seanx

There was a book on this a few years back: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140167129/jimloyshom...

Sony Duo 11. I have one as my primary dev machine and it works pretty well + I can play Civ 5 on the plane.

Well there is me. I wanted a dev machine that I could use as a desktop, laptop or occasional tablet. I ended up with a Sony Vaio Duo which is pretty good at what I want.

Or there is my (leaving) boss who has a laptop, desktop and iPad but is now going to a W8 tablet, probably a Surface Pro or Helix.

Or there is my (incoming) boss who has a desktop and an android tablet but would prefer a single device.

When I show my Duo off to people, no-one has said "what a bad idea". What they have said is "how much" and "can I have it".

While the surface pro itself may not be the right device, there are a lot of people who would like a good convertible device.

How the hell can a doctors visit run to $800?

I'd drop serious dollars on one of these if it had more ram and storage.

Windows 8 supports multitouch trackpads on new computers. Many older laptops can also get gesture support with the correct drivers. My 18 month old laptop has pinch support + all the edge swipe gestures.

For our CEO and GM, that's true. Add a citrix client and it could be an only computer for the rest of our staff except for me.

This post would have made a lot more sense if I had the slightest idea who any of the sports players or teams were.

Driving to ski fields will be fun:)

A friend of mine had $3m stolen by his business partner who simply wrote out $500k cheques and took them to the bank. The bank oked the cheques despite knowing that he had no signing authority.

Once it all came to light, the bank then sued my friend and drove him into bankruptcy.

Fuck banks

Could you do this with a high strength magnetic ring?

Your blog doesn't support comments. Is that a feature too?

As a developer I sympathise, but as a user I don't. I can understand not supporting IE 6 and 7, but not supporting 8 and 9 is not a feature, it's a lack of feature. It's saying that you aren't prepared to work with me the way I want to work.

It may be the right choice, but don't sell as that it's not.

For all you ever wanted to know about removing drm: http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/

Win Phone 7 Mango (should be released later this month, can get it now if you know where to look) has an IE9 based browser that supports html 5 etc

The moment a decent windows 8 tablet comes out, the iPads in our company will be gone.

The thing is that you will have a choice. I'll be able to get a 17" hex core, dual HD power machine while my wife/kids can have a arm powered tablet. Both machines will be able to run the same metro apps.

Personally, I like power tablets. I got an android instead of an iPad (I gave away my iPad) because of the added functionality (usb in, hdni out). If I could have a windows tablet instead, I'd be a very happy camper.

I have come to the conclusion that 0 based indexing is basically building "off by one errors" as a language feature.

The fact that for(int i = 0; i < length; i++) is nicer than for(int i = 1; i <= length; i++) is irrelevant. The c style for loop is designed to make the complex case easier while making the common case harder. It also makes some compiler optimisations impossible

A better for loop would be something like for(int i = start to end)

However with 0 based indexing you end up with e.g in delphi:

for i := 0 to count-1 ... which is an open invitation to error.

In other words, the for loop construct should not be used as an argument for or against 0 based indexing, it should be derived from the indexed used.

It's different in new Zealand. If you don't like the waiting list you can have private insuanace or pay yourself for a private hospital. We did this when my wife had a melanoma. Waiting list was 3 months (non urgent) so we went private. It cost $4000 (operating room, surgeon, nurses etc).

Australia requires a different version of many games because it has more stringent age ratings. This means that a separate distribution agreement is required for Oz (and thus for new Zealand because the Yanks can't tell us apart). This translated into higher prices because, well just because.

The short answer is a vpn into the US (or nearly anywhere). Prices become magically cheaper and hulu starts working.

If driverless cars start reducing the car road toll then motorbikes will start to look really dangerous:(.

I suppose we could get self driving motorbikes but that would be missing the point of riding.

IIUI Anders isn't suggesting that null isn't necessary, but that you should be able to say in code: this type does not allow nulls (or this type does allow nulls). We have this with value types, int or int?, but not with reference types. Adding this in at the start would have removed many chances for bugs.

E.g. I frequently need to check if params are null and then throw an exception at run time. If I could declare a param as requiring a value then the error could usually be caught at compile time.

>> WinPho is bad

Win Phone is fantastic but incomplete. I.e. not all the api's are there but the bits that are there work well.

I haven't used the latest xcode, but when I was developing for iPhone (2-3 years ago), it was god awful.

I haven't done android dev yet but the feedback I get from friends doing it on Windows is that it is a major PITA getting set up. ..

Why USA only? Makes it unusable for me:(.

And if delphi had complete GC, i would probably still be using it for new projects.

> I like simplicity. Simplicity tends to perform well, and being simple also means it has little space for problems.

I like simplicity in my code, I am far less concerned about simplicity in the underlying libraries that I use.

GC makes my code simpler and more understandable. I use manual memory allocation when I absolutely need to, and GC languages when I can. In most cases, that means I use a GC language.

Personally, I'm not an android, or open source, advocate. I don't use it at the moment and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to someone else. All the phone oses I have have used are flawed to some extent and picking one is a matter of deciding which flaws you can tolerate or not notice.

Gruber doesn't care about openness either, he uses an iPhone. His argument is is simply a way to bash android without addressing anything that is substantive to most people.

Last month he was trolling that android wasn't open because motorola hadn't provided a froyo update to an older phone, completely ignoring the fact that the comunity had already provided multiple updates.

Next month he will be complaining that android isn't open because google hasn't provided the source to something else.

To most people, it doesn't matter if android is 65% or 70% open. What matters is how well it meets their needs. If openness helps meet those needs then it's important, if it doesn't then it's irrelevant.

Finally, if Gruber was interested in openness, he would allow comments on his blog. Without that, he is just a troll with a pulpit.

"The majority of skilled developers prefer Macs or Linux."

Do you have any data to back that up or is it just an uninformed opinion? In my experience the majority of skilled developers use windows but I wouldn't try to extrapolate from my experience (as a windows developer) to a univeral truth.

There are reasons for mandating windows (or osx or *nix) devices. Whether they are valid reasons depends on the circumstances. Personally I prefer to develop on the system that I am developing for but that is not always feasible (ios) or desirable (anything involving xcode).

Gruber is an Apple fundamentalist, preaching to the choir. There is only one true way and all facts will be interpreted or ignored in favour of that way.

Dissension is not allowed in his church, if you disagree with what he says then do so elsewhere.

If you need an analysis of what Apple is doing, or where they are going then he might be good at that (I don't know, I don't care) but you absolutely cannot rely on him for unbalanced coverage on anything else.

Arguing about whether google marketing is deceptive is a waste of time. ALL marketing is deceptive. Go watch an Apple keynote for example.

Arguing about whether android is "open" is also a waste of time. Open is not a bool, it's a float. If Linux is 100% and Windows is 0% then Android is maybe 60% and ios is somewhere in the single digits.

In the past 14 months, I have used WM6.5, ios, Android and Win Phone 7. The only reason I could use Android is that it is open enough that it could be installed on my HD2, a WM6.5 phone.

Open is not a bool, it's a float. Android may not be "open" but it is still far more open than IOS.

Also, some recent MS libraries for .net are released as open source (e.g. MVC) and consequently work just fine on Mono when released.