The bulk of my recent programming has been in Objective C but once I leave API calls my code quickly becomes pretty classic C with elements of C++. Yes I love the simplicity of a foreach type structure where it is brain dead to iterate through some set/hash/array of objects with little or no thought about bounds but once I start to really hammer the data hard I often find my code "degenerating" into c. Instead of a class I will create a structure. Instead of vectors I use arrays. I find the debugging far simpler and the attitude to what can be done changes. In fairly raw C I start having thoughts like: I'll mathematically process 500,000 structures every time someone moves their mouse and then I literally giggle when it not only works but works smoothly. What you largely have in C is if the machine is theoretically able to do it then you can program it. Good mathematics can often optimize things significantly but sometimes you just have brute manipulations that need to be fast.

But on a whole other level my claim with most higher level languages ranging from PHP to .net to Java is that they often make the first 90% of a large project go so very quickly. You seem to jump from prototype to 90% in a flash; but then you hit some roadblocks. The garbage collection is kicking in during animations causing stuttering and the library you are using won't let you entirely stop garbage collection. Or memory isn't being freed quickly enough resulting in the requirement that all the users' machines be upgraded to 16Gb. Then that remaining 10% ends up taking twice as long as the first 90%. Whereas I find with C (or C++) you start slow and end slow but the first 90% actually takes 90% of the final time.

But where C is a project killer is the whole weakest link in the chain thing. If you have a large project with many programmers as is typically found in a large business system working on many different modules that basically work on the same data set that a safer language like Java is far far better. I am pretty sure that if the business programmers working on projects that I have seen were to have used C instead of Java that those server systems would crash more than once a minute. You can still program pretty badly in Java but a decent programmer shouldn't blow the system apart. Whereas a decent C programmer might not be good enough for a large project.

So the story is not if C is better than say Java but what is the best language for any given problem set. I find broad systems, like those found in the typical business, with many programmers of various skill levels are idea for Java. But for deep system where you layer more and more difficulty on a single problem such as real-time robotic vision that C or C++ are far superior. A simple way to figure out what is the best language is to not compare strengths and weaknesses generally but how they apply to the problem at hand. In a large business system where horsepower is plentiful then garbage collection is good and pointers are only going to be a liability. But if you are pushing up to the limits of what the machine can do such as a game then a crazy pointer dance might be the only possible solution and thus demand C or even ASM.

Lastly do you want your OS programmed in Java?

I could see a really crappy bomb fizzing or whatnot if it the contents ignited instead of detonating. Years ago I flew model rockets and the occasional one would do something strange. It wasn't uncommon for one to ignite, smoke for a huge amount of time, and then sort of fly. Keep in mind that these bozos are potentially cobbling these things together and are likely to not get it quite right.

Given the first thought of most baggage handlers is: dildo followed by razor or toothbrush it is pretty dumb. But I don't think they are hiring from the leading engineering schools. They are getting guys from the hardware store where a guy told me the new LED lights don't break because instead of a filament they use a spark. Did I give him a quick lecture in Quantum physics; it would have probably have been as useful as telling this guy that all those training videos document the least likely thing in peoples' bags.

I can not cast stones at these people as I recently arrived home from a trip to find that there was a horrible buzzing noise in my house. I could hear the noise from the front door and thought it might be the furnace; no joy. Maybe the fridge, nyet. Oh no my computer, nope. But no matter where I went it was of roughly even volume. Then as I took off my backpack I realized it was my electric toothbrush buzzing in the backpack. So my little lesson is that you hear the sound you are expecting. In a airport the paranoid are expecting bombs and so they hear bombs.

The supreme court of Canada recently made a very radical decision I think regarding a bunch of guys who left a big bank here. Basically the court decision was that people can work wherever the hell they want for whomever will have them. The court seems to have completely tossed out the idea of an employee having any kind of non-compete as violating their right to work. But the decision went much further. It wasn't just about working for the competition or even stealing former employees but the court even said stealing old clients and their phone numbers was fine as long as it was reasonable that the employee could have remembered that data. So if an employee even wrote some names and numbers down it was fine as long as it was a reasonably memorable list. In the particular case the employees were dealing with a fairly small elite clientele so the bank really lost big time. Again the court said that you can't make an employee forget stuff.

This of course is a Canadian supreme court case but I went to a lecture given by a supreme court justice who said that most supreme courts look to other supreme courts around the world that are based upon the English system of law as the same sort of cases tend to crop up in the various courts at similar times. So without a doubt the US courts will at least glance at this outstanding decision supporting workers rights.

