and the pangolin, what's not used for trinkets or medicine is simply scoffed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/maga...

"They asked up to $1,500 (£1,000) a kilo. Asked why they were so expensive, one woman replied with no apparent shame: "Because they're rare and illegal."

My only hope here is that when the pagolins are all dead, the ants they used to eat in great quantities rise up and eat the vietnamese and chinese who put profit above ecology.

I don't see the problem - the people they're up against will simply take the technology and start making their own rhino horn. After all, they understand profit more than most, so being able to make their own "honest guv, its real rhino, would I lie to you" 'medicine' without all the expense of paying some middleman poacher, you know they're going to go full-on in the fake rhino horn trade.

actually WinRT is not any language specific. You don't even need the C++/CLR bindings for it.

What happened is Microsoft took the .NET runtime (which was mostly a wrapper around win32 anyway) and turned it into a different wrapper that is now much more native code directly exposed to .NET apps, but that native code is also directly exposed to all other languages.

They have the WinRT wrapper for it which looks very much like the old .NET runtime,but it more like COM than a managed API. You can also access it via a c++ style API (that's known as WinRL) that was inspired by Microsoft's ATL APIs.

So technically .NET no longer exists, its all native runtimes bundled into the Windows core.

True in a way - you may not get the awesomeness of Django when writing webapps, and ASP.NET is pretty awful (they know - that's why keep changing it, which means your skills are always obsolete, ho hum). but you do get VS, which is pretty damn good.

I don't do much C#, preferring C++ for heavy lifting and 'something else' for specialised bits (eg UI or webapp front end) and it works very well in these cases, but I wouldn't like to code WCF or WPF or ASP.NET daily basis at all.

Team Foundation Server is pretty bad as well, they did stick git support onto it, but that's really just a git front-end on a centralised repo (which is not a bad idea, just doesn't work so well if you're used to git workflows). The back-end build system that's part of it is configured using 10,000 lines of XAML code, which is just truly awful.

Its still better than Java though!

There's no reason at all not to use C++, but you do that for the real work your app does, and then you link your C++ library to a small front-end that is written in whatever the native toolkit is for your platform.

So you can have your C++ logic accessed by iOS, or Android, or Windows phone or desktop. You can even hook it up to a webserver (or embed one) and have it running as a webapp.

It does cost a little more, creating these different UIs, but the benefit is often worth it. Qt is great, ut native UI is better at being a UI on its intended platform.

this , so much. C# may be Microsoft Java++ but at least they get updates on a weekly basis, Oracle... well, even if you do get notified of an update there's no guarantee it'll apply correctly anyway (possibly due to Windows security software preventing it, or firewalls blocking the download) and even if you do download and apply it, there's a small chance someone will forget to uncheck the ask.com toolbar and you're even worse off than you were before the update!

The biggest issue is that if someone has gained access to your internet-connected server, they have massive amounts of bandwidth to launch all those nasty things they do. You want fewer DDoS extortion attacks, fewer malware botnets? Kill off Java. (note that, last time I looked a load of the security updates for the JRE was to do with webservice code, ie server-side connectivity. All those people saying "oh its only the browser plugin" are sticking their heads in the sand)

Java sucks, it just needs to die.

unplug it, or if its embedded, remove the audio driver for it, or set the 'volume' control so it cannot hear anything anyway. And put some tape over the little hole it listens through.

Now.. good luck doing that on your phone.... best just to remove the app (if you can) or trust Google not to have slipped this stuff into Android as part of its voice activation feature (for your convenience, of course)

bah. stupid slashdot comment system. They should dump it in favour of Disqus or something modern!

the link is:

http://winsupersite.com/blog/s...

there's about as much chance of it being abandoned as the Windows API being abandoned

oh shit.

(fortunately no-one cares about the new win API, and are still coding for Windows 7, but I do wonder what will happen when a critical mass are on Windows 10)

said the man whose SCM allows you to delete history!

our 3 core ambitions are

Create more personal computing; reinvent productivity and business processes; build the intelligent cloud and integrate business decisions . Ah, our 4 core ambitions are more personal computing, reinvent productivity, build intelligent cloud, integrate business decisions and drive market excellence... , our 5 core, no. amongst our core ambitions are reinvent productivity and business processes; build the intelligent cloud, integrate business decisions, drive market excellence and get nice red uniforms.

oh damn, I'll come in again.

four negatives in a row

I believe this is easily parsed:

Stephen Elop, Mark Penn, Kirill Tatarinov and Eric Rudder.

they can expect as much as they like... but in these times, the money comes from pumping up expectations and selling overpriced shares to investors, and then selling the company to facebook or Google for way more than its worth!

See sourceforge - this is how you make money, get a VC to fund your 'exciting and innovative game-changing' service and get pots of cash. Revenue totally optional, advertising irrelevant.

The trouble with businesses today is that some of them have a bricks-1.0 mindset that expects to receive revenue by selling stuff (even if its adverts and malware)! pffft.

I use Mozy to back it up, and BTSync to sync it with my phone.