Comment Re:OH NO!!! (Score 1) 355
I counted to 4 in binary on my fingers and just stayed with that.
Comment Re:Details on benefits (Score 1) 569
You have no contract? Or a very incomplete contract? I've never worked anywhere, except perhaps as an hourly dishwasher in high-school, without a contract. That's like accepting a job only knowing that your salary will be "pretty good".
Erlang's Creator Speaks About Its History and Prospects 48
Seal writes "Erlang, originally created at Ericsson in 1986, is a functional programming language which was released as open source around 10 years ago and flourished ever since. In this Q&A, Erlang creator Joe Armstrong talks about its beginnings as a control program for a telephone exchange, its flexibility and its modern day usage in open source programs. 'In the Erlang world we have over twenty years of experience with designing and implementing parallel algorithms. What we lose in sequential processing speed we win back in parallel performance and fault-tolerance,' Armstrong said. He also mentions how multi-core processors pushed the development of Erlang and the advantages of hot swapping."
Comment The stack is just taller (Score 1) 731
The main thing that has changed over the years is that the software stack has grown deeper, and today there are many more people working at higher abstraction levels where a lot is handled for them.
But under the covers, little has changed. Someone must write and understand code all the way down to the hardware. You can bet that people writing kernels and drivers think a lot about space and speed. Or write some code for one of the low cost micro-controllers that are in virtually all electronic devices and you won't have the luxury of a large software stack.
There are very likely *more* people writing low level code today than 20 years ago. Only the percentage of programmers writing low level code is declining because there are many orders of magnitude more programmers writing higher level code.
Comment Re:Let me be the first to ask.... (Score 1) 180
It is a rabbit with a nasty cancerous virus. Just want I'd like my desktop named after!
Comment Better call log (Score 2) 606
Aka recents. You can't even tell how long an individual call lasted with the current implementation.
Comment The D is product development (Score 1) 580
TFA seems to get the distinction, but /.ers should note that at software companies like MS the D part of R&D is everyday product development which is always ongoing. So at MS R&D will always be a major part of overall expenses.
The article argues that MS isn't getting enough return from total R&D spending (which includes product development). People here just need to remember that R&D does not equate to just the R (research) part.
Comment Re:Probably Not (Score 1) 633
- BSD ensures freedom of the *producer* of the code to do what they want.
- GPL ensures freedom of the *recipient* of the code to do what they want.
You are implying that licensing under the GPL somehow limits your options as the producer (aka copyright holder), which is not correct. If you are the copyright holder, you are free to re-license at any time. You may not be able to revoke a license that you granted others on an irrevocable basis, but you can certainly apply any number of separate licenses.
For a project that has multiple copyright holders the overall situation is more complex, but you still have the freedom to do what you want with the parts that you created.
Alexa, Amazon's Most Flawed Idea 113
Rub3X writes "The Alexa ranking system is naturally flawed. The data should never be treated as accurate, as it's easily manipulated, and not supported for most browsers in the world. It's an estimate, and nothing more.
" I've been saying that forever, but unfortunately for me, since it's a number on a website that is considered "Real" to some, I'm supposed to take it seriously. I imagine this is a problem for many webmasters out there.
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