Posts by Powerlord

Reality check: Java 8 finally catches a multi-core break

...except that A Non e-mouse already linked a Twitter blog entry two years newer than the article you linked to that mentions Twitter wrote a new app server named Blender in Java.

Google sniffs at MySQL fork MariaDB: Yum. Have an engineer

Re: Good News Everyone...

"and really, given the authorship, how can any one person accept the sale or claim to be the owner with the ability to sell an open source project?"

Copyright assignment. I just assume any code "owned" by a corporation, like MySQL AB, has copyright assignment clauses for contributors. Heck, even [b]GNU[/b] has Copyright Assignment clauses in order to keep complete control of glibc and the like. That Linux doesn't was a major slipup by Torvalds.

Oracle wants another go at Google over Android Java copyrights

Re: It a crap shoot out there

"However the American legal system is such that if you don't like the judgement you can keep paying your money and throwing the dice in the hope you get the result you want. "

Depends on which court you started with, as each court you appeal to has to be a higher court. Since this case started in the Federal Circuit Court, it had to be appealed in Federal Appeals Court. If you want to appeal the Federal Appeals Court verdict, you have to petition the U.S. Supreme Court and hope they choose to hear your case (most of the time, they'll refuse).

And, if you do manage to get before the U.S. Supreme Court and you lose there, you have no one left to appeal to in the U.S. legal system. Although you could try to convince the legislative branch to change the law...

Bad news: PC slump worse than feared. Good news: It's Friday

WinRT wasn't necessarily a bad idea. Or wouldn't have been a few years ago. Or a few hundred pounds cheaper. Now it's just too late and too expensive with no killer app to sway people to buy it instead of an iPad or Android.

Samsung slams Apple patent jury, wants new trial in US

Re: And yet...

PJ's reporting is biased wherever the GPL is concerned (don't misconstrue this as thinking I supported SCO; SCO deserved the fate it got). Once she gets outside that area, I find her fairly level-headed.

Cloud support brings WikiLeaks back online

So, how long will it be before WikiLeaks posts data taken from Ecuadorean sources?

Bill Gates, Harry Evans and the smearing of a computer legend

Re: so

And by google / oracle, you really meant sco / ibm, right?

Tablets, copycats and Weird Al Yankovic

Re: <raises hand>

Perform This Way is a more recent example, although some people may not like the music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss_BmTGv43M

For no reason now,

I'll sing in French,

Excusez-moi, Qui a pété?

Re: <raises hand>

A lot of Bob Rivers songs tend to be attributed to Weird Al.

The general rule is, if you can't recognize Weird Al's voice, it's probably by Bob Rivers. Unlike Bob Rivers, Weird Al sings all his own songs.

ACTA can't get its act together

Re: Bollox

The MPAA and RIAA pervert everything they touch.

I honestly don't know why governments, the US Government in particular, keeps kowtowing to the MPAA and RIAA. (Disclaimer: I'm a US citizen.)

Bravo to the countries that refused to ratify... hopefully the remaining signatories can also be convinced not to ratify.

Google Chrome serves up only emptiness, for many users

Re: This wouldn't happen

Has Opera finally gotten off of its "lets make the Browser uglier" kick they've been on since 9.5's release?

No? Thanks, but no thanks.

Ten... remastered videogame classics

No Metal Gear Solid 1 in the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection?

Disclaimer: I haven't played the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection.

From what I can tell, the Metal Gear Solid remakes are just updating the textures and adding widescreen support. That's why Metal Gear Solid 1 isn't being remade, because to do so, they'd have to redo the animations and character models, or get permission from Silicon Knights (and possibly Nintendo) to use The Twin Snakes instead.

The Secret of Monkey Island

I hear LucasArts switched CEOs right before the Monkey Island 2 remake was released, and it was the (now gone) CEO that was pushing for the remakes. :/

So, I don't think we're going to see a remake of DotT.

LucasArts Day of the Tentacle

Steam releases were their non-remakes

My assumption was that LucasArts released the games they weren't intending to remake on Steam.

After that, they released the remakes of Secret of Monkey Island, then Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge.

Sadly, LucasArts got a new CEO during the MI2 remake, so chances are we won't see any further remakes.

Steve Ballmer window-dresses Windows 8

Windows 6.1

The reason Windows 7 is 6.1 and Windows 8 is likely to be 6.2 is because of stupid software vendors who naively check for the presence of Windows XP. They did something like this:

if (version >= 5 && subversion >= 1)

This is false for W2k (5.0), true for XP (5.1), false for Vista (6.0), and true for Win7 (6.1). If Win7 was 7.0, it would have been false for Win7.

This was discussed on the Windows Team blog, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to make links in El Reg's comments.

Microsoft: IE9 not yet 'broadly' available

MS does have a point, however minor

The only way to get IE9 now is to go to Microsoft's website (either directly or through a search engine), manually download the IE9 installer, and manually install it.

To get Firefox 4, you just have to go to Help, Check for Updates, and then when the "Firefox 4 is Here!" dialog pops up, click "Get the New Version"

Double-clicking patent takes on world

Prior Art

It would sure be a shame if there were prior art on this specific usage.

For example, it would be bad for this case if it turned out that the W3C DOM Level 2 (published in 2000) had an Events document that documented a MouseEvent named "click", and the documentation said:

"If multiple clicks occur at the same screen location, the sequence repeats with the detail attribute incrementing with each repetition."

Oh wait, there is such a document and it does include such text... published two years prior to this patent?