
Right so in other words, despite going off on a tangent you completely agree with the point I made then?
My point was simply that for most people (it's still a 90% PC dominated world remember) the cost of hardware is a real consideration if you want to develop for Apple too.
But don't let that disrupt your fanboy off on a tangent rant about how financially superior Apple users are, and how anyone who can't afford a Mac shouldn't be developing anyway. Keep telling yourself that, the reality is all that it means is a lot of developers just wont bother developing for Apple when the likes of Google do offer a cross platform development environment for their mobile OS for free - something which judging by your comment you seem aghast at the thought of a company deciding to do.
But hey, that's why most analysts are predicting Apple will drop further behind Android and within a few years even behind Windows Phone - because Apple is just plain too hostile to developers. The more developers you turn away, the more you risk losing those one or two killer apps to the competition without them being willing to port to your platform, whilst any killer apps on your platform will be ported, because the competition make it trivial to do so and the imbalance between marketshare with the competition provides more and more incentive to develop for them, and less and less for you.
But hey, Apple should know this, it's the same mistake they made with desktops in the 80s.
That's also assuming you have a Mac in the first place. You can develop for Android and most other platforms on any mainstream OS on any hardware capable of running it. If you want to develop for iOS and use the proper toolchain rather than some backwards 3rd party hacked together PoS then you'll need to add $1000 or whatever to the bill to buy Apple hardware.
Not really, because Motorola has been succesful in the modern smartphone era, whilst Nokia has been nothing other than an epic fail.
Google didn't stand a chance anyway, with Elop at the helm Nokia effectively was taken over by Microsoft. That may not be the legal status but make no mistake, it was a coup by Microsoft, they ousted both the anti-Microsoft leadership and developers at Nokia.
I wouldn't be suprised, should Nokia start to have a succesful Windows 8 business down the line to see Microsoft take over Nokia properly. I suspect they got Elop in there to see if it would work - if it doesn't, fine, I'm sure Elop will have a job waiting for him back at MS again, if it does, great, MS takes over Nokia properly, and Elop becomes head of Microsoft's mobile devices division.
I was going to say 5 years ago Motorola may have been the consolation prize, but as Razr is still to this day the most succesful high end phone relative to it's era in terms of sales it's hard to see that's the case too. Nokia's strength is in selling masses of low margin dump phones to Africa and Asia, and I'm not sure that's a sector Google would want, because said phones can't run Android, don't tend to have internet connectivity and so wont display ads. Motorola is definitely the smarter choice of the two for Google. Convincing Nokia to follow an Android route would've been a boon for sure, but was never likely with Microsoft's coup of the company.
Still, the predictions are Windows Phone is going to come 2nd place behind Android and push Apple back to 3rd within a few years anyway so it's really Apple that needs to be concerned, not Google if these predictions come true, but IMO they all depend on whether Apple gets back to innovating, or sticks to it's recent plan of minor largely irrelevant updates. It seems to have lost it's way somewhat since Jobs stepped down from being full time CEO in Feb, whether that's a coincidence, or whether it's because Cook really is just a shit CEO leading to a Ballmerisation of Apple (10 years of stagnation) remains to be seen I guess.
No shit. It's called a theoretical scenario. One people can comprehend, because it's basically equivalent to what Assange faces if he's forwarded to the US from Sweden.
"The assumption is, that all European countries that are signatory to the treaty provide adequate protections as enshrined in the ECHR. "
Yes, and we all know the problem with assumptions. Especially poorly researched ones, made in a hurry in response to a terrorist incident.
"To accuse the TPB judge of not being able to make a fair trial would be a serious charge - and to counter it, most countries - including Sweden - have appeal courts, and supreme courts. TPB lost in those courts too."
Well TPB hasn't exhausted it's appeals yet, but that's besides the point. You're making the assumption the courts are completely separate from government influence, and entirely uncorruptible. All we can go on is the evidence, do you genuinely believe that it is acceptable for such conflict of interest to be allowed in a trial like that of the TPB when it can so easily be eliminated by replacing the judge? Do you not think that serious questions arise when that step is not taken? Even if the judge isn't corrupt then there's no excuse not to let someone else who has no such conflict of interest run the trial, the fact they didn't alone implies there is no care to protect against conflicts of interest prejudicing the trial regardless of whether the judge did or didn't allow this to cloud his judgement, and that alone hence implies Sweden is not capable of operating fair trials where the threat of conflict of interest is eliminated as far as reasonably possible. It's not unfair to then consider that if such trivial and simple steps aren't taken to replace the judge and ensure no conflict of interest before the trial that the conflict of interest was in fact present intentionally.
