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Yesterday Microsoft reported flat Windows revenue from the year before, despite an unprecedented drop in PC sales.... There are several factors that made this possible. As investor relations chief Chris Suh put it on the earnings call, "Non-OEM revenue grew 40% this quarter, driven by sales of Surface and continued double digit growth in volume licensing." So how much did Surface help Microsoft's Windows revenue this quarter? Let's do a rough back-of-the-envelope estimate. But if Windows unit sales don't pick up again, the future looks increasingly bleak.
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Lookout has discovered BadNews, a new malware family, in 32 apps across four different developer accounts in Google Play. According to Google Play statistics, the combined affected applications have been downloaded between 2,000,000 – 9,000,000 times. We notified Google and they promptly removed all apps and suspended the associated developer accounts pending further investigation. All Lookout users are protected against this threat. BadNews masquerades as an innocent, if somewhat aggressive advertising network. This is one of the first times that we’ve seen a malicious distribution network clearly posing as an ad network. What it is, how it works and how you can stay safe.
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No matter what you make or how much you charge, some people will find things to complain about. If you drop your app’s price all the way down to free, people will still complain — just not about the price. They’ll move on to the features, the implementation, the design, the updates, the way you look, or what kind of dog you have. They’ll complain about every facet of your app, and then they’ll complain about unrelated topics just to pile on. 1 star. Unfunny subhead. Needs more cowbell.
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Yup
Some will complain even when beaten with a golden hammer
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Is booze for programmers like spinach for Popeye? The Ballmer Peak, a reference to Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, holds that imbibing alcohol improves cognitive ability, up to a point–a variation of the Yerkes-Dodson law, which shows a correlation between arousal and performance. Anecdotal evidence suggests that optimal programming occurs about two beers in. But what sayeth science? Cocktail coding actually works... to a point.
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Terrence Dorsey wrote: Anecdotal evidence suggests that optimal programming occurs about two beers in
This is getting framed and put on my wall.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Extensive highly scientific trials have shown this to be true of pool playing. Dependent on genetic factors that seem to be related to scandanavian heritage around 1.25 pints of strong ale makes dramatic and in some cases seemingly miraculous improvements to even moderately good pool skills.
The effect however is temporary fading quickly as alcohol intake increases. Various attempts were made to attempt to sustain the effect by limiting or preventing further alcohol intake. These proved to be disasterous and a number of test subjects were lost.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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jQuery 2.0[^] is now available.
Best new feature? No support for IE 6, 7, and 8. Also because of that, the whole thing is smaller, for faster downloads. They say they'll keep upgrading the 1.x line for a while for those poor unfortunates that do need to support those older browsers.
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TTFN - Kent
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Kent Sharkey wrote: No support for IE 6, 7, and 8.
Wow.
Dropping IE6, yes. IE7? Debatable, but iffy. IE8? Still (unfortunately) early, running at 5-6% usage.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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They're open about 2.x not being intended as a dropin replacement for 1.x yet. Dropping the IE legacy support was done mostly to let them clean some stuff up internally (with variants of webkit shipped with android 2.x being the new crap browser albatross). Their current recommendation is to either stay with 1.x or do an if (crapIEversion) loadJquery(1.x); else loadJquery(2.x); construct until all your users have abandoned crap versions of IE.
As a sidenote, with all the IE9 is still unusably broken Hatoraid being spewed across the net, jquery putting the browser in older versions of Android as the webs current crappiest common denominator amuse me greatly.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Yeah, I imagine a lot of corporations are still using IE8 as the standard - I even know of a few people *somehow* still running IE8 at that other place (I would have though internal security would have come down on them by now). Oh, and XP users, of course.
Still, it does have issues that they had to code around, and they are continuing the 1.x line, so I think you're fine for a while (and very fine as you're only running 1.6 at the moment).
Like Dan, I'm amused at their comments on Android. Imagine if they had said "Safari" there. The peasants would have been storming the castle!
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TTFN - Kent
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Clarification: I'm not amused at them for singling out Android 2.x as being the worst thing since IE8; I'm amused at the fact that A2.x is the worst thing since IE8 when after IE6-8 it's IE9 that gets the most Hateraid from the internets yammerheads while A2.x is never mentioned at all.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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What am I optimizing for when I write my code today? Change will always come. I know that from the outset. "I will change something in that spec during the 25 years the system will live". How do I try to handle that? Do I precieve change as a risk or an enabler? Being able to change fast is a business advantage and a way to manage risk. How do I make my code being easy to change? What kind of documentation do I need in a system that I'm going to change a lot? What do you optimize for?
