So they basically selected a bad datatype and wrote a very inefficient program to handle manipulation of data and they use that as the basis to say that memory was the issue. The issue was programming without thought to what the computer was actually doing. Is this what these two Universities are teaching their students? Were they being purposely bad programmers to prove a point?

God help the world if these people ever have to program efficiently....

I find a number of facts to be in basic conflict in the report. Most developers can't make a living through the app store, yet they are afraid of Apple for some reason - even though they cannot make a living. First the App store makes it fairly simple for every tom, dick and harry to write an app and put it on the store shelves. They don't need to package it, they don't need to setup their own web-sales site.... The problem is that you have a bunch of app developers that think if they write some small app that a trail of customers will beat a path to them and buy it, they think that any stupid app will make money. A lot of small apps will drive down prices for those apps, the smaller the easier to make the app the more competition. I remember 30 years ago that there were many substantive applications to do some basic functionality... word processing. I don't know how many different ones were created, but there were quite a lot. I know my father had 9 installed on his Windows computer just to compare them himself (head of an institution) to see which ones were any good. Most of those companies went bankrupt quickly - even though there was substantive (much much more than most apps in the store) development put into them. Unfortunately the current generation seems to think they are somehow privileged and if they write something they should be able to make a living at it... it is not the way the world works. You have to compete, you have to invest time developing an app that you are passionate about, you have to risk losing time/money on the venture. You have to market your own app outside of the store, and you have to differentiate your product from all others. If you are really lucky and you do all those things correctly, then maybe you can be one of the few that can turn it into a viable business. What it strikes me is that there are a lot of cry babies out there that either have not invested enough or have enough skills to make a go of it. Apple does not owe you anything -- it is up to you to market it. You have to approach it like Apple would which means you have to differentiate your product and worth more to people to buy it than the other products -- even if the other products are lower priced. All the app store did was give you a place where someone can enter the credit card and buy it.... Apple does not owe you anything. As far as developers being afraid... guess what.... it is not that much different than normal business.... When I do business I don't go out of my way to stab companies that I am working with -- it is just not good business. I usually approach it with two faces.... one for when I am dealing directly - where I am more honest and then one that is a public face where I don't air any dirty laundry because it is not good business.

The construction site across the road from me probably employs 10x the labour (or more) than one in North America because of the availability of low cost labour making it affordable. That means that as labour became less affordable in North America it became redundant but efficiencies.

"you refer to jobs being made redundant. i don't believe plumber, carpenter, or surveyor have gone out of style since the days of the roman empire, and i don't see robots mixing and hauling concrete at the work site more cheaply any time soon"

Construction is not done the same way, and it will move even more towards prefabrication in the future. The old skills of carpentry are long gone for the most part.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Only so many jobs for each of these professions. In addition construction is even more cyclical than many other jobs out there - feast then famine.

The teach by topic sounds more like streaming at an early age. China does that because they cannot afford to give all students the same level of "higher education" so they stream people out earlier into more "technical vocations" earlier. This leads to a less flexible society that will not be able to adapt in the future. What you teach in school to some 15 year old may not be valid skills when they are 26. Teaching all the "subjects" to people in a "Cafeteria Services" program in an integrated way may seem like you are teaching them in a way that interests them, but in reality you are really streaming people at an early age into being a "cafeteria servant" and when those jobs are made redundant... so are most of those kids cum adults.

If you work in a large enterprise you will likely buy equipment that is certified to run on the OS that you are running, they will not go out and buy the newest -- hottest hardware which has not been certified to run it and replace the operating system with Windows 7. You will avoid the newest technology that is not certified by the manufacturer to run Windows 7. What the consumer buys and what the enterprise buys will not likely be the same hardware in all cases.

Xp was kept alive through Vista.... until Windows 7.... Windows 7 has been kept alive through Windows 8, 8.1 and Windows 10 is coming out in a matter of months. This is the new Windows, get use to the new Windows if you want to continue using Windows.... Me, I stopped using Windows in 2007 and never looked back (other than the work computer which is Windows - but it is not my choice). No new machines are being sold with Windows 7, although Enterprise is free to install Windows 7 on Windows 7 compatible hardware - but hardware/laptops not aimed for business may not be supported going forward. Laptop aimed at business will probably not be the leading edge hardware -- at least when it comes to Windows 7 installations. Windows 7 days are past....