"The Police in Sweden have issued an arrest warrant for him - it doesn't mean, can we come to your house, or ask questions over a video link - it's you're coming down to the station to answer questions."
No they haven't, the prosecutor has issued a European Arrest Warrant, which is extremely odd. Not to mention being asked down the local station is a bit different from being asked to fly back to a country you left after all charges were dropped against you only to be raised again after you left despite the police having ample opportunity to question you prior and despite Assange's local station effectively being the Swedish embassy where he has even offered to go for questioning, but no, they want him in Sweden proper. Why do you think that might be?
He wasn't trying to escape justice. He hasn't even been charged yet, he's argued all along that the Swedish prosecution could question him in the UK and then if there's a case for him to be charged they could go ahead and do that and try and extradite him based on the charges.
What he's trying to avoid is being extradited to Sweden without charge, and then being passed on to America. Particularly when in Sweden the case has already become too politicised because even their PM has basically pre-judged him in TV interviews.
Your assumption is simply that he'll get a fair trial in Sweden, but as with the TPB trial which was overseen and the outcome determined by a judge who was a member of a content industry political lobbying organisation, who was good friends with the content industry lawyers in the prosecution and was pushed forward at the behest of American pressure as demonstrated by leaked cables we know that Sweden isn't capable of ensuring that this will be the case.
This isn't a job well done by any measure but I'm not suprised, we in the UK are as much a puppet state of the US as Sweden is. When we can't even protect our own people like Gary McKinnon from extradition to the US even now, with a coalition government in which both leaders previously stated they were against his extradition though it's far from certain he wont be extradited still then frankly, Assange, a foreign citizen, had no hope- that much has been clear all along.
If Sweden just questioned him here in person, or via video link, and then charged him I'd be far more supportive of this, but extradition for a case with massive politicisation in the country trying to extradite when they haven't yet even been willing to produce solid enough evidence to charge him hence based entirely on an accusation? Fuck no, that's not justice.
Would you like to be extradited to a country like China because of nothing more than some random person there claiming you raped them when you went there on holiday despite a complete lack of evidence and no charge being put forward by Chinese authorities? Sure the US isn't China, well, for most people, but for someone like Assange whom the US makes exceptions to it's supposed love of liberty, justice, and free speech, it really is that draconian a situation.
It doesn't matter if vendors write the device drivers, the device drivers still have to interface with the OS and that means the OS providing services the drivers can interact with to, you know, do something useful.
Apple has no qualms about deprecating support for older or obscure hardware whilst Windows always does it's best to cope. Windows also supports hardware you see in industry which Apple would never dream of bothering to support. Both have their pros and cons - MacOS X is sleeker and faster as a result, but Windows is more widely compatible, this mirrors the fact Windows can be bought and installed on whatever hardware you want, but Apple maintains a strong grip over where it's OS can go.
Your example of Linux actually demonstrates the point, it lets you manage what you do and don't need loaded. This is why you've always historically had to fuck around recompiling the kernel, and nowadays, with kernel modules. The benefit is that you can tailor it to be fast for your needs, the cost is worse usability- many people don't have the skill or will to go fucking around with that for the sake of an extra minute or two startup time whilst they go make a coffee, to others however it's essential to their setup that systems boot as fast as possible and so it does matter. It's again about tradeoffs, Windows isn't slow just because Microsoft's devs don't understand optimisation like you believe is the case. When new versions of Windows are released and we hear bootup times have improved it's because they finally have actually been able to trim away some of the legacy cruft because it genuinely isn't needed anymore.
But as you clearly have no grasp of the topic at hand I guess I'll leave it there. There's no point arguing with people who just don't know wtf they're on about, but carry on anyway. You're one of those people, in your mind you're never wrong. Even though everyone around you is pointing out quite clearly why you are, all you can do to counter that is to continue to say things which demonstrate your lack of knowledge.
The problem is that the problem only exists in your mind. The kind of optimisations the GP is suggesting people should do make no difference noticable by a human nowadays.
I'm not sure what you're on about RE: Firefox, but it's performance issues aren't to do with this kind of low level optimisation - speed issues in applications nowadays are because of much higher level problems, like poorly architected software which can be solved with a refactor, not months of hand optimisations to try and tweak the tiniest bit of memory or a handful of CPU cycles out of an algorithm at best.
