Posts by trstooge

RIM workforce decimated: 2,000 jobs slashed

"Decimated" doesn't mean what you think...

At first I read the headline and was like "zomg, RIM is dead".

Decimated means killing the biggest part. In military it means killing all but 10%.

Removing 10% of a workforce is far from "decimating".

Adobe releases lengthy list of Apple Lion woes

The key app is the browser

"Where would Mac be without Office, Adobe, and a few other key apps?" you ask? Well, I happen to own two Macs and have none of these "key apps".

Maybe that Apple would be exactly where all those iPhone / iPad / Android / and Internet users are?

*The* key app on my Macs is the browser. My document editing suite is Google Apps: I can edit and share my documents and spreadsheets between Windows, OS X and Linux as long as I've got a browser.

To keep on with your example, should Apple and Google have decided that old MS-DOS application from 1993 had been crucial we'd never have got the iPhone / iPad / Android devices.

I, for one, much prefer Apple's approach than MS's approach.

If Adobe doesn't like the userbase that Apple is providing them, they can focus on Windows-only but don't get mistaken: there are a *lot* of app developers willing to fill the Photoshop gap.

Nokia posts massive loss, blames 'ambiguity'

Was talking to a CEO the other day...

About this very topic: he replied to me "I'm not concerned by two losers joining forces". If MS buys Nokia they'll buy a company now bleeding money. Addind WP7 won't magically make the Nokia devices on par with the iPhone 5 nor with the latest Android niceties out there. MS's strategy now seems to be lawsuits against phonemakers (they make more money out the deal they settled than by selling WP7 phones). They'll probably buy Nokia for their patents. Nokia's is free-falling and the crash is going to be very hard: they haven't reached full fall velocity yet.

Google Go strikes back with C++ bake-off

Google+ API(s) and language(s)

+1 to your post... I did get to open my Google+ account using an invite sent directly from someone at Google and it's nothing short of amazing. It's better than failbook, no doubt about it. Of course now they'll need to get people on board but if the thing takes off, it's going to be amazing.

I was wondering exactly the same: which API / language will they give to developers to write 3rd party apps?

They're indeed persevering (after the Buzz and Wave fiasco) and they're moving very, very fast. More power to them.

The problem with Java

The problem with Java is not that it's not fast: it can be seriously rock. I'm doing scientific number-crunching using Java. It's multi-threading facilities are very convenient etc. But the problem with Java is still, after all these years, exactly the same: the GC is slow. So slow. People will keep telling that nowadays its fast but, no, it isn't. Not by any stretch of imagination. The entire Java mindset and ecosystem has been built around the "object-are-cheap-to-instantiate-and-GC" waste mentality and as a result the GC needs to kick in constantly. Writing efficient Java software means trying to instantiate as few objects as possible and use libraries that do not instantiate objects. There's a reason why a HashMap{Integer,Long} is put to shame by Trove's TIntLongHashMap. 99.5% of Java programmers out there don't understand that. Even those that think they do really don't. That's why we've got no Photoshop written in Java. That's why there's hardly any serious desktop apps written in Java. There are exceptions, of course, like JetBrains and their amazing IntelliJ IDEA (well, guess what, they're using Trove ; )

Google in preemptive strike on Microsoft Office 365

I don't get all these comments, Google Docs is a godsend...

I'm the owner of a SME and I really don't get the comments here. I don't care about Google (or Microsoft) looking into my stuff: I'm not competing with them and I know they won't sell my stuff to my competitors. They'll send me even more targetted ads: more power to them and I really don't mind.

Google Docs are wonderful: I work with people on three continents and we share documents using Google Docs all the time. Oh, btw, we're an IT company. We use the Google Docs API to automatically populate some spreadsheets, etc. Not only we don't need to pay the Microsoft tax anymore (Google Docs works fine on OS X and Linux, goodbye Windows licences, goodbye Office licences) but moreover our docs are available everywhere, at anytime. Offline backups are trivial to do. No more versioning issues.

There are so many advantages. Way easier computer park administration too btw.

You guys better adopt to office suites being "in the cloud" (either Google or Microsoft) because they're here to stay and to keep on gaining market share every day. A lot of people that try them simply get hooked: it's just too convenient. And, no, neither Google nor Microsoft will disappear tomorrow so your data is safe. Moreover as I already wrote backups are trivial and the APIs very cool (at least for Google docs).

EFF backs away from Bitcoin

Looks like the BitCoin author wasn't that smart after all...

First the fact that anyone stealing you single bitcoin file has basically stolen all your bitcoins and now this...

Can't believe Bitcoin has been praised for so long as something supposedly so smart.

The number of holes in the entire Bitcoin ecosystem seems staggering.

Good move by the EFF to stop accepting these: not only is Bitcoin super-shaddy but also under-architected.

Japan takes the Top 500 lead with K super

Link to the Linux source

Link? Top 500 websites. Click on every single computer in the top (and about 98% of the entire Top 500 list) and you'll see:

OS: Linux

Be it a single OS or thousands of Linuxes, they still need to communicate very effectively to grab 98% of the entire Top 500 list.

It's not like someone could replace all these Linuxes with, say, the ATARI 512's TOS, and still grab 98% of the entire Top 500 list.

Like everything in the top 10, it's running Linux

Linux is the amazingly scalable OS running on that beast!