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Comment Re:Drones are dirt cheap and no pilot dies. (Score 1) 232

What if this (extreme and unlikely scenario) occurred: an enemy force launches an extremely large flight of propeller-powered fighter/attack aircraft. Sure, our F/A-18s and such might blow them away until they run out of missiles. The dynamics between propeller (slow but extremely maneuverable) vs jet (fast but makes bigger turns) might prevent a gun-range, outnumbering dog-fight from playing out in our favor.

There was a short story something like that - some modern jet fighter slips back in time to WWI, and could not engage the enemy planes due to the speed difference, and the inability of the fighter jet's radar to get a lock onto the paper and wood enemy planes. It turned out that he didn't need to fire weapons at the warbirds of the era. All he needed to do was to buzz them while supersonic. They didn't have the speed or maneuverability to get out of the way, and their airframes were so relatively fragile, that they couldn't handle the shockwave. The planes would snap like twigs in the wake of the jet. And being supersonic, he could travel up and down the entire front lines in a matter of hours.

I imagine that you wanted to say WW II.

Comment Re:Confused (Score 1) 319

To a certain extent it is true, and I am of the ones delighted with the C++ Renaissance happening at Microsoft.

However, I have to ask what means managed? If I compile C# to native code like the Bartok compiler does, is it still managed?

If I create a C or C++ application and make use of Boehm GC libraries, it is now managed?

Managed and native are just marketing buzzwords.

Comment They are already here (Score 1) 338

There are already quite a few projects making use of Scala, Clojure, Erlang, F#. Ocaml and Haskell tend to not be so used as the former three.

One small thing that might disklike Microsoft bashers is that F# is developed by Microsoft and Ocaml and Haskell communities do have quite a few developers employed by Microsoft Research.

Comment Stupid users (Score 1) 169

No operating system can protect stupid users from installing dubious applications.

Regardless how many security walls you put in place, if the user says yes to everything there is no way he will get protected.

The stupid thing is that this then lands in the stupid non-technical press as "platform X has malware" articles.

Comment Re:Biggest problem with iOS development (Score 1) 191

That is what many developers fail to see. At the end of the day, a PC + Visual Studio costs more than a Mac, which provides all the developer tools together with the operating system.

It is true that you can get the Windows SDK + Visual Studio express versions for free, but those are the light versions, so to speak.

Comment Open WP7 to native developers (Score 1) 191

If Microsoft is really serious about convincing developers to port to WP7 from iPhone, they should offer native access to the platform to everyone and
not just special partners.

Most developer shops don't have enough resources to keep parallel versions of the application code in different languages.

Comment Re:PC = Windows? (Score 1) 195

The problem is not the game developers, but the publishers.

The game industry works in a similar way to the other entertaining industries. A game studio needs to find a publisher that sponsors the game development, the publisher then gets to say how the game gets developed and which platforms are to be targeted.

This is the main reason why only Indies are targeting Mac and Linux platforms.

Because the publishers only want easy money, they only accept consoles first and the type of game style proven to make money.

We need more Indies.

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