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Comment: Re:Never thought I'd see FUD from Open Source (Score 1) 109

by steelfood (#43797451) Attached to: MariaDB vs. MySQL: A Performance Comparison

The same thing with Java.

Rumor is, they bought Sun for Java, in particular, for the purposes of suing Google over their implementation of Java used in Android. Rumor is, they thought they could recoup the cost of Sun with the award they'd be getting from that and subsequent lawsuits.

Comment: Re:What would they come back to? (Score 1) 258

by steelfood (#43790819) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Can Yahoo Actually Stage a Comeback?

What saved Apple was a leader with creativity and vision, and a rabid fan base.

I don't know if Yahoo has the former, but I can tell you with certainty that they don't have the latter. They have a solid user base, but they're by no means fans. Which means that they cannot afford to make as many mistakes as Apple could.

Comment: Re:How quickly can they de-crap their products? (Score 1) 258

by steelfood (#43790763) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Can Yahoo Actually Stage a Comeback?

The newest versions of Firefox aren't horrible, but it got a bit rough a few versions back. I do wish they'd bring back the status bar though. Everything else has otherwise settled down into something fairly decent and quite usable.

Google, however, is settling into a "we are Google, we can do anything we want and you just have to suck it" mode. They're treating nobody well at this point, neither their customers nor their users. It's only a matter of time before somebody a bit nicer comes along and eats their lunch.

Comment: Re:Shouldn't those kids die? (Score 1) 221

There are weak, as in the elderly who have survived and children who have not been given the chance, or people who might have just had a bout of very bad luck, and the weak who are unfit to survive by virtue of their inability to become useful, productive members of society.

Techniques developed to save the former also save the latter, and vice versa. As a species, we would probably be better off with fewer of the latter. But who might be able to judge to whom treatment is given, and to whom it is denied? I don't think any human is qualified. A diety? None such exist, and if one does, it is certainly deferring its judgment until later. Our only choice is to help as many as we can, and hope the person we are helping belongs to the former, and not the latter.

Also, it's important to remember that while some deaths might be good for the whole, each death is also an individual tragedy for those close to that person. I only wish I could remember who said this.

Comment: Re:why no dark matter black holes? (Score 1) 44

by steelfood (#43776697) Attached to: Dark Matter, WIMPS, and NASA's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Data

This is kinda putting the horse before the cart. The fact that galaxies exist as localized clumping of matter is postulated to be due to this "dark matter" substance that does not interact with anything else, including itself, in any way except by gravity. I.e., dark matter is the proposed explanation for galaxies, not the other way around.

Comment: Re:Anything to get more customers (Score 1) 715

by steelfood (#43745259) Attached to: Google Demands Microsoft Pull YouTube App For WP8

I suspect all this noise about downloading the video is more due to Google trying to appease the demands of some big the publishers and "content creators".

Not that Microsoft is in the right, but I wonder if Google's trying to act like the dog of some of these other companies at the moment.

Comment: Re:Apple need to do no evil (Score 1) 191

Proposed penalty: Full access to Apple's internal iOS APIs. App store unlock. Apple cannot develop software that other companies cannot develop.

That's how Microsoft has to operate with their monopoly in the OS market. The guys working on Office cannot use an API call that the guys working on Windows has not disclosed.

Comment: Re:So? (Score 3, Informative) 127

by steelfood (#43733383) Attached to: How Maintainable Is the Firefox Codebase?

It's crucial to know the distribution of that 11%. If they were all located in one area, it might be as you say, But if the 11% was comprised of a few files in each major module, then that'd be bad.

You want the bulk of your program doing the actual work to look like a tree. You don't want the bulk of your program to look like a mesh (graph). This is especially true of your core components.

Comment: Re:It's started... (Score 1) 301

by steelfood (#43733081) Attached to: DHS Shuts Down Dwolla Payments To and From Mt. Gox

Well, that's the thing. It's not rare. It's only perceived to be rare. But that's a perception that came about as a result of human value placed upon its intrinsic properties.

In fact, a big reason why it's been the de facto currency all the world over is due to its plentifulness. The other big reason is because it's easy to work with, and the final (slightly lesser) reason is because it does not oxidize.

Ask not what's inside your head, but what your head's inside of. -- J.J. Gibson

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