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We are building an open laptop, with some wacky features in it for hackers like me.... Of course, a feature of a build-it-yourself laptop is that all the design documentation is open, so others of sufficient skill and resources can also build it. The hardware and its sub-components are picked so as to make this the most practically open hardware laptop I could create using state of the art technology. Slightly unconventional because, when you DIY, you can do it exactly as you like.
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This is not intended to be a list of 10 developers who happened to make good games in 2012 (though releasing a good game certainly didn't hurt anyone's chances of being included). When selecting the developers on this list (presented alphabetically), Gamasutra and Game Developer magazine editors determined which ones defined the year in a positive way. These are the developers and studios that left their mark on 2012 -- the ones that the industry will be watching in the years ahead. A lot of great indie games here that have been flying below the mainstream radar. Check them out.
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The transistor, the ubiquitous building block of all electronic circuits, will be 65 years old on Sunday. The device is jointly credited to William Shockley (1910-1989), John Bardeen (1908-1991) and Walter Brattain (1902-1987), and it was Bardeen and Brattain who operated the first working point-contact transistor during an experiment conducted on 16 December 1947. Yet this now ubiquitous device - these days more as an element in silicon chip design than as a discrete component - has a history that goes back to the mid-1920s. A bouquet of germaniums in your honor.
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The core problem here is that many test organizations design their test regimes to test Security Suites... and then apply those tests just to MSE rather than to the entire “Microsoft security suite” of which it is part. Why? One key reason is that Microsoft doesn’t explicitly offer a security suite, instead it spreads security capabilities across its products and components. Rather than MSE being the cornerstone of its security efforts, as an anti-malware engine is for a traditional security vendor, for Microsoft MSE is a component that fills in a missing piece in the Windows security effort. ...so if you use Firefox or Chrome you don’t get those benefits.
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The tech industry and its press have treated the rise of billion-scale social networks and ubiquitous smartphone apps as an unadulterated win for regular people, a triumph of usability and empowerment. They seldom talk about what we've lost along the way in this transition, and I find that younger folks may not even know how the web used to be. Here are a few glimpses of a more open web that's mostly faded away.
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C++ 11 is “far better than previous versions”, says the inventor of the language Bjarne Stroustrup.... C++ is an ISO standard, first ratified in 1998 with C++ 11 completed in 2011, but Stroustrup revealed he was initially resistant to standardisation efforts. “It took some arm-twisting to get me to realise that it was time to start a standards effort," he said. "People pointed out that you couldn’t have a language used by millions controlled by a single guy in a single company. Even if you could trust the guy, you can’t trust the corporation. I was a bit sad, because the things I wanted to do would take years instead of months, because you have to build up consensus, and then you have to wait for five compilers to catch up." If you want something that is really widely used, you need some kind of standard.
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Interesting to read that Stroustrup doesn't like macros containing whole chunks of code. I've always found them making code very hard to follow, I find it very comforting that it's not just me!
Wout
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I like PHP, Python, and JavaScript, and I like making things in PHP, Python, and JavaScript. I’m not a Symfony developer, or a Django developer, or a jQuery developer. I think this is an important distinction. It’s entirely possible to be a jQuery developer, but not a JavaScript developer. It’s possible to be a Django developer, but not a Python developer. Those are all certainly valuable and useful tools, but if I only know how to use one framework, my options for using the right tool for the job get pretty limited, and in my experience, large, full-stack frameworks are often not the right tool, particularly if flexibilty and performance are major concerns. Learn languages, not frameworks.
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Terrence Dorsey wrote: full-stack frameworks
Shouldn't that be "stackfull"?
I agree with not throwing technology at problems that don't require it. Prefer simpler techniques.
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What follows is a primer on the key security-oriented characteristics of the HTTP protocol. It's a collection of a number of different sub-topics, explained in my own way, for the purpose of having a single reference point when needed. A brief, handy guide to not getting hacked.
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We are excited to announce an update to the Visual Studio Achievements extension: the availability of nineteen new achievements all oriented toward Windows 8 app development. These new achievements can be earned in JavaScript, C#, VB and C++. Some examples include: I Like To Move It Move It which is earned by using the accelerometer and The Play Is The Thing which is earned by using the AutoPlay contract. New achievements shipped. Achievement unlocked!
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Now that the final versions of Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 have shipped, most Silverlight developers are looking at ways to translate their existing skill set to Windows Runtime (WinRT) apps built with XAML. Because you're already familiar with XAML, you need to understand what the Windows Runtime consists of, and how it's different than what you're used to. In this article, I document 10 things I've found while building my first WinRT app using XAML/C#; I hope they'll save you time and energy getting used to this new platform. Wait, is this different than Windows RT? Is Silverlight staying or going? I'm so confused...
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You aren't the only one confused by this. MS (particularly the Win8 team) has done an incredibly hideous job of messaging, and an equally hideous job of defining Windows 8 (which is actually two operating systems). I'll try my best to explain.
