World: r3wp

Gee; and posted before April 1.   Vista not gaining; surprise surprise. 
 Can we finally start to shrink a monopoly?

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/operating_systems/windows_a_monopoly_shakes.html

it would be so wonderful if they would just start from scratch with 
a new OS. just from scratch. screw compatibility. it will be a pain 
for a few years, but it will do them and us good in the end. I know 
they can do that.

Or ...  start using an OS that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and 
where the primary concern is better software (or maybe, simple "Hey 
look what I wrote ... I'm smart"), not lock in.  :)

I still hold MS directly responsible for the early demise of OS/2. 
  Well, that and Homer Simpson's Compuglobalhypermeganet

I'm not so sure, MS with its current configuration can make a good 
OS from scratch. Too many cooks.

They have plenty of great engineers. It's how they use them that's 
wrong. They could produce 10 times more software than they do now, 
if things were organized right. Things seem to work out quite well 
in the gaming department, from what I hear from various XBox gamers.

I love Vista  and think it gets a bum rap.

I guess it burned me too many times in the less than 10 times I've 
used it.  Note;  I only diss MS due to the predatory practises of 
"suffer no other software to live".  That is just bad for everyone. 
 MS included - how can they beg, borrow and steal innovation if no 
one is around to innovate for them.  And take a close look; name 
me one innovation that has come out of MS.  One.  With 50,000 employees 
you'd think one or two original ideas would have escaped by now.

popup menus

I kinda figured there had to be at least one.  So I'll stand corrected, 
but not change of stance.  :)

http://www.google.com/virgle/index.htmlGoogle on Mars.

Virgin and Google  virgle.   Sounds pretty cool.  And sounds like 
Mars may end up being an MS free zone  :)

Alas REBOL may also be excluded.   OR I'm being sucked into a well 
orchestrated April Fools Joke.  Have to wait till tomorrow to see.

LOL 1. of april. I didn't connect it with that project until now. 
Let's see tomorrow. :-)

From the bottom of  the FAQ page ... this is realy a well done hoax/not 
hoax ... can't tell
http://www.google.com/virgle/error.html

You....can't....tell???  Brian...Brian....Brian....dude...


We feel that ensuring the survival of the human race by helping it 
colonize a new planet is both a moral good in and of itself and also 
the most likely method of ensuring the survival of our best – okay, 
fine, only -- base of web search volume and advertising inventory,” 
Page added. “So, you know, it's, like, win-win.

Well I'm gullible; and I'm staying that way.  Innocent until proven 
guilty.  :)

: )

Lua has a module for VisualStudio ... http://www.itrango.com/vslua/
 as does Haskell ... I can't imagine it is a help to Haskell but 
it could be good for Lua.  Then again, some people might move to 
Haskell from F# for VisualStudio....  http://www.haskell.org/visualhaskell/
   and I think I saw an APress book on F#  http://research.microsoft.com/fsharp/vsmode.aspx

IDolEct  is not the same as Ipse Dixit Etcetera

idiolect, that is ... guy can't even type ... or spell ...

Now this is cute - it is almost Rebolish ...   http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/markaby/
But it also is not HAML

Pop-up menus came from RISC OS

Sigh. Why should MS or all the others create a better OS if a new 
one is already available?

Remember that it takes a decade to do such a thing

For those that collect programming languages;  HoltSoft the developers 
of Turing have gone out of business.  Dr Holt has moved on.  Turing 
is in wide spread use amongst Ontario High Schools.  (Sad, my home 
province pumped out an entire generation of programmers of a dead 
training language)  Anyway, they had posted it free for non-commercial 
use  on their website, which is now shutdown.   The admin of compsci.ca 
has posted it to their forum board.  This could well be a time limited 
offer.   I don't know all the details of Turing, but this version 
was commercial and proprietary before the shutdown announcement and 
posting of the free copies.   http://compsci.ca/holtsoft/

thanks.  Was it used only in Grade 14?  My fear is that UNICON could 
become a 'collectible' ( we pronounce it as in 'honey-comb' - sweet 
and well-constructed ).  No 'but the users suck big-time" jokes, 
OK?

I'm not real sure, but some of the people on the compsci forum mention 
learning it right it grade 9, some in 10, some in 11.  Again, it 
seems to be Ontario.   Let's hope UnIcon lives to a ripe old age. 
 Turing, not so sure; it was designed for teaching but as we all 
know; you're first is hard to forget and it may take on a life of 
its own, similar to the whole Pascal field.

and so I find TXL at http://www.txl.ca/

Ch v6.0 is out.  Slower than 5.5 on my Win98 machine, but they fixed 
a few bugs, probably added others.

I still get freaked out by Ch.   Mixing shell, C and C++ at a console 
feels weird
C:/ch/> char *s = `date`
C:/ch/> s
Wed Apr 16 03:33:37 Eastern Daylight Time 2008
C:/ch/> free(s)

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/04/18/commodore_lawsuits/

I read a Danish newsarticle today that said that a technology group 
that works for the Danish government suggested that all PCs would 
have to undergo periodical physical examinations in order to be usable 
on the internet, quite like we have to put our cars through examinations 
every X kilometres to make sure they are safe to ride. It's hard 
to grasp how incredibly stupid that suggestion is.

Since we now have a broken patient journal system thanks to government 
policies on how such software should be built, as predicted by 12 
year olds, I wouldn't put it out of the question that they would 
actually try to do this.

We'll know what happened when we don't hear from you any more :-)

I know what you mean. I worked in the Dutch government organisation 
that was supposed to push our electronic patient files

I'm confused, what would be an example of what would "fail" the computer?

All I can say is, if my car has an OS, and it was Windows, well....you 
all know that should not be allowed on the streets...

Interesting - Apple buys PA-Semi, producer of low voltage PPC chips 
- http://www.osnews.com/story/19672/Apple_Buys_Chip_Designer

Reichart, the problem is of course that you can't possibly tell that. 
Would my Macbook not be OK'ed, because it does not run Norton Antivirus? 
We could write a few thousand more examples like that. Perhaps a 
couple of million.

Looks like the OLPC road is getting more bumpy. I don't get however 
how this will help the Sugar UI by running WinXP underneath:

http://www.thestate.com/technology-wire/story/383365.html

If they had made the OLPC from edible components, it would have been 
more useful.

maybe the weakening USD make it so much tougher to achieve the goal.

It's another trainwreck

The weakening USD would only make it more affordable, though

My assumptions are as follows:

1. the same USD can now buy less stuffs


2. weak USD has cause oil price to go up and in turn this translate 
to higher manufacturing production cost for the components.


3. The weak USD can now import less components from the manufacturing 
countries like Korea, China etc.


It is with the above logic that I said it will be tougher to achieve 
the OLPC @ US$100 goal.

I may be wrong though.

4.  Weaker USD may also mean less "nice people" funding OLPC out 
of goodness of heart.

A weaker USD is the best way to get rid of national debt fast.

MS Mesh concept (kind of IOS NG), ironically presented by guy called 
Ori Amiga - http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=399964
(looked at the low res video)

A weaker US dollar makes US products a more attractive offer.

Yes, the design work is done in the US, so that gets cheaper to pay 
for foreign countries

Production is in Asia and it's shipped all over the world, so it 
would be silly to tunnel that through the US

The tag price in dollars may go up, but if the rate between Asian 
currencies and the currency of the buying country stays the same, 
it would compensate it

http://ejohn.org/blog/running-java-in-javascript/

Well, there you go. :-)