I wouldn't put mine to the curb because I'm still playing game titles on the console. Having said this, the world being awash in $100 and less boxes that do a better job of Netflix (AND the others...), it's also awash with devices that with a decent BT game controller or similar can manage just shy of the PS3 titles as well.

It's not a wise move on their part. Google's going to eat their lunch if they do this.

It's still a hack and a workaround there. Just because it works "okay" and it's "easy" doesn't mean the yanking of the functionality in the PS4 isn't problematic. I know I'm waiting for a critical mass of PS4 titles before I contemplate a move- and with GoogleTV or an Android HDMI stick, it became stupidly easy to do the others. It's another box, but still- Sony's not getting me to sign off on this crap and at the rate they're going I might just give the PS4 a pass as well.

There is a reason I am keen on seeing if Valve can manage something with SteamBox/SteamOS/Linux. I'm a bit tired of the BS and lies about this stuff.

Don't SAP have their own RDBMS, called SAP DB or MaxDB? It was even released as free software a few years back (then they changed their mind and went back to proprietary). Do you mean that despite that, the only database backend that works well with large SAP installations is Oracle?

The class is algorithms and data structures. The entire point is to learn the internals of common structures. The student needs to write and learn about linked lists, not learn how to use a linked list library. The student needs to write and learn about trees, not learn how to use a tree library. Learn about and implement several different sorting algorithms, not how to use a sorting library.

A student's role is different than a job in industry. A student is attempting to learn the material. They need to learn how the internals work. Many of these algorithms and data structures are used all over inside standard libraries. They are so common that every professional should know them flat-out. For a class about the algorithms and data structures they need to write their own tools. For a class about something else or in the industry they can use a library if they want.

It is the same reason we teach kids times tables and make them do long division rather than just hand them a calculator in the third grade. When the study is covering mastery of the material and understand how things are manipulated they need to do it by hand. This way the student will actually develop the ability to use the knowledge when they need it.

Argh, didn't proofread my edits and two links broke the gender gap paragraph. Forgot that greater than and less then signs get treated as html blocks and get eaten.

From various reports the first one in a tab I closed, the second one like this we get stats. Poor mothers, UNDER $25K, usually stay at home. About 45% work. Once the individuals in the family make between $30K to $60K each it is common for both to work, with 77% of mothers in the workforce. But once they enter the "highly paid" range of over $90K of husband's salary the mothers start to tend to stay home, and once the husbands hit $150K it drops back to 43% of the women working. A large part of the gender gap in tech jobs comes from worker choice, not employer bias.

Well, according to government statistics, the "Percent Black or African-American" represent about 7.1% of 2011 graduates and about 7.4% of the workforce, and both are trending upwards. Compare the roughly 7.4% of black computer programmers with 10.8% of the general population. So a smaller percent of the population get the training, but those who get the training are not discriminated against for hiring purposes. (Not talking about wages, just hiring diversity.)

From the same report with a 10-year granularity, females make up about 33.9% of the 2011 graduates and about 26.6% of the computer programming workforce. Women are also making up an increasing number of the workforce that changes based on age. The report notes "these estimates could be consistent with an age effect. That is, when women are young, they are more likely to be employed in STEM, but as they age, they move out of STEM employment." The trend lines show 35-year-old females in the group as a growing population, with the growth dropping rapidly by age groups. Compare that with the 48% females in the general national workforce. So in hiring diversity women do make up a lower number by diversity but it is largely by their own choice rather than hiring discrimination.

One of the real problems with the gender gap is that many times it is a sign of wealth or poverty -- that is, in various demographics of wealthy households and poor households women are not part of the workforce. It forms a bell-shaped curve. Poor mothers ($90K) the line starts to rapidly drop again. So splitting out the numbers, if the individuals are making $30K-$50K then often the mother is educated and also the mother works. But once the family has highly paid workers, with the husband highly paid making >$90K then the women again tend to stay home with children rapidly trending back down to about 43% working once you've crossed the roughly $150K husband's income. Since the tech field is very highly paid that puts the gender gap as a voluntary choice, not an involuntary hiring discrimination.

