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Comment Re:Ok, I'm convinced (Score 1) 213

by kantos (#34450546) Attached to: Silverlight 5 — Back From the Dead?

I don't think it's really correct to call anything in Silverlight a "web app" not only is it a client based runtime... but it really didn't get the necessary features to support a full featured webapp until Silverlight 3. What Silverlight is... is a step between a clickonce app, and a web page. I think MS's message is going to start becoming along these lines: "If you can do it in HTML5 the do, if you can't then use Silverlight." What that message says to me is that Silverlight is for apps that you want to make REALLY REALLY easy to deploy and are willing to live with the restrictions Silverlight places on that application.

<rant>Personally I think the tragedy of Silverlight... and indeed .NET in general is that MS has not made it more open, not so open as Java where it degrades into detrimental infighting, but open in the sense that it would be easy for Novell to implement Moonlight and Mono. I am one of the many .NET developers who wishes that Mono had brought WPF to linux. Why? Because at least then I could make apps that don't look like shit on linux. I presume that it never happened due to licensing issues over DirectX with MS, which is really a shame. Mono as a client runtime is a tragedy, what it could have done, and what it did is good... but not really any better than java. While the server runtime is worth talking about, it is as far as I am aware not used extensively, thus making it a failure.</rant>
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Moodle 2.0 Released (moodle.org)

Submitted by Jamiemeister
Jamiemeister writes: After two and a half years of development by hundreds of developers the open source Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) project Moodle 2.0 has been officially released. It is available for download now and is typically updated weekly. http://download.moodle.org/

"Moodle is an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. It's also a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity."

Comment Re:C#, Windows.Forms, and Managed DirectDraw (Score 1) 331

by kantos (#34364396) Attached to: What 2D GUI Foundation Do You Use?

Right now, I'm using C#, Windows.Forms, and Managed DirectDraw for graphics. DirectDraw is very fast at creating and rendering graphics, it does a good job. It's a little tricky to set up, but performance is much better than System.Drawing. I do get tons of warnings that my code is using classes which are marked as deprecated, and the built in XML documentation is also drowned out with a big long warning about how DirectDraw is deprecated, blah blah, then finally when you look at the last sentence, there's your actual documentation.

Also, the program is made for a Windows XP machine, and refuses to run on another Windows 7 machine. I have no idea which dependency it doesn't like.

For C#, SDL is a non-starter. There is an SDL library available, but you are restricted to only using the single SDL window that's created, you can't make other windows or controls in that window. There is also a SDL panel control for Windows Forms, but it's a bad joke that draws to the screen by assigning System.Drawing.Bitmap objects.

The one SDL object per form...that is because WinForms is very thinly wrapped MFC/GDI+ and while for very simple UI applications it works great. It is fundamentally limited due to the fact that it is legacy reaching back to the 16bit windows days and is dependent on USER and GDI objects (these are very limited resources) and also has NO hardware acceleration on most machines.

As for DirectDraw... that IS the reason it doesn't work on Windows 7, Microsoft doesn't even ship those libraries to 7 unless they are specifically installed by the user, and why would they! They have Direct2D, a well designed (but currently buggy because it's new) framework. If you're programming .NET and want access to that power just use WPF which is a thinly veiled layer over DirectX10 (with a built in back compatiblity layer for XP) with some basic work already done for you. Why would you waste your time programming on an obsolete (and soon to be removed) component, when there is a fully supported, well documented framework already available!

While I know the OP wasn't interested really in 3D as a C# guy I have to give a shout out to XNA which has some excellent 3d capabilities from a managed language, I wish that MS would allow others to implement XNA as it would be a major boon to linux gaming if they did

Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 897

by kantos (#34221730) Attached to: Which Language To Learn?

To para quote a former boss of mine who worked on the Windows 95 team:

"Oh we never coded any thing in Perl... if we needed anything we just asked Larry to do it"

-David Theilen

Submission + - Cracks found in Shuttle external fuel tank (nasa.gov)

Submitted by Mysticalfruit
Mysticalfruit writes: During an inspection of Discovery's external fuel tank, two cracks in the stringers were found. Currently NASA is evaluating its possible repair options. Considering how critical these stringers are to the structural integrity of the tank, I'm surprised that they'd be so willing to repair in place. This launch will the the last launch of Discovery before she is mothballed.
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Intel glibc "improvements" break memcpy (lwn.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Recent changes in glibc's implementation (http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=commitdiff;h=6fb8cbcb58a29fff73eb2101b34caa19a7f88eba) of a 25-year old standard C function, memcpy, are playing havoc (http://lwn.net/Articles/414467/) with some applications' assumptions about the function. Fedora 14 users have been hit (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638477) with a Flash player that doesn't play sound properly on recent Intel chips and even Linus Torvalds weighed in, noting that the changes seem only to have hurt users without any properly benchmarking or demonstration that they helped anybody.