"It's almost as if the existence of faster CPUs and larger memory has enticed some to be extremely lazy"
Or just made them focus on getting stuff done rather than implementing optimisations no one will ever notice.
Oh, and your MacBook startup vs. your Windows startup? That's because Windows supports an ever changing set of hardware configurations and retains support for legacy software. Your MacBook has the luxury of retaining a relatively small set of hardware configurations and Apple being happy to chuck backwards compatibility out the Window.
Sure Windows is slower to boot up but it works on more hardware and has superior backwards compat. Sure your MacBook has poor backwards compat. for older Mac software and wont ever support some hardware configurations, but it's got a better startup time. Those are the tradeoffs you face with this sort of thing.
Surely you understand this though if you're an optimisation guru, that you know, it's all about tradoffs? Or perhaps if you're one of those that's all about optimisation whatever the cost in man hours and however negligible the benefits then you don't understand that it's all about picking the right balance.
So no, don't "MOD PARENT DOWN!!!". You have a rose tinted view of an era when all software was ultra-optimised by super non-lazy ninja programmers, I remember it more as an era where software still took longer to load and performed far more poorly than it does now, crashed far more often in far more fatal manners, had far more dangerous security flaws like root access exploits rather than just SQL injection exploits, and where usability was out the window as you had to spend hours configuring your system to even get it to run a game or whatever.
I don't think the past was really as rosy as you think.
Yes, and even if it wasn't, then I just read the summary as basically saying some circuit boards probably shouldn't be patentable either, not that because they are, software should be too, which was his argument.
Yes, although I'm seeing the americanised version become more and more popular here in the UK nowadays.
When we had some patent legal eagles in at my old job last year to advise on the patent filing and enforcement process for some patents we wanted to file they were pronouncing it pay-tent rather than pah-tent still though and I guess they use and hear the word as much as anyone in the UK.
"Look, I'm not here to debate AGW. I'm here to point out that the article is full of shit, which is something you don't refute. Instead, you attack me as a denialist when my only point is that I can't believe the article when there is a blatant lie in the title itself. I'm gonna call bullshit wherever I see it. The fact that you DON'T proves that YOU are the one with the closed mind."
Actually, it's the fact you're splitting hairs over something minor and pushing that as evidence that the bigger picture is wrong that's the problem.
It doesn't really matter if a single particular article is poorly worded, that doesn't change the fact that the science behind global warming is now pretty strong. In your earlier post you were trying to imply precisely that - that because the article was poorly worded and Mr Muller wasn't a fully fledged global warming skeptic, that the whole global warming thing in general is questionable.
That is frankly a complete load of illogical bollocks. That is why you are closed minded - because you are desperately clutching at whatever remaining straws you can find to try and justify your predetermined view of the situation, yet it's looking ever more ludicrous the stronger the evidence for GW gets whilst the firmly grounded scientific evidence against it continues to not actually exist.
According to the response I got back when Ed was "reaching out to the people for opinions", yes.
I wasn't terribly surprised, Ed was afterall instrumental in Brown's government, not to mention his right had man Ed Balls and Ball's wife. Really, the party hasn't changed - just reshuffled minus Brown.
David Milliband was probably their best hope for change in the short term, as he was a Blairite, that doesn't make him ideal of course, but it at least meant he's not an authoritarian-socialist Brownite.
Which is of course why the unions didn't want him.
"She lost her seat at the last election (I won't say which because it would reveal where I live and I value my privacy). Good riddance."
Right, and who replaced her? Someone with the same values no doubt?
I e-mailed the Conservatives when they were in opposition a few years ago when the DEA was first mentioned as an idea as they were "seeking to get the views of the public" in their attempt to pursue power.
I got a reply back from Jeremy Hunt which was almost word for word a press release from the RIAA, containing entirely unproven facts, despite me making it clear that part the problem I had with the DEA was the fact there was no solid evidence being put forward as to the validity of the music industry's claims. It was pretty clear to me all those years ago that he was a puppet, a shill of big media, so I was hardly surprised to see it all come out about him in the News of the World scandal.
Of course, now Labour is in opposition, good old Red Ed is doing the same thing, seeking the opinions of the public, to guage what they did wrong, how they can change. So, I figured I'd take him up on the offer.
Imagine my complete lack of surprise when he gave me the usual blurb about how their ID card database would save lives, and how the DEA was necessary to protect the creative industries from billions of pounds in losses and how Labour would still support these if reelected.
