" there are bound to be people who purchase a Windows 8 tablet, and then wonder why they can't throw some of their existing x86 software on there"

Not sure about that. Or at least no more than Apple users. Apple has distinct OS for iPad/PC but the user doesn't really know that... there is super-strong "Mac" brand on both. Either people do get surprised they can't do this, or they fundamentally assume a tablet isn't a PC.

So if I write a fairly intensive PC/x86 app and compile it to run on ARM, will it suck the batteries dry?

Re: Re: Re: What a huge disappointment..

"If it'll run on Windows 7, it'll run on Windows 8"

Right? And it will - mainstream W8 that 90%+ of actual PCs will be using. It seemed pretty obvious you couldn't magically run an x86 binary on an ARM device.

I _did_ hope you'd be able to cross-compile to an ARM target (similar to how we compile for 32/64bit targets) but I guess not... or at least not for non winRT apps.

Re: What a huge disappointment..

I've never heard anyone claim WOA would run x86 through emulation... in fact I've always heard this denied, yet people thinking it was the case. Got a source?

Re: MS better hope...

Laptops and PCs aren't going to be running WOA... right?!

Re: well now

Surely anyone who acts and claims to be part of anon is by definition part of anon? Isn't that the point of anon?

Re: Live by the software patent, die by the software patent

Exactly - you complain to try and stop them doing it to you, or at least make it cheaper. That's just part of the game.

Re: Re: Lets look at the time line a bit shall we

If Android genuinely infringes patents then it's reasonable they should pay... that's different from pre-existing arrangements for companies to work together regarding patents which are ubiquitous to web standards.

Re: DfID

You don't view providing education as "helping the needy"? One thing that properly poor communities have in common is their aspiration to send their children to school.

Re: Windows XYZ

It's hardly unusual though - you can buy software for $50 for your personal/hobby use, if it's for commercial use then suddenly it's $200.

Re: Confused by the confusion....

Oh - I hadn't even realised "Windwos on Arm" was the proper brand name; I thought it was still Windows 8, and WOA was a more technical thing.

No. If you don't want to pay towards that portfolio, don't buy such a device.

The device you buy probably uses hundreds of patents, oddly enough you don't get to pick and choose which when buying a consumer item for a few £hundred.

Re: Efficiency out of the window

The console comparison is a good one - I suppose even better would be to look at the Nintendo DS, etc... these are now several years behind the curve for smartphones.

The problem is, mobile phones thrive on apps, and a huge number of app developers have appeared who are not amazingly good/experienced. On consoles, it takes a few years to learn all the tricks and app developers won't invest that time to sell a $0.79 app!

Re: It's amazing

Not many people in the real world scream at Apple. Only on techy sites like this.

>>If you only take off your Google tinted glasses for a second

Stealing from someone and then claiming the moral highground is absurd. If someone wants to create their own search engine and provide all the servers to run it, advert and tracking free, THEY can claim the kudos.

Passing Google's service off as your own is no different as using your neighbour's WiFi so your ISP can't see what you're doing... it's just plain wrong.

Re: Google "results"

>>Prior to that, I used Google; but made sure that it was searching for "random" stuff a lot more often than my genuine searches.

That's paranoia of the most hilarious type. Well done. Perhaps you should just keep off the internet if you're so scared of people watching you.

Re: Goodbye and thanks for all the fiche

The "right thing" being stealing someone else's work because you don't want to pay the price they ask for it?

Re: Re: Seriously?

Yes but trailers and teasers are supposed to have some link to the forthcoming film/game. This is totally out of character with a cutesy game like AB.

Might as well just have a static image "we made a new version of AB".

Re: Rich

If you are Fred Bloggs you are entitled to complain too. It's not about being rich though, it's about being publicly known.

Re: quick....

You just don't know how this game is played, do you? "It's not IE" was practically the marketing slogan for FF and Chrome.

Re: How To Program Robustly In C++

One problem though is if you implement super safe pointers and memory allocation and all that stuff in C++ to protect the developer, you surely end up reinventing lots of stuff Java does out of the box, and simply narrow the gap between the two in performance as well as functionality/safety.

Re: Re: @Jean-Luc: Your knowledge of C++ Applications is limited

Sorry but you're simply incorrect. Java and .NET are great platforms and are perfectly suited for 90%+ of software, but optimised C++ code is faster than optimised Java code simply because Java has more stuff to do. You can't implement the same code on both to compare, you have to tweak your algorithms based on understanding how it works.

