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Comment Re:Our own computers ... (Score 4, Insightful) 154

Long time /. user here; I've been doing game dev for 20+ years and as someone who uses Windows, OSX, and Linux daily and thinks all OS's suck, some just more then others -- hopefully you won't treat this as just a random user posting ...

It's true Open Source can't solve all business needs. (Anytime an ideology is taken to an extreme you usually end up with delusions, but I digress.)

However, I was curious what are your specific business needs that OSS can't solve?

It sounds like you are tied to closed source and MS. Right now you are at the mercy of Microsoft. Is that where your business wants to stay ?

i.e.
What is your 10 year migration plan to not be locked into one vendor's proprietary solutions? (Notice how I didn't specify MS or Linux.)

If you have already spent millions on your platform, what is it going to cost you to stay with MS when they no longer support your needs?

Comment Re:WindOwS X (Score 0) 154

The difference is Apple built upon a solid Unix foundation.

Every version, for the first ~6 six versions was faster and faster.

Microsoft has made little innovation from Windows XP .. Windows 10.

- "Kill Process" is STILL half baked. i.e. Applications can still get in stuck state preventing them from being shut-down
- Notepad still doesn't know how to read a file bigger then main memory
- Windows isn't smart enough to turn off the pagefile with more then 16 GB RAM

etc.

Submission + - Open Source C++ ClanLib SDK refreshed for 2015 1

rombust writes: "Will ClanLib turn around the tides and finally challenge SDL. The latest 4.0 release already offers what Unity and the Unreal Engine charges 30% for, but now after 16 years of development, using only hobbyist developers it will take on the giant of open source game SDKs! Dedication that's rarely found in the Open Source community, without commercial backing.

Comment TL:DR; (Score 4, Informative) 187

Remind me to never visit Brazil, Mexico, or Honduras.

Summary, in alphabetical order

* Brazil x 19 !!!
* Columbia
* Honduras x 2
* El Salvador
* Guatemala
* Jamaica
* Louisiana, USA
* Maryland, USA
* Mexico x 10 !!
* Michigan, USA
* Missouri, USA
* South Africa
* Venezuela x 4 !

Top 50 List without all the bullshit images:

1. San Pedro Sula, Honduras had 171.20 homicides per 100,000 residents.
2. Caracas, Venezuela had 115.98 homicides per 100,000 residents.
3. Acapulco, Mexico had 104.16 homicides per 100,000 residents.
4. João Pessoa, Brazil had 79.41 homicides per 100,000 residents.
5. Distrito Central, Honduras had 77.65 homicides per 100,000 residents.
6. MaceiÃ, Brazil had 72.91 homicides per 100,000 residents.
7. Valencia, Venezuela had 71.08 homicides per 100,000 residents.
8. Fortaleza, Brazil had 66.55 homicides per 100,000 residents.
9. Cali, Colombia had 65.25 homicides per 100,000 residents.
10. São LuÃs, Brazil had 64.71 homicides per 100,000 residents.
11. Natal, Brazil had 63.68 homicides per 100,000 residents.
12. Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela had 62.13 homicides per 100,000 residents.
13. San Salvador, El Salvador had 61.21 homicides per 100,000 residents.
14. Cape Town, South Africa had 60 homicides per 100,000 residents.
15. Vitoria, Brazil had 57 homicides per 100,000 residents.
16. CuiabÃ, Brazil had 56.46 homicides per 100,000 residents.
17. Salvador (and RMS), Brazil had 54.31 homicides per 100,000 residents.
18. Belém, Brazil had 53.06 homicides per 100,000 residents.
19. St. Louis, Missouri had 49.93 homicides per 100,000 residents.
20. Teresina, Brazil had 49.49 homicides per 100,000 residents.
21. Barquisimeto, Venezuela had 46.46 homicides per 100,000 residents.
22. Detroit, Michigan had 44.87 homicides per 100,000 residents.
23. GoiÃnia, Brazil had 44.82 homicides per 100,000 residents.
24. CuliacÃn, Mexico had 42.17 homicides per 100,000 residents.
25. Guatemala, Guatemala had 41.90 homicides per 100,000 residents.
26. Kingston, Jamaica had 40.59 homicides per 100,000 residents.
27. JuÃrez, Mexico had 39.94 homicides per 100,000 residents.
28. New Orleans, Louisiana had 39.61 homicides per 100,000 residents.
29. Recife, Brazil had 39.05 homicides per 100,000 residents.
30. Campina Grande, Brazil had 37.97 homicides per 100,000 residents.
31. ObregÃn, Mexico had 37.71 homicides per 100,000 residents.
32. Palmira, Colombia had 37.66 homicides per 100,000 residents.
33. Manaus, Brazil had 37.07 homicides per 100,000 residents.
34. Nuevo Laredo, Mexico had 34.92 homicides per 100,000 residents.
35. Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa had 34.89 homicides per 100,000 residents.
36. Pereira, Colombia had 34.68 homicides per 100,000 residents.
37. Porto Alegre, Brazil had 34.65 homicides per 100,000 residents.
38. Durban, South Africa had 34.48 homicides per 100,000 residents.
39. Aracaju, Brazil had 34.19 homicides per 100,000 residents.
40. Baltimore, Maryland had 33.92 homicides per 100,000 residents.
41. Victoria, Mexico had 33.91 homicides per 100,000 residents.
42. Belo Horizonte, Brazil had 33.39 homicides per 100,000 residents.
43. Chihuahua, Mexico had 33.29 homicides per 100,000 residents.
44. Curitiba, Brazil had 31.48 homicides per 100,000 residents.
45. Tijuana, Mexico had 29.90 homicides per 100,000 residents.
46. MacapÃ, Brazil, had 28.87 homicides per 100,000 residents.
47. CÃcuta, Colombia, had 28.43 homicides per 100,000 residents.
48. TorreÃn, Mexico, had 27.81 homicides per 100,000 residents.
49. MedellÃn, Colombia, had 26.91 homicides per 100,000 resident
50. Cuernavaca, Mexico, had 25.45 homicides per 100,000 residents.