Really, it doesn't matter what you or I think, only what companies willing to engage in corrupt practices with corrupt MPs think.
Still, at least it provides a bit of humour when the likes of Louise Mensch goes on HIGNFY and gets herself ripped to shreds trying to defend such practices as she did the other week, so it's not all bad I suppose.
He was skeptical of the science being claimed to prove the issue, not the issue itself. The two are very separate things - it's possible to say "Yeah, I think global warming is happening, but I don't believe the science being done thus far is of decent enough quality to prove it so we can't say for sure".
He has now done research that appears to fit quite closely to the science he was skeptical of.
Why do the global warming denialists need to make things up and jump to false conclusions if their belief is as solid as they say it is?
Nothing will help someone like you though, you're clearly set in your ways and not one of those people who will ever change their mind despite being faced with mounting evidence contrary to your claim, and no evidence supporting your claim. So stick to the straw man arguments, if they really make you feel better. I'm sure that's what flat earth theorists did to make themselves feel better too.
"If the White House were to come under cybernetic attack, and the majority of those attacks appeared to originate from my house, you bet your ASS that the Secret Service will be knocking on my door, with a battering ram!"
Cybernetic attack?
If it was a cybernetic attack then I think the secret service would have more to worry about than you as I suspect it would look more like Rise of the Machines than it would Hackers.
Yes this is just a typical Slashdot pedant post, I just couldn't help but point out that cybernetic != cyber.
Slashdot Mirror
Google bought Motorola, so yes, they are party to it.
But otherwise I agree with you.
I think this is something specific to where you've worked, I've never heard of a company where all IT decisions go to popular vote amongst the techies, most places have IT managers who make such decisions and it really then comes down to an objective decision if competent, a biased decision if incompetent or outright corrupt.
People with specialist knowledge in the realm of the decision in question may get asked their opinion or it may get passed down to them, but popular vote as a strategy for IT decision making, wtf? That's a bad idea precisely because some people will be more knowledge and more objective than others, better to have those managing the department and making the decisions than letting every monkey with a screwdriver and a stick of RAM have their input unless they genuinely have something helpful to add.
Frankly I think this is EXACTLY what it's about. For the most part:
People doing C are old school skilled developers.
People doing C# are professional developers or hobbyists with a genuine interest in programming.
People doing Javascript are the average Joes in the street who just built their first HTML page and want to know how to make a hover button or whatever but really just aren't interested in programming in general.
Bit late to this discussion, but the 360 made enough profit to cover up the entertainment division's losses on the XBox programme back around the start of 2010.
A large part of this was having 20 million+ people paying £30 - £40 a year for the pure profit machine that is XBox Live, not to mention that XBL shows ads on top so they get ad revenue for it too. This + the high attach rate for the 360 allowed them to achieve profitability enough to cover past losses relatively quickly this console cycle, even with the $1bn write off for the RROD fiasco.
"There's another reason though why we might see Apple let up to some extent - with Steve gone, Tim Cook seems like a guy who would be less passionate about suing other companies."
You reckon?
Apple only stepped up the litigation game when Jobs stepped down back in January, that's when they really took off with it. I'm actually concerned now Steve has gone despite Steve's anger towards the competition that this is more Cook's strategy, it just seems odd it started to head this way as soon as Cook started running things day to day and has escalated more and more the closer Jobs got to his death bed and hence the less involvement he was able to have with the company.
There may be quotes now saying Jobs wanted to kill Android and such and an angry man he may have been, but he wasn't stupid - I can't say I ever liked Jobs but he didn't do what he did by thinking litigation was the solution to everything, he did it by pursuing strong product design and marketing. Cook? I'm not so sure, I get the feeling the litigation route is his favoured option because under him innovation has plummeted and litigation has rocketed.
"There should be options in the OS to disable the windows key when full-screen applications are running"
What? any programmer worth his salt can do this.
If it's not done in a game it's because the game's developers made the concious decision that people want to be able to get out of their games and jump to the start menu to do something else, we did after all change to multi-tasking operating systems for a reason.
"but MS continually just releases a crap of DRM they call GFWL with no "features" a gamer would ever possibly use)."
Other than an excellent system for inviting friends into games, managing voice chats and so forth? I agree it needs some work, but it's got some nice features without a doubt which they've carried over from XBL.
You've still completely missed my point despite me stating it 3 times now.
