kpxxx

How is uboot fundamentally different than BIOS or UEFI/EFI? It's not like all the PC clones through the ages had the same bootup sequence for RAM and peripheral init.

> The result: the controls of modern aircraft look very similar to those from the 1930s.

http://magazin.lufthansa.com/content/uploads/2016/07/A380-80...

http://imgproc.airliners.net/photos/airliners/5/1/1/0898115....

LOL. The "explanation" in the article is mostly poppycock. Modern avionics are based on engineering of human factors. There's no inherent desire for skeuomorphism or even traditionalism. Control modalities that have been tested to work better than potential modern replacements tend to stay, that is all. In military tactical aircraft the differences are even more stark. On the smaller GA scale of aircraft, it isn't so much traditionalism, as economics.

> You seem to dislike Windows quite a bit. To the point where it seems personal or you have a vendetta against it.

I have better things to do then have a "vendetta" against either a corporation or a piece of equipment (I don't know which you were insinuating).

At the same time I have no reason to defend commercial entities that should do better.

Like I said, I use the goddamn thing (SP3) as a daily driver for mobile use. It doesn't change the fact that numerous things have been appallingly broken for a stack completely controlled by Microsoft. I absolutely do not care to enumerate the "quirky behavior". For that you can go to answers.microsoft.com and also get a laugh observing that shitshow of unhelpfulness.

> Being able to access your workstation via airport wifi at all is actually a benefit in this case, unless you intend to wheel it around like a suitcase

Did you walk out of a 1980s time warp or something? The workstation in this case carries 1TB of storage and weighs 3.5 lbs. (And it still has wifi in case you need that).

That's because Microsoft is trash. Typing this from an SP3, which I overall like very much. I was given this, so I have no misgivings. But the overall sloppiness of Windows and the years of varying quirky behavior I've had with this thing has been very annoying. Windows has an excuse when the hardware is arbitrary, but with the surface line there is no excuse.

If I had paid more than a few hundred dollars for an SP3, I would be quite upset with the numerous annoyances. As of now, it generally works ok. Of course Windows is still trash (which app do I use for settings again)?

But yeah, once you start taking people's money in Apple ballpark (and these are not cheap), make things work at least as good as Apple (which, yes, isn't perfect), or expect negative comments.

The difference is they are demonstrating fantasies or idealizations that much of their customer base have or aspire to themselves. Truck commercials are made that way with a large part of their customer base keenly in mind.

> MS was probably worse.

Not that this counters anything you said nor that relevant to this topic, but as a nerd I am genuinely curious if this was true. I used to write lowlat audio stuff for iOS so I was well aware of the situation Android vs iOS (and because of my large interest in audio Android in general always makes me puke in my mouth a little -- like it is one of those neat little hidden indicators that while Apple is a hardware company, Google is fundamentally an ad company -- they really don't give a shit other than prioritizing ad delivery).

Anyway, Windows itself obviously has solid low-lat audio services, was it really that bad in the mobile stuff?

No. Ironically, you're probably not old enough. AIM predated any meaningful adoption of SMS in the US by a long time. In the 90s, I was one of the youngest to carry a cell phone (13) -- I wasn't rich either, just a nerd. In the mid to late 90s that was really the nadir of cheap cell phone deals, you could get a phone for a penny and the monthly service for $15-20 for month if you paid $0.15 per minute or so. No SMS though, the phone didn't even support it (That was an all analog AMPS phone - The next year I got a shitty CDMA phone, but still no SMS).

I didn't have a text capable phone until after 2000.

Meanwhile, AIM well I carried the same ID since 1994 or so.

I'm not quite sure I believe that a lot of people use the X primitives. The alternative to Gtk and Qt is most often not raw Xlib. There are alternative toolkits such as Motif, Xt. And then graphics abstractions such as SDL. Obviously all of these (including Gtk and Qt) use at least some of the X primitives in their rendering or themeing engines, but direct use of Xlib primitives is quite rare. And I think the whole point of the argument is that the commonly used primitives today are things like XRENDER, which aren't really primitives since they are an extension. Precisely the point being made.

Basically, name me an app that uses solely X11 primitives without the use of any extensions and no overlying library over libX11 (and no, xclock doesn't count)

Imagine if the creator of the ideal windowing system wasn't aborted in the 1960s.

