Shamanmuni

As someone suggested earlier, Scala is probably the best option for a Java developer looking for an alternative. Runs in the JVM, is compatible with Java programs, mixes OOP and functional programming. It can be summarized as "Java meets Haskell".

What I found liberating in Scala is a simple proposition: "use OOP when it makes sense, and functional programming when it makes sense". It's wonderful when you don't have to reason about everything using the OOP lenses and you get to choose, very empowering.

Your criticism to Scala in the other comment seems to amount to "it's not Java", which is extremely weak as an argument. If you are looking for an exact duplicate of Java, then just use Java. Scala is more complex than Java, certainly, because it gives you more options and also because it has a way of rewarding those who master the language. And "ugliness" is a completely subjective matter, I find Java with all its boilerplate ugly and not Scala, for example.

It depends on the kind of designer we are talking about, it's not all about graphics design. Web designers (you know, the ones probably targeted by this software) don't need to depend heavily on Adobe applications and can comfortably use Aptana Studio for web design on Linux.

However, I was referring to myself. I was interested but couldn't use it, so I won't recommend it, as simple as that. I think software relies heavily on network effects, and many possible early adopters probably are running Linux too.

In my experience designers tend to be quite conservative in their choice of tools and probably won't ditch Flash just because this application appeared today. Developers are usually much more keen on trying out the latest tool, it's part of the trade.

In my opinion, it's a mistake to imply "Get the hell out of here, you're not the target audience" when you probably depend in these people to recommend the software to your target audience.

I am, mostly because it's wrong and helps in perpetuating misconceptions. I use a PC with Linux, you can use a Mac with Windows or Linux (and others), and nowadays Macs are PCs with a prettier design, so saying "PC and Mac" is completely meaningless. It's like saying "Mobile phones" when it only works in Android. You then have to take the time to explain to normal users why it doesn't work in their iPhones or Blackberries.

I would expect better from Google.

But it's called "Google Web Designer", so many of us web developers probably thought we were the target audience. I first thought it was a Dreamweaver competitor with better support for JS libraries and HTML5, which would be great.

Instead we have "Google Ad Designer" targeted at designers and marketers. OK, I was still interested at least to play with it for a while and see if I could recommend it to my designer friends, but no Linux support and worst of all, they use PC as a synonym of Windows and Mac as a synonym of Mac OS X. Sorry, but this isn't the 90's anymore, go back to your time machine.

So, I agree I'm not the target audience, but you have to admit the announcement can be perceived as misleading and off-putting.

Douglas Crockford just said that even though Javascript's syntax resembles an imperative language like C or Java, it's much more similar to a functional language like Lisp or Scheme. From that comment a whole myth began which states that Javascript == Scheme. That's like saying Java == C just because both are imperative. Handwavy and completely wrong.

What you should take from that assertion is "Javascript is more functional than imperative" (which is correct) and not "Javascript is lispy" (which is not).

Of course, I'm sure it could never be an automatic winning strategy, but I think it could have given them a fair chance at market dominance.

Instead of the popular and proven OS with many apps they chose the unpopular and unknown one with just a few. And in the end, what's the advantage of the Windows-only strategy when Microsoft gives licenses to Samsung and HTC to produce phones with the exact same OS? They haven't differentiate themselves at all from the competition, just cornered themselves.

I didn't say that, I said it could hardly be argued that they couldn't have easily entered the Android ecosystem. We are talking about smartphones, they were (and are) competing with Samsung anyway, Windows or Android. So, what you say doesn't make much sense to me.

I acknowledge Nokia's situation in 2010, but I think you are taking the other extreme of considering Nokia already doomed by that time. By the time Elop entered Nokia it still was the largest mobile phone maker in unit sales and Samsung had just entered the smartphone sector a year before. And though a promising entrant, Samsung wasn't that big of a threat until much later.

Look at the article you linked, or Elop's memo, they don't even mention Samsung or Galaxy phones (just Android in general terms). At that time Android was low-hanging fruit to be put on their phones and leverage their market leadership. The first Galaxy phones weren't exactly a paramount of excellence. I don't think it's very unrealistic to think that they could have competed with Samsung in more or less equal terms for Android dominance.

And I'm telling this without being exactly an Android fan, but at that time it was the most sensible course of action (IMHO). They could have even tried both Android and Windows Phone (something Samsung did) and see what sticked.