Someone pointed out that there are further costs to developing for iOS. I pointed out that it's also worth factoring in the cost of hardware as it'll be relevant for many developers too, nothing more, nothing less. I don't disagree it's not a steep amount, but the hardware investment is enough to put some people off if not because of cost but because they're not interested in getting used to a new language on a new OS on a new piece of hardware that they have to integrate into their existing setup. I wasn't originally making any comment as to whether it's a big deal or not, just adding to the discussion the point of hardware costs. You're going on about the $99 fee now however, and I'm not sure why, I've never made any dispute about that - you seem to be carrying your discussion of that to this thread from other defensive posts you've made about it in other threads. I think you're right, $99 by itself is no big deal if you already have a Mac. I've spent more on individual pieces of content for applications before.
FWIW, you don't really need full Visual C# (Windows Phone doesn't use C++) to develop for Windows phone, the free express version does the job and is still a fuller featured IDE than most other offerings it competes with. The more expensive versions contain tools that are more suited to large team environments and large enterprise projects than anything else.
I don't hate Apple either, I'm a lead developer at a firm that develops for many platforms and the iPad is a prominent platform for us right now and we've developed some very succesful applications for the military amongst other clients, but I also think their developer support is the least promising and they show no sign of boosting developer support, they by and large have the weakest longer term outlook right now and have no one to blame but themselves because they've had such a strong position to continue to push forward from. Windows Phone is much nicer and friendlier to develop for than the other two platforms, whilst Google do an excellent job of making sure you can use their tools and deploy to their platform for little cost and with no hassle, you've got a lot of freedom too when working with their platform to do some pretty innovative things that Microsoft and Apple's walled gardens prevent.
But hey, call everyone who dare suggest Apple isn't perfect a hater if it makes you feel better. I'm sure it'll get you far and will help resolve all of Apple's problems.
My point was that the cost exists.
You stated that if someone can't afford the cost they shouldn't be developing. That implies you recognise the cost exists, hence, you agreed with my point - that the additional cost exists. The addition of your opinion was merely that you think the cost is not a problem, not that it doesn't exist.
Are you now saying the majority of developers (bare in mind Mac marketshare) don't in fact have to buy a Mac to develop for iOS with Apple's 1st party tools?
Let's be honest, in your rage to ensure no one dare post something without response that could be even slightly construed as bad about Apple you rushed to disagree with me and state how the cost of Apple hardware was no big deal, even though that wasn't really my point.
This is really the problem with being a fanboy, you can't look rationally at anything that's said, you have to jump off the wagon and lunge for the jugular if there's even a hint of negativity to your pet brand.
Still, it provides good amusement for people like me watching you make a fool of yourself completely contradicting your own point because you failed to miss the original point in the first place in your bout of defensive fanboyist rage.
Right so in other words, despite going off on a tangent you completely agree with the point I made then?
My point was simply that for most people (it's still a 90% PC dominated world remember) the cost of hardware is a real consideration if you want to develop for Apple too.
But don't let that disrupt your fanboy off on a tangent rant about how financially superior Apple users are, and how anyone who can't afford a Mac shouldn't be developing anyway. Keep telling yourself that, the reality is all that it means is a lot of developers just wont bother developing for Apple when the likes of Google do offer a cross platform development environment for their mobile OS for free - something which judging by your comment you seem aghast at the thought of a company deciding to do.
But hey, that's why most analysts are predicting Apple will drop further behind Android and within a few years even behind Windows Phone - because Apple is just plain too hostile to developers. The more developers you turn away, the more you risk losing those one or two killer apps to the competition without them being willing to port to your platform, whilst any killer apps on your platform will be ported, because the competition make it trivial to do so and the imbalance between marketshare with the competition provides more and more incentive to develop for them, and less and less for you.
But hey, Apple should know this, it's the same mistake they made with desktops in the 80s.
That's also assuming you have a Mac in the first place. You can develop for Android and most other platforms on any mainstream OS on any hardware capable of running it. If you want to develop for iOS and use the proper toolchain rather than some backwards 3rd party hacked together PoS then you'll need to add $1000 or whatever to the bill to buy Apple hardware.
Not really, because Motorola has been succesful in the modern smartphone era, whilst Nokia has been nothing other than an epic fail.
Google didn't stand a chance anyway, with Elop at the helm Nokia effectively was taken over by Microsoft. That may not be the legal status but make no mistake, it was a coup by Microsoft, they ousted both the anti-Microsoft leadership and developers at Nokia.
