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User: bonch

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  1. Re:I think this is bullshit on Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO · · Score: 1

    Diversity does not mean tolerating bigotry directed at minorities. It's crazy that you talk about tolerating disagreement when Eich is the one who donated money to criminalize what he disagrees with.

  2. Re:AHAHAHAHAH on Bug In the GnuTLS Library Leaves Many OSs and Apps At Risk · · Score: 5, Informative

    The bug was found due to observed behavior, not due to a code review.

  3. Vista on Steve Ballmer's Big-Time Error: Not Resigning Years Ago · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In an interview with ZDNet, Ballmer said his biggest regret as CEO was in how Windows Vista was developed.

    The aftermath of Vista is precisely when he should have resigned. CEOs of other tech companies have resigned for lesser debacles.

  4. Privacy concerns now outweigh terrorism in polls on NSA Director Defends Surveillance To Unsympathetic Black Hat Crowd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The NSA scandal has been so earth-shattering with regards to raising awareness of government surveillance that concerns over civil liberties now outweigh concerns over protecting the country. The shift is across party lines as well. It's no wonder politicians of either party have been decrying a rising trend of libertarianism. Whether or not it's accurate to classify today's anti-government fears as such, the fact that the U.S. has become the kind of country to seek asylum from is staggeringly insane. The "trust us" defense isn't good enough.

  5. Re:The move to HD hurt them on Wii Outselling Wii U, Only 160,000 Units Shipped Last Quarter · · Score: 1

    If you mean that their disinterest in HD in 2006 didn't hurt them, I agree with regard to the first few years of the Wii's life, but its lack of power eventually caught up with them when cross-platform developers left the Wii. Today, the Wii U isn't selling because it doesn't have much first-party software available to showcase the system. Miyamoto acknowledged that this is the result of underestimating the scale of labor required for HD development and subsequently having to delay their software releases (another area where it's behind is in providing competitive online services). The rest of the industry went through this transition this seven years ago, and Nintendo was able to ignore it at the time because of the money they were making.

  6. The move to HD hurt them on Wii Outselling Wii U, Only 160,000 Units Shipped Last Quarter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nintendo dragged its feet in the move to HD and is paying the price. They underestimated the time and money expense, and now their first-party releases are behind. On top of that, there's barely been any marketing for the Wii U, which has a name that implies it's an accessory for the Wii rather than a new console. The console's tablet controller doesn't offer anything that people's existing smartphones and iPads can't do better. It was likely released in reaction to the iPad (Nintendo stated in 2010 that Apple is their biggest threat). With the lack of hardware power and user base, there's nothing with which to court third-party developers, who are focused instead on the more powerful consoles coming out later this year.

    Nintendo's stronghold remains handheld gaming. However, even that is under threat from smartphones. On top of what Android already supports, iOS 7 will ship with native physical controller APIs, and Apple is working with hardware manufacturers to release official attachments and wireless controllers. While the 3DS certainly won't disappear, it will be interesting to watch how well it fares among adult gamers when physical controllers become commonplace in the iPhone accessory aisle.

  7. Quote from another dead hero on Training Materials for NSA Spying Tool "XKeyScore" Revealed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "They don't want the voice of reason spoken, folks, 'cause otherwise we'd be free. Otherwise we wouldn't believe their fucking horseshit lies, nor the fucking propaganda machine, the mainstream media, and buy their horseshit products that we don't fucking need, and become a third world consumer fucking plantation, which is what we're becoming. Fuck them! They're liars and murders. All governments are liars and murderers, and I am now Jesus. Now. And this is my compound."

    - Bill Hicks, Live at Laff Stop in Austin

  8. Re:sick of windows at work on Early Surface Sales Pitiful · · Score: 2, Insightful

    People have invested in iOS and Android apps, leaving little incentive to switch. Additionally, WinRT lacks functionality compared to Win32. Microsoft has become reactive and conservative, following what others do rather than leading. They had the opportunity years ago to shake things up with the Courier tablet, which was focused on content creation. The project was killed because Bill Gates wanted it to be a more traditional device that interfaced with Office.

  9. Marketing expenses on Early Surface Sales Pitiful · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In other words, Microsoft spent more money on advertising the Surface than they took in selling it.

  10. Re:Misleading Article on Google Argues Against Net Neutrality · · Score: 1, Informative

    If you'd read the article, citing what other broadband companies do is exactly the defense Google responded with, but that policy contradicts their previous position on net neutrality.

  11. Don't be evil (some of the time) on Google Argues Against Net Neutrality · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google plans to offer its own business-class services on Fiber. Can't have people running their own servers as competition. This company tends to claim support for whatever is politically popular among techies and then quietly go back on it when it affects their bottom line.

  12. Re:Guess. on Linux 3.11 Officially Named "Linux For Workgroups" · · Score: -1

    Because thinking this is juvenile makes you an "MS apologist".

  13. Re:users? on NetBSD To Support Kernel Development In Lua Scripting · · Score: -1

    I don't know; Lua's treatment of both as the same type of data leads to unexpected behavior:

    local a = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 }
    a[3] = nil -- "Remove" an element
    -- Now a is { [1] = 1, [2] = 2, [4] = 4, [5] = 5 }

    On a similar note, Lua's "everything undefined is nil" behavior can lead to subtle bugs. For example:

    local a = { alpha, betaa, delta, gamma }

    Assuming those are previously defined, the misspelled "beta" will evaluate to nil and create an array hole, which will screw up the value returned by the length operator. It also means you can't do things like reliably get the count of { f() } if f() returns nil.

