You can wrote very fast an elegant code in C++ just as easily as in C - it's just a different tool set. C++ is not for writing code using the same approach one uses with C; It's terrible for that. But once you understand scoped objects, all memory and resource leaks go away (well, you can attach something to a global structure and forget about it, but you can mess that up in any language). That alone is a huge win.

C++ has one terrible, fundamental flaw: the learning curve is too high. There's just about nothing where the "right way" is obvious, or even common. And so few people get to real expertise that there's not a common library that collects all those right ways and makes them easy to learn! It's a tragedy, really.

You could set up a mirror array to focus all the light of the Sun into a point. You still couldn't heat up an object there hotter than the surface of the Sun - it would be radiating heat away fast enough to stay at that temperature.

Temperature is a potential: like torque, or voltage difference. It limits what you can do, no matter how much light you focus, just like torque limits the force you can apply no matter how much power you have, or similar with voltage and current. For mechanical and electrical power, getting more potential (with the same total power, less losses) is easy - just add a gear or a transformer.

With light it's also possible, but it's not optics, and it's pretty rare - fluorescent materials which absorb multiple photons of a lower frequency and emit one of a higher actually do exist, and could passively raise the temperature of part of a system, (much to the horror of thermodynamicists). It doesn't violate any conservation rules, any more than a low-temperature heat engine driving a high-temperature electric heater does. But that's not at all what's happening with mirrors and optics, which like are putting your batteries in parallel, not in series.

When light pressure is the dominant force, balancing gravity, and the energy of the system is dominated by the energy of the photons and electrons, conduction isn't playing a big role, percentage wise. The difference between 5/2 power and 4th power means the latter dominates at millions of Kelvin, no?

The original variant of the optical IBM/Lenovo scrollpoints are really nice and have a separate third button above the XY scroll saddle. Bonus points for having a two axis scroller that is hard to slip off when pressing left or right and being symmetric for ambidextrous use. The later models fail by putting the third button on the side.

The OpenSSL Software "Foundation" is actually a corporation which happens to be located in Maryland, US - not too far from the NSA corporation (A US Department of Defense subsidiary). Are they trustworthy? Take a good hard look at the heartbleed "bug" and make your own educated opinion. It is interesting to note that according to information presented by Jacob Appelbaum at 31c1 the NSA corporation are able to snoop SSL traffic.

The idea that the markets for every other concievable consumer product should be turned into the PC upgrade treadmill from the 90s is hardly a selling point.

That bullsh*t isn't even tolerable on PCs now anymore.

People got tired of it. I doubt anyone wants a return of that crap.

Much like the music industry, video needs format churn to fuel unsustainable growth.

The industry already has a problem convincing people that they need HD. A lot of people don't have the enthusiast sorts of setups where it would really matter. Or rather, most people don't.

A lot of people are skipping 3D too.

The industry got fat off of a forced technology switch. They were on the gravy train for awhile and don't want to go back. It never occured to them that they were experiencing an unsustainable bubble.

Now they want to throw all sorts of nonsense at us in a desperate attempt to keep the gravy train rolling.

Anyone with a space where they can mount a projector will be in a decent enough position to see an improvement with 4K.

Everyone else, not so much.

Reminds me of how VGA could readily handle higher resolutions than modern displays, component video even better, but everything had to be digital so they could sneak in their DRM.

4K probably needs a media format to get off the ground. The extra bandwidth required for a 4K broadcast is probably a problem for most cable systems. The extra bandwidth required for streaming will VERY likely be a problem.

Streaming already has to make severe compromises as is.

Although most people probably don't have viewing setups that would benefit from 4K. Many don't have setups that benefit from BD even.

'When I invented the term Object Oriented, C++ was not what I had in mind.' - Alan Kay.

No it isn't. As a Unix MacOS is pretty unrecognizable once you scratch the surface. It's not really a Unix. It's just that the "certification" is so low level that it allows for a level of inconsistency that no Apple fanboy would tolerate (unless it's an Apple product).

Really MacOS is only a Unix for marketing purposes. It's not something that Apple (or the cult) actually wants exposed to the masses. It's just something to tick off the checklist and to point to when Windows and Linux users snicker.

"No. We're not really the product that panders to morons. It's a Unix and everything."

The argument is not stupid. A lot of us actually use multiple Unixen and view the notion that MacOS is one too to be laughable.

> Why do that? Chromebook is already running Linux,

CUPS.

I don't have any interest in every little thing I do on my home network being tied to the Google collective. The same arguments for leaving ChromeOS can be applied equally to removing it and replacing it with Linux.

The term Linux becomes a problem as soon as there is a different user land bolted on top of it. Once Android became popular, the problem of conflating GNU with Linux finally became more than just an academic exercise.

GNU tools were popular before the rise of Linux. They were popular even on non-Unix operating systems. That's the nature of something you are free to recompile anywhere.

The fact that something is Linux/but-not-GNU matters when you try to do something with it not supported but commonplace with Linux/that-is-actually-GNU.

That's kind of what this whole article is about: those of us that get disgusted with ChromeOS and install a proper Linux.

Does anyone have a contract with WhatsApp to provide guaranteed services? No. They provide a free service and have the right to do anything they want with it.

Locking out apps that don't meet their requirements is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Blocking users outright is heavy-handed but none of them paid a dime to use the software and have no basis for a lawsuit.