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Comment Re:Software vs. content (Score 3, Informative) 231

Ah, what does it all mean? I dunno, are the Chinese proposing some sort of new web server protocol standard? Is there a new RFC out?

They've just called their software 'QZHTTP'. Try 'telnet qzone.qq.com 80' and 'HEAD / HTTP/1.0' and you'll see for yourself:

Server: QZHTTP-2.3

I don't think anyone's suggesting there's a new protocol here.

Comment Re:Oh, I'm sure that this will last. (Score 4, Interesting) 260

So, clearly, they had some reason for wanting to make the change. I'm guessing that that reason, whatever it is, didn't just vanish.

The previous blog entry explains the reason: when you post your data it spills over to your friends accounts via inboxes etc. When you delete your account they don't want to have to hunt around all of your friends' and ex-friends' accounts to clean up all of that data, and they don't want to get in a legal mess by not cleaning it up.

I'm not sure I buy that completely: unless I use Facebook's messaging to send my email address say to a friend then it will only ever be stored against my record and deleting my record should clean it all up. And deleting all messages I created, and all notifications generated by my account should clean up the rest.

Comment O RLY? (Score 1) 674

Lately there has been a huge push by Certified Microsoft Professionals and their companies to call (potential) clients and warn them of the dangers of open source.

I am a Microsoft Certified Professional and I work for a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner company. I'm not aware of any push nor have I seen material from Microsoft to encourage / support us making this push. Citation needed.

Comment Re:Death march (Score 1) 580

I mean, can you seriously name one product that's come out of MS R&D that counts as a success (discount anything that's a blatant knockoff of a pre-existing product, embrace and extend/extinguish is not R&D)?

It's not a runaway commercial success but Office Roundtable is a very neat gadget that came from Microsoft Research - it's a 360 degree videoconferencing camera which intelligently tracks the current speaker. We don't really need videoconf here but if I could justify one I'd get one :-)

Comment Re:Who'd have thought it? (Score 1) 283

Don't port, write portable using libraries that were made for that purpose.

In an ideal world, sure, but it doesn't usually work like that. Portable libraries, where they exist, don't always have all the function you need. They don't always expose everything in a completely platform neutral way e.g. because the hardware drivers underneath have subtle differences in the way they handle things. They sometimes have bugs themselves. etc. (I'll concede I haven't done this for games but I have written more mundane apps portably.)

Bottom line: you can't assume something will work unless you explicitly test it. Sure, testing one platform will catch common bugs but you still have to playtest the game thoroughly on all platforms after you've fixed the common bugs.

Some bugs are instantly visible (e.g. code won't even compile) on some platforms and cause only hidden damage on other platforms.

Now hang on a minute - that'd only be true if you're using different compilers on each platform and that isn't something you can take lightly. Even switching between different versions of the same compiler can be a significant porting effort - you can't just assume your code will compile and work on three separate compilers for free.

Comment Re:Who'd have thought it? (Score 1) 283

Targeting a larger audience results in more sales. Who'd have guessed? :p

But at the cost of porting then testing and supporting three separate releases. TFA doesn't address the cost of that, and tripling your testing along must be huge.

Sure, it worked for him, he got a huge volume of Mac sales, but that doesn't mean the numbers will work for everyone.

Comment Re:any possibility of open sourcing it? (Score 2, Informative) 87

If this is typical of stuff used throughout... then open sourcing would be very difficult, you'd have to separate everything like that.

That's largely irrelevant, though - it's the game code we need open sourcing and in particular the server code. As long as the game *data* (i.e. the sounds etc.) is generally available we can still use it even if it doesn't get GPLed or whatever.

Comment Re:52 kilowatt Hours? (Score 1) 603

No, not electrical storage density but physical density. As in mass / volume.

We're talking about replacing the Tesla car's battery with some number of these to increase it's range. Whereas we know you could install three for the same weight we don't know that three will fit inside the Tesla battery compartment.

Comment Re:It will work... (Score 1) 907

so... what was the site license I used for years and years when I worked at a university?

Fair enough, I'd forgotten about that - that's the MSDN Academic Alliance programme. It's a special case, there's no equivalent in the commercial world. I don't think it's supposed to be unaudited though.

If you're an OEM reseller and you had a site-licence then you'd just be installing Windows on PCs and sending them out of the door. If you buy individual OEM licences then you can sell on CDs, activation keys and the basic licence / warranty docs.

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