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Comment Re:Ah... (Score 1) 217

While I agree with you on most points, I don't think the last sentence is warranted -- because people aren't perfect. Just because you can write a piece of code doesn't mean you should. 1) If the problem has been solved exactly like you wanted, and the resulting code has 5 years of bug fixing associated with it, it's probably a good idea to use it (contrived e.g. are you going to rewrite Linux?). 2) Why waste time solving a problem that's already been solved by someone else (assuming it aligns with your specs). Your job is to solve problems, not write code -- computer/code is there to help you solve problems. 3) If you launch a product on the internet with, say, a privacy bug because you wrote that piece of code yourself...well, your company may not be around long enough to fix that bug.

Comment Re:risk aversion (Score 1) 112

Can and will are two very different things. Just like you can go out and masturbate in front of the city hall in daylight, you (most likely) will not. Just like someone can fry their moral parts of his brain, doesn't mean he will (most likely fry some other portion, or a big portion altogether...if he manages to fry it in the first place). If everything happens with the merest possibilities, we'd either have a big black hole where the earth is right now, or you would've won the jackpot many times over.

Comment Re:The truth is (Score 1) 147

Your point being that it's an "art", implying not everyone can be good at it, implying people good at the art is few and far between, implying there's a shortage? If so, yes, I get that, and my point is that it isn't as much of an art as people want to say it is. If not, perhaps you can clarify your point and be less of an ass about it.

Comment Re:The truth is (Score 1) 147

It's not the way the "art" is. It's poor teaching and a lack of will to learn. Sure, maybe not everyone can become an excellent programmer without putting in at least 15 years, but almost everyone can be a good programmer with a good few years of learning/training. And no, college doesn't teach you everything you need to know to be a good programmer.

Comment Re:Journalists love calling out google for everyth (Score 1) 259

Exactly. And the goal of educational websites is to promote education amongst the underserved -- targeting the "haves" is kinda counter to their state goals. And if any of the popular education sites misses that point, then in theory the "invisible hand" should guide the smarter education sites to offer low bandwidth versions (and this would quickly be reflected in enrollment counts).

Comment Re:New ChomeCast Device ? (Score 1) 104

I-frames may cost that much. However, most of the frames are P-frames (using VP8 parlance), which cost a lot less. There is even more room for compression when you consider temporal coherence in additional to adjacent block coherence. (There are Golden frames and alt-reference frames, but those are details of the algorithm/implementation.)

Comment Re:Not really (Score 2) 76

I would agree with 2 out of the 4: open SDK and courting indies. I'm a dev, and yhy the hell do I care about open OS or open hardware? I'm not going to make my own hardware, and neither am I going to ask my customers to install custom OSes (which means the OS has to be full-featured and bug-free before I support said platform). Game developers need ways to make money (most likely just to put food on the table), not to fulfill some ideological desire.

Comment Re:ouch! (Score 2) 172

And didn't pay $10B for the patents. Here's a nice cost breakdown from public/SEC information or the interwebs:

Original purchase: $12.5B
Motorola's cash on hand from purchase: $2.9B (don't know much went with the sale, though...but definitely less than $2.91B)
Sale of Motorola Home: $2.35B
Sale of Motorola Mobility: $2.91B
Tax losses from Motorola: I don't know how much

So we're talking about a total cost of at most $4.34B for however many patents they're left with. And of course, there's all the invisible moneys they saved from not having to fight patent battles in court. Not to mention all the hardware/manufacturing/supply chain/client expertise they ended up with for use in their hardware projects, such as Glass and pusher robots. Yeah, not a bad deal at all. Heck, with a deal like this, they should do the same to RIMM as well -- widen that moat some more.

Comment Re:ouch! (Score 2) 172

So, uh, that's why Google sold Motorola and kept the vast majority (not "some" as you stated) of the patents? Added to the fact that those patents were valued at almost half of the original purchase of Motorola? Oh, and how'd you get the $10B figure? I guess you didn't figure in the sale in Motorola Home for $2.35B? How about the $3B in cash that Motorola had when the original purchase took place? Good job with your "make your own smartphone" theory -- I had a good laugh.

Comment Re:better than javascript? (Score 1) 161

I just read your other post, and you start to sound like someone who is uninformed. Chrome is the only other browser other than FF that "supports" Asm.js (technically speaking, all JS engines support Asm.js, so I don't know what you mean by "against it"). You can even run Epic Citadel on Chrome, and performance has been steadily improving.

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