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Comment Re:IBM PCs compared extremely poorly with Amigas (Score 1) 289

It wouldn't have been hard at all to clone an Amiga -- most of the hardware, as I understand it, is well documented.

Yes, the hardware interfaces was well documented. But since the Amiga was using custom chips (for sound and graphics, if not more) I doubt it would've been easy or cost effective to re-create those chips for a clone.

Comment Frameworks are more important than language (Score 3, Insightful) 407

* Learning: Pascal is fast. C++ is horribly slow. The rest are moderate.
        * Compiling: While it can't beat "no compile", Pascal is shockingly fast for people used to something like C or Java. C++ is horribly slow.
        * Start-up: Pascal again does fine. Here it's joined by C and C++. The interpreted stuff is typicallly an embarassment.
        * Run-time: Pascal again does fine. Here it's joined by C. C++ can be fast if you treat it like C or if you're a God-like expert in compiler/library details that normal mortals don't understand. The interpreted stuff is typically an embarassment.

What I find interesting is that no one has mentioned that what's actually more important than the language itself is the available libraries/toolkit/frameworks that it comes with.

Let's face it, after you've learned a few languages it pretty much comes down to "what is printf called this week?" when you pick up a new language (functional languages aside). Getting familiar with frameworks is actually what takes the most time.

C++ and C are pretty bad in this department. STL is nice but only gets you so far. Threads? Nope (not yet). Sockets? No. XML/encryption/whatnot? Sorry. You have to write an awful lot of code to come up with this or find (and learn!) a support lib that does this. (I do C++ for a living.)

So I'd say: Python. Or C#/Mono (but that's not on the list, why?)

Comment Re:One step vs. three: convincing administrators (Score 1) 181

Even if you need to transfer data from an ext3 file-system to an MS Windows machine you can always get software that can read that file-system. Here is a MS Windows ext2/3 reader if you don't believe me. Even Mac's have software that can read and format ext3 file-systems. So were are the development costs since the products are already available and are, shock/horror free?

As much as I would like to have a universal non-proprietary file system this won't fly with users. Both options are read-only which means you can't even remove images from the media after you've copied it to your system.

AFAICS the Win solution that you ref'd is a standalone program, meaning it's not possible to use standard file I/O calls to read from the device. So the pipeline would be:

  • start reader
  • copy to local system
  • remove copied files on the camera (which ones did I copy again?)
  • start GIMP, and get to work...

instead of

  • start GIMP, load file, and get to work...

Comment Re:PassGorithm - One Algorithm, infinite passwords (Score 1) 1007

I invented this method and has worked for me perfectly since then. What I did was to develop an algorithm by which I can reconstruct my passwords based on the website or account.

This is security through obscurity: you're relying on the algorithm being kept secret.

That being said, I used to do this as well for a while but started to move critical passwords away from it. Now I store them in my iPod instead, which has the drawback that I have no idea how I can recover my passwords when it dies. There are backups but no idea if I can actually get at the data. It would be useful to export them (as text or CSV) and encrypt that with GPG.

Comment Re:Study Assignment (Score 4, Insightful) 683

"That's great! The result is correct, and your app is also quite a bit quicker than my own implementation of the problem. Congratulations, I think you're the only one so far who managed to get the correct result so far."

I was so taken aback that I probably just stared at him for a few seconds. Then, I stupidly said "So... You want to see my code?" but he was like "No, the result is correct, and your implementation is very fast, so I don't need to see the code. Good job. Send in the next guy."

This is so sad. He notices your code is faster and he's not the least bit curious? (I presume he's some kind of CS prof.) Anyway, good for you, but still... :-(

Comment Re:iTunes Prohibits Terrorism... (Score 1) 124

Terrorists around the world were heard saying: "Curses, foiled again..."

I'd argue the exact opposite: now that we know for sure that iTunes can be used to these purposes (otherwise apple wouldn't have included it in the EULA, right?) they'll double their efforts to find out how...

Graphics

NVidia Considering Porting PhysX To OpenCL 54

arcticstoat writes "NVidia has revealed that it's considering porting its PhysX API to OpenCL to allow PhysX GPU-acceleration on competitors' graphics cards as well. At the moment, a GPU needs to support NVidia's CUDA technology in order to accelerate PhysX on the GPU, and ATI has so far declined NVidia's offer to get CUDA working on ATI GPUs. NVidia's director of product management for PhysX, Nadeem Mohammad, said, 'In the future it's a possibility that we could use OpenCL' for PhysX, adding, 'If we start using OpenCL, then there's a chance that the features would work on ATI, but I have no idea what the performance would be like.'"

Comment Re:There is a lot of talk, and little action. (Score 4, Interesting) 281

And here's your first clue. Diebold is in the business of making ATMs.

Heise security has a story that there's malware around specifically targetting Diebold ATMs running Windows...
http://www.heise.de/security/Windows-Trojaner-auf-Diebold-Bankautomat--/news/meldung/134794 (in German)
http://www.sophos.com/security/blog/2009/03/3577.html (blog entry the article refers to)

Linux Business

Why Linux Doesn't Spread - the Curse of Being Free 1243

Vlad Dolezal tips us to a philosophical take on why Linux hasn't grown to challenge Windows as the most popular operating system. According to the author, the reason is simple; Linux is free, and humans tend not to equate free things with being valuable. "Here's what Compy McNewb sees. He can get both OS's for free. But one of them is worth over three hundred dollars, while the other one is worth nothing. 'That's not true!' I hear you scream. 'Linux is worth a lot! It's just being offered for free!' I know it's not true that Linux is worth less than Windows. It's far more valuable to the end user in terms of getting things done. But that's not what Average Joe Computer Newbie sees. He sees a free product versus a three-hundred-dollar product he can get free. It's all about the perception!"

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