I wouldn't be suprised, should Nokia start to have a succesful Windows 8 business down the line to see Microsoft take over Nokia properly. I suspect they got Elop in there to see if it would work - if it doesn't, fine, I'm sure Elop will have a job waiting for him back at MS again, if it does, great, MS takes over Nokia properly, and Elop becomes head of Microsoft's mobile devices division.
I was going to say 5 years ago Motorola may have been the consolation prize, but as Razr is still to this day the most succesful high end phone relative to it's era in terms of sales it's hard to see that's the case too. Nokia's strength is in selling masses of low margin dump phones to Africa and Asia, and I'm not sure that's a sector Google would want, because said phones can't run Android, don't tend to have internet connectivity and so wont display ads. Motorola is definitely the smarter choice of the two for Google. Convincing Nokia to follow an Android route would've been a boon for sure, but was never likely with Microsoft's coup of the company.
Still, the predictions are Windows Phone is going to come 2nd place behind Android and push Apple back to 3rd within a few years anyway so it's really Apple that needs to be concerned, not Google if these predictions come true, but IMO they all depend on whether Apple gets back to innovating, or sticks to it's recent plan of minor largely irrelevant updates. It seems to have lost it's way somewhat since Jobs stepped down from being full time CEO in Feb, whether that's a coincidence, or whether it's because Cook really is just a shit CEO leading to a Ballmerisation of Apple (10 years of stagnation) remains to be seen I guess.
"European Arrests Warrants do not cover China."
No shit. It's called a theoretical scenario. One people can comprehend, because it's basically equivalent to what Assange faces if he's forwarded to the US from Sweden.
"The assumption is, that all European countries that are signatory to the treaty provide adequate protections as enshrined in the ECHR. "
Yes, and we all know the problem with assumptions. Especially poorly researched ones, made in a hurry in response to a terrorist incident.
"To accuse the TPB judge of not being able to make a fair trial would be a serious charge - and to counter it, most countries - including Sweden - have appeal courts, and supreme courts. TPB lost in those courts too."
Well TPB hasn't exhausted it's appeals yet, but that's besides the point. You're making the assumption the courts are completely separate from government influence, and entirely uncorruptible. All we can go on is the evidence, do you genuinely believe that it is acceptable for such conflict of interest to be allowed in a trial like that of the TPB when it can so easily be eliminated by replacing the judge? Do you not think that serious questions arise when that step is not taken? Even if the judge isn't corrupt then there's no excuse not to let someone else who has no such conflict of interest run the trial, the fact they didn't alone implies there is no care to protect against conflicts of interest prejudicing the trial regardless of whether the judge did or didn't allow this to cloud his judgement, and that alone hence implies Sweden is not capable of operating fair trials where the threat of conflict of interest is eliminated as far as reasonably possible. It's not unfair to then consider that if such trivial and simple steps aren't taken to replace the judge and ensure no conflict of interest before the trial that the conflict of interest was in fact present intentionally.
"The Police in Sweden have issued an arrest warrant for him - it doesn't mean, can we come to your house, or ask questions over a video link - it's you're coming down to the station to answer questions."
No they haven't, the prosecutor has issued a European Arrest Warrant, which is extremely odd. Not to mention being asked down the local station is a bit different from being asked to fly back to a country you left after all charges were dropped against you only to be raised again after you left despite the police having ample opportunity to question you prior and despite Assange's local station effectively being the Swedish embassy where he has even offered to go for questioning, but no, they want him in Sweden proper. Why do you think that might be?
He wasn't trying to escape justice. He hasn't even been charged yet, he's argued all along that the Swedish prosecution could question him in the UK and then if there's a case for him to be charged they could go ahead and do that and try and extradite him based on the charges.
What he's trying to avoid is being extradited to Sweden without charge, and then being passed on to America. Particularly when in Sweden the case has already become too politicised because even their PM has basically pre-judged him in TV interviews.
Your assumption is simply that he'll get a fair trial in Sweden, but as with the TPB trial which was overseen and the outcome determined by a judge who was a member of a content industry political lobbying organisation, who was good friends with the content industry lawyers in the prosecution and was pushed forward at the behest of American pressure as demonstrated by leaked cables we know that Sweden isn't capable of ensuring that this will be the case.
