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Comment GPL vs LGPL (Score 1) 693

by shutdown -p now (#46743233) Attached to: The GNOME Foundation Is Running Out of Money

Not quite. Gtk and Gnome appeared because Qt was originally proprietary. The reason why Gnome became "the default", though, was because enterprise distros like RedHat pushed for it - and that was because Gtk and Gnome were both LGPL, so closed-source software could link against them. This was not the case with Qt, which was open sourced for a long time, but was GPL rather than LGPL.

Comment Re:That's not the only thing that's gone... (Score 1) 270

by shutdown -p now (#46742791) Attached to: The New 'One Microsoft' Is Finally Poised For the Future

Their motto of "Developers, Developers, Developers" also disappeared with Ballmer's exit. Everything is now getting locked down to the max in their attempt to be like Apple.

If by this you mean the various limitations surrounding Windows Store (aka "Metro") apps, then those happened very much under Ballmer. Hell, the guy have only just recently left, so what exactly has disappeared since then?

At the same time, Satya was heading Cloud & Enterprise business before becoming CEO. And C&E, among other things, includes DevDiv - and Satya has a lot of supporters there. Furthermore, note the meteoric rise of Scott Guthrie, who was always one of the more passionate advocates of a solid and modern developer story for MS (in particular, embracing F/OSS).

Comment Re:Deniers (Score 1) 869

The solution in the short term is to use the best methods to obtain petroleum based products, fracking, to keep costs down so we have enough research money to throw into things like geothermal electricity, battery technology, and geo-engineering solutions to removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

So, basically, tax oil production - we could call that, say, "carbon credits" - and then invest those into R&D necessary for clean energy and geoengineering?
Technology

How Cochlear Implants Are Being Blamed For Killing Deaf Culture 510

Posted by samzenpus from the let-the-flamewar-begin dept.
First time accepted submitter Maddie Kahn (3542515) writes "Deaf culture has its own language, its own social norms, its own art forms, its own theater. But it's under threat. Why? Because most parents of deaf children now choose to use technology to help their kids hear. This piece explores why a revolutionary technology stands accused of killing a culture."
Math

P vs. NP Problem Linked To the Quantum Nature of the Universe 199

Posted by Soulskill from the schrodingers-cat-is-both-alive-and-equal-to-NP dept.
KentuckyFC writes: "One of the greatest mysteries in science is why we don't see quantum effects on the macroscopic scale; why Schrodinger's famous cat cannot be both alive and dead at the same time. Now one theorist says the answer is because P is NOT equal to NP. Here's the thinking: The equation that describes the state of any quantum object is called Schrodinger's equation. Physicists have always thought it can be used to describe everything in the universe, even large objects, and perhaps the universe itself. But the new idea is that this requires an additional assumption — that an efficient algorithm exists to solve the equation for complex macroscopic systems. But is this true? The new approach involves showing that the problem of solving Schrodinger's equation is NP-hard. So if macroscopic superpositions exist, there must be an algorithm that can solve this NP-hard problem quickly and efficiently. And because all NP-hard problems are mathematically equivalent, this algorithm must also be capable of solving all other NP-hard problems too, such as the traveling salesman problem. In other words, NP-hard problems are equivalent to the class of much easier problems called P. Or P=NP. But here's the thing: computational complexity theorists have good reason to think that P is not equal to NP (although they haven't yet proven it). If they're right, then macroscopic superpositions cannot exist, which explains why we do not (and cannot) observe them in the real world. Voila!"

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