Yep, as they detailed back in 2009:

http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sitting-in-traffic.html

(((((*what))) are(((you)))saying)))?((((there))))?

#warning rant coming

"printf instead of std::cout"

I love c++, but it definitely has some dark spots, even still the long overdue c++0x update (c++11 whatever). Thank deity we finally have standard smart pointers, better templates in various ways, move semantics, etc. It was really necessary to finally have that, even if it was a decade late (I'm sure we lost quite a bunch of good c++ programmers and projects to more newfangled languages in the delay). Even though we often won't be able to use it until all compilers (and developers) in use for a certain codebase are updated, it is a start.

c++ streams... After exceptions the second worst mistake in c++... c++ needs something good for that functionality, but streams and exceptions don't help.

Beware of std::cout, it is not thread-safe and is a gigantic pain in the expletive for outputting formatted text. The utility of overloading the shift operator for interfacing with streams is overrated. std::endl is a curse word. streambuf is an ugly hack.

while std::string is usually an improvement over the plain 'char *', it also is as often overkill as it often is underpowered. Why else would so many people have their own string class? Why would Qt have QString? It's because std::string and fstreams are severely lacking... standard c++ needs more syntactic strength in tokenizing, parsing, formatting, transforming, combining, and type-converting of string content. What is there, in the standard, is, well, imho kludgy. I'm not saying that I have the answer to what exactly it needs, it just needs something better.

c++ still has a lot of catching up to do. Libraries like boost should really only have their sandbox and legacy code left, and libraries like qt shouldn't need to redo/replace basic functionality. It should be possible to get a proof of concept implementation (aka badly optimized but mostly functional and not too many bugs for a demo or trial) working quickly as easy in c++ as it does in certain other languages. Until then, it should work hard to catch up before we lose most programmers to other languages.

I remember how the first building exploded and a specialist in the news said that that really isn't a big deal and that nothing really was wrong.

It's not on the web page, but there is a 0.8.10 from a week ago:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash/2012-02/msg00000.html

Yeah, because that never happened before. Oh, wait...

Maybe the company should keep some old original crackberries and maybe a couple of RAZRs on hand as replacements for 'broken' ones... That will fix the problem faster than anything...

I'm not sure if I should believe the video, it looks like an infomercial, and the disclaimer flashed at the end doesn't instill confidence that it really exists and works...

Well duh.

If only I could become a bank to borrow at the FED counter...

Those people who are 35 and up now were teenagers 25 years ago, that's 1986 and earlier. In 1986 and before, the time in which the people who are at least 35 years old and today were young teenagers beginning to think about which career path to choose. And in 1986, computers were, well, mostly boring, and definitely not something to make good money in.

So, how many teenagers do you think choose a career path into something that looks boring and not making much money?

MSDOS and it's FAT filesystem (and their predecessors) had it too, and called them 'file extensions', They uses things like 'exe' for the apps, 'ico' for the related icons, 'jpg' for the photo, 'txt' for the comments, 'doc' for the related documents, 'bat' for task descriptions, etc, etc.

They just aren't used like that much...

And instead of using what already exists, it's much better to reinvent the wheel and give it a whole new name.

(/sarcasm, or not?)

I've had one of those black rectangle flatscreen mobile devices to play videos for the little one quite a while now, and it was on the market before the iPad. It has been mistaken for an iPad frequently, even though it doesn't even have a touchscreen.

Here is a picture, 'looks like an iPad', or, because it predates it, 'an iPad looks like this':

http://www.technotalks.com/reviews/aluratek-preps-in-cinepal-hi-def-portable-media-player/

I'm not saying it's an iPad, but it looks like one and it's a battery powered thing with a big screen you can carry around and it has screens with icons, menus, and stuff, it even plays videos and music.

And in the article you link to, a commenter also linked to this interesting image: http://i.imgur.com/3AlUc.jpg

That looks pretty helpful, almost like a synaptic for windows. Does it also get rid of the 'I have an update please do another cycle of clicks now' popups that so many windows applications have?

"there would still be some murmurings about whether or not that teachers having a direct, unfiltered, (and most of all) unmonitored access to their child outside of class is a good or bad thing."

Good point, but who says that the social networks can't make something where the parents of a child, as known to the network, can choose to want to review and filter that communication, like moderators, as it is on done certain forums?

I bet a lot of parents would love to have the option to 'approve/disapprove' certail levels of contact to their children from 'outsiders'. Nana can talk directly, others get moderated by mom, dad, or nana ;-), and all postings with links to websites get moderated too...

Social Networks are not just for 'buddies', they are a way for people to communicate, and apparently quite a popular one. I can see it useful for kids to ask their teacher questions on-line, or for a teacher to notify or remind their students of something. Yes, there are other things for that such as forums, email, and chat, but there are social networks for that too, and (gasp) some people like them (probably because it both integrates a lot of the on-line methods and communication and removes things such as needing to update a contact because they switched email addresses). Don't get me wrong, I mostly use email myself, but that might just be 'legacy' or 'habit'.

Now, many students wouldn't want their teacher to see everything they do/say on the social networks, but that's what google plus has those 'circles' for. You can even let people you don't like be 'in' your social network, you just put them in a 'circle' that doesn't see anything (and vice-versa, the on-line version of fake friendlyness).