Open source drivers get updated as the kernel gets updated, and old hardware continues to work long after the original manufacturer can no longer be bothered to support it. The notion that open source OSes don't support old hardware, or software, is completely and demonstrably false.
The Sparcstation typically went directly under the monitor. That added little to the amount of desk space used while increasing the monitor height slightly.
These days, the prevalence of LCDs makes the design less practical.
The whole system relies on everybody, everywhere, having a piece of filtering software on their PCs working at all times. There's no conceivable mechanism to get anything like that to work, even if it provided value to the people running it - which this doesn't.
Actually, Python2.6 is slated to include a tool which will update purely syntactic differences to Python 3 automatically. There are some issues it won't be able to fix, but Python2.6 will have a mode which will generate warnings about those so that they can be fixed well before Python 3's release.
The original Prince of Persia was originally created for the Apple ][ in 1989, so naturally the computer did a good job of it. All the beautifully animated character graphics were an evolution of Jordan Mechner's work on Karateka.
It is on Windows, in any case. But since UTF-8 doesn't have different byte orders, there's no actual need for a marker; it's just a few wasted bytes of information which should either be derived from the text data or stored elsewhere.
Except that he isn't limiting how you can program in Python. lambdas are still in Python 3 if you really want to use them. But for most applications of lambda in Python, list comprehensions are superior. They're not only easier to read, but also provide better performance.
Considering the vast gulf of language flexibility between Python and actual "bondage and discipline" languages such as Pascal or OCaml, the notion it should be counted among them is difficult to take seriously.
Nvidia has provided Linux drivers for the AMD64 platform for some time now. Equivalent open source drivers would be preferable, of course, but not for lack of 64-bit support in this case.
Numbers and strings aren't interchangeable. What's the correct answer to 1 + "foo" ? A weakly typed language will likely make up some value, but I don't want to second-guess what that value might be. An explicit conversion step that turns strings into numbers is a better way of telling the language what I mean, and providing an error check for invalid numbers at the same time.
If a single, consistent GUI was important, we'd all be using Macs.
It's not.
A specific, "must-have" desktop application that only runs on Linux would drive desktop adoption. But since open-source developers tend to make their applications portable, and portability leads to Windows versions, it's difficult to point to an application one must have Linux for.
But as the desktop gets increasingly less relevant, I expect Linux to become increasingly important due to that same portability. Perhaps one day Windows will match it, but not anytime soon.
FLAC decoding is purely integer-based. In addition, it is one of the least CPU intensive lossless audio codecs available in terms of decoding. Any iPod has enough power to decode them. Apple has simply chosen not to support it.
Lossless audio compression means that any PCM data fed to it can be restored later, without loss of any kind. The amount of compression varies depending on the PCM data itself. Any loss incurred before getting that PCM stream (such as sampling the original analog audio) can't be helped. It's not magic, after all.
TIFF does allow different pages to be different dimensions, and is extensible enough to hold just about anything imaginable via a nonstandard tag or two. The real hangup is that good TIFF handlers aren't as straightforward as a simple paging JPEG viewer, and the effort isn't really worth it.
The standard UNIX behavior of "mv/tmp/foo//bar/foo/" is to make "/bar/foo/foo/" if "/bar/foo/" is already a directory. If "/bar/foo" is a non-directory file, mv(1) will refuse to remove it, even with --force.
*/Preferences - standard place for apps to store their user specific settings instead of hidden . files in the main user home directory
Which user? One could expand it to/Preferences/user1/settings and so forth, but how is that better than/home/user1/.settings ? Having all the.settings files in a home directory means that backing up, restoring and transferring/home saves all those files at the same time. Thus, it is less fragile than storing them anywhere else.
Personally, I don't back up hundreds of GB. My important data fits on 2 single layer DVDs and I do a regular(ish) backup of that, the rest of the contents of my hard drives is stuff that can be downloaded, and stuff like my music library (a reasonably large amount of Vorbis data) which, whilst it would be a PITA it can be re-ripped from the original CDs.
How much is your time worth, though? A lot of data can be recreated if given enough time to work on it. However, I'd rather buy an external drive as a mirror for all that audio so that I won't have to re-rip it should my internal drive fail. Given that hard drive capacities are growing faster than my music collection, it's really not very expensive to do.
It does have the hoursepower to do complete PS2 emulation in real time, especially if you use the Cell and RSX chips to help.
I'm sure Sony claimed they could pull it off at some point, since they tend to wildly overstate the capabilities of their devices while early in development. But in reality, the Cell's massively parallel architecture isn't well suited for emulation (a very serial problem) and HLEing the entire Graphics Synthesizer to offload it to the RSX chip isn't likely.
