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nx · on July 21, 2009

He also implies nobody would write a foreword if it wasn't for the prestige. I would be honored to write a foreword for people I admire, I'd do it even if my name wasn't on the book.

nx · on July 18, 2009

What gray lady?

nx · on July 10, 2009

Awib is an optimizing compiler:

o) Sequences of '-','<','>' and '+' are contracted into single instructions. E.g. "----" is replaced with a single ADD(4).

SUB(4)?

nx · on July 10, 2009

Lasted about 2 hours.

nx · on June 3, 2009

Baker told Register Hardware today that each triangular key has significantly more dead space around it than you’d find on a standard Qwerty layout. Consequently, users are more likely to press the correct key each time they tap.

Or less likely to press any key at all?

nx · on May 17, 2009

I really want to believe that, but we'll have to check later on. I'd like to see the OS community triumphing over commercial solutions.

nx · on May 8, 2009

Nokia 1100.

mshafrir · on May 8, 2009

http://www.slashgear.com/32k-nokia-1100-bought-for-online-ba...

pavlov · on May 8, 2009

Btw, the Nokia 1100 is the best selling consumer electronics device ever -- they sold over 200 million units of this single model in 2003-2007.

csomar · on May 8, 2009

i had one 5 years ago, they have good batteries, good for calling!

nx · on May 3, 2009

Because it was THAT hard to Google it, right? http://www.google.com/search?q=google+ocean

swombat · on May 3, 2009

Why spend 5 seconds googling something when you can waste hundreds of people's time with your easily-answered question?

nx · on May 3, 2009

Would be really cool if one could define "new gates" in terms of gates, e.g. a half-adder, a full-adder.

nazgulnarsil · on May 3, 2009

agreed. a couple slots for your own black boxing of a component would enable fairly complex ideas to be quickly demonstrated. Could be a great teaching tool.

likpok · on May 3, 2009

Indeed. In the CS architecture class here they use Logic Works, which is only a little higher-level, but with a much worse interface.

It is no replacement for more powerful things (e.g. FPGAdvantage), but for didactic purposes, this is quite useful.

nx · on April 27, 2009

I hate Jeff, but this post makes sense: instead of being constrained by the backwards compatibility requirement, one can just pack every past version of the software on each release, just like HTTP clients and servers do when they ask for the protocol version.

potatolicious · on April 27, 2009

I see this also as a way of getting developers to stop being so damned lazy. If I were MS I'd start stripping deprecated API calls out of the OS immediately - force anyone who's still running an ancient code base that they refuse to maintain to virtual mode. This might light a fire under their asses to get "Windows 7 compatibility" (i.e. no lame dead API hooks) higher priority.

Back-compat has always been the main force that held MS back, I'm glad they're doing something about it.

mooism2 · on April 27, 2009

If MS strips out deprecated APIs, won't they have to include virtualised XP with all new versions of Windows, and not price discriminate on it? They don't want horror stories of Aunt Tilly not being able to run her favourite apps on her new PC and blaming Windows.

potatolicious · on April 27, 2009

The thing is, Aunt Tilly is likely to run apps like IE, Outlook, Office, and Firefox, all of which are run by teams that are professional enough to keep their code up to date. It's unlikely that these guys can't have "Windows 7 compatibility".

The horror stories will come from enterprise software, where companies are running Win3.1 binaries even to this day, and where developers are even lazier.

And there's no reason to strip out WinXP compatibility per se from Windows 7 - IMHO the OS needs to keep native back-compat for at least the last couple of generations - but anything older shouldn't be in the code base.