My 'buntu desktop environment is the most solid I've ever used, with the caveat that once a year I can expect to spend a few hours in driver hell. I think this balances out with the once-a-year BSOD hell I encounter on Windows.
I agree with you that WINE is terrible, but I have Win7 running brilliantly right now on VirtualBox. Other than that, linux has all the specialized tools I need for coding and web development, I switched over to console gaming a few years back because I was tired of the hardware upgrade treadmill, and the Microsoft productivity stack, while better than Libre Office, isn't compelling enough to tie me to that platform. Also, I'm not sure what problems you had with video players. VLC has served me well on Windows and linux.
I guess the real killer app for me is sudo apt-get install [some incredibly useful open source library I really need right now, dammit]. The open source infrastructure on Windows is so anemic it drives me nuts.
The patent by itself does not describe a skip list, but the most common skip list implementations use a multilevel list data structure similar to what's described in the patent.
The underscore.js source (http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/) also serves as a great primer on the effective use of 'this'. My rule of thumb is to never rely on 'this' unless 1) the function is already bound to an object or 2) I have explicitly set the binding via bind, call or apply. When in doubt favor explicit argument passing.
In general, you can use explicit argument passing or closing over what you need. I tend to use closures to get information from my current scope to a callback, although that doesn't always work in heavily object-oriented code.
I'm working on a distributed app that shares code between the client and server, and there are already a multitude of open-source libraries that are designed to run in any JS environment.
Math (significant math), encoding and hashing being done on the client sounds like a poorly designed application. Same for templating on the server -- which I assume you mean manually compiling templates using a library, and sending the result to a client, perhaps as a property of a JSON object.
Yes, you just learned the very thing that is under debate here: that unless your mom trolls though HN discussions, she would never guess that opening a web browser and navigating to that cryptic URL is the mechanism for installing a printer.
Oh, sorry, I left out the "click shit" part. Do some of that, too.
More importantly, you left out the "minimal Debian box" part. With modern desktop environments, you can just plug your printer, wait a few seconds for it to tell you it's installed, and your done. Way easier than on any other OS.
That's the configuration mechanism in a minimal system where just about everything is disabled. In any kind of system that a novice would be using, it shows up in all the expected places.
I had this problem until I disabled vertical refresh. Based on posts in the ubuntu forums this appears to solve most people's problems with the AMD drivers.
Any battle tech that's an order-of-magnitude cheaper to kill than to produce is destined for obsolescence. You can see this happening now with main battle tanks, which are easily knocked out by IEDs and increasingly sophisticated man-portable missiles. It will be interesting to see what happens to the manned air superiority fighter over the next couple of decades now that unmanned drones are being deployed on a wide scale.
Few M1s have been destroyed or badly damaged by insurgents in Iraq. Their use has declined since the invasion not because they are too vulnerable, but because they are less useful without enemy tanks to engage and using them against infantry in urban environments risks heavy civilian casualties.
I was thinking less about the conflict in Iraq than the conflict in and around Israel, where small groups of insurgents have over the past decade mounted increasingly sophisticated attacks on Israeli armor in the open. The deterrent factor here is just as important as the ability to blow stuff up.
Probably nothing. Remember that unmanned drones were used in combat in Vietnam. They were quite short ranged of course, and could only be used for one mission: Sidewinders.
Bitwise operations pop up fairly often in advanced data structures (Hash Array Mapped Tries, Bloom Filters, etc). The big advantage in my view is being able to perform complex, data-intensive tasks in otherwise limited environments (e.g., mobile devices).
Yep. To upgrade the memory on the compact macs one needed a hex driver, a soldering iron and a spare resistor. I'm still shocked my Dad let me tinker with expensive university property like that.
That was just the Plus. By the time the SE and Classic rolled around, all you needed was the long handled torx, but it helped if you had a case splitter.
I can't believe I soldered a resistor on one of those with a 50w monster soldering iron.
I agree with you that WINE is terrible, but I have Win7 running brilliantly right now on VirtualBox. Other than that, linux has all the specialized tools I need for coding and web development, I switched over to console gaming a few years back because I was tired of the hardware upgrade treadmill, and the Microsoft productivity stack, while better than Libre Office, isn't compelling enough to tie me to that platform. Also, I'm not sure what problems you had with video players. VLC has served me well on Windows and linux.
I guess the real killer app for me is sudo apt-get install [some incredibly useful open source library I really need right now, dammit]. The open source infrastructure on Windows is so anemic it drives me nuts.