Submission + - Is HULU blocking Linux clients now? (hulu.com) 1

Submitted by
WolphFang
WolphFang writes: "I was watching the Anime, Vandread, when the video sequence suddently became:

Hi! We notice that you are trying to access Hulu from Boxee. It's not
available, but we're working hard to bring our Hulu Plus subscription
service to Boxee! Stay tuned for updates."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Patents FUI Computing

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Not sure what the folks at La Leche League will make of this, but Microsoft Research has made it possible for a mother to surf the web while nursing her newborn, thanks to its newly-patented 'foot-based user interface' (FUI?). 'In addition to causing health problems,' explains Microsoft in the patent, 'the traditional keyboard and mouse interface can be simply inconvenient in certain situations as well. In one instance, a mother with a baby in her arms is unable to easily perform simple tasks, such as checking email, on a computer.' Users of the 'Foot-Based Interface for Interacting With a Computer,' however, will be able to move their feet and step on the floor a la DDR to execute various commands, such as deleting email or scrolling down the screen. Due to the usual foot-dragging on the part of the USPTO, the patent — filed for in 2006 — was essentially obsolete by the time it was issued on Tuesday, a week after Microsoft's Kinect launch.
Open Source

Submission + - Microsoft Open Sources F# (infoq.com) 1

Submitted by aabelro
aabelro writes: Don Syme has announced the release of the F# compiler source code as a code drop under Apache 2.0
Privacy

Submission + - ISP drives music label to ditch download action (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by nk497
nk497 writes: The Ministry of Sound music label is blaming UK ISP BT for forcing it to hold off on sending letters demanding £350 in payment to those suspected of downloading its music illegally. BT has demanded guarantees that the customer IP data it hands to rights holders under court order for such anti-filesharing action will be kept safe and not used to abuse its own customers. Getting that through approval courts has taken longer than expected, and the ISP deletes all data after 90 days as part of its privacy policy, meaning 20,000 of the 25,000 IP records the label was seeking access to have been deleted. "The safeguards we aim to establish via the court are on the security of data handling, a threshold for providing a customer’s details based on a minimum number of separate incidents, the tone of contact with broadband subscribers and a reasonable approach to financial compensation sought,” BT said in a statement. The move is an indirect win for Anonymous. The hacking group took down the website of law firm ACS: Law, which also sends out such letters using BT customer data, leading to a data breach. That data breach was the impetus behind BT demanding better control of how its customers' data was used, which in turn lead to the delays that saw the MoS-related records deleted.
Open Source

Submission + - LSE contractor ‘suspended’ after huge (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by DMandPenfold
DMandPenfold writes: An IT contractor has reportedly been suspended by the London Stock Exchange following a huge network hit between Monday night and Tuesday morning.

The network was floored, knocking a key Linux trading platform out of action and bringing a halt to the largest technology transformation at the exchange in 25 years.
Patents

Submission + - ITC deals Apple a setback in Nokia patent case (blogspot.com)

Submitted by FlorianMueller
FlorianMueller writes: In February, Apple asked the US International Trade Commission to ban the entry of several Nokia products into the US market because of patent infringement. In a pre-trial hearing that started this week, the ITC staff presented an analysis according to which "the evidence will not establish a violation ... as to any of the asserted patents", reports the IDG News Service. However, most media reports don't mention that this relates to only four of the patents Apple asserted against Nokia. The case hit a fork in the road back in April. Nokia's alleged infringement of five other patents now forms part of the case Apple filed against HTC. Even if those four patents turned out invalid (or valid but not infringed), Apple could still prevail over Nokia. Also, not counting the patents the ITC views skeptically, Apple has 24 different patents in play against HTC and Motorola. Android has become a popular target of patent suits.
Crime

Submission + - Anonymous Takes Down US Copyright, Hadopi Tomorrow (myce.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: According to several sites, yesterday the group known as Anonymous successfully took down copyright.gov, the main page of the United States' Copyright Office. This follows attacks on the Ministry of Sound website, the RIAA this last weekend and for tomorrow (the fifth of November) word is that yet another DDOS attack will occur — probably against the French site Hadopi. It would appear that Operation Payback is in full swing and even Gene Simmons will tell you resistence is futile.

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