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Confucius say: "Coding for change is coding for stability."
Marc
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Static typing is great because it keeps you out of trouble. Dynamic typing is great because it gets out of your way and lets you get your work done faster. The debate between strongly and dynamically typed languages rages on, but understanding the issue starts with weak typing and languages such as C. Dynamic languages are popular now. The pendulum will swing back. Be flexible.
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After working with Ruby and Rails now for a while, and while I think it is cool and geeky and fun to use, I disagree with the author's conclusion "There’s no clear conclusion." I have come to my own conclusion - dynamic typing is a cop out for good static typed architecture. It's a drastic thing to say, but I am happy to defend that statement.
If anything, working with Ruby has shown me that the programmer must be even more vigilant in writing maintainable code because of the loosey-goosey (or is that loosey-duckey) way you can do things in a dynamic typed language which lends itself to all sorts of abuse. The result is almost always really bad architecture unless the programmer is very, very good. And if that's the case, a static typed language will not get in the way.
Still, I enjoy Ruby and Rails as I develop a disciplined approach. The telling point for me though is that the discipline I'm developing is built into static typed languages like C#. Having to explicitly formalize it with languages like Ruby, well, I think I make my point.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: loosey-goosey (or is that loosey-duckey)
It is either Floozy-Lucy or ducky-f*cky.
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Marc Clifton wrote: Ruby and Rails I thought it was "Ruby on Rails".
Dynamic has it's place, but I think strong static typing is much safer.
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.-John Q. Adams You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering.-Wernher von Braun Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-Albert Einstein
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ahmed zahmed wrote: I thought it was "Ruby on Rails".
It is, I was specifically refering to Ruby as a language and Rails as a framework.
ahmed zahmed wrote: Dynamic has it's place, but I think strong static typing is much safer.
Quite so.
Marc
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Today, most programming languages can use reflection. Statically typed languages, such as Java, have little to no problems with reflection. What I find interesting, however, is that any dynamically-typed language (like PHP or Ruby) is heavily based on reflection. Without the concept of reflection, duck-typing would most likely be impossible to implement. When you send one object to another (a parameter, for example), the receiving object has no way of knowing the structure and type of that object. All it can do is use reflection to identify the methods that can and cannot be called on the received object. As with any cool toy, use reflection, but don’t abuse it.
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Good ideas in programming languages persist and spread to other languages, permeating them over time. Thus, unsurprisingly, the Java.next languages — Groovy, Scala, and Clojure — share many common features. In this and upcoming Java.next installments, I explore how the convergence of function manifests in the syntax of each. I start with a feature — the ability to overload operators — that makes up for a longstanding deficiency in the Java language. If you're a Java dev, are any of these languages in your future?
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Apple's Interface Builder is supposed to assist you with several important tasks in the process of creating user interfaces: Laying out views, Wiring up outlets and actions, Creating segues between view controllers (with storyboards). After working on a fairly complex iPad app for the last six months together with Chris Eidhof, my personal bottom line for Interface Builder doesn't look too positive with regard to these tasks. In fact, I'm willing to try out abandoning Interface Builder alltogether for the next project. This may sound pretty radical, but let me walk you through my thought process. Storyboards and Auto Layout versus getting actual work done.
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Last February myself, Professor Darrel Ince and Professor Les Hatton had a paper published in Nature arguing for openness in the code used for scientific papers.... Recently, an important paper in economics has been in the news because its conclusions turn out to be inaccurate for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is a programming error using the popular Microsoft Excel program. This error, in an unreleased spreadsheet, highlights just how easy it is to make a mistake in a 'simple' program and how closed programs make reproducing results difficult. Scientists should consider their code as an important product of their work.
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One of the best things about travelling to shows like PAX East and the Game Developers Conference is the chance to check out titles from off-the-beaten-path, independent developers. While shows like E3 are overwhelmed by the presence of multi-million dollar booths from huge publishers, the early-in-the-year shows make a point of highlighting some of the most original and promising game ideas from game makers without big contracts or salaried positions behind them. Freed from the financial responsibilities of the major AAA publishers, these are the titles that are most likely to truly break new ground in gameplay, aesthetics, and subject matter. The best games are often hiding, waiting to sneak up on you and...
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It's fairly new and very much a work in progress, so not all games run yet and not all features are implemented. The cosmos. In the vast universe, the history of emulators is but a flash of light from a lone star....
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