iofthestorm

I hope the author realizes that TI does a ton more than make graphing calculators... they're probably one of the biggest manufacturers of ICs out there (about to swallow National Semiconductor or something).

I don't read HN much, but I thought that in theory that's something you would expect of reddit and not HN? Isn't HN supposed to be above that kind of stuff?

I thought this was always the point of Gears, as a stopgap for HTML5 features until browsers supported them all. But I don't really see why they need Gears on Firefox for local storage for example, when Firefox has had a local storage API since version 2.

See https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Storage

Of course, I am not really a web developer or a Google employee so I probably don't have the whole picture.

Oh, I guess the Firefox 2 storage isn't actually HTML5 storage, according to http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/html5.html#localstorage . But then, I don't quite understand where that lies in relation to HTML5.

Err, I think the Cliq is actually a totally different phone for T-mobile but with a similar form factor. The hardware on the Droid is much better, eg. 848x480 screen instead of 480x320 screen. I don't think the Cliq has an OMAP SoC either, probably ARM11. And the Droid uses stock Android 2.0, whereas the Cliq has Android 1.6 or 1.5 with Motorola's MOTOBLUR on top. But the Droid will have wifi, since it's a higher end model, and Verizon has changed its policy of removing wifi now that they require data plans on smartphones anyway.

All Verizon smartphones will now have wifi. This is because all Verizon smartphones now also require you to get a data plan anyway. Kind of meh, but it's not going to discourage me from getting this phone. Having a data plan is still fairly useful, and since I'm on a family plan I only would have to pay for the data plan anyway.

Haha, my roommate is in this class. His textbook is really nice, it reads really naturally. But my roommate said that his lecturing is not that great.

I got one that says "Save the Shire" and I have no idea why.

I think Insertion sort tends to be the most natural sort for doing things like sorting playing cards. Anything else seems like it would be more of a hassle than it would be worth in real life.

And of course, it originated in Firefox. I also think Opera can do this as well, although I suppose that's not a libre browser.

I'm sure Stallman knew about that, considering that he went there for some time.

> Does "Programs and Features" do anything more/less than "Add/Remove Programs" in Vista SP3? No.

Actually, yes. You can search the list of programs, and there are a lot more columns that you can sort them by, which is hugely useful when you're trying to find something.

> With regards to search, I've found their implementation inferior not only to OS X's spotlight, but also Google Desktop Search. Especially pre-SP1 Vista search. But assuming you don't have Google Desktop Search installed (like the average user) it is still a usability win. But again, not worth a $400 upgrade, considering Google Desktop Search is free and runs great on XP SP3.

Care to give any specifics? I've found it to be better than Google Desktop search and a recent annoying problem with an OS X Macbook convinced me that spotlight is useless. I was trying to browse the network, and I tried searching for network and it would not show the network browser in the spotlight (apparently it's hidden in one of the menus in Finder because Apple thinks its users are too stupid to use networks, or something). And really, $400? Are you really trying to say that Vista costs $400? Sure, that was the retail price of Vista Ultimate when it launched, but now even the most expensive edition is only $300, and upgrades or OEM versions are half as much. And most people upgrade their OS when they get a new computer, so that's a stupid argument.

>. Like most Real Power Users I've adapted to the big change (internet apps)

> So yeah, most of us have adjusted to change. By bypassing crap when there are better alternatives.

Huh... one thing doesn't follow the other. But keep thinking that if you want...

Ahh, that's a bit of a problem. That was something I was intending on using. But I'll still check it out and hope for msysgit to improve in the future.

I agree, the PHP documentation is pretty great. And the user notes, while sometimes hit and miss, are usually fairly useful too. Often you'll find someone who's trying to do exactly what you are, and they'll have a way to do it, and then other people will post better ways. It's a pretty cool system.

Nice, I've been pretty interested in git recently but since I use Windows primarily (flame me all you want, but I actually like Windows) it seemed like it wasn't worth the hassle. I will definitely have to try it now. I had thought earlier msys-git was kind of unsupported so my only option was cygwin but I guess that isn't so much of a problem if github seems to be endorsing it.

Some forum software accepts openID now. I agree completely, at this point I have so many forum accounts on random sites where I just needed to ask one question pertaining to some program or something. The other day I needed to ask a question on some forum and was about to make a new account when I found that I already had made an account. Now I've decided to only use openID for new forums if possible and just not join others unless I think I'll participate a lot.

> Games are going to be a big question, however. CSS+JS? Hm.

