JonoW

The key difference is that there is no way for Microsoft to revoke an application from a users pc (pre app store I mean)

Windows Phone does this well with trial mode, you download the full app but it has a trial switch that the dev can choose to limit features. If you then buy it, the switch reverts, you don't need to download again. Works well for games especially

WPF, DirectX? No...

Regarding deployment/packaging, there is MsDeploy for that. You can deploy files, IIS settings, db scripts, registry settings from a sip package

To be fair, positions 1, 2 and 3 (JavaScript, SQL, jQuery) are "common" languages in that most web developers use/need them in addition to their core server language/framework (apart from node.js of course).

To what exactly? The problem is that video steaming services need to toe the line with the studios. They want DRM, so what other options are there to stream DRMed video in a browser? until studios give up on DRM, Flash and Silverlight will stick around

XAML is very vector orientated, most apps will (should) not include pixel based art-work unless really necessary.

I think something like this in combination with Kinect/Leap would be an incredibly immersive experience.

One bit I think is poor design is that parseInt parses all characters until it finds a non numeric one. It can introduce some really subtle bugs.

The crazy part is that it's not a bug; it's behaving exactly as it's specified to.

Why not just pay 300 bucks for an actual games console? They seem infinitely more capable of handling media than this.

I'm really saddened by the cynical tone of the many critics of Oscar out there. People only seem to focus on the advantages his prosthetics, whilst ignoring what must be a multitude of disadvantages. He has less leg power to power out of the blocks and he probably looses energy through the connection of his legs to the prosthetics. And lets not forget mental disadvantages.

Oscar is probably a one in a generation case, it would be travesty to ban him from competing.

What does that even mean?

I think the problem is that all the companies involved (Apple, Microsoft, Google etc) are American; if the products of one American company are banned somewhere, another American company will invariably benefit. I think if an American companies products were being banned in the US to the benefit of a non-US company, only then will US law-makers start raising their eyebrows.

Do you really think the Nokia board hired Elop without thinking about a partnership with MS?

Ah crazy, didn't know that was against the AdWords T&Cs...

Or just create set up some Google Ads to do the hard-work for you, for a couple bucks (or free if you can get some AdWord vouchers): http://lifehacker.com/5854955/how-to-max-out-your-dropbox-re...

If I were DropBox, I wouldn't mind this one bit, they're basically getting the public to pay for their ads. Genius on both fronts :)

Given that tHN is full of developers, I'm pretty disapointed that so many ppl are lumping all the IE's together as a single product.

I totally see that IE6 & 7 are not worth the dev effort, IE8 is probably border-line, but IE9 is a good browser and people seem to be vastly exagerating how much work goes into getting IE9 to look and work like other browsers (i.e. not very much).

So not supporting IE9 seems a bit lazy to me, and I have to say, a little "religous" (they seemed to have ruled out IE10 already without doing any research into why). Also find it strange that they actively block it rather than just warn people about it being unsupported.

However, I will cut them slack because the target market are creatives, and it's an admin site rather than a consumer level site, so probably few IE users here. But others here seem to be extending this idea to the public web, which seems like a mistake...

Silverlight 5 and WebGL offer hardware accelerated 3D graphics. So if you're making a new 3D game from scratch, SL or WebGL could be worth looking into.

If a company has no plans to use these premium features, then yes, I would imagine they will continue along as-is with Flash.

But a last thought; a revenue sharing plan like this will make big players nervous - what might Adobe starting charging for next? It will cause developers to start at least considering alternatives.

No options? Silverlight? WebGL? Sure they may not be perfect, but for 9% of revenue, companies will consider alternatives pretty quickly

Article is not clear whether Azure instances are down, or just the service management tools? But either way, ouch!

"Can't all modern Android tablets connect to all modern peripherals? The first one to ever exist (Xoom) can connect to a display, wireless keyboard, and can act as a USB host to connect to arbitrary USB devices. I imagine the most recent tablets are far more advanced in that area already."

Things is, what platform is going to be the best at switching modes between desktop and tablet, with full support for multiple monitors, printing, VPN etc, stuff business will like? Windows 8.

How is that different from any other OSS project? If MS wants, they could look at a projects source code and decide that they've violated a patent and sue them. To my knowledge they're yet to do this.

Cheapest is actually $39.99. For some reason, that pricing calculator doesn't give the option for the extra small compute size, which is $30 a month. Check out this link which has more detail:

https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/advanc...

I guess I was more meaning the artists (or even group of artists) hiring their own marketing people, i.e. not contracting out to an agency, but actually having their own staff, probably people that have worked at labels before. No idea if that could ever work...

One thing I've never understood about the music industry regarding the marketing argument - why don't the really big, successful artists just pay for their own marketing? Hire a team to do it for them and skip out the labels entirely. They would surely make more money and have total control of their music rights.

Correction - you can use NuGet with VS Express.

One thing to consider about costs; to use a $4 version of xcode you have to buy a Mac, so the price differential is probably not as much as you are making out.

I use VS professional at work, VS Express at home, the difference is not that great (only thing I miss is ReSharper, but even that is expensive, about $150 I think)

Keep in mind that most of the MSDN has copy-pasteable links (at least last time I checked, i.e. this morning), e.g. the entire set of .NET BCL reference docs. But, they don't use a syntax highlighter on those, boo to them.

I'd love to know more about the legalities of a company (that isn't a bank) withholding funds for months. PayPal must be making a pretty profit on the interest accrueing on those accounts.

Yup I do agree with you that the FAQs should come across as though they will do their absolute best to protect your financial data and restrict who can see it.