Also, your soundbite about NASDAQ is not relevant. When we talk about financial institutions needing ultrafast algorithms, we don't mean the stock exchanges. We mean the automated trading algorithms which banks develop. These are entirely different things.

Re: Re: Re: Hardly "blindingly fast"

I'm not going to suggest my compiler can create code as fast as hand-crafted ASM. But it's certainly not an order of magnitude slower. That level of performance would mean ASM would remain much more widely used because there are still areas where performance is worth the extra work... such as gaming (both code and GPU programming) and software trading.

Intrinsics and so on mean you can use SIMD without having to mess about in ASM anyway.

Re: C++11

OpenMP offers language-level multithreading. Shame it doesn't really catch on because for simple parallel tasks it is way less code than 'proper' threading libraries.

Re: Re: C vs java

Well done for failing to read his post. He said he implemented the SAME code in each, this is a discussion about how the compiler works with the SAME input, not about how to optimise code.

Go back to thinking how clever you are now.

Re: Re: Re: And that is why...

>>So you're never dealing with an event "in the future".

I don't care what time system you use, next Tuesday is in the future. I'm not talking about issues of "is it 1am or is it 1am again". I'm talking about a person creating an event that runs from 1500 today until 1500 in 4 months time... we have a problem with the human's understanding what that means, which can lead to misunderstood behaviour... the event lasts 1 hour more less than the user expects and this has some weird side effect nobody thought off.

So it's not a direct problem of tracking times, but indirect problems where requirements miss edge cases, or users don't understand the system... ultimately user error but the problems still remain.

Well I'm no expert but isn't a lot of the work that goes on about how quickly the parts of the system talk to each other as well as how fast each bit works? If so, then distributed processing introduces a massive paradigm shift in how important it is to partition problems to support such methods.

But in global terms... you're probably right for many types of problem.

Re: Didn't Facebook ask for this?

Maybe, but the <u>report them</u> part is kind of important.

>>Facebook would do well to employ this guy instead of prosecuting him. He clearly knows better than any of their current security team what needs to be tightened up.

That their security team not only detected his intrusion but tracked him back to his bedroom suggests they're not exactly useless.

Re: @Peter2

>>As he put it: "would you rather your security was designed by someone who knew the theory of security or the practice?" Using people who've been caught in the act is more common than you'd imagine and has to be the ultimate definition of rehabilitation.

Hiring someone who was once a criminal is one thing. Hiring a current criminal is another.

Re: Systems Administration 101

Nowhere in the article does it actually say the software was actually running on local time, only that the changeover caused a problem. What their servers were doing is not mentioned, unless anyone has a link to a more in-depth analysis they can quote from?

Re: And that is why...

>>The safety-critical systems I worked with ran everything on GMT. The local time was simply translated to and from GMT when required.

There really is no excuse for this sort of thing.

I think you're oversimplifying. Converting all times to UTC is not a universal fix for DST issues. The moment you have an event which spans a DST cross-over, or you are working with a date in the future after the next changeover, problems start to creep back in.

When countries move their DST changeover date (USA did recently), even more difficult.

Re: Hire dumb developers - get dumb software

It's the developers who don't think they make mistakes who are the dangerous ones.

These things don't cause problems because of dumb developers, but because of lack of proper testing.

Re: No need for daylight savings these days

>>Lots of people have flexi time. If they want to get up earlier so they can go home earlier, they can.

Unless they have children. You're still doing the school run in the dark for several months, which is depressing for all concerned

>>We will have to educate the muppets who think that going to Summer Time gives more sunlight in a 24hour period though.

I think you're falsely attributing that thought to people who don't actually hold it. Even thickos know the clocks change so we get more of the daylight, even if they don't understand why it works that way.

Re: Re: Re: Eventually ...

>>No, they have exactly the same amount of daylight in winter. Playing with the clock just means that it begins and ends at different times.

Same amount as who? The Scots do have less daylight in winter than the rest of us?

Re: Re: Forcing the hand

You're joking right? Or so far into Mac-land that you're unaware of all the software which sells thousands of copies a year directly from the vendor's site?

Re: Forcing the hand

>>Then once they've managed to reel in a few more independent developers then we'll see the option to turn it off vanish.

Hard to see that happening while anyone wants to develop corporate apps for Mac. Or do/will they provide a special way to do that as they already do for private iPad apps?