I'm going to give the article a pass on this. They explain the genesis of the Snapchat dot codes. They don't explicitly say that the FB and snapchat codes are based on QR, they do genericize the term QR a bit, but that is all.

The problem is of course barcode isn't quite right either. The term 2D or Matrix codes never really caught on (of course the FB symbol isn't a matrix code either).

Further, the "dreaded" is a bit of poorly worded editorializing. But I recall a few years ago when they started popping up, that whily maybe not dreaded, people thought they were a stupid gimmick (for all the reasons mentioned in the article) and many times intrusive or tasteless. Dreaded similar to fucking blue LEDs. That is, to say, Blue LEDs are useful, but it was damn fucking annoying when a bright one was put on damn everything they didn't belong.

> Since 'beginning-of-file' isn't really something you can reduce to a token...

Of course you can, generate a token immediately upon opening a file. Nothing special about b-o-f or b-o-l. Similar to EOF.

> Not sure where you get the patronizing tone from.

This would be a start:

> Most people doesn't have your or my kind of work. And even those that do will be able to use their phone on any screen at some point.

Nice assumption there.

> The numbers speak for themselves both when it comes to webstats, sales stats, usage etc.

How so... You make it sound so obvious. Webstats, sales stats, usage... you'll need to elaborate. The sales stats of smartphones vs desktop/laptop really doesn't by itself prove declining use or a shift in use. In my industry (which is not tech BTW, so stuff that notion), almost everything across levels in mostly desktop and average age of devices nearing 10 years - this refutes the relevance of sales stats. Primary software is all "native desktop", and real desktop, not some fucking Electron app, not a web app. There are players in this industry that are trying to shift to tablet/smartphone with cloud apps, but they have made little actual conversion - ie it is a rounding error. Webstats are not an issue.

No the numbers don't speak for themselves. Continue implying I'm an idiot that knows nothing outside tech (ha!), or explain.

> some people are going directly to smartphones instead.

"some people" are always doing something.

> primary device the mobile takes over more and more of that work. The other argument is that mobile devices have augmented many things without significantly replacing existing systems. And really, while that is all fine, if critical things are still dependent on the "old tech" than it is a counter to the significance of a mobile invasion. From personal experience, in a few industries, in 2017, you could make all the smartphones disappear and people would be sad and there would be some significant efficiency losses, but things would move one. On the other hand, make the old PC infrastructure disappear and everything goes to hell. That I felt was, in part, the gist of the OP's arguments and I agree.

I think you're a prick. You certainly come off that way in text.

> You see that once you have to build solutions for the masses.

Oh and I'm going to opine based on your generalizing assertions that your definition of masses must be more limited than you think. Unless you mean masses as "media consumers", in which case I'll just say it is not a small industry, but it is a minor part of the economy.

Why this happens has been explained, but more generally what you posted really doesn't prove anything at hand really. The dictionary created from scratch could be made an updateable view by hooking __setitem__.

If you gonna contradict with "are you sure?" for something so objectively answered by the source, it might be helpful to think if your example actually demonstrates what you're trying to prove.

As someone that used to do kernel and RTOS development for many years and then migrated into web and app dev for a living because it allowed a more flexible lifestyle for paying the bills - this equivocation is disingenuous.

There is some room for disagreement, but I agree with most of the following. https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Da...

Kernel development, similar to algorithmic trading (incl HFT), some types of games, various embedded, actual production compilers etc requires a higher level of rigorous understanding from a variety of areas compared to the vast majority of webapps (often CRUD) and most software that IT professional work on. Kernel dev similar to other performance critical or safety critical systems has a much reduced set of tradeoffs and more numerous constraints, for one.

Of course, most applications require knowledge in disciplines such as design and domain specific knowledge that kernel development does not require, but that is besides the point. It requires a different type of thinking overall (one that is more unforgiving to lack of rigor and not as open to subjectivity cf. design) that low-level systems development/engineering and most app development are virtually unrelated disciplines outside of trivial similarities relating to them both targeting computers.

I don't say this to discourage anyone. But these reductions are unhelpful and outright condescending to those that might struggle to learn (oh it's just a slightly different domain than your JS TODO app....um no it's not.. it's harder for you to learn because it is actually harder and more complex).