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Comment Abandoning Desktop was a BIG Mistake for RedHat (Score 1) 232

More than a decade ago, when they abandoned desktop and regular users and only focused on enterprise, they made their biggest mistake. Where do you think Ubuntu Server users come from?

Even most of us who are highly knowledgeable and understand Linux to it's most profound depths appreciate a good desktop experience. The fact we can compile a kernel or any software does not mean we prefer that to a nice end-user experience.

It is still not too late for RedHat, and given the horrible direction Ubuntu has been going recently (trying to run on Phones and Tablets), and the fact that the tablet fad is starting to pass and the desktop did not die (as evidenced by Microsoft's direction with Windows 9), they have a great chance to re-capture the desktop user. They will definitely not be able to do that by supporting Gnome 3 (something a large part of desktop users hate, even if a small minority likes it), and their very unfriendly package manager. They now have Ubuntu as example of how to do some things right, and as proof that this is a desirable business direction.

Comment DropBox is terrible (Score 5, Interesting) 275

Unlike Google which uses ownership to determine size used, you can run out of space in DropBox by someone sharing you a large folder. DropBox also make is impossible from the web interface to see the sizes or usage of files to make room or clean up. I ended up paying Google for 100gb because their service is simply better.

Comment PL = Honorable Institution. (Score 4, Funny) 226

Even if thee free publicity would lead to more people watching and consuming soccer-related products and services in the long run, It's always good to see honorable institutions such as the Premier League inciting everyone to be a good citizen and abide the law, at the cost of them losing money. A true example to follow.

Comment Pointless because Android will not support it. (Score 2) 52

Google "do not be evil" single handedly decided that OpenCL will never run on Android and instead is pushing for their crappy alternative, RenderScript:

https://code.google.com/p/andr...

No matter how valid the arguments of those who favor OpenCL are, Google just answers with FUD.

Comment You have to pay $$ to use C# in a game. (Score -1, Troll) 254

Everyone is getting into C# because of Unity, but this is actually a trap. If you want to make a C# game and publish it on mobile without restrictions you have to pay. The only portable C# implementation that works on mobile (besides Windows Phone) is Mono. Their class library is LGPL, which is in a grey area, Xamarin says:

"Typical examples of commercial licensees include device manufacturers embedding Mono in hardware where the user is not able to independently upgrade the Mono virtual machine from the source code"

This rules out Android and iOS. Unity has a free version but also has restrictions:

Unity Free, which include the free platform add-on products, may not be licensed or used by a commercial entity with annual gross revenues (based on prior fiscal year) in excess of US$100,000, or by an educational, academic, non-profit or government entity with a total annual budget for the entire entity (based on prior fiscal year) in excess of US$100,000.

So, again, make sure you are doing your research well, because you might end up in an unexpected situation.

Comment We don't need more languages, we need bytecode. (Score 3, Informative) 309

Web browsers should at this point be able to parse some sort of bytecode that can be translated to native. This way anyone can use whatever programming language he or she pleases. Google did a great work with PNaCL, but I don't think that will ever gain traction from the other vendors.

Mozilla's ASM.JS is much better idea and much closer to a real-life usage scenario, but Google itself is not doing enough to promote it and their support is half assed (even though It would definitely benefit them).

Comment Thank You Google, you were Wrong. (Score 0) 230

> two thirds of the top 2,000 apps in the Google Play Store use natively compiled C code

Of course, how else would one make code portable between platforms? Yet their support for using their native Java API from C or C++ is horrible. JNI is unsafe and crash prone and the NativeActivity is so limited that barely anyhthing can be made with it.
Space

Red Dwarfs Could Sterilize Alien Worlds of Life 76

astroengine (1577233) writes "Red dwarf stars — the most common stars in the galaxy — bathe planets in their habitable zones with potentially deadly stellar winds, a finding that could have significant impacts on the prevalence of life beyond Earth, new research shows. About 70 percent of stars are red dwarfs, or M-type stars, which are cooler and smaller than the sun. Any red dwarf planets suitable for liquid water, therefore, would have to orbit much closer to their parent star than Earth circles the sun. That presents a problem for life — at least life as we know it on Earth, says physicist Ofer Cohen, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Cohen and colleagues used a computer model based on data from the sun's solar wind — a continuous stream of charged particles that permeates and defines the solar system –- to estimate the space environment around red dwarf stars. 'We find that the conditions are very extreme. If you move planets very close to the star, the force of this flow is very, very strong. Essentially it can strip the atmosphere of the planet unless the planet has a strong magnetic field or a thick atmosphere to start with,' Cohen told Discovery News."

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