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Comment Riiight... (Score 1) 162

If their recent redesign of YahooGroups is any indication, this will be a massive train wreck. The overhaul of YahooGroups was definitely a case of "fixing" something that wasn't broken. I admin three long-standing fora on YahooGroups (one even dates all the way back to before the eGroups acquisition) and plan to migrate all of them off of their system. Randomly dropped members, members who want to be removed but can't be, and other stupid shit.

Replacement will be a hosted solution of my choosing, on a server I have more control over. I've had enough.

Comment Re:A features, an irksome burdden for most (Score 1) 266

X is not Windows. While I do sometimes get the annoying popup on Windows systems, I have never had that issue on my KDE desktop. Even on Windows there's a configuration option in the Control Panel to disable it. So no, it is not a "burden" to anyone, really. Unless you're using Windows (which isn't what this topic was about anyway), and are too lazy to spend 30 seconds on Google figuring out how to disable it.

I'll grant you that maybe Windows should have the feature disabled by default...

Comment Re:But ... (Score 1) 89

Beer is, by definition, based on fermented grain. Sure, there are other (at times odd) ingredients involved in these ancient recipes, but at the end of the day Dogfish Head is a commercial craft brewery, and a very successful one at that. They didn't get where they are by making beers that suck. I've had quite a few of their beers, and while some definitely qualify as strange, most of them are quite good, and all of them are at least interesting.

Comment Re:no (Score 1) 262

Modern "embedded" x86 processors generally sacrifice a fair amount of performance to meet their target power/heat numbers. Once you make those concessions, the performance gap relative to ARM narrows considerably. Furthermore, the most computationally demanding tasks in the embedded space tend to be either graphics/video (which will use embedded GPU hardware) or amenable to running on a DSP (implemented using GPU compute or dedicated DSP hardware).

Comment Re:ABI? (Score 2) 262

ABI = Application Binary Interface. Defines the pointer sizes and conventions for passing function arguments at the object code level (among other things). The ABI determines how the compiler generates object code for function call/entry/exit, and the width of pointer types.

API defines the interfaces seen by the programmer.

Comment The return of memory models? (Score 3, Interesting) 262

This sure feels a lot like a throwback to the old 16-bit DOS days, where you had small/medium/large memory models depending on the size of your code and data address spaces. We've already got 32-bit mode for supporting pure 32-bit apps and 64-bit mode for pure 64-bit; supporting yet a third ABI is just going to result in more bloat as all the runtime libraries need to be duplicated for yet another combination of code/data pointer size.

I hate to say this since I'm sure a lot of smart people put significant effort into this, but it seems like a solution in search of a problem. RAM is cheap, and the performance advantage of using 32-bit pointers is typically small.

Comment Re:Guilty and impossible to prove innocent (Score 2) 248

Please read the complete RSA press release and parse it carefully: https://blogs.rsa.com/news-media-2/rsa-response/

They don't deny that they entered into a deal. They deny that they entered into a deal "with the intention of weakening RSA’s products, or introducing potential ‘backdoors’ into our products". In other words, there was a deal, but they are insisting that they didn't realize at the time that the algorithm had a backdoor.

If there was no deal at all, they wouldn't have felt a need to qualify the denial with the above quoted text.

Comment Re:Whoopty do (Score 1) 147

Ubuntu isn't even really an exception. You can still install the barebones "server" flavor, then drop whatever DE you want on top of that. Or start with one DE, then install another DE alongside it. As far as I'm concerned it is just a nit-picky detail of what they happen to promote as the default distribution image.

Comment Linked article is clueless (Score 2) 292

The article quotes the CEO as saying the company is struggling due to "capital constraints". Then right below that, "This has been a common refrain. OCZ reports lower sales, it blames a shortage of NAND." Does the author truly not understand the difference between a shortage of cash to fund ongoing operations, and a shortage of parts?

Regardless, I don't see their departure from the scene as a great loss. Their spotty reputation for quality and customer service has caused me to avoid their products in general, and has apparently come back to bite them in the ass. The only sad part is that they might take PC Power and Cooling (one of the premier PSU manufacturers from back in the day, which OCZ acquired a few years ago) down with the ship.

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