Instead, they chose to stop Symbian and Meego and took the strange decision of betting the future of the company on the all new Windows Phone 7, something which can only be described as an enormous gamble. Those first phones couldn't even be upgraded to Windows Phone 8 when it came out afterwards, and I'm not even mentioning the incompatibilities between those two. Talk about a burning platform.

It's not about unusual sequences of events, he's saying that Elop had an important incentive to accelerate the landslide of Nokia into irrelevance in order for it to be bought cheaply by his former employer. Things like publicly bashing your company (that well-known memo), abruptly stopping a successful (though declining) line like the Symbian cheap phones and spending a whole year to launch a new line with an unproven and unpopular OS (in mobile). Even before all of that enthusiasts had hacked the N900 and made it run Android (look at NITDroid), so it could hardly be argued that it was difficult task for them to swiftly move to Android and differentiate themselves like Samsung does. He wasn't responsible for Nokia's difficulties in 2010, but it was far from an impossible situation.

Seriously, these events are things many of us saw as soon as he put a foot on Nokia. We have been calling him a Trojan Horse since then, and with Nokia bought and Elop back at Microsoft as Head of Devices with a juicy check who can say we were mistaken? I even bought a Nokia N9 last year considering it my farewell to a once great company destined to be a part of Microsoft. And I'm hardly a clairvoyant.

I agree with you, and some actual facts can be provided. Just look at the benchmark game between Go and C++ in quad-core x64: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?t...

In average, C++ is three times faster than Go in all the tests. These benchmarks aren't definitive but you can assume that in general the difference in performance is much less than an order of magnitude.

Now, look at the same comparison between Go and Python3: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?t...

Python3 is in average 20 times slower than Go. And I love Python but Go isn't that much harder to use. It's quite a nice language, actually.

So, the exodus from Python to Go is very understandable, you gain a lot of performance without sacrificing much. And I think there's room for performance improvements in Go, perhaps in a couple of years C++ developers will make the transition. But I think that the real C++ killer is Rust. Time will tell.

OK, technically correct, but access to source code and a restriction on commercial distribution is not what people usually associate with propietary software. When you say propietary what most of us think is Linus releasing binary-only versions of Linux in 1991, which is false. I think "almost free software" is a much more accurate description, and a lot less flamey.

And by the way, the GPL was first written in 1989, so you could hardly argue that in 1991 many people understood how free software should work or which are the longterm consequences of using a certain license for your hobby project. Cut Linus some slack, he released source code and eventually used the GPL, right?

But they were together already. This past time Nokia only developed Windows phones and Microsoft paid for the marketing of the Lumia. Nokia had Stephen Elop as CEO, for crying out loud. We already knew Nokia was a part of Microsoft. This is not a move, just a formality; the low price gives you another hint. If the partnership Microsoft-Nokia could have changed their positions in the mobile sector, it would have happened years ago.

Nothing will change as a result of this.

It's true what you say, but we have a different world nowadays. In 1999 Microsoft was the undisputable world champion in IT, they were the only ones who had deep pockets, lots of users and a tremendous software ecosystem. Now we have both Google and Apple with deep pockets, lots of users and software in their stores.

Google is even playing the Microsoft card, developing a desirable OS for the hardware manufacturers to use in their devices. And the hardware manufacturers are delighted because not only it's free, but they also can have their own app stores and add value to differentiate themselves from the competition (look at Samsung with the Galaxy devices). It must be a hard sell to convince these guys to return to Microsoft, be just another "Windows devices + crapware" manufacturer and stay away from the profits of purchased apps.

On the other hand, the much touted inertia towards Microsoft products has been debunked, I think. Many people seem quite happy and productive with iWork or QuickOffice on their devices. And that cannot be overstated, once you see that in the end you could do work without Microsoft Office, it's really hard to put the genie back in the bottle. The other part was games, and you can find plenty of them both in iOS or Android.

So, not impossible, but it's clear that this time it will be very difficult for Microsoft to be topdog in mobile. They are late and struggling.

The paradox is that as Bitcoin gets more mainstream, in practical terms it will be more and more similar to "real" money.

Bitcoin has been off the radar for the SEC, but as it gains notoriety there will certainly be an interest in regulating it.

