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Comment Re:Good. (Score 1) 443

by Chainsaw (#30548354) Attached to: All GPLed Code Removed From MonoDevelop

There's no pass by reference in Java, it's all pass by value. Yes, I'm a pedantic Coward

That can't be right. Passing everything by value would mean that an object modified simultaneously in two threads would get out of sync immediately. Also, a quick Google search shows that Java actually passes objects by reference. So much for pedantic cowards...

Comment Re:Manually semantic != semantic (Score 1) 423

by Chainsaw (#30132406) Attached to: What's Coming In KDE 4.4
Yes, my pictures from the vacation 2009 might end up in the "vacation 2009" directory. It only becomes a problem when you also want to find all pictures from your vacations where James is present, or the beach pictures in 2009 and 2007 that has your wife in them and that you would rank 4/5 or higher. One solution is to have a silly amount of directories, and doing hardlinks of images. That isn't very wife friendly, though. The tagging that KDE implements is a easy solution.

Comment Re:its a really simple answer (Score 0, Flamebait) 389

by Chainsaw (#29227259) Attached to: Why Is It So Difficult To Allow Cross-Platform Play?

PS3s are big endian machines. Xbox 360s are little endian.

Q.E.D They can't talk to each other.

Oh, right, that's why all of those PowerPC equipped Macs couldn't connect to networks and exchange information with my x86 Linux server: they had different endians.

No, actually, that's bullshit. There is absolutely no reason at all why the endian should matter. If a piece of software can't communicate with another because of different endians, the programmers should be dragged out into the woods and be shot.

Network byte order. Look it up.

Comment Re:Disturbing trend (Score 2, Interesting) 227

by Chainsaw (#28385981) Attached to: Opera Unite Web Server Benchmarked

and you're restricted from hosting content that they consider "obscene, vulgar, hateful, threatening, or that violates any laws"

Dude... You're talking about a company residing in Norway. The third largest export after oil and salmon is Black Metal. Which is kind of bizarre, as Norwegian is probably one of the most cheerful languages there is.

Comment Re:does an iphone.... (Score 3, Insightful) 582

by Chainsaw (#28298383) Attached to: Does the Wii Provide A "Watered-Down" Game Experience?

I think you're drawing the wrong conclusion. If a third-party publisher would create a game with the same high standards of Super Mario Galaxy or Metroid Prime 3, instead of bad PS2 ports or quick hackjobs... Don't you think they would sell tons and tons of them? The Wii is perfect for FPS games, moving from the clunky and worthless dual-analog control to a mouse+WASD compatible scheme. Despite that, noone has really bothered with doing anything for it other than Conduit.
Transportation

People Prefer Angry-Faced Cars 473

Posted by timothy from the researchers-like-to-anthropomorphize dept.
fatalfury writes "Researchers from the University of Vienna asked 20 males and 20 females to rank vehicles based on their appearance. The list of traits included arrogant, afraid, agreeable, disgusted, extroverted, sad, and others. Cars with 'meaner' traits (such as BMW) ranked higher, whereas cars with 'nicer' traits (such as Toyota's Prius) ranked lower. With billions spent on developing new products in the automobile industry, this could spur a trend in meaner-looking cars and perhaps explain why sales of the Prius and other green cars are slow to take off with average consumers."
Microsoft

Microsoft Programming Contest Hacked and Defaced 151

Posted by kdawson from the star-developers dept.
davidmwilliams writes "Microsoft followed their major annual Tech-Ed event in Australia with a week-long programming contest called 'DevSta,' to find 'star developers.' While the quantity and quality of submissions suggest a poor turnout, it certainly caught the attention of at least two hackers who left their mark. Here is the low-down on the contest, what happened, by whom, and screen shots for posterity in case it's been fixed by the time you read this. And unless the volume of submissions increase dramatically within the next few hours, someone may be awarded an Xbox for doing nothing more than rewriting the Windows calculator as a .NET app."
Graphics

Submission + - Trolltech adopts GPL 3 for Qt (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Funkmaster F
Funkmaster F writes: At the KDE Developer Conference today, Trolltech CEO Havaard Nord announced that its Qt application development toolkit will be released under GPL 3. 'Here at the KDE release event, Nord's announcement was met with applause. Like Trolltech's initial decision to move from its own QPL license to the GPL, this announcement and the company's more recent decision to adopt the GPL for all platforms rather than just Linux, demonstrate the company's ongoing commitment to openness.'
Intel

Server Benchmarking Lone Wolf Bites Intel Again 90

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the everyone-loves-a-homecourt-ruling dept.
Ian Lamont writes "Neal Nelson, the engineer who conducts independent server benchmarking, has nipped Intel again by reporting that AMD's Opteron chips 'delivered better power efficiency' than Xeon processors. Intel has discounted the findings, claiming that Nelson's methodology 'ignores performance,' but the company may not be able to ignore Nelson for much longer: the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp., a nonprofit company that develops computing benchmarks, is expected to publish a new test suite for comparing server efficiency that Nelson believes will be similar to his own benchmarks that measure server power usage directly from the wall plug."
Microsoft

Submission + - ISO rejects OOXML (computerworld.com)

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: Microsoft's Office Open XML was rejected by the International Standards Organization today. To be accepted as a standard, a proposal must pass two hurdles, and this one failed both of them. Now, Microsoft will have to respond to negative comments and hope it can get a positive vote in early 2008. In the meantime, MS may be losing revenue to open source competitors, according to Computerworld.
AMD

Intel Viiv vs. AMD LIVE! 115

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the boxing-match dept.
Searching4Sasquatch writes "Hot Hardware has tested two nearly identical HP systems in an effort to determine the best solution between Intel's Viiv and AMD's LIVE! campaigns. Priced around $999, these general purpose systems are tested straight out of the box with no tweaking or refinement to illustrate how "Joe Consumer" would fare in using one of these platforms."
It's funny. Laugh.

Texas Lawmaker Wants To Let the Blind Hunt 647

Posted by kdawson from the don't-shoot dept.
IHC Navistar writes with a story from Reuters Oddly Enough. A Texas lawmaker has introduced a measure that would allow blind people to hunt any game that sighted people can currently pursue. The article notes that the bill may have clear sailing in the hunting-besotted state of Texas. An education outreach person from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department explained it this way: "A blind person can shoot a rifle by mounting an offset pistol scope on the side of the rifle instead of on top. This allows their companion behind them to peer over their shoulder and help them sight it, but the blind person can pull the trigger."

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