But from a less technical perspective, Sony's engineers have had a long time to try and offload the PS2 functions from those chips and avoid this PR headache. If they had any intention of finishing such emulation, they would've done so by now.
It wasn't done completely at the software level; the PS3 could emulate the CPU (somewhat), but still needed the PS2's graphics chip. Now that the graphics chip is being removed, backwards compatibility is no longer possible. The PS3 simply doesn't have enough power to emulate the entire PS2 anywhere near real time.
Given the success of the DS, I felt the Wii's dominance was assured for many of the same reasons. Both are aimed at broad demographics, both are differentiated from the competition (in terms of possible control schemes, especially), both are cheaper than the competition and both feature real backwards compatibility.
My biggest surprise is that so many analysts and 3rd parties were caught off guard by the Wii.
If any of us started distributing Id's copyrighted materials in violation of their license, I'm sure it'd take less than a week for their legal team to put an end to it.
And I'm sure they wouldn't be very nice about it, either.
If you don't want your apps disappearing from the other screen when switching virtual desktops, why not make them sticky with your window manager? I would expect that'd be less of a headache than classic-style X11 multihead.
Slashdot Mirror
You want to see human ancestors morphing into man, you got em.
Open source drivers get updated as the kernel gets updated, and old hardware continues to work long after the original manufacturer can no longer be bothered to support it. The notion that open source OSes don't support old hardware, or software, is completely and demonstrably false.
The Sparcstation typically went directly under the monitor. That added little to the amount of desk space used while increasing the monitor height slightly.
These days, the prevalence of LCDs makes the design less practical.
"Help & Preferences" -> "Index" -> "General", then uncheck "Show Tags".
I turned them off a long time ago since they provide no value.
They'd like it to work, but it won't. Ever.
The whole system relies on everybody, everywhere, having a piece of filtering software on their PCs working at all times. There's no conceivable mechanism to get anything like that to work, even if it provided value to the people running it - which this doesn't.
Actually, Python2.6 is slated to include a tool which will update purely syntactic differences to Python 3 automatically. There are some issues it won't be able to fix, but Python2.6 will have a mode which will generate warnings about those so that they can be fixed well before Python 3's release.
The original Prince of Persia was originally created for the Apple ][ in 1989, so naturally the computer did a good job of it. All the beautifully animated character graphics were an evolution of Jordan Mechner's work on Karateka.
It is on Windows, in any case. But since UTF-8 doesn't have different byte orders, there's no actual need for a marker; it's just a few wasted bytes of information which should either be derived from the text data or stored elsewhere.
Except that he isn't limiting how you can program in Python. lambdas are still in Python 3 if you really want to use them. But for most applications of lambda in Python, list comprehensions are superior. They're not only easier to read, but also provide better performance.
Considering the vast gulf of language flexibility between Python and actual "bondage and discipline" languages such as Pascal or OCaml, the notion it should be counted among them is difficult to take seriously.
Nvidia has provided Linux drivers for the AMD64 platform for some time now. Equivalent open source drivers would be preferable, of course, but not for lack of 64-bit support in this case.
Numbers and strings aren't interchangeable. What's the correct answer to 1 + "foo" ? A weakly typed language will likely make up some value, but I don't want to second-guess what that value might be. An explicit conversion step that turns strings into numbers is a better way of telling the language what I mean, and providing an error check for invalid numbers at the same time.
I figured it was only a matter of time before music that doesn't sound any worse than CD audio would be grouped in with the $400 volume knob people.
It shows how far standards have fallen in the name of expediency.
I expect they're simply splitting the original book into 2 films rather than making up all new material. Quite a lot happens in it, after all.
If a single, consistent GUI was important, we'd all be using Macs.
It's not.
A specific, "must-have" desktop application that only runs on Linux would drive desktop adoption. But since open-source developers tend to make their applications portable, and portability leads to Windows versions, it's difficult to point to an application one must have Linux for.
But as the desktop gets increasingly less relevant, I expect Linux to become increasingly important due to that same portability. Perhaps one day Windows will match it, but not anytime soon.
FLAC decoding is purely integer-based. In addition, it is one of the least CPU intensive lossless audio codecs available in terms of decoding. Any iPod has enough power to decode them. Apple has simply chosen not to support it.
Lossless audio compression means that any PCM data fed to it can be restored later, without loss of any kind. The amount of compression varies depending on the PCM data itself. Any loss incurred before getting that PCM stream (such as sampling the original analog audio) can't be helped. It's not magic, after all.
TIFF does allow different pages to be different dimensions, and is extensible enough to hold just about anything imaginable via a nonstandard tag or two. The real hangup is that good TIFF handlers aren't as straightforward as a simple paging