Imagine that tomorrow Bitcoin gets really big, it isn't crazy to think that many people will be worried about having all their money in the computer they use everyday and is connected to the Internet. Then some companies start offering a service which lets you deposit your bitcoins and they assure you that they won't get robbed and if they do, they will be held responsible for that. Oh, and they require you to have a verifiable identity for your account since that helps to prevent fraud. They just ask a monthly fee for the maintenance of your account and a small fee for every transaction you make through them. You have in front of you something similar to a bank.

So, if you have to pay bureaucratic costs of regulation, and institutions like banks for Bitcoin, then it's not that different from the money we are used to. The one which also hasn't intrinsic value and for most of us is just a number in a computer anyway.

It's called analogy. I think the same reasoning and conclusions apply in both situations, which doesn't mean they are equivalent. It's a useful example when all this "which kind of license offers more freedom" arises.

The societies we live in have answered that denying a little personal freedom in order to protect the collective offers more freedom than the one in which that doesn't happen. There's no debate about that. Then, why are we still debating this?

Yep, GPL preserves freedom in exactly the same way modern societies preserve freedom for their citizens. You are free, everyone who lives in the country is also free and you're not allowed to enslave other people. Of course, someone could make the argument that preventing you from owning slaves denies you some freedom. And from a narrow and purely technical side he would be right. However, which society would you say has more freedom, the one in which slavery is forbidden, or the other? I think the same argument applies to FOSS.

I can think of two: documentation and simplicity. Comparing Parallella with GPUs only in performance is missing the point. The board is open and quite understandable for non-experts like me. It's a platform for learning and experimenting, like a Raspberry Pi but more geeky. You will probably have an easier time tinkering with this and getting it to do useful things, that's the point. I feel, like the parent commenter, quite excited about this.

But if what you say is true, the ad shows that working for Facebook sucks too. I don't think that was played very well.

It continues to amaze me how Facebook is so popular when they don't seem to have a clue about human communication. First comparing the service to a chair (really?!), now showing their CEO and public face as a boring guy who nobody pays attention to and its developers as having attention deficit disorder.

I know I'm not their target audience, but I wonder if any Facebook user thinks this ad is cool or funny. My inner teen thinks it's lame.

It's strange, because your first description is exactly what it does. In each activity you can add a set of widgets and use certain applications, you can even configure the way the desktop is shown (Search and Run, Folderview) differently for each view.

I usually use two different Activities named Work and Fun. In Work I have my text editors, konsole with multiple tabs, a couple of widgets related to those apps, my work email and maybe some books for reference. In Fun I have the web browser, Ksudoku opened and widgets with jokes, rss feeds, email, weather information, etc.

It's easy to notice what I have configured: a distraction-free environment to focus on my work and a distraction-full one to relax; just two clicks between the them! Couple this with the Pommodoro technique (25 minutes, 5 minutes play) and KDE has made me a very productive and happy worker.

Hope my example helps.

But the price of the Tegra 4 isn't known. One of the most exciting aspects of Ouya is its price. You can get one for half of what a Nintendo Wii costs.

That's a sweet spot, people don't know the console but can consider giving it a try because of its price. Choosing Tegra 4 would probably increase the cost of the hardware.

Maybe in the future we will be able to buy a Ouya 2 (backwards compatible) with Tegra 4 at the same price, that would be wonderful.

Personally, while I generally agree with rms, in this particular situation I think he went overboard. Not in expressing his opinion, but in the way he did it.

I say this as a free software advocate; this situation arises from a sad reality, and one that rms doesn't even address: it's really hard to make money from free software. I don't think Mark Shuttleworth was enthusiastic about sending users' information, the deal with Amazon is just a way to try to monetize an OS which its users mostly don't pay for.

So, instead of rallying the people to boycott Canonical, rms should be more understanding of the situation. After all, the Free Software Foundation is well aware of the difficulties of obtaining money in this space. Have you noticed that the three biggest patrons of the FSF are companies whose money comes largely from non-free software? I'm talking about Google, Oracle and IBM. What does it tell us about the free software movement. https://www.fsf.org/patrons

We are close to 2013, many years ago, when I started using Slackware Linux, I would have expected that by this time there would be many thriving companies offering free software solutions for the desktop and competing for my money based not on lock-in, but on quality and innovation. Where's my flying car?