OS X Yosemite still supports my 2008 Mac Pro (with upgraded video cards ATI 5770). There is a cost to trying to support legacy software written 10+ years ago..... The operating system has to jump through hoops and keep old obsolete code for APIs that have long been deprecated - it bloats the operating system, often turns operating system code into spaghetti and limits the operating system moving forward -- it also is ripe as a security threat. Most of the software usually works, there sometimes is one or two applications that were programmed using already deprecated APIs that need to be updated.... but then I seem to remember the nightmare that was Windows XP apps on Windows 7 because of the improvement in security. You even had them creating a virtual XP support to handle old programs - which in itself did not always work.

I have used VMware and not had an issue with networking - I can configure it many different ways.... the preferred way is just making it on the same network as the main computer (so if I use 10.1.1.11 for OS X, I use 10.1.1.12 for Windows). As far as bare metal, that might be the case if you were gaming -- or -- a database (though I run an oracle database in my vmware)..... but if you are actually needing bare-metal for gaming - I would recommend getting a computer that is specialized (with better gaming hardware) than a mac. Personally, I multi-task and booting solely into Windows would be extremely annoying to me.

This story will apply to not just Apple laptops, but quite a few new laptops going forward. For hardware (including drivers for all the devices built into the motherboard) it makes economic sense to build and test new drivers that are Windows 7 compatible since there is a large pool of people using Windows 7 on desktops that may buy the hardware as an upgrade. For laptop specific hardware for new laptops there is no upgrade market and all new laptops must be sold with Windows 8.1+. It does not make sense to build and test Windows 7 drivers for these devices since there is no real market to speak of. Be it new Apple laptops or other manufactures laptops, new hardware for laptops just will not have the drivers. Just testing a new driver costs millions of dollars. Apple has dropped Windows 7 support in bootcamp for new hardware. It does not make sense for Apple to invest millions of dollars to write and test drivers for hardware that has no hardware support for Windows 7.

"ActiveX is a software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly in the context of the World Wide Web. It was introduced in 1996 and is commonly used in its Windows operating system. In principle it is not dependent on Microsoft Windows, but in practice, most ActiveX controls require either Microsoft Windows or a Windows emulator. Most also require the client to be running on Intel x86 hardware, because they contain compiled code." HTML5 is a standards based format, so is CSS. JavaScript has been standardized in the ECMAScript language specification.

Insurance increases can be considerable and ongoing (not one time) [it can add up to thousands of dollars per year]. But the real deterrent is loss of points leading to suspension or loss of license. You really want to stop something, take their license away for incremental amounts of time.

Demerit points are much more of a deterrent to things like speeding in Canada (speeding while going at the same speed as traffic although is typically not enforced as speeding - i.e. normal speed on 401 is about 120 - 130 while the posted limit is 100....) Caught for speeding 16+km and you lose 3 points, insurance goes up... and if you repeat you have to go to an interview... and at 15.... poof goes your license.

It is not considered a currency -- or you would run afoul of other law.... and it is not a security otherwise they would have run afoul of reporting / tax regulations....

I write and speak similarly, but it is easy to misinterpret when I am writing to get offended by taking my often blunt way of arguing my ideas without a grain of salt. If they are able to see me and I them (their expressions) both they and I are able to communicate more effectively and avoid situations. To keep face to face meetings on point, hold them standing up and keep them short (figure out how long it will take beforehand and stick to it). Many short meetings are more productive than large long meetings. Unfortunately none of that is available to me these days since I work at home half a world away from the office. I would like the ability to hold videoconferencing calls (at peoples desk similar to using the phone with a camera) but the office is not very advanced. You could easily install a system that allows you to hold and archive video "standup" meetings these days if you want backup. The other alternative is to hold the short meeting, agree on what you can and summarize it in a short email after the fact (since it is just facts of the outcome it is no longer an argumentative situation).