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Software

Canonical Unveils WebApps For Ubuntu 61

nk497 writes "Canonical has revealed a system to make web apps behave more like native applications in Ubuntu. The Ubuntu WebApps feature will 'allow applications that normally run in the web browser to have some functionality outside that browser, within the Ubuntu desktop,' product manager Pete Goddall said. Basically, sites can be pinned to the launcher — which sounds a bit like IE9's pinning system, but WebApps can also interact with the OS, displaying notifications for new messages in Gmail, interacting with Last.FM via Ubuntu's sound controls, and when right clicking on photos, including Facebook as an upload option. WebApps will land in 12.10 in October, but there will also be an add-on version for people staying on long-term support version 12.04."
Programming

Objective-C Overtakes C++, But C Is Number One 594

mikejuk writes "Although the TIOBE Index has its shortcomings, the finding that Objective-C has overtaken C++ is reiterated in the open source Transparent Language Popularity Index. The reason is, of course, that Objective-C is the language you have to use to create iOS applications — and as iPads and iPhones have risen in popularity, so has Objective-C. If you look at the raw charts then you can see that C++ has been in decline since about 2005 and Objective-C has shot up to overtake it with amazing growth. But the two charts are on different scales: if you plot both on the same chart, you can see that rather than rocketing up, Objective-C has just crawled its way past, and it is as much to do with the decline of C++. It simply hasn't reached the popularity of C++ in its heyday before 2005. However the real story is that C, a raw machine independent assembler-like language, with no pretense to be object oriented or sophisticated, has beaten all three of the object oriented heavy weights — Java, C++ and Objective C. Yes C is number one (and a close second in the transparent index)."

Comment Re:Well deserved (Score 5, Insightful) 178

and nobody would have expected even Facebook to fail this hard

Huh? Facebook has pretty stated that their strategy is to try major, risky changes at high speed and retract them if necessary. A careful, backwards-compatible, regression tested release process is the opposite of what they do.

So: I would say anyone trusting facebook with their critical data is a fool.

Comment Re:Good luck (Score 2) 324

Perhaps I'm being naive, but Steam only solves one part of the "problem" of games on Linux. Many other difficult technical problems remain, such as the fragmentation of distros, poor 3D video drivers/performance, fragmented APIs such as audio.
And then there all the "marketing" problems, such as that many Linux users are not interested in paying for games, or want open source, or also run Windows for games.

Comment Re:An x86 pocket PC (Score 1) 66

imagine using all your favorite desktop apps on your phone

No thanks, that would suck. The success of iPhone followed by Android shows that people want new software (or at least software with a new UI) suited to the form factor. In any case, my favourite desktop apps now consist of a web browser, and ... um. An IDE? Good luck using that on a phone.

Comment Re:Optical? (Score 1) 502

As a game artist myself, you can never have textures with too much resolution [...] or models with too much detail.

As a player, I stopped caring about improved resolution some time ago. Current PS3 games have enough. It would be a minor nicety to have more resolution, but only if it was free (ie. didn't hurt framerates, load times, effort put into gameplay, etc).

Comment Hybrid works if the SSD is good, but ... (Score 1) 311

We are using Intel's "Smart Response Technology" which uses a small 20GB mSATA SSD on the motherboard in conjunction with a regular hard drive.
It can cache both reads and [optionally] writes.
In read/write cache mode, it gives about 80% of the performance boost of using the pure SSD, for our Visual Studio 2010 disk thrashing.

However, these are good quality Intel SSDs, not the "cheapest flash chip I could find to bung in my hard disk" that the all-in-one hybrid drives seem to use.

Comment Re:Deliberately behind the times (Score 1) 362

I would also add that TFS feels a bit unfinished. The basic design is pretty good, but certain small but very useful things are missing in the UI, e.g.:
the merge/compare tools cannot ignore case or whitespace (!)
there is no rollback in the GUI (until a recent Powertools addon, which is flakey)
In some places you can get to the history of a file, in others not
There is no easy way to search your bugs (work items)!

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