Comment "customers's" (Score 1) 134
I know, spelling/grammar police and all, but boy does that make me twitch.
Submission + - Supreme Court may decide the fate of API's, Klingonese, Dothraki... (slate.com)
nerdpocalypse writes: In a larger battle than even Godzilla V Mothra, Google V Oracle threatens not only Japan but the entire Nerd World. What is at stake is how a language can be patented. This affects not just programming languages, API's, and everything that runs..well...everything, but also the copyright status of new languages such as Klingon and Dothraki
Submission + - SF Says AdWare Bundled with Gimp Is Intentional (google.com) 5
tresf writes: In response to a Google+ post from the Gimp project claiming that "[Sourceforge] is now distributing an ads-enabled installer of GIMP", Sourceforge had this response:
In cases where a project is no longer actively being maintained, SourceForge has in some cases established a mirror of releases that are hosted elsewhere. This was done for GIMP-Win.
Editor's note: Gimp is actively being maintained and the definition of "mirror" is quite misleading here as a modified binary is no longer a verbatim copy. Download statistics for Gimp on Windows show SourceForge as offering over 1,000 downloads per day of the Gimp software. In an official response to this incident, the official Gimp project team reminds users to use official download methods. Slashdotters may remember the last time news like this surfaced (2013) when the Gimp team decided to move downloads from SourceForge to their own FTP service.
Therefore, we remind you again that GIMP only provides builds for Windows via its official Downloads page.
Note: SourceForge and Slashdot share a corporate parent.
Submission + - Microsoft, Chip Makers Working on Hardware DRM for Windows 10 PCs (pcworld.com) 1
writertype writes: Last month, Microsoft began talking about PlayReady 3.0, which adds hardware DRM to secure 4K movies. Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm are all building it in, according to Microsoft. Years back, a number of people got upset when Hollywood talked about locking down "our content". So how important is hardware DRM in this day and age?
Submission + - We'll be the last PC company standing, Acer CEO says (digitaltrends.com)
Velcroman1 writes: At a sky-high press conference atop the new World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, Acer unveiled a sky-high lineup of goods – and placed a flag in the sand for the sagging PC industry. “There are only four or five players in the PC industry, and all of us are survivors,” Jason Chen, CEO of Acer Corp, told an international group of reporters. “We will be the last man standing for the PC industry.” To that end, the company showed off a slew of new laptops and 2-in-1s, the new Liquid X2 smartphone, and introduces a new line of gaming PCs, called Predator.
Submission + - Wellness App Author Lied About Cancer Diagnosis
Freshly Exhumed writes: Wellness advocate Belle Gibson, who translated her high profile as a cancer survivor into publishing success, has admitted her cancer diagnosis was not real. Ms Gibson, 23, who claimed to have healed terminal brain cancer by eating wholefoods, made the admission in an interview with the Australian Women's Weekly. The success of Gibson's book, The Whole Pantry, and her smartphone application, which advocates natural therapies, has been largely dependent on her high-profile as a cancer survivor. Sadly, we've seen this sort of behaviour before. It would seem that Belle Gibson has emulated Dr. Andrew Wakefield in knowingly decieving the public in ways that could possibly be dangerous to the health of believers.
Submission + - GNU Hurd 0.6 Released (lwn.net)
jrepin writes: It has been roughly a year and a half since the last release of the GNU Hurd operating system, so it may be of interest to some readers that GNU Hurd 0.6 has been released along with GNU Mach 1.5 (the microkernel that Hurd runs on) and GNU MIG 1.5 (the Mach Interface Generator, which generates code to handle remote procedure calls). New features include procfs and random translators; cleanups and stylistic fixes, some of which came from static analysis; message dispatching improvements; integer hashing performance improvements; a split of the init server into a startup server and an init program based on System V init; and more.
Comment How many sites actually honor DNT? (Score 1) 64
My understanding was that DNT has mostly been a failure, though I don't know how much of that has to do with IE's default behavior. Am I wrong about that? Are there lots of sites out there honoring the DNT setting?
Submission + - SimCity's Empire Has Fallen and Skylines Is Picking Up the Pieces (vice.com)
sarahnaomi writes: Mariina Hallikainen, CEO of small Finnish game developer Colossal Order, is having a good day. When I call her, it's only been a few hours since she learned that Colossal Order's SimCity-like game, Cities: Skylines, has sold more than half a million copies in its first week. The first 250,000 of those were sold in the first 24 hours, making it the fastest-selling game its publisher Paradox Interactive has ever released.
The irony here doesn't escape Hallikainen. Only a week before Skylines was released, game publisher Electronic Arts announced that it was shutting down SimCity developer Maxis' studio in Emeryville, which it acquired in 1997.
"I feel so bad about Maxis closing down," Hallikainen said. "The older SimCitys were really the inspiration for us to even consider making a city builder."
At the same time, Hallikainen admits SimCity's mistakes were Colossal Order's opportunity. "If SimCity was a huge success, which is what we expected, I don't know if Skylines would have ever happened," she said, explaining that it would have been a harder pitch to sell to Paradox if the new SimCity dominated the market.
The irony here doesn't escape Hallikainen. Only a week before Skylines was released, game publisher Electronic Arts announced that it was shutting down SimCity developer Maxis' studio in Emeryville, which it acquired in 1997.
"I feel so bad about Maxis closing down," Hallikainen said. "The older SimCitys were really the inspiration for us to even consider making a city builder."
At the same time, Hallikainen admits SimCity's mistakes were Colossal Order's opportunity. "If SimCity was a huge success, which is what we expected, I don't know if Skylines would have ever happened," she said, explaining that it would have been a harder pitch to sell to Paradox if the new SimCity dominated the market.
Comment Re:Researchers Nearly Double the Size of Worker An (Score 2) 99
Glad I wasn't the only one thinking this.
Comment Re:Get ready for metered service (Score 1) 631
Some states in the US allow you to choose your electricity provider - it's still coming down the utility company's power lines regardless, but you can buy from a different company.
Comment Re:Well, yeah (Score 1) 677
Has nothing to do with "holy prophets" or anything like that. I've done programming with and without goto, and goto is (usually) bad. I knew this before I ever heard of Dijkstra.
The study says that goto has not been a problem BECAUSE it is not being used inappropriately. Inappropriate use is exactly what Dijkstra cautioned against. So the study isn't saying anything other than that people did exactly what Dijkstra suggested they should do.
Comment Re:Well, yeah (Score 1) 677
Stop teaching students to avoid goto so that it takes hold again, leading to bad code all over the place, so that we can empirically prove that it's a bad idea? How about we just don't do that and avoid the problem to begin with.
Unrestrained use of goto was demonstrated to be a bad idea decades ago, that's why Dijkstra recommended against it in 1968.
Comment Re:Well, yeah (Score 1) 677
The point is that people do not generally use goto in these harmful ways because they've been warned not to. That's what skews the study in the summary. You're going to have a hard time finding that empirical evidence of how goto can lead to bad code, because one of the first things coders are taught in today's programming courses is, "Do not use goto." Meaning that the inexperienced coders who would be having these problems are avoiding the problem by not using goto. Those who are using goto are those who know the risks and how to mitigate them.
So, in the absence of conclusive data either way, I can only argue from my experience. I'm a programmer who has used both goto and more tightly-controlled flow control, and in my experience goto is not a good option for the vast majority of cases (particularly for inexperienced coders).
Comment Re:No one is using GOTO because .... (Score 1) 677
And why do you think this is bad practice?
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