To me the answer is quite simple. What is HP doing for any employee the day they leave? Absolutely nothing. So what should an ex-HP employee do for HP after they leave? Absolutely nothing. As for any contract. You could sign a slavery contract but any court would toss it out in a second. The key to a contract is that there is an exchange. If I promise to give you a gift of $1,000,000 tomorrow for absolutely nothing on your part you can't actually sue me when I don't deliver. There has to be an exchange. When the employee stops paying the employee the contract has ended regardless of what extra bits HP might wish for. I suspect that this will be going to the supreme court in the US as people will think that it is "unfair" for the employees to be so disloyal and some lower courts might be so foolish as to fall for this argument. But the law is not about fairness. It is about rules; and contract law is fairly old and boring that way. So it will be interesting to see how this all turns out. Personally I was surprised to see our supreme court side so thoroughly with the little guy when the other side was one of the biggest banks in Canada.

An apple like laptop for $300 bucks seems to be a bit of a no brainer. Like many slashdotters I am the technical adviser for most of my large family as well as work. With the exception of those who need specific Microsoft Programs or iTunes a Linux desktop on a machine with those specs would nicely meet the budget and needs of at least half my family. For my self I would love it as a second laptop. There are so many specs in the typical computer that far exceed the typical user's needs. My sister for example just bought an asus machine that I suggested as staples had a pretty good deal and her 7 year desktop really needed replacement. She is one of the people who must run a Windows machine so the specs are more demanding yet her 2TB HD is extreme overkill as she might need 20GB between the OS, MS Office and whatnot. I am willing to bet that in 2018 when she replaces this machine that the vast majority of her machine will be empty. Thus the tiny storage capacity of a Chromebook should be little detriment to most. But the better construction and lighter weight are far more important features that make the chromebook comparable to staples machines priced closer to $1000 as most of the sub $1000 stapes machines are clunky with cheap features such the split left shift key and load of bloatware. The same with many of the other lesser features of the chromebook as compared to "better" machines; most of the features where the chromebook is lesser are unimportant. The fact that at a glance the thing looks like a macbook won't hurt sales at all. So for anyone to be surprised that the chromebook is kicking ass is a surprise to me.

I am willing to bet that the MBA-types at places like HP are scratching their heads saying HP entry models are better than that damn thing as they go through a check list of how their machines are so much better feature for feature not realizing that 98% of customers don't even know what RAM does but their customers do know what they like when they see a friend with one and see that it runs a HD youtube video just as smoothly as the HP machine that has way more "L2 Cache".

The other thing that the MBA types are not realizing is that they are no longer competing with the laptop next to theirs in the display section of Staples or Best Buy but they are competing with the cell phone in the person's pocket.

I suspect that the average Pakistani thinks little of their government; thus anything the government blocks must be good and should be checked out. I suspect that the total amount of blasphemy watched is higher in the end as the population end runs any poorly implemented systems the same way Canadians end run the whole "This content not available in your region."

Once in a blue moon someone might have the exactly relevant facts (which I still think might be a load of BS) but I come to the comments to see the interesting side comments where people might say things like, "HP makes a big load of crap except their Model X is a hidden gem at half the cost and twice the power of anything else" Or "I stopped buying HP servers because company X makes this brain dead simple blade server system with each server coming in at $199..."

About 15 years ago I was buying an HP printer from Canada's equivalent to Best Buy and they were trying to do the usual crap warranty upsell. I told the guy, "For $10 off I'll take an HP product with no warranty." That was 15 years ago. I recently opened a cheap little HP inkjet and the included black cartridge had zero ink in it. I don't mean it had dried out but it had never contained ink as I cut it open and found no sign of ink. I didn't flip out or was even a tiny bit surprised. This is what I expect from HP products.

The same with HP laptops; I expect a mountain of bloated trialware that will be a huge pain to remove and a variety of other cheapnesses such as the whole split left shift key thing.

I also buy servers and with no experience at all with HP servers would simply not touch them with a bargepole due to my experiences with the rest of their product line. But back to their older products. I know people with older(10 years+) laserjets that just keep going and going; while I know others with newer colour laser jets where the red is fading due to dust buildup on a mirror buried deep inside the machine.