Yeah, that was my thinking as well. The phone and OS overall look superb, but I was wondering what would happen to games and other applications that just can't be written with HTML+JS. If they left it the way they have, The other thing is that by catering to web developers, they cut out a lot of traditional software developers who haven't or don't want to learn the whole web app system.

Wow, I was looking for this recently but didn't remember what it was called. For me, Windows is good overall, and I'm a gamer, and I started on DOS so I'm pretty command-line happy, but after using Linux/UNIX for personal use and school I vastly prefer the nix command line tools. I have Cygwin installed and use that somewhat often, and I also have msys so I can use some nix commands in the regular Windows prompt. What does SFU/SUA do that Cygwin/msys don't? Speed is always nice but what do you mean by software compatibility?

What? I think you complain about stupid things and miss real features. It's called "Programs and Features" now for one thing, and it features a lot more detail and information than the Add/Remove programs dialog of old. Also, being able to search for a program specifically saves so much time it's ridiculous.

You seem to be one of those people that complains that Microsoft didn't add enough features in Vista in one thread and then complain in another that they changed everything around. You're complaining about superficial changes and willfully ignoring real functionality - the search-focused UI is a dramatic improvement, and you can claim it was taken from OS X or what have you but that doesn't make Vista's implementation any less useful.

Real power users will learn the new methods and features and probably learn to love them, and probably upgrade and/or dualboot/virtualize Linux. That's what I've been doing, and I'll continue to do that. On the other hand, whiny noobs on the internet will continue to whine about everything Microsoft does because they can't adjust to change.

I agree. XUL isn't that bad, but it seems like XUL based applications use about twice as much RAM as their non-XUL counterparts. Firefox and Thunderbird are fairly competitive on that front with other web browsers, but Songbird easily uses over 100MB of RAM, and is sluggish, whereas even Windows Media Player, which for some reason has a reputation of bloatedness, uses under 30MB on my machine unless playing video, which Songbird can't even do.

That said, I think one of the advantages to XUL is that it allows for easy modifications and extensions. On the Firefox/Thunderbird front, that's worth it, but in some other cases, it might not be. I think even Amarok on Windows (when it works) uses less RAM than Songbird on Windows.

Err, if you noticed he linked to the "Jason character's" blog post about Windows 7 and the guy himself was pretty active in the comments on that article (jperlow).

The point of this article is that one of the problems with Vista and now Windows 7 is that people were so used to the XP way of doing things, even if the XP way was stupid or unintuitive. If you take some time to learn the new UI it's a lot better. Same with Office 2007, the old Office menu system was horrible unless you knew exactly where everything was, whereas with the Ribbon/Fluent UI most of the time it adapts for the specific features you are currently using.

XPification is a stupid analogy because XP was just a paint-job on 2k to make it palatable for non-business users. Most of the people who "like" XP are just too used to it; XP was the longest running consumer version of Windows (skipping Server 2k3) and probably the first consumer version that wasn't horribly crash-prone. A few are annoyed at the increased resource usage but don't realize how much hardware specs have increased in the 5 years between XP and Vista; using the Moore's Law rule of thumb specs should have increased by over 8x so it makes sense that it uses more resources as appropriate.

That's pretty interesting, I didn't even know about Flash cookies. Feels kind of weird to learn about technology first hand from the NYT, but pretty cool nonetheless.

I agree. Anyone who thinks a touchscreen-only device can replace tactile buttons on a gaming device is on crack. Although, the DS doesn't have a web browser built in except on the newer DSi, which is currently only available in Japan, and all web browsers on the DS/DSi have generally sucked for anything beyond text-only browsing. The homebrew browsers are actually somewhat better than commercial ones, although I don't have a DSi yet but from what I've seen the DSi's browser is still pretty slow. I wouldn't compare DS web browsing to the iPhone, but then I wouldn't compare iPhone gaming to the DS/PSP.

The biggest factor for me is the games, though, and only a Nintendo platform will ever have Nintendo games (industry trolls that keep calling for Nintendo to become a third-party developer notwithstanding). Nintendo is definitely one of the top game development houses out there, and Apple doesn't really have anything that can compete. Nintendo understands games, Apple does not.

Geez, how elitist can you get? I just started coming here because there's more programming related stuff that sometimes doesn't hit /r/programming, but I haven't seen any evidence that people here are somehow more sophisticated or something than people on reddit. Seems about the same to me, except without the pun threads, and the layout is similar but slightly worse than reddit (like how replying opens a new window).