Or laser from orbit!

The "commands everywhere, hit enter to resample them" existed back then for macintosh programmers Workshop, as many developers will remember. Basically there were no need for real 'scripts', you could type commands, hit 'enter' then hit 'undo' and 'enter' again to re-run it, and yes you could 'execute' anything you selected.

That was the only use I had for the 'enter' key of the numeric keypad of the old mac's keyboard in fact.

So, revolutionary... hmmm. I also reimplemented JUST that as a text-input extension quite a few years ago for OSx, where I could do pretty much exactly that from any text editor on the mac, like SubEthaEdit etc.

I did C++ for a very, very long time (20+ years), and yes, you can take a nice subset of c++ that is not bloated, and in that case it's a nice language.

The problem is when you work with other people. They'll drag in all the bloat they can, templates, RTTI, stl (ick), and... boost (arrrgh). And you end up with code that is actually giganormous, and runs slower than Java. I'm not joking, try stuff like OpenSCAD (chokes on 2 pages of geometry) or Code::Blocks (lags like crazy when editing the smalest of file) then there is the obvious KDE desktop, and many others.

So a few years back I reverted to C99. C99 actually had some features that c++ lacks (complex struct initialisation for example) and after years of C++ you know enough about putting structure into your code that you don't /strictly/ need classes anyway. In fact, after a while, you start to realize that in many case, you /don't/ need classes -- sometime you can reduce a problem to 2 or 3 functions, you don't need the 24 accessors, 5 constructors and all that fluff.

It's very refreshing try it. I think you can pick up good habits by hacking on the linux kernel and stuff like qemu/kvm... that sort of C project uses very complex constructs, all in C, and all in a 'clean' environment, there is a LOT to learn in these projects.

The only thing I miss is references; thats the ONE thing I'd like to bring back.

Oh, and if you want slightly smarter memory management for struct-like-objects and that sort of stuff, do lookup "libtalloc" -- it's a little bit of samba that is well worth the look at..

Amen to this. I also notice that a lot of the "stories" are either deliberate plants, or are fed in by commercial interest into a clueless editorship.

So yes, I also have been mostly lurking, reading the RSS headlines and sometime clicking, I haven't commented in years!

But really, "BI" ? What a frigging joke, with the canned stock photography of suits weaving their mobile phone around.

Ever heard of embedded development ? Or, maybe you think that distros themselves just appear magically as an ".iso" file brought by father xmas ? I'm sure you're very proud of having recompiled your kernel at some point, and that seems to have given you enough insight into general software development to make large, broad statements about it all.
Actually, I /do/ find it funny, but not in the way you probably intended.

Is this really "slashdot.org" where "nerds" used to be around ? You know, nerds, who do technically oriented stuff "just because they can" ?

The various comments on this topic -including the one up- makes me wonder really, or has "nerd" become more of a "I'm such a nerd, babe, look, I installed an app on my smartphone".

Or /. has been mirrored to "hipster.com" and I'm accessing the wrong portal

"has the enthusiast passion for overclocking cooled off"

Not from my 5.0Ghz Core i7 2600k anyway -- The tools have become better, the mobo are generally better built and more tolerant to punishment (some have 2 Oz copper), the power rails are a LOT more controllable than before, and in general the IC companies that make the power ICs have progressed a lot too in that time, so you can overclock easier, quicker, get better results and in general, extract quite a bit more, without nitrogen.

And, I compile distros all day, to me going from 3.8Ghz max to 5.0Ghz stable (and quiet!) is awesome; make -j10 FTW !

Anyone tried "Chameleon" ? from the osx86 people ? beats the crap out of the lilo/grub combo by a country mile.

Alternatively, run extlinux. It's like grub, without all the garbage associated, and the now countless (on debian) directories of config file where you have to scratch your head for hours to add "vga=" to the kernel command line.

I think you give credit a bit generously here. And in any case, how do you explain 1) the linearity and consistency of results 2) the fact it's consistently slower than a windows with Trim support ?

If the blocks were truely erased, at the very least the peak write would be significantly faster, but it's not.

The only other wacky possibility would be for the OS to be the bottleneck.

They used the "write zero" disk erase method, which in fact un-erase every NAND block of the disk, which in turn forces the disk to erase each block again as it writes. Thats why they see such consistency of results : they are measuring the worst possible case where the disk is forced to the slow path for each block.

To erase NAND, you need to erase it by block, and the resulting block is full of 1's. Writing to NAND is a question of writing zeros in places, you can't write 1's on NAND unless you erase it.

So in a way, their test is showing that OSX is much, much better than windows when the disk is dirty, but that apple hasn't implemented the "trim" that allows the disk to re-erase nand 'free' blocks.

... aka Captain Cyborg, is a running joke in the UK for many, many years.

His name associated with this event makes me smirks in anticipation of The Register coverage..

I think there should be a nobel of engineering or something similar, given to whomever designed that rover.

It /never/ happens in real life that you can get away with designing a piece of equipment that outlasts it's fail-by-date by so much. In most companies nowayday, these guys would be in trouble !

It sort of ought to be encouraged somehow...