Global variables, lack of namespaces and block scopes are nuances that can be worked around with proper coding practices and a good understanding of the language.
Why would you go through all this work when there are languages that provide all of this and much more and are as flexible a JavaScript?
Great post! If you'd replace "its" by "it's", it'd be perfect...
For the most part, they keep working well. The major problem is that the upgrade changes the layout of files on the disk, and, since the highly optimized boot procedure depends on that, your boot will likely become slower. You can at least mitigate this problem by rebuilding the boot readahead list as explained here.
The good news are that they seem to finally have added the long-awaited support for multi-touch. As listed in their relese notes:
MotionEvent can now report simultaneous-touch information for devices that support it. Up to three pointers can be tracked simultaneously.
The bad news are that, apart from some improvements to the on-screen keyboard, the GUI doesn't seem to be making use of it at all. So, those of us hoping to impress our acquaintances by zooming web pages in and out iPhone-style will probably have to wait until 2.1...
Yes, the whole system.
2001 came and went. Now in 2009, Linux machines are perfectly able to hot swap monitors. It's good to live in the future, isn't it?
I could add Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to the list. By the way, why is this post considered a flamebait?
and I guess this applies to the large majority of netbook manufactures as well. I don't own a netbook, but there are stories all around the Internet about Linux netbooks being shipped with broken distributions that don't even support the netbook's integrated hardware properly. I'm perfectly aware of the fact that Linux doesn't support all hardware in the market, but manufactures have control over the hardware they put in a computer, so this should never happen (as long as they care about it, that is).
Sadly, this netbook Linux story seems to have been just an attempt from computer manufacturers to force Microsoft into compliance. And, as today's story shows, they are being quite successful in their pursue. We can now expect most manufactures to ditch Linux in favor of Windows 7, since MS seems to be bending under their pressure by giving them special Windows 7 pricing.
Yes, you are aware of the fact that you're buying a crippled system...
I also live in Germany, and can share your view 100%: nobody is concerned here. I wonder however, if the reason is just because they don't understand the implications. For the regular person, this looks just like "they are doing something to fight child porn, and since child porn is bad and they're fighting it, it must be OK". The only way to change this situation is to get people to understand what's really going on, and that's a big challenge because the issues are not only complex but often highly technical.
Probably, the real problem is that achieving this requires really good communication skills, and this is something we geeks don't excell at. Looking around
Until we understand this and act accordingly, we'll continue to see the decisions we care about being made in the wrong direction by clueless or even ill-intentioned politians.
Do you have concrete examples to mention? Are you sure that those examples are comparable to Germany and other European countries?
"Theft of Bandwidth" is nonsensical if you provide that bandwidth with no restrictions (as most public wikis do).
Well, the point is precisely that wikis are there for specific purposes. As long as you write about the topics that are relevant for a particular wiki, it is OK to use its bandwidth, but any reasonable person can expect that the owners won't be as happy if the wiki is used for purposes not intended by them. In this sense, the bandwith is actually restricted. Not technically restricted, but ethically restricted, if you will.
There are many comments here reporting that Linux netbooks are becoming impossible to buy. It seems to be the same here in Germany: I haven't seen a single Linux netbook in a brick and mortar store until now.
My impression now is that hardware manufacturers were never serious about Linux netbooks. They were just bluffing so that Microsoft would lower its prices, that's all. Now that microsoft bent its knees, they are happily going back to Windows, which is known territory for them. This explains the lack of advertising for the Linux models, as well as the low quality of the Linux distros preinstalled on many netbooks. Of course, as long as you're just bluffing, any investments into Linux integration are just a waste of resources, so you keep them to a minimum.
On the flip side, TFA shows that Microsoft is realizing that they now own the market, so they'll probably soon start to impose their onereous conditions again. It's indeed interesting times we're living...
Criticism has a value, though. User interface design is a good example of an area where users rarely have good suggestions, or at least, not immediatly after suffering the problem. The designer must find out what the problem is (sometimes by inferring it from the suggested solution) and then try to come up with a good solution that doesn't break the original design altogether. In this sense, users that are good at pointing out where the problems are are potentially better than those who make quick suggestions. The first group is likely to work together with the designers in finding a satisfactory solution, whereas the second group may be much more inclined to defend their own solutions, however inappropriate.
10% is a larger market share than OSX has in the general desktop market. I definitely wouldn't call it a failure.
Old programmers never die, they just hit account block limit.