I understand and completely support the "respect user's privacy" argument, but we should also understand the "money doesn't fall from trees" argument and seek acceptable solutions, otherwise the year of Linux on the desktop will never come.

Google is proposing and very actively working in the WHATWG and both WebKit and V8 are open source. So you can easily access the specifications for these APIs and see how they implemented them. It's the absolute opposite of "the Microsoft way". They even hired Ian Hickson, who pretty much is the "web standards guy".

It's not Google's fault that the other browser vendors are not as fast as them. They will eventually catch up and we'll all have a better web. I'm really glad the situation has changed so much since the days of "IE 6 only" and later "we all have to wait for the slow learning kid, IE". For a web developer these days are truly exciting.

It's quite usable for casual users who don't know the names of the applications and want to explore what's in the computer. KDE offers a gret solution for this; in the start menu applications are organized by category and there's a short description next to the icon explaining what it does.

If you enter a category it doesn't add a layer, it shows the applications in the same view as if you were opening a folder; and at the bottom you always have a Search bar which works great and power users can comfortably use.

So, say, you want an application to play video. You go to Applications, select the Multimedia category, and click on the icon that says "Video player".

Both Unity and Gnome3 also have solutions in which you don't have to compromise or use quirky macros to get the behaviour you want. You can have the best of both worlds. But then, as usual, many will continue bashing Linux GUIs as if they were a usability nightmare and totally inferior. C'est la vie.

What? Nobody else was using it?

Have you seen the Classics app for the iPhone? It appeared before iBooks and it had page turning. Apple even copied the bookshelf from them.

It's no bullshit, the system is being abused. Silly and obvious things like a specific implementation of pagination in ebooks are being patented by a company who wants to go "thermonuclear" with its competitors. And many act like it's OK. Why? Because it's Apple? They didn't innovate at all with iBooks.

Sorry, but the skeptical in me says this comment reeks of advertising. I don't know if it was your intention or not, but it feels like you try really hard to establish "geek cred" and then make some grandiose claims about Windows 8. It seems like you were comparing Windows 8 to a really non-standard Linux environment and then out of nowhere you claim performance is at least 25% better to three DE's which weren't in your dual-head box. Odd.

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof (some benchmarks, maybe), you are not providing any of that.

On the other hand, if you use the same category of native apps in different devices, you'll notice inconsistencies that disrupt the user experience. Whereas with an HTML5 app you don't care if you're using a phone, a tablet or desktop, it's the same application.

So, this argument about UX really depends in which perspective of continuity you are considering, single platform oriented or cross platform oriented.

How does the BSD license avoid something like the Oracle lawsuit against Android? From my understanding it wouldn't have made a difference.

1-Click purchases, which is close in ridiculousness. Buying stuff online clicking once was such an outstanding innovation that it surely deserved protection from all those thieves who never could have figured that out by themselves...

Well, that's related to the particular implementations, not theory. If PostgreSQL works faster and is less resource-intensive than MongoDB, it says nothing about their theoretical underpinnings. The whole point of the NoSQL movement is that one approach (relational databases with SQL) to work with data and its structure cannot be the best answer to all the possibilities in that space. Not because of particularities in the implementation (eg. speed), but because it gives you an easier time working with it; there's no mismatch.

I'd say that if you are working with diverse documents with a few or no relationships, a document oriented database is necessarily a better fit to the task at hand than a relational one. It's a tautology.

If you are needing many JOINS and your data is homogeneous, there's a mismatch. You probably should have chosen a relational database in the first place, as it better fits that model.

Nuances matter, and being cautious in respect to change is not the same (at all) as being afraid of it. I love Python and don't mind refactoring code from time to time if I perceive a benefit from doing it.

I think the "conservative" feeling comes from the fact that there's no immediate need to rush into Python3. Many changes were backported to version 2 and it has been a useful and dependable language for many years. So we have a good situation in which we can take our time to refactor the code and make the final transition when we feel it's ready.

On the other hand, the OP conflates changes in the language with changes in the applications built with it, which is an error. The Python community is very happy using the language in projects with cutting edge features and uses. You have to look further than just Django, at Scipy or Biopython in order to see that. In that respect the community is more eager of change than the one surrounding Ruby, which is mainly oriented to web development.