Maybe where you live, but the cost of my iPad 2 3G service is $15 a month. On top of that, if you I've in an urban centre, you're probably well covered by WiFi anyway. So that $15 goes quite a long way. I can pay for 2 years of 3G service at the cost of what a Windows laptop would cost me, with the benefit being (wait for it)...I don't have to carry a crappy sub-$300 Windows laptop with me everywhere I go. The EC2 Windows instance living in the cloud I use most frequently is a quad-core with 24GB of RAM and a few TB of hard disk space -- and you're not going to find a cheap sub-$300 Windows laptop with those sorts of specs.

Yaz

Of course there is. You install an RDP or VNC client on your phone or tablet, take a few minutes to setup a cloud OS instance on your favourite cloud service (EC2, Azure, whatever), and connect. You now have the full PC experience on your phone or tablet, running whatever you want, from wherever you want, for however long you want it.

Yaz

To make things fair, I think you'd have to define the valid set of languages as general purpose languages. I could see coming up with a chess-specific language that would be super-efficient in that the language would already have known chess properties as built-in elements.

Yaz

Alternately (and somewhat more likely), it will create a legion of future business people with software needs who know how to articulate those needs in a logical way when trying to write a specification.

Yaz

As an outside observer, that end appears to be to run as much anti-virus/anti-malware as possible.

Yaz

If only it had been able to run for at least one more season. The ending was better than for a lot of other cancelled series, but from what I've read as to where the writers would have taken the series, one more season would have been welcomed.

Yaz

Don't be too hard on yourself. I prefer to blame /. for not supporting Unicode :).

Yaz

C^ar Zamenhof estis Polan?

Yaz

Esperanto has only ever been promoted as a universal second language. There has never been a push to make it the native language for anyone, anywhere. Hence, no loss of culture needed nor required.

Yaz

Esperanto.

Yaz

Windows has always been like a cheaply made off road vehicle made in a former Soviet-bloc country. The controls were a little weird, and it broke down a lot, but otherwise it could drive on a lot of really sketchy roads, and you probably knew a guy who knew how to fix it for you when it broke down.

Then Windows 8 came along. To continue the analogy, it was like a new model year of that same cheaply made Eastern European off-road vehicle suddenly came with a few well-needed under-the-hood improvements so that it wouldn't break down as readily, along with a big 8" spike sticking out of the centre of the drivers seat. Aficionados who have never driven another car in their lives rave about the spike (it's painted some very nice colours), and continue to flood forums trying to convince people who have stayed away from the newer model because of the spike that if they just tried it long enough, they'd get used to having a giant spike up their asses.

Now Microsoft is coming out with Windows 10, the biggest benefit of which is that it now features a slightly shorter spike. And Windows zealots will try to convince everyone else that it's a major improvement. But you're still taking it in the ass every time you get in for a ride.

Yaz

As it happens, my wife bought me a PS4 for Xmas -- a massive upgrade over my 15 year old original PS2. It came in the box with GTA5 (on disc), and a coupon for a free digital download of another game.

It's been a PITA that PSN has been offline. There are a lot of features and functions built into the system that rely on online functionality, including for some dumb reason accessing the built-in web browser. However, playing GTA5 hasn't been an issue -- I just popped the disc in, waited what felt like an eternity while it installed itself (it didn't give me a choice, and warned me it could take up to an hour), and I was off and playing. All without having been signed into PSN.

In essence, the system worked exactly as you described that it should. A single-player game on disc loaded and ran just fine while PSN has been offline. Not all the functionality was there, but the major function that doesn't require network access (playing GTA5 in this case) has worked flawlessly.

Yaz

Cores and clock speed is hardly the only determinant of performance. It sets a hard upper bound, but that can be readily squandered by software.

In the case of Android phones, they pushed for extra cores early on to avoid UI stutter during garbage collection cycles. iOS has never provided garbage collection; you either have to setup your own retain/release calls to keep or relinquish objects, or you use ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) to do more or less the same thing.

In effect, it's a trade-off. Google decided to simplify memory management for developers, and keep the barrier to entry low by appealing to existing Java developers, with the trade-off being that they require more parallel processing power for garbage collection. Apple avoided the need for the additional processing power and battery capacity (and in turn device size) by not implementing garbage collection in iOS, and thus can squeeze more performance out of fewer cores, with the trade off being you can't just pull Java developers off the street and have them start writing iOS apps. ARC is so slick that IMO Apple has an overall edge with their design; others are of course free to disagree.

Yaz

First off, naturally the level of security I'm talking about would probably only be reserved for national governmental agencies intended to protect ultra-sensitive data. For them, that level of security is necessary, and they will spend the money and resources to audit and verify everything if necessary (which is why we have SELinux).

Additionally, the build chain comprises not only the compiler, but the standard libraries and any third-party libraries as well. If not verified, these could easily have unexpected code inserted into them, that compromises your product once linked against them. You wouldn't expect to see such compromised libraries "in the wild", as they would probably part of a targeted attack. This is hardly unprecedented; while not done at build time, Stuxnet uses DLL replacement on Windows to add extra routines to the operating system, which are used to inject code being uploaded into a PLC.

Again, most organizations don't care to undertake the kind of expense required to protect against such attacks; they use the chain-of-trust you describe. However, national security organizations do work at this level, and if you need that level of security, pre-compiled binaries, whether they come with source or not, is insufficient.

Yaz

Yup -- I intended that to be considered part of the build chain. Compiler, standard libs, any 3rd party library dependencies, the build tools themselves (have to make sure they're using the libs you expect them to...), the OS kernel...right on down the chain.

Yaz