xradionut

If only a geek could buy the latest version of the OLPC laptop...

It's not all US citizens. Only well-connected, wealthy US citizens have rights. The rest of the US citizens are semi-disposable like the rest of the world.

"You can not feed a nation on "a premium product" that you have to "pay a premium for""

Yes you can. You just need fewer people to feed.

Decently paid Costco employees vs Amazon contractor wage slaves? Consider what you wish for...

We buy in bulk and store it or share it among two to four local households. Makes for a big savings if carefully planned. We also share coupons and other discount programs. My spouse figured out that our household alone saves over $1500 US per year by careful consumer purchasing outside of other savings means, (aka eating at home, taking lunches, car pooling).

The Windows solution would seem to only work if you have admin access to the specific server or the rights to access the journal.

As a long time reader of both science fiction and fantasy, only about .1% is instructional or thought provoking, the rest is escapism or wish fulfillment, the modern version of the penny dreadful.

Books may teach you stuff others want you to think, not necessary the truth. But then again, most people can't handle the truth.

If this isn't a joke, then Grace Hopper is spinning in her grave.

Borderlands 2 is a mix of FPS/RPG/Coop goodness. It's the first shooter I have liked since Doom and the only one my spouse plays.

"By all measures, Win9 should be a great OS. MS just has a nasty habbit of releasing experimental software as if it were ready for production."

I think they have jumped the shark with 8.x as far as their desktop OS goes.

No, the attitude I hear in the Deep South is: If you are successful, you can afford professional services and your spouse doesn't need to work, if not, you are a loser and not a good enough Christian. Work harder! (And send my kids to St Thomas for spring break while you enjoy your stay-cation.)

Even the executives where I work don't really comprehend the stresses of a "normal" two income family. They have evolved to live in a disconnected reality.

This often backfires. My MIL got me scented candles. WTF?!

Here's what I tell my wife's family and my family. If you feel like gifting, DO NOT get us physical gifts, we don't have the space and there's a 99.99% chance you will not be right in your gift selection.

We'd love to have a call or card, but if you must spend money, gift cards to specific merchants, (insert list), or cash are acceptable.

"Much greatness in him and I wonder what he would have achieved if he had started off in California rather than Essex and Cambridge."

Maybe nothing great? Consider if Linus didn't have Finnish winters?

Consumer debt and the increase of public lotteries are the schemes that allow inequality to exist as long as it has. Take them away and you take away hope.

The chilling thing is the answers you get when you ask some of the more frank of the upper class in a moment of candor what should happen to the people that are no longer necessary or left behind.

Some of outliers of their solutions range from literal slavery via prison/slums, to starvation, to genocide. Worst of all answers is indifference or "God will provide". They got theirs, go fuck off and die.

But the US population as a whole has slid backwards in power and monetary means over the last thirty years. The shenanigans that allowed the elite to walk over the working class had their roots in the late 70's and 80's with the shift to the right and the "Greed is Good" era.

Mac users do bitch about the OS, there's forums where they have done so for decades. There's still folks calling for Apple to fix the fucking Finder. I used Mac OS back in the day and was one of the early users of OS X. But none of this was magically intuitive, people did and still bought how-to books and spend hours Googling tips.

And yes, Windows hasn't been that great over the years, but like most tools is manageable with effort. Windows 8.x has been a step backwards on the desktop but Windows Phone is surprising good.

As a pro I still think GUIs are one piece of the system, but CLIs still rule in my world.

"Is there a way that a company with closed source and proprietary infrastructure can prove that it's not up to any funny business?"

No.

People think working for Goldman Sachs is ethical. People participating in the Summer Olympics think Russia is ethical. People buying Nikes and Fuji water think they are ethical.

Where do you stop?

Very few folks are idolizing him for his code correctness, but for his ability to prototype and ship.

I've worked with developers like Notch. I like them because they can create rapidly iterate apps/sites/ideas that normal people/users understand and critique. Then developers like me come in and polish the turds under the covers so we can ship and maintain.

He's not writing SQLite or Space Shuttle code, it's a amusement.

I don't know why the blog poster is impressed. This is Notch's domain, writing code of this ilk. He's probably got over a decade or more dealing with games and graphics, the hard part is dealing with a API that's unfamiliar.

(I have ported familiar code from a Python script to a C# desktop application in similar time, the hard part was dealing with various .NET quirks.)

This appears to be a repost, we had a nice discussion of this work on Oberon yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6829464

I'm not seeing the big issue being raised here. I think much of how a child turns out in life depends on their parents.

My wife likes pink, but she's also better at repairing cars, playing video games, repairing smart phones and target shooting than myself. She would be an awesome programmer or system admin, but likes project management and people more than I do. She is the one in her family that bought the gaming consoles starting with the NES.

It would be nice to see Oberon ported to MIPS. maybe the PIC32 would be a good target.

There's that too. Although I'd like to have the time to port Oberon to MIPS, maybe the PIC32 since the more powerful, modern MIPS chips are out of budget. Haven't done the analysis, but I think it would be a good match.

How about making a language, compiler, OS and applications and not use C or C++ ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6829464

The ARM family is the problem in that case. There's so much variation among the different versions that drivers are an issue. There is a version of the Oberon language, Astrobe, that runs on the a few of the smaller chips, created by CFB Software, but it's not a full operating system. http://www.astrobe.com/default.htm

"Mostly thanks to the regularity of the RISC instruction set, the size of the compiler could be reduced significantly. It now measures less than 2900 lines of program and compiles itself in about 3 seconds, which is proof of its efficiency. The entire system compiles itself in less than 10 seconds."

Very nice indeed.