And don't get me going on the prices of toner and ink. So my guess is that HP is a company run by MBA types "proving" all kinds of "facts" using spreadsheets while leaving the basics such as loyal happy customers in the dust as those things don't spreadsheet very well. If you are wondering what I mean by the misuse of spreadsheets think about this scenario: You are HP and you have some new trialware product to add to your latest laptop. The product looks like it will make an average of $16.95 per machine. You expect to sell 300,000 units. Well that works out to 6 million dollars. Then you add another trialware column, and another, and another. Soon those machines are simply printing money. But how do you calculate the number of customers who will never buy another HP after realizing that they basically just bought the electronic equivalent to postal junk flyers? Not so easy to put that into a spreadsheet; you can but it tends to be built on more fuzzy information that can be tainted with optimism. My personal guess is that a goodly portion of high priced Apple's sales are built upon people seeing a machine that didn't come with Norton AV and its bloaty brethren. These technologically unsophisticated people then reason that it is worth double to not get this crap. I like Apple products so I am not casting aspersions and I also know that there are many other reasons people buy them both worthy and shallow but I know many people who have no inclination to waste one second fighting with their machine and value their time accordingly.

So when I hear that HP is squabbling over $11 billion that would potentially be detectable from the proper use of spreadsheets (accounting) I just laugh like a drain.

Desktop motherboard manufacturers know that in the past and in the present that following the dictates of Microsoft is how to survive. But those days are mostly over. I doubt any of the MB manufacturers are going to stand up and fart in Microsoft's face and say NO. But I suspect they know the trend is moving away from Microsoft and with the Linux noises that companies like Valve are making that Microsoft will only get weaker. Thus they will probably pretend to put UEFI onto the motherboard but make it really really easy for anyone with the capability to install linux to turn it off. So I suspect that the motherboards will soon come with UEFI enabled by default (maybe) but that you can either go into the bios and turn it off or short a jumper.

Other options would be to leave a weakness in the system so that it is easily hacked and thus bypassed; this way they can meet the letter of Microsoft's law but not at all the spirit. And of course they don't need to make a hole, they know people will find a hole and they won't bother patching it. But I just don't see the manufacturers coming out and directly attracting Microsoft's rage. Plus companies know that all kinds of businesses will want to put a whole range of products on their systems from oddballs like DOS with many wanting XP, Vista, and Windows 7. It wasn't that long ago that I saw an ATM running OS/2. I suspect the guts of the ATM were newish.

But in the near term Microsoft is going to ask "Who farted?" and the various manufacturers are going to pretend that they didn't.

All that said, Microsoft's worst nightmare would be for a company to start releasing Motherboards/Machines with UEFI disabled as a feature and telling the world that smart discerning high-end customers buy systems without UEFI and that the drones buy what the suits at Microsoft tell them. What microsoft seems to forget that while computer nerds running things like Linux are not a significant market share in and of themselves they are who guides, or outright chooses what systems get picked. Minimally how many slashdoter's are involved by their families when they are picking machines. Without starting a religious war about my personal tastes I can say that when people around me are buying a system I give them a fairly narrow range of choices that if they stray from I won't take their "urgent" calls at 10pm when things are going wrong a month later. "Oh your poorly designed laptop that sucks cooling air in only from the bottom overheated when sitting on the sofa and now you need your data pulled from its carcass? How about no." So while people like us probably only represent 1% of the market we probably influence 30+% of the market. So if we don't like UEFI the manufacturers will soon find that we have a bigger vote than simplistic market surveys might otherwise suggest. So even if they totally cave to MS I suspect cracks will appear fairly quickly.

Simply set their reviews aside and mark them as such. So if the author of Cooking Carrots reviews Cooking Lots of Carrots you can get a better understanding. If they give an otherwise 5 star book a crap review you think "sour grapes" but if they give it a 5 star review then you think, "Hmmmm an expert and competitor giving 5 stars is pretty damn good."

I read one Amazon thing where the author does a video about their books. The author trashes one of their own books. Basically the author said the publishing company ruined it. That is the most awesome review I have seen on Amazon.

If they are going to ban anybody it should be two groups, first the angry group that just keeps handing out 1 star reviews. The second group should be publishers. You can tell their 5 star review from a mile away all perfect market speak that nearly matches the books official description, "A gripping tale spanning 4 continents and two world wars..."