Based both on what I have seen and also what I have read in various reports, the problem (if there is one) is at the source end of the education pipeline. When it comes to "Black or African American" demographics the number of graduates and number of workers is at parity. When it comes to females, the numbers are that women who choose to stick with the field are readily employed and that many women leave as they age at a rate far more rapid than other fields.

In terms of sheer numbers, I'd guess you are right: more Win32 applications have been written since 1995 or so than there are apps for iOS. Especially if you include in-house software.

In terms of applications to do something most people want to do, which is a subjective measure I admit, iOS may have the lead. Particularly so if you look for software that's optimized for tablet use: there are a lot of very capable Windows programs which are rather less usable on a tablet than with a physical keyboard and mouse, whereas iOS apps are all designed around touchscreen use.

For example, I've been looking for a map program (similar to Google Maps) that runs on a handheld Windows 7 PC with attached GPS. It's surprising how few choices there are that do the basic function of showing your GPS position on a map, and aren't some crusty thing last updated in 2004. True, if I included Windows 8 "Metro" apps there would be a wider choice, but still it is dwarfed by what you get on Android or iOS. (FTR - in the end I went with Anquet Maps for hiking maps and Mapfactor PC-Navigator for city use.)

The problem with USB MSD is that you can't operate against the store with the OS on the device at the same time the Host OS is doing it. MTP was chosen so that you could do things on the store while the device was able to use it at the same time. The fact that the implementation of the whole notion's flawed (Hey, Microsoft came up with it!) in the manner that it's single threaded (You can only act on a single object request at a given time), is irrelevant to everything. Now, if they could come up with a 2.0 that was multithreaded, and have proper USB IF compliant implementations of the same (MTP is an IF spec, mind...) then it'd be great. You need SOMETHING like it in place- just not what we've got in it's current form.

O_o

What security problems? You can't autoexecute stuff off an SD under Android. The only time there's a security concern (and it's going to be the SAME on the on-device eMMC...) is that you can execute code off of an SD that vendors didn't intend for you to run. That's how people side-load in the first place. They didn't change anything with this little change they made in KitKat and didn't break anything any worse than it was with this change back.

The reason that they quit including SD slots was because they want everything on Drive or similar and it lowered the BoM cost to peel those out. It's not security- quit deluding yourself and everyone else with this tripe.

Openness? Please...lay down the crack pipe before posting. Seriously.

What gets me is why they didn't lead with this to begin with. What they did with KitKat was effin' stupid.

As for Verizon getting their updates out? Heh...you're kidding, right? You'd just bend a 6' digging bar all to hell trying to surgically remove their head. I quit trying to hold my breath on that one when they got a Nexus and promptly treated the damn thing like a red-headed stepchild; and then made it...difficult...to obtain dev edition devices. (Ever thought that maybe a dev wants to be ON your damn network since it's reliable compared to the others, Verizon? There's legit reasons to have root permissions on the phone...even if you don't see them and keep deluding yourself that you're "protecting" the users...)

So you start with a fairly reliable delivery service, add in severe federal penalties for tampering with the mail, then additional severe federal penalties for interfering with an election.

If you are worried about tampering (or if you didn't send your ballot in time, they must be postmarked the day before the election) you can deliver them yourself to any polling place or the election office on voting day. If you still don't trust that a paper ballot delivered to the polling place will be tampered with, you are more paranoid than most.

And as others have mentioned, compare the risk of a mailed ballot being lost or tampered with versus an electronic vote being lost or tampered with. I have more trust in the mail-based paper system.

Meh. I voted by mail a week ago. Got a paper ballot. Had lots of time to look up details on all the issues, including the judges, some obscure issues, and the people I'd never heard of.

Much better solution. No lines. No scheduling around work. Several weeks to study out everything.

I highly recommend it for everybody.

He should outright sue. It isn't anything except a very high quality micro-CNC machine. It's called a Ghost Gunner because of one of the intended purposes. As such, they just breached agreement on their end without cause and he has cause.