This isn't a job well done by any measure but I'm not suprised, we in the UK are as much a puppet state of the US as Sweden is. When we can't even protect our own people like Gary McKinnon from extradition to the US even now, with a coalition government in which both leaders previously stated they were against his extradition though it's far from certain he wont be extradited still then frankly, Assange, a foreign citizen, had no hope- that much has been clear all along.
If Sweden just questioned him here in person, or via video link, and then charged him I'd be far more supportive of this, but extradition for a case with massive politicisation in the country trying to extradite when they haven't yet even been willing to produce solid enough evidence to charge him hence based entirely on an accusation? Fuck no, that's not justice.
Would you like to be extradited to a country like China because of nothing more than some random person there claiming you raped them when you went there on holiday despite a complete lack of evidence and no charge being put forward by Chinese authorities? Sure the US isn't China, well, for most people, but for someone like Assange whom the US makes exceptions to it's supposed love of liberty, justice, and free speech, it really is that draconian a situation.
It doesn't matter if vendors write the device drivers, the device drivers still have to interface with the OS and that means the OS providing services the drivers can interact with to, you know, do something useful.
Apple has no qualms about deprecating support for older or obscure hardware whilst Windows always does it's best to cope. Windows also supports hardware you see in industry which Apple would never dream of bothering to support. Both have their pros and cons - MacOS X is sleeker and faster as a result, but Windows is more widely compatible, this mirrors the fact Windows can be bought and installed on whatever hardware you want, but Apple maintains a strong grip over where it's OS can go.
Your example of Linux actually demonstrates the point, it lets you manage what you do and don't need loaded. This is why you've always historically had to fuck around recompiling the kernel, and nowadays, with kernel modules. The benefit is that you can tailor it to be fast for your needs, the cost is worse usability- many people don't have the skill or will to go fucking around with that for the sake of an extra minute or two startup time whilst they go make a coffee, to others however it's essential to their setup that systems boot as fast as possible and so it does matter. It's again about tradeoffs, Windows isn't slow just because Microsoft's devs don't understand optimisation like you believe is the case. When new versions of Windows are released and we hear bootup times have improved it's because they finally have actually been able to trim away some of the legacy cruft because it genuinely isn't needed anymore.
But as you clearly have no grasp of the topic at hand I guess I'll leave it there. There's no point arguing with people who just don't know wtf they're on about, but carry on anyway. You're one of those people, in your mind you're never wrong. Even though everyone around you is pointing out quite clearly why you are, all you can do to counter that is to continue to say things which demonstrate your lack of knowledge.
The problem is that the problem only exists in your mind. The kind of optimisations the GP is suggesting people should do make no difference noticable by a human nowadays.
I'm not sure what you're on about RE: Firefox, but it's performance issues aren't to do with this kind of low level optimisation - speed issues in applications nowadays are because of much higher level problems, like poorly architected software which can be solved with a refactor, not months of hand optimisations to try and tweak the tiniest bit of memory or a handful of CPU cycles out of an algorithm at best.
"It's almost as if the existence of faster CPUs and larger memory has enticed some to be extremely lazy"
Or just made them focus on getting stuff done rather than implementing optimisations no one will ever notice.
Oh, and your MacBook startup vs. your Windows startup? That's because Windows supports an ever changing set of hardware configurations and retains support for legacy software. Your MacBook has the luxury of retaining a relatively small set of hardware configurations and Apple being happy to chuck backwards compatibility out the Window.
Sure Windows is slower to boot up but it works on more hardware and has superior backwards compat. Sure your MacBook has poor backwards compat. for older Mac software and wont ever support some hardware configurations, but it's got a better startup time. Those are the tradeoffs you face with this sort of thing.
Surely you understand this though if you're an optimisation guru, that you know, it's all about tradoffs? Or perhaps if you're one of those that's all about optimisation whatever the cost in man hours and however negligible the benefits then you don't understand that it's all about picking the right balance.
So no, don't "MOD PARENT DOWN!!!". You have a rose tinted view of an era when all software was ultra-optimised by super non-lazy ninja programmers, I remember it more as an era where software still took longer to load and performed far more poorly than it does now, crashed far more often in far more fatal manners, had far more dangerous security flaws like root access exploits rather than just SQL injection exploits, and where usability was out the window as you had to spend hours configuring your system to even get it to run a game or whatever.
I don't think the past was really as rosy as you think.
Agreed, if you want to get a job learn .NET.
If you want to learn Dart, then right now it'll be for fun and learning, so just get on with it.
"This analogy is rather flawed."
