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Programming

Dart Is Not the Language You Think It Is 257

Posted by Soulskill
from the it's-actually-cobol-in-a-funny-hat dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Seth Ladd has an excellent write-up of Dart: 'When Dart was originally launched, many developers mistook it for some sort of Java clone. In truth, Dart is inspired by a range of languages such as Smalltalk, Strongtalk, Erlang, C#, and JavaScript. Get past the semicolons and curly braces, and you'll see a terse language without ceremony. ... Dart understands that sometimes you just don’t feel like appeasing a ceremonial type checker. Dart’s inclusion of an optional type system means you can use type annotations when you want, or use dynamic when that’s easier. For example, you can explore a new idea without having to first think about type hierarchies. Just experiment and use var for your types. Once the idea is tested and you’re comfortable with the design, you can add type annotations."
Businesses

Amazon, Google and Apple Won't Need To Pay Tax, Despite Goverment Threats 326

Posted by timothy
from the rent-done-been-sought dept.
girlmad writes "Despite moves by government to get Google, Amazon and Apple to admit they make sales in the UK and US, and therefore should pay tax on these earnings, this article argues these are empty threats and that any taxes paid will get returned to the tech giants in government grants and subsidies. Tough luck to the small firms out there."

Comment: Re:Turn the question around (Score 1) 201

I'm not talking about glasses uploading automatically. I'm talking about them using remote storage on Google servers for anything that they shoot, which is already an option on Android, and will surely be even more important on Glass, even more so if we suppose that the glasses won't have the computing power and storage capacity required for realtime image processing which is going to be an important application for that kind of device.

Comment: Re:Turn the question around (Score 2) 201

A dorky headpiece that could soon be worn by millions of people, continuously taking billions of high resolution photos and video clips with precise date/time/gps locations, and sending all of that data to a single commercial entity whose business is to harvest and process personal data, with a track record of privacy stumbles, an extremely high computational capacity and already knowing lots of details about millions of persons including faces, names, email and street address, whole phone books, geographic locations.

Comment: Re:Hate labor laws? (Score 1) 292

My company has an entire office full of people in Italy that do nothing because we have no more use for the facility but the local laws do not allow us to fire them. Instead we make them show up every day, for their 7-8 hours and sit in chairs and do nothing.

Fire your lawyers then. In Italy you can fire people you no longer need, it's called "justified objective reason", and it applies in cases of crisis, downsizing, restructuring, or ceased utility of the job position in general.

Iphone

iTunes: Still Slowing Down Windows PCs After All These Years 512

Posted by Soulskill
from the performance-is-a-luxury dept.
colinneagle sends this quote from an article at NetworkWorld: "I run a very nifty desktop utility called Rainmeter on my PC that I heartily recommend to anyone who wants to keep an eye on their system. One of its main features is it has skins that can monitor your system activity. Thanks to my numerous meters, I see all CPU, disk, memory and network activity in real time. the C: drive meter. It is a circle split down the middle, with the right half lighting up to indicate a read and the left half lighting up for write activity. The C: drive was flashing a fair amount of activity considering I had nothing loaded save Outlook and Word, plus a few background apps. At the time, I didn't have a Rainmeter skin that lists the top processes by CPU and memory. So instead, I went into the Task Manager, and under Performance selected the Resource Monitor. Under the Processes tab, the culprit showed its face immediately: AppleMobileDeviceService.exe. It was consuming a ridiculous amount of threads and CPU cycles. The only way to turn it off is to go into Windows Services and turn off the service. There's just one problem. I use an iPhone. I can't disable it. But doing so for a little while dropped the CPU meters to nothing. So I now have more motivation to migrate to a new phone beyond just having one with a larger screen. This problem has been known for years. AppleMobileDeviceService.exe has been in iTunes since version 7.3. People complained on the Apple boards more than two years ago that it was consuming up to 50% of CPU cycles, and thus far it's as bad as it always has been. Mind you, Mac users aren't complaining. Just Windows users."
Government

Data Leak Spurs Huge Offshore Tax Evasion Investigation 190

Posted by Soulskill
from the thousands-of-corporate-escape-pods-launched-in-response dept.
New submitter lxrocks writes "Tax authorities in the U.S., Britain, and Australia have announced they are working with a gigantic cache of leaked data that may be the beginnings of one of the largest tax investigations in history. The secret records are believed to include those obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that lay bare the individuals behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands, Singapore and other offshore hideaways. The IRS said, 'There is nothing illegal about holding assets through offshore entities; however, such offshore arrangements are often used to avoid or evade tax liabilities on income represented by the principal or on the income generated by the underlying assets. In addition, advisors may be subject to civil penalties or criminal prosecution for promoting such arrangements as a means to avoid or evade tax liability or circumvent information reporting requirements.'"

Comment: Re:Greed (Score 1) 292

by peppepz (#43694493) Attached to: Hanford Nuclear Waste Vitrification Plant "Too Dangerous"

So, because one particular design has a problem, you would condemn all nuclear technologies?

Where the hell did I say that? I didn't even qualify the fact as a “problem”, that's just how those things are designed to work. And why should BWR designs be “bad”? They’ve been used successfully for decades.

However, finding faults with a well designed molten salt reactor will be very difficult for an honest person.