Windows 8 is actually two operating systems duct-taped together. One is the "Desktop" OS, which for all intents and purposes is Windows 7. It runs just like Windows 7 (minus the Start Bar), and is fully backwards compatible with all the code and plug-ins (including Silverlight) that you used before Windows 8.
The other side of the OS is what people sort of called "Metro". But we can no longer call it that because MS found out that "Metro" was already trademarked. There is effectively no good name for it now (apps for this part of the OS are now loosely called Windows Store Apps rather than Metro apps, for example). This part of the OS is exposed as WinRT or Windows RT. It is brand new code that has little to do with old Windows, and includes all the consumer-ish UI bits, like live tiles, charms, touch gestures etc.
When you buy Windows 8 on a PC (or for a PC), you get both sides of the OS installed. If you run the newer Windows Store Apps, they are launched from the tiles screen and run in WinRT. If you try to run old Windows apps, they run in "Desktop" mode, even though you will probably be launching them from the tiles screen too.
If you get Windows 8 on a mobile device powered by an ARM chip, you only get the new WinRT side of the OS (no Desktop mode).
So, if you attempt to create a new Windows Store App (WinRT application) in .NET, part of it will feel familiar because WinRT apps also use XAML to define the user interface (just like WPF and Silverlight did). However, there are some WinRT quirks in the runtime, like most operations being asynchronous, that force developers of WinRT apps to learn some things that are not so similar to older Silverlight or WPF apps.
As for the second question, about whether or not Silverlight is alive or dead... it sort of depends who you ask, and what platform you are targetting. Steve Jobs effectively killed plug-ins on mobile devices. After he decided that iOS would not allow plug-ins for mobile app devices, most other mobile producers followed suit (including MS). Silverlight requires a plug-in to run, so it's effectively been killed from most new mobile platforms.
Windows Phone 7 was trying to force all apps to be Silverlight, but Win 8 Phone is now all WinRT, and will *not* be supporting Silverlight.
Silverlight will still run in Windows Desktop mode, but if you have the full desktop capabilities available, then Silverlight is probably not the best technology to use, especially because it will no longer run on other platforms. If you writing apps for Windows itself, then you're probably better off with WPF (in desktop mode) or WinRT Apps. If you want a more universal run-everywhere technology, people are migrating to HTML5 because that's the only thing that will run across most mobile devices as well as desktops and laptops.
So basically, the areas where Silverlight will still operate have narrowed, and the areas where Silverlight provides a clear advantage have all but disappeared. When you add the rumors and rumblings about what's going on with Silverlight development within MS, it's clear that most reasonable people feel that if it's not exactly dead, it's on life support.
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A retired mechanical engineer, Mr. Woodland was a graduate student when he and a classmate, Bernard Silver, created a technology — based on a printed series of wide and narrow striations — that encoded consumer-product information for optical scanning. Their idea, developed in the late 1940s and patented 60 years ago this fall, turned out to be ahead of its time. But it would ultimately give rise to the universal product code, or U.P.C., as the staggeringly prevalent rectangular bar code is officially known. | || | | | | || || |
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RIP
Bob Dole The internet is a great way to get on the net.
2.0.82.7292 SP6a
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The web browser is not only important at home or in school. For business, the browser is a key tool for accessing line of business apps, connecting with customers and partners, modernizing employee desktops, and enabling employees the flexibility to work from anywhere. Choosing the right browser is critical for organizations, and a choice that has far-reaching impact on organizational security, productivity and application development costs.... Forrester found that ninety-six percent of firms today standardize on a single browser for company-issued PCs. Available in convenient 12-packs...
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Quote: Forrester found that ninety-six percent of firms today standardize on a single browser for company-issued PCs,
Am I the only one who thinks that the only way that number is even vaguely credible is if it was limited to companies so tehcnically lethargic that they're mostly standardized on IE6?
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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Hmm, a Microsoft sponsered survey finds that IE is the best browser. Who would have thought that?
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The programming profession is blessed with a number of gifted essayists. Today I will pick on three of my favorites — Eric Raymond, Paul Graham, and Steve Yegge — because they all seem to disagree about why (and whether) mathematics is relevant to the practicing programmer. They seem to agree on one thing... From a workaday perspective, math is essentially useless. This view is mistaken.
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The Fibonacci calculation presented as an example by Evan Miller is seriously flawed!
It is less efficient than a loop and (at least with IEEE double precision) fails to get the correct value for N > 70.
(See: Fibonacci Without Loops or Recursion[^] and comments.)
I haven't checked the closed-form factorial implementation, but I suspect it will fall victim to at least the problem of numeric precision.
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Tablets have come a long way since Apple first introduced the original iPad in 2010. They’ve gotten thinner (and, sometimes, thicker), smaller (and, sometimes, larger), more durable, and, of course, cheaper. But how cheap is too cheap? Does a worthy tablet exist for just $100? Penny wise, but will you look foolish?
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At long last, Google has released its own iPhone maps app to compete against Apple's homegrown version introduced with iOS 6. For three months, iPhone users have been limited to Google's functional-but-lacking mobile mapping site, and their reaction to the new app tells us all we need to know: people really missed native Google Maps support. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood... now you know which to take.
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