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Comment Re:But the movie selection still sucks (Score 1) 178

For me, some of my selections are TV shows I simply was too busy to be at home whenever they originally aired. I can go back and now watch them at my convenience not network scheduling. For example I started watching Lost but got busy with one work in the 2nd season. I couldn't really catch up at the time which meant all subsequent seasons were out of the question as they story progresses from season to season.

Comment Re: Finally! (Score 2) 178

I don't understand the fascination with entertainment.

I don't understand people who are dismissive of other people's choices of entertainment. Some people play video games. Some people play sports. Some people like having the ability to watch Doctor Who on demand whenever they want.

Comment Re:Those who wrote report hardly even understand s (Score 4, Interesting) 35

currently Pan STARRS works full time to search for asteroids, but you won't find this fact in a report.

But that's not the assertion the report makes. The report does not say that there are no programs and people working on the problem. The report is saying that the current efforts and projected efforts will not be enough to meet the 90% goal by 2020 given that only 10% of the estimated target asteroids have been found.

But there is not even mention of that such lack of money, instead it is insisted that there so huge money are spent on search for asteroids.

Funding is one aspect; however, the report also asserts that even if the budget were increased significantly the current program's structure will probably not be efficient enough to take advantage of increases and recommends a change in management structure.

Then, they criticize allocation of funds to Space Surveillance Telescope in Australia. That is true, that there are no mentioned agreements, the trick is that all software for the telescope is developed by just the same team, which received grants from NASA and more - asteroid tracking will not even interference with operation of telescope while performing duties, so agreements might be not an issue after all, because nothing will change in operation of telescope to enable it to look for asteroids.

The problem is not who is developing the software or how effective it is. The problem is the SST will be in Australia's hands and no agreement is in place for time on the telescope. While the future administrators might be friendly to the NEO program, there are no guaranteed time allocation (in writing). The criticism is that NASA should not have granted the money without some sort of formal agreement or plan for after the transfer. Just like any contract: get it in writing.

And what is important - this telescope will be most powerful asteroid tracking telescope.

Which makes it even more important that NASA get some sort of agreement about how much time the NEO program will get. It's not like powerful telescopes are easily obtained at your local grocery store.

So was it a good idea to spend money on it? I would say yes. For authors it is really no.

That's not what the authors are saying. They are not saying the money should not have been spent. They are saying that NASA made a terrible deal because they essentially gave money away with little assurances that they get anything in return. It's not like NASA is just swimming in excess money. NASA's budget is always under pressure to do more with less.

so we have a situation that someone wants to show who is boss here. But unfortunately, those pretending to be bosses look more like idiots.

No we have an inspector general doing their job: oversight.

Comment Re:This isn't scaremongering. (Score 1) 494

Americans might look on with bemusement; I can understand that. I guess it's a bit like Florida choosing to break away from the US, having a pro-Florida political party endlessly demonizing "them" (the rest of the US) as causing pretty much every economic and political woe Florida has going for it. As an English guy, I think this whole situation really sucks. If the UK breaks up, the whole of Britain will be worse off for it, but I suspect Scotland will take the bigger brunt of the pain. And given that it will have made the decision, it will deserve to.

Well as an American guy I have to say that's not a good analogy. As much as the rest of the US thinks Florida is backwards, Florida was not another country rich with their own traditions when the US acquired it. Texas would be a better analogy. Also an English guy, I don't think you understand that you've not exactly treated Scotland very well and that's one of the reasons it wants to leave. Another reason is that much of oil England is harvesting is Scottish and they do not get what they think is a proportional amount from it.

Here's another view from another Englishman, John Oliver.

Comment Re: Apple not in my best interests either (Score 1) 183

The frontend is not the entirety of gcc. For example, if Oracle puts out a lot of enhancements to Java, they still have to get the Gnu project to modify gcc components like the parsers and back-end. Now Oracle or Apple could merely accept that performance for compilation and execution under gcc would be slower without optimization. That's where the stagnation was coming. Sure gcc could compile Objective-C but it was never optimized. It was never going to be optimized. So Apple created their own compiler. Oracle also maintains their own Java compiler.

Comment Re: Apple not in my best interests either (Score 1) 183

Er what? The Gnu Project has always been the maintainer of gcc. Apple is the maintainer of their version of Objective-C. gcc compiles C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Java, etc. However, just because someone enhances a language that can be compiled in gcc does not mean the gcc compiler takes advantage of any changes. This is because Apple is not the Gnu project. In the same way, Oracle (or Sun at the time) making changes to Java does not mean the gcc compiler would work well with the changes or optimize the compiler. Objective-C development on gcc was pretty stagnant whereas C++ development was busy. So Apple had 2 real choices: 1) build their own compiler or 2) re-write everything in C++

Comment Re: Apple not in my best interests either (Score 1) 183

Webkit was a fork of KDE's HTML renderer, mostly over maintenance issues.

So when Apple rewrote the engine in WebKit2, it was over "maintenance issues"? That's a little bit of revisionist history. When Apple forked KHTML it was for one reason: control. Apple wanted to make a lot of changes (which they did) and take it in a new direction. They could have stayed with KHTML; however, that meant they would have to rely on KHTML developers to approve and upstream changes. So they forked it which they are allowed to do.

I don't think Apple has ever open sourced anything because they actually believed in open source ideals, namely that open sourcing something has a positive-sum outcome.

No Apple is interested in getting things to work. If that means open source, that's what they'll do. The positive-sum is not for them but for us.

Comment Re: Apple not in my best interests either (Score 1) 183

Almost everything you said is wrong. At the time clang was born GCC was not stagnant, it was moving along quite well, and it was busting out C++ improvements.

For Objective-C it was. So Apple either had to switch to C++ or go on their own which is what they did. Now Clangs work on other languages but Apple's focus was always on Objective-C.

Comment Re:Apple never about open anything (Score 1) 183

Apple prides itself as a closed ecosystem.

Apple prides itself on an integrated system. That does not always mean closed. For example, their music is AAC which is the successor to MP3. This is not a format of their design.

Yes it may have adopted some open source projects like WebKit in Safari.

And by adopted do you mean made it the de facto engine for many different web browsers? When Apple forked KHTML, it was not used by Google or Opera etc. If you want to ignore that they created OpenCL, LLVM, Bonjour, etc.

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