Yes, and even if it wasn't, then I just read the summary as basically saying some circuit boards probably shouldn't be patentable either, not that because they are, software should be too, which was his argument.
Yes, although I'm seeing the americanised version become more and more popular here in the UK nowadays.
When we had some patent legal eagles in at my old job last year to advise on the patent filing and enforcement process for some patents we wanted to file they were pronouncing it pay-tent rather than pah-tent still though and I guess they use and hear the word as much as anyone in the UK.
Yes.
If you're a fanboy.
"Look, I'm not here to debate AGW. I'm here to point out that the article is full of shit, which is something you don't refute. Instead, you attack me as a denialist when my only point is that I can't believe the article when there is a blatant lie in the title itself. I'm gonna call bullshit wherever I see it. The fact that you DON'T proves that YOU are the one with the closed mind."
Actually, it's the fact you're splitting hairs over something minor and pushing that as evidence that the bigger picture is wrong that's the problem.
It doesn't really matter if a single particular article is poorly worded, that doesn't change the fact that the science behind global warming is now pretty strong. In your earlier post you were trying to imply precisely that - that because the article was poorly worded and Mr Muller wasn't a fully fledged global warming skeptic, that the whole global warming thing in general is questionable.
That is frankly a complete load of illogical bollocks. That is why you are closed minded - because you are desperately clutching at whatever remaining straws you can find to try and justify your predetermined view of the situation, yet it's looking ever more ludicrous the stronger the evidence for GW gets whilst the firmly grounded scientific evidence against it continues to not actually exist.
According to the response I got back when Ed was "reaching out to the people for opinions", yes.
I wasn't terribly surprised, Ed was afterall instrumental in Brown's government, not to mention his right had man Ed Balls and Ball's wife. Really, the party hasn't changed - just reshuffled minus Brown.
David Milliband was probably their best hope for change in the short term, as he was a Blairite, that doesn't make him ideal of course, but it at least meant he's not an authoritarian-socialist Brownite.
Which is of course why the unions didn't want him.
"She lost her seat at the last election (I won't say which because it would reveal where I live and I value my privacy). Good riddance."
Right, and who replaced her? Someone with the same values no doubt?
I e-mailed the Conservatives when they were in opposition a few years ago when the DEA was first mentioned as an idea as they were "seeking to get the views of the public" in their attempt to pursue power.
I got a reply back from Jeremy Hunt which was almost word for word a press release from the RIAA, containing entirely unproven facts, despite me making it clear that part the problem I had with the DEA was the fact there was no solid evidence being put forward as to the validity of the music industry's claims. It was pretty clear to me all those years ago that he was a puppet, a shill of big media, so I was hardly surprised to see it all come out about him in the News of the World scandal.
Of course, now Labour is in opposition, good old Red Ed is doing the same thing, seeking the opinions of the public, to guage what they did wrong, how they can change. So, I figured I'd take him up on the offer.
Imagine my complete lack of surprise when he gave me the usual blurb about how their ID card database would save lives, and how the DEA was necessary to protect the creative industries from billions of pounds in losses and how Labour would still support these if reelected.
Really, it doesn't matter what you or I think, only what companies willing to engage in corrupt practices with corrupt MPs think.
Still, at least it provides a bit of humour when the likes of Louise Mensch goes on HIGNFY and gets herself ripped to shreds trying to defend such practices as she did the other week, so it's not all bad I suppose.
He was skeptical of the science being claimed to prove the issue, not the issue itself. The two are very separate things - it's possible to say "Yeah, I think global warming is happening, but I don't believe the science being done thus far is of decent enough quality to prove it so we can't say for sure".
He has now done research that appears to fit quite closely to the science he was skeptical of.
Why do the global warming denialists need to make things up and jump to false conclusions if their belief is as solid as they say it is?
Nothing will help someone like you though, you're clearly set in your ways and not one of those people who will ever change their mind despite being faced with mounting evidence contrary to your claim, and no evidence supporting your claim. So stick to the straw man arguments, if they really make you feel better. I'm sure that's what flat earth theorists did to make themselves feel better too.
"If the White House were to come under cybernetic attack, and the majority of those attacks appeared to originate from my house, you bet your ASS that the Secret Service will be knocking on my door, with a battering ram!"
Cybernetic attack?
If it was a cybernetic attack then I think the secret service would have more to worry about than you as I suspect it would look more like Rise of the Machines than it would Hackers.
Yes this is just a typical Slashdot pedant post, I just couldn't help but point out that cybernetic != cyber.