  14. Re:How much of this is down to crApple... on Opera Picks Up Webkit Engine · · Score: -1

    "crApple"? Next you're going to tell us Bill Gates at M$ is the devil, this year will be the year of Linux on the desktop, hot grits down your pants, Natalie Portman naked and petrified...

  15. Re:Stallman bitches, film at eleven on RMS Speaks Out Against Ubuntu · · Score: -1

    I don't see a reference to RMS saying nobody should have kids - do you?

    Stallman made the statement in the radio show described in the first link. If you want more evidence of his anti-children position, here's a more well-known example.

  16. Porting to Windows RT on Hit Game Makes £52 In First Week On Windows RT · · Score: 1

    I was excited about WinRT (not to be confused with Windows RT...yeah, I know) during Windows 8's development and was considering porting a project, but after evaluating Windows 8, the lack of features in the APIs, annoying interface decisions, and confusing hardware fragmentation made it an easy decision not to bother. Microsoft's alleged refusal to promote ARM-only apps, when it needs all the apps it can get, re-affirms that decision. Windows 8 is a non-starter as a development platform.

  17. Re:Stallman bitches, film at eleven on RMS Speaks Out Against Ubuntu · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's one thing to have some Larry Wall style eccentricities, but Stallman hurts any movement he attaches his name to because of his extremist views. He believes, for example, that programmers should not expect to be paid for their work and that it's more important that non-free software disappear than it is for someone's children to be fed (he also believes nobody should have children). He's also made vile statements about what he calls "voluntary pedophilia", claiming that it should be legalized.

    The annoying part is that in nearly every Stallman discussion, people will say things like, "You may not agree with everything he says, but we sure need someone like him who always sticks to their guns!" No, we don't. He's hurting the movement.

    GNU was an interesting philosophy when it was started, but it's not as if it was the only open source ideology or that other open source movements wouldn't have taken hold. This isn't to diminish GNU so much as it is to diminish Stallman's glorified role in history among computer geeks and lessen the movement's reliance on a crazy person.

  18. Doesn't help on MPAA: the Impact of Megaupload's Shutdown Was 'Massive' · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I don't take issue with the shutdown since Megaupload was being used as a gigantic, unregulated store for pirated content, and that does take money away from content creators. Instead, I go out of my way to purchase independent content to support artists outside of the mainstream system, and any mainstream content I do want gets purchased digitally, which ultimately contributes to a lessening of relevance for the traditional distributors represented by the MPAA. Home film releases come out out sooner and sooner after their theater runs, and streaming services like Netflix are so popular on living room devices that Microsoft claims video streaming surpasses game-playing in terms of hours of usage on the Xbox 360. Whatever traditional structure the MPAA is protecting has already been supplanted by legal mediums.

    In other words, Megaupload isn't necessary--the fate of the traditional movie industry has already been sealed by companies who embraced the internet.

  19. Re:Like who again? on Motorola Seeks Ban On Macs, iPads, and iPhones · · Score: -1

    How is this countersuing or fighting back? This is an outright offensive move. The only "consensus" otherwise is among Slashdot posters who are STILL trying to portray Google's acquisition of Motorola as purely defensive. For some reason, Google can absolutely do no wrong here, whatsoever, at all, ever. Why? Because they use Linux?

  20. Re:Google, Apple on Motorola Seeks Ban On Macs, iPads, and iPhones · · Score: -1, Insightful

    That would be a more convincing statement if every Apple competitor wasn't copying the designs of their products. Now all the laptops are aping the MacBook Air. It's ridiculous.

  21. Re:FB and Google are NOT in the same situation. on Dark Days Ahead For Facebook and Google? · · Score: -1, Redundant

    One is the designer and developer of the most popular smartphone + tablet OS.

    Huh? The most popular tablet operating system is iOS. Android has very little presence in the tablet market. Having smartphone market share won't mean much if Google doesn't make money from Android, according to their own quarterlies.

  22. That is cool, but... on Axis, Yahoo's New Browser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That search result display is actually really cool. I'd love to see that in other browsers (including desktop browsers). The problem is Yahoo's track record is poor when it comes to updating their products. For instance, Yahoo Mail is embarrassingly behind other web mail services. If Yahoo treats this like they treat their other products, I can't help wondering if it will just become another obsolete Yahoo thing.

  23. Re:Choose one on The Future of Browser Choice · · Score: -1, Troll

    This condescending attitude toward non-techies is off-putting and needs to die. You don't have some unique brain power that others lack. You just choose to spend your free time on computers. Other people choose to spend their time on other things that you lack knowledge in.

  24. Re:history repeating on The Future of Browser Choice · · Score: -1, Troll

    This is a security issue. Non-techies don't care about "browser choice". They do care about their phone not getting hacked. Just because IE6 was terrible doesn't automatically mean that a restricted browser platform is bad...it just means IE6 was bad and insecure. If you want fast JIT, WebGL, etc. then expect security restrictions.

    Vendors are trying to avoid the mistakes of the past (IE6) by providing secure, restricted platforms for running web code. If they didn't and became infested with exploits, techies would be shitting all over them for THAT.

  25. Choose one on The Future of Browser Choice · · Score: -1

    Choose one: a secure platform with a fast built-in browser that executes JIT and accesses hardware drivers but with third-party restrictions, or an insecure platform with lots of browser choice but increased opportunity for malicious exploits.