I feel bad for all the people in Brazil and Mexico.

Submission + - What Might Have Happened to Windows Media Center

Phopojijo writes: Microsoft has officially dropped Windows Media Center but, for a time, it looked like Microsoft was designing both Windows and the Xbox around it. That changed when Vista imploded and the new leadership took Windows in a different direction. Meanwhile, Valve Software and others appear to be tiptoeing into the space that Microsoft sprinted away from.

Submission + - Harvard Engineering Students Build the Ultimate BBQ Smoker

HughPickens.com writes: Carolyn Y. Johnson reports at the Boston Globe that a 16-person team at Harvard has solved one of the toughest problems in the field of food preparation: How to build a foolproof smoker that can repeatedly produce the perfect brisket, to be judged on texture, taste, and appearance. Tested by countless computer simulations of virtual brisket smoking, nearly two dozen weekend smoking sessions — often in snow or sub-zero temperatures — and 220 pounds of meat, the smoker is a rigorous, data-driven tool for making a feast. Making a perfectly smoked piece of meat may seem to be as far as you can get from an engineering conundrum, but engineering professor Kevin Kit Parker saw it as a problem that required a deep understanding of chemistry, heat transfer, materials science, prototyping, and solving problems. According to Parker, Barbecue has been a veritable Wild West in which pit masters build mishmash setups that incorporate garbage cans, cinder blocks, a giant rotisserie. “They are the biggest contraptions and pieces of junk you’ve ever seen,” says Parker. “Everyone had their own little mojo they brought to the problem.”

In the end, the secret was to precisely control the temperature both in the smoker and in the meat over the “low and slow” smoke. They had to keep the meat below 120 degrees long enough to let the enzymes in the meat break down the collagen and make it tender; they wanted the smoker’s shape to cause “cyclonic airflow,” meaning the smoke would circulate down toward the brisket. While the wood would burn at 700 degrees, the meat would gradually rise over a 15-hour period to about 190 degrees. The class settled on a material — ceramic — and a shape that resembles a cooling tower at a power plant. The design solved one of the big problems with the commercial smoker they used, by eliminating hot spots where the meat might cook too quickly and dry out. They built an app that would allow cooks to monitor the conditions inside the smoker and share their experiences through social media. How to measure success? "They look for perfectly cooked brisket to take on a mahogany hue," says Johnson. "When sliced, there should be a slightly pink section around the edge, called the smoke ring. The meat must be tender, but not falling apart." “They’ve gone from basic science," says Patrick Connolly, chief strategy officer for Williams-Sonoma, who plans to bring the design back to the company’s leaders, "to really understanding how you optimize for flavor and texture."

Submission + - FBI director says Americans have not traded liberty for security since 9/11 (dailydot.com) 2

Patrick O'Neill writes: “There has not been a tradeoff between liberty and security in our response to terrorism in this country and in our efforts to offer security to the people of the United States," said James Comey, now the director of the FBI. Comey was the number two man in the Department of Justice during the Bush years when NSA and law enforcement surveillance of Americans grew to unprecedented heights. Now he's pushing to stop encryption by default on Apple and Android devices.

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