We’ll be able to discuss that when molten salt reactors exist on the market.

Advertising

Microsoft YouTube App Strips Ads; Adds Download 381

Posted by timothy
from the when-companies-compete dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft appears to be sticking a finger in Google's eye with the launch of its new YouTube app for Windows Phone. The app, ReadWrite has confirmed, strips out YouTube ads when it plays back videos and allows users to easily download video by way of a prominent 'download' button."
The Courts

Google Seeks 'Do-No-Discoverable-Evil' Patent 109

Posted by timothy
from the can-we-bribe-someone-to-bury-this-from-auditors? dept.
theodp writes "E-mails and other communications between employees,' explains Google in a newly-published patent application for its Policy Violation Checker invention, 'can implicate potential violations of company policy or local, state or federal law that can go unchecked by attorneys or other legal personnel.' So how can you avoid those embarrassing Goldman Sachs and Enron e-mail gaffes? Use Google's 'methods and systems for identifying problematic phrases in an electronic document'! From the patent application: 'Documents may be used as evidence in court, administrative, or other proceedings. It is in a company's best interest to minimize or eliminate policy violations and/or situations that could give rise to legal liability. It is also often in a company's best interest to be able to Pack [?] these situations. Problematic phrases include, but are not limited to, phrases that present policy violations, have legal implications, or are otherwise troublesome to a company, business, or individual.' So, if you can't Do-No-Evil, at least you can Do-No-Discoverable-Evil!"
Google

Google Glass Is the Future — and the Future Has Awful Battery Life 473

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the shorten-length-of-day dept.
zacharye writes "The concept of wearable tech is really buzzing right now as pundits tout smart eyewear, watches and other connected devices as the future of tech. It makes sense, of course — smartphone growth is slowing and people need something to hold on to — but the early 'Explorer' version of Google's highly anticipated Google Glass headset has major problem that could be a big barrier for widespread adoption: Awful battery life." Also, a review of the hardware. The current Glass hardware heads south in less than five hours, which doesn't seem too short relative to similarly powerful devices, but since it is meant to be worn all the time you'd think it would have a large enough battery to make it at least 8 or 10 hours.
Operating Systems

OpenBSD 5.3 Released 109

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the time-to-dump-core dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Today, OpenBSD 5.3 has been released. It has many improvements, updates, and new stuff. Also, OpenSMTPD 5.3 is included. This is the first version of OpenSMTPD considered to be ready for production. Many pre-built packages are available for many architectures. OpenBSD 5.3 ships with various Desktop Environments, including Gnome 3.6, KDE 3.5, and XFCE 4.10." And don't forget the release song, "Blade Swimmer."
DRM

New Console Always-Online Requirements and You 435

Posted by Soulskill
from the only-you-can-prevent-forest-fires-and-terrible-DRM dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The new Xbox is almost here and the details appear to strongly suggest 'always on' is the way forward. We all know that this is an artificial requirement and certainly there are plenty of people on all sides of the table. To paraphrase the user 'tuffy' who commented on this issue at Ars Technica recently; if you're trying to sell 'always online' as a feature of the future, there needs to be some benefit for me the customer. There is not one. Or, rather, there is no sign yet of any actual clearly compelling reason why any end user would support this limitation to their purchase. So, what's the best way to express this? Spend your money on an Ouya? Contact the Xbox team? These are all valid options but they also lack visibility. What we need is a way that could help actually quantify the levels of discontent in the gamer community. Maybe E3 attendees could turn their backs in protest like some did during Thatcher's funeral procession. Or gamers could sign some useless petition. What do Slashdotters think? Is the upcoming Steam box a reasonable plan? As a gamer, I'm of two minds about the whole thing. I really don't like it but I may roll over eventually and join the herd because I could get used to it. Then again part of me is rankled by this slow erosion of access to me and my data."

Comment: Re:now we wait (Score 1) 586

by peppepz (#43555991) Attached to: Europe Needs Genetically Engineered Crops, Scientists Say
I'm not against GMOs per se: the hand of man has been improving the unkind nature since the dawn of the times. I know that much of the fruit we have been eating for centuries is "genetically engineered" somehow, that lemons don't grow from lemon seeds.
However, saying that Europe needs genetically engineered crops is hyperbolic at best.

I frequently hear tales of GMOs saving the world and whatnot. But when I ask for a scientific measurement of their effect, all I get is studies - often sponsored by GMO proposers themselves - showing that, in developed countries (as Europe is), they can lead to modest increments in yeld (in the order of magnitude of 10% over ten years), and sometimes they don't (e.g. in Australia).

I can't talk about what happens in the vasty plains of Germany, but here on the terraced slopes of southern Europe tons of fruits are left to rot on the branches because picking them up would cost more than you'd earn by selling them (also because of the european subsidies which transfer money to latifondists no matter what they do with their land), and still no hungry mobs are plundering those fields. We can't compete with China on growing cheaper rice, no matter what seeds we use. What we can do is to promote our centuries-old cultivars, and the traditional foods based on them, and sell them for a premium because they don't taste like shit.

You'll forgive my diffidence, but in the latest years, every single time we've been told to drop a time-honoured habit of us in order to copy some other country's recipe for success, it ended up in grief and hunger (this one scientifically measured) for us. Timeo multinationals et dona ferentes.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

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