One thing to keep in mind is that the ARM is much more general purpose while the Intel chips tend to have a more complex assembly instruction set. So for adding one number to another (x=y+z) I suspect the simpler ARM architecture is going to win on power consumption. But many Intel chips have assembly instructions specifically for crazy things like AES encryption. This is used as the basis of many encryption protocols, hashing, and random number generation. So if a machine is basically serving up all encrypted data then it is possible that an Intel chip will be much faster and consume much less power while performing these operations. Depending on whether he software will take advantage

So I thing this is a case where you really have to look at the significantly broken down performance results to see if your use case fits one chip better than the other. A normal consumer example would be if your OS is encrypting your file system and using these cool Intel instructions. I suspect that it would then be a night and day difference in battery drain. But the drag is that you probably have to pretty well buy a device with both chips, set up your standard configuration, and then test it out. This is generally only something an IT person about to provision a department might be expected to do.

I guess that the overall benchmark is all we really have to go by which really doesn't tell the whole story.

I suspect that people are going to fight empty cars (which are just too cool). But more interestingly some of the people who fight drunk driving will show their true colours and be shown to actually be anti drink people. And before you cast any stones at me for that one it is the position of the woman who founded one of the biggest anti drinking and driving movements; she started it after losing loved ones but feels that the organization has been co opted by temperance types.

This is totally correct. The key is controlling information flow. Usually an org chart does not only suggest who has power but is usually designed to control the flow of information. This is why MBA types are so keen on huge complicated org charts which usually quickly get dotted lines here and there. So if you can end run your boss information control wise they usually get really anxious. The nightmare scenario in a classic MBA polluted company would be some rubber on the road type like a programmer is golfing buddies with say the CFO. Every layer of management in between the programmer and the CFO will literally lose sleep over this disastrous situation any reports up or directives down must suddenly contain the untwisted truth; horrible situation for all those useless middle managers.

Actually wrong, one it is too many years, and two they published his name in a staff directory. The only "Insider" knowledge was that he was a useless douche which was not gained from the inside of the new company but from outside it. Basically this would be the same as being an oil engineer who is told about a new drilling technology that will make old oil fields new again and then going out and buying up old oil fields before this becomes generally known; the fact might be little known but it is not "insider" information. If someone inside that company had disclosed that he was still being a useless waste product then that would have been insider info; but his behavior was actually irrelevant. What he gave me was an insight into how poor their hiring practices were; had they asked around for anyone who ever worked with him I suspect they would have trash talked him into the dust; so either they didn't ask around or they ignored the feedback. I don't think he was there a day before he finished moving and was laid off. So the information I had was basically information the company had leaking out into the world for anyone to think through. Sort of like the oddities of recent Apple decisions making me think that they have a critical gap left by Steve Jobs. Things like the new iMac has a crappier HD than the previous model. I can see Steve Jobs making someone cry if they tried that stunt on his watch.

Now had I bet against my own company knowing he was a useless douche then that would be insider info but seeing that he was being called on his QA stupidity if anything I should have bought shares in the company I worked for (would have made good money there)

Insist on a one person reporting structure. The moment you are reporting to more that one person all is lost as each then is competing for your time and will try to shove in more features or reporting demand than the other.

Years ago I was happily working on a project where I basically dealt with the client. But our QA department just lost a big contract and saw my good sized budget and weaseled in. The head of the QA department did his damnedest to get more and more people onto the project and then started communicating with the client which somehow was being then communicated to me as we need more testing. So after a few weeks I was having to deal with 5 QA people, a QA manager, and the client. Productivity dropped like a stone. So I met on the side with the client who demanded that they approve any billable time for any employee ahead of time. So the QA manager would send in a huge complicated (30 pages) request for this and that and the client would send back a note, "At this time I will only accept billable time on programming, at the end of the project we will re-examine the need for QA." Then the next time the QA manager phoned him he answered the call with, "the time on this call had better not be billable."

A week later the QA manager had an all-hands-onboard management meeting where he demanded that all projects have a set minimum percentage of QA. This failed and he then layed off half of his QA staff.

The best part of all this is that I made some good money. The QA Manager was hired by a huge tech company (2000 bubble) and I played the options market to basically short the crap out of that company as he had been hired for a very senior position and my logic was that any company that could not filter out this waste product was doomed. Their share price went from $120 to around $10 in a couple of months and he basically moved there and was then laid off.

So insist on a single reporting person which will then result in your MBA type having to stack his MBA underling on top of you. This will be so obviously silly that it is doomed. If you do end up reporting to more than one person get the resume cooking as the stress of reporting to more than one person on a project is just not worth it. If you have 3 MBA types all piling on with their own perverse desires(TPA reports) then they will each demand 40 plust hours of work from you per week so either you will die trying to feed their stupid requests or you will fail and they will all sabotage you as they will need someone to blame and they are higher up the information food chain than you.