octotoad

I came on the scene around the time IM and web-based chat rooms (arguably) peaked; 2000. In the 'FOSS' world, aside from mailing lists, IRC was the dominant means of communication.

I'm only turning 27 this year, and I really can't wrap my head around people using things like vendor-specific IM or web-based chat rooms as a replacement for IRC in similar scenarios.

I know it's basically the same thing; a centralised gathering point tied to a server run by a particular company or organisation, but, I don't know...IRC just feels like a more 'transparent', neutral form/protocol to me.

Waste of time even linking to such unfounded garbage. I would've been disappointed in myself for reading it, if it wasn't for the comedy factor.

The whole thread reeks of trolls and teenage-conspiracy-loving gullibility.

Thanks for the laugh.

This got me thinking about the whole Windows ARM port and x86 compatibility. I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but, why the hell didn't Microsoft make use of .NET for cross-platform compatibility?

Have developers write applications in C# or any other language supported by the CLR and let .NET work out the x86/ARM differences.

I'm sure there are valid technical and possibly political reasons this didn't happen, but I still find it very strange that Microsoft went to the trouble of developing this entire platform/framework/ecosystem just to ignore it when the opportunity arises to actually make good use of it.

He may be a fanboy, but in this case it makes perfect sense to compare something like the Surface tablet to similar Apple products. Yes, there are other tablet computers out there, and yes, tablets did exist before the iPad, but Apple's offering has become the mainstream benchmark for tablet computers, whether you like Apple or not.

I automatically interpreted that statement as a reference to the idea that Microsoft is kind of playing catch-up and suffering from a case of 'me too' in the world of tablets and brand-specific retail stores.

I personally can't see anything pointing to an attitude of "if you don't adore the iPad you're in denial" coming from either the article author or Microsoft.

The article's description of the Microsoft store experience and their staff basically makes me think of a small, stubborn child covering their ears and yelling "Blah, blah, blah. I can't hear you!" when competing products and companies are brought up.

indiegogo page: http://www.indiegogo.com/hackitat-a-film-about-political-hac...

Looks like they were going for $80,000. Almost made it to $30,000.

Looking forward to seeing the end result. I can't get enough of documentaries on subjects like this that are produced by people that actually have half a clue.

I find this announcement kind of bitter-sweet. It's awesome, amazing and inspiring that a company like Valve has put this much effort in to supporting Linux, no matter what their underlying motives are. At the same time, it's really sad that this is the biggest thing to happen to mainstream Linux gaming since Loki and id/Epic since the early '00s.

As somebody who was briefly caught up in the "convert-all-the-things-to-Linux" evangelism of the early 00's to the "fsck it, I don't care who uses it. I like it." attitude, I sincerely hope this makes an impact. Forget the FLOSS ideals and morals; if this means more 'power users' realize there's a viable Windows alternative for gaming (and more), everybody wins.

I know a lot of 'purists' will inevitably complain about the influx of 'noobs', but, fsck it. No matter what beliefs/philosophies you follow, it's always a good thing to be able to show people that there are other options.

As a long-time follower & sometimes contributer to the free/open Unix scene, this makes me proud.

"or connect it to an arduino"

As the article mentions, this doesn't seem to be as easy as it should/could be.

Hate to post a comment just to be negative, but, I seriously can't believe this has appeared on the front page of a site like HN.

"Welcome to"?. LFS is so old that I would assume any self proclaimed geek/hacker would've already been aware of it. It has existed for over ten years.

I must admit I haven't even visited digg in over four years, but wasn't it originally intended to feature user-submitted content? The front page pretty much screams the exact opposite to me. I instantly pictured a bunch of hired goons sitting in an office, submitting content in return for their weekly pay.

The headlines, photos and layout reminds me of Ars Technica without the original content.

I've noticed this over the years when reading developer blogs via sites like Planet GNOME.

In the first half of the last decade, there seemed to be highly motivated, talented groups of contributors who helped build and maintain momentum in many popular open source projects like Gnome. I'm not saying there aren't top notch developers still working on FOSS, but many of those big-name 'rockstar' contributors seem to have either been lured to a competing/alternative platform, or just simply lost interest.

I often wonder if age plays an important role, with many former wide-eyed, young, idealistic developers possibly adopting an attitude along the lines of "meh. Maybe I should just buy a Mac and worry less about ideals and philosophies" as they get older and priorities change.

I can understand and appreciate these ideas in some ways, but as others have pointed out, what the author describes seems to be related to more serious emotional issues surrounding confidence and self esteem.

Nothing particularly wrong with the sentiment and logic involved, it just seems a bit too 'one-size-fits-all' for an issue that possibly runs a lot deeper than one might think.

This has to be one of the most invaluable filtering techniques I've learned to employ in the past year or so in regard to sites like HN.

It seems obvious in hindsight, but I'd never realised how many article headlines ending with a question mark naturally contained so much fluff.

I now instinctively answer the question with a 'no' and move on without reading any further.

You're still 'paying for it the whole time' regardless of whether the phone is turned on or off, assuming you're on a plan.

The phone simply being turned on doesn't equate to more calls being made. Like the parent said, turn it on when you need it.

"This was the work of people frustrated that they still don't know the price or launch date of Microsoft's new Surface tablet."

I hope that's meant to be some sort of strange attempt at a joke...not that it seems appropriate.

I'm in the same situation at the moment, having just begun a Bachelor of Information Technology through RMIT and Open Universities Australia, which for international readers, is a distance education organization involving several large Australian universities. I am also working full time, although not in IT, unfortunately.

I'm not in a financial position to fund my studies myself, so I'm making use of the federal government 'FEE-HELP' system, which basically means I don't begin repaying my loan(s) until I reach a certain income threshold. I also live in a 'regional' area on the NSW Mid North Coast, and despite living within an hour of a local university, the courses and degrees I've enrolled in aren't offered in this area.

I can understand that there are most likely different factors that determine whether or not a particular degree is covered by FEE-HELP, but it's a shame that it seems like a proper CS degree is still only viable for somebody living in a large capital city, with the finances available to self-fund their studies.

As you've mentioned, a Bachelor of IT does offer certain fundamental units that you'd encounter in a CS degree, but none of the advanced maths units seem to be offered.

If the National Broadband Network actually gets finished one day, hopefully more long distance education providers might be able to offer degrees such as CS, with the aid of fast, reliable internet connectivity to help solve the locale problem.

Finally, a cheap ATX-compatible ARM board. Give me PCIe and DIMM slots and I'll be salivating. Equip it with something like a dual-core Cortex chip and I'll be throwing wads of cash in all directions.

From the article: "NVIDIA awakened the world to computer graphics when it invented the GPU in 1999."

Umm....

Exactly. It's easy to tout this 'cloud' based world as a looming, common-place utopia when you're an uber nerd who is completely detached from everyday 'normal' people who barely understand the basic concepts of the internet/web, or who have severely lacking bandwidth and data usage quotas.

No, not at all. It's just that statements like "and likewise, developing for the NUC will be as easy as developing for a standard, Windows-based x86 PC; two perks the Raspberry Pi will not enjoy." makes it seem like a lack of x86 support is a bad thing in the Pi's case, which it's not, since ARM is fine for what it's meant to do.

As for the part about development being as easy as a Windows x86 box; the same could be said about Linux on the Raspberry Pi. It's the same OS you'd run on an x86 box.

Just seems like an apples/oranges comparison. Like others have commented, seems like a lot of 'tech journalists' seem to assume small form factor == Raspberry Pi competitor/alternative.

The author of this article clearly has no idea about what a system like Raspberry Pi is aiming for. The lack of Windows compatibility is one of its most important features. It's about kids learning to do fun, interesting, challenging things with a computer. It's not about using an office suite or playing TF2.

It's funny watching a project like this progress over the years. You inevitably get the "it's slow and bloated now" comments, but if no new features were added you'd end up hearing people write it off as irrelevant.

The new BeOS-style 'deskbar' feature in 4.10 looks awesome. Pity X11 DEs and window managers don't have much of a concept of applications and associated windows in the way that MacOS/BeOS do.

Been an Xfce addict since the 3.x series and I still keep coming back to it.

I can understand the argument regarding the slow uptake of OS X Steam games, but I can't help thinking hardware plays a small role mainly in relation to more 'hardcore' gamers.

One big advantage a Linux Steam box would have over a Mac is the ability to swap out critical components such as video cards and CPUs.

Even if Valve or others go to the effort of supporting OS X with their latest, whiz-bang AAA title, what's the point if you're on Apple hardware that's limited to a particular GPU that can't be replaced? (with the exception of a super-duper Mac Pro, and even then I can't see it being very easy to just go out and buy a new GTX 650-OMGTHEPIXELS-Edition card and expect it to work the way you would with a 'PC').

It's not like every distribution out there uses a different audio framework, graphics API etc. The fundamental components are all the same. Efforts to standardize a lot of things in the free-Unix/Linux world have come a long way in the last 5-7 years.

Also, realistically, the number of supported distros would likely amount to a small handful. Bigger distributions like SuSE, Fedora and Ubuntu.

As an 'amateur developer', when I read articles about these new 'movements' I often wonder about the authors who write them. All I ever think is "Wow, this person must have a really cool job with awesome, care-free managers who don't mind letting their staff run wild with the latest and greatest framework/language."

When I picture a proper, professional, employed software developer, I think of somebody who follows a "Right tool for the job. Go with what you know. Don't get caught up in the razzle dazzle" kind of philosophy/attitude.

Just seems like a lot of people in the industry don't always think this way, and I often wonder where/how they actually put these fantastic new technologies to use in the real world.

I'm sure it's been said before, but I don't see why there's this obsession with fixing what isn't broken. Seems like change for the sake of change.

The current layout puts the most important element ahead of all else: the headline, the link title, or whatever you want to call it. Everything else is secondary.

I don't particularly care who submitted it, what the amount of comments are, or the ranking, until AFTER I've read the article/page. If it's good content, upvote it. Isn't that the point?

I have liked some of the styling/design ideas people have come up with, but every one, as many have pointed out, just breaks things up in a way that makes it more difficult to digest what's being presented to me.

Why I Dismiss Webpages Instantly: Green text on black background.

My eyes hurt after only a few seconds.

It's not 1996.

Almost all of Rollercoaster Tycoon as well. Blew my mind when I found out.

> And Australia slams [insert countries] for not buying Australian goods.

And then encourages people to buy products and services that are Australian made.

"Ok, so...I should purchase products and services from local businesses to support our own industries, but...other countries should do the opposite and buy stuff from us? Riiight..."

Just read around two thirds of 'The Node Beginner Book'. I've only briefly played with node.js before now and I still don't really have an immediate use for it personally. I could see myself using it to whip up rough scaffolding to support prototypes of personal projects written in other languages.

I did learn something from its event-driven callback system though. Made me realize I was approaching things the wrong way in a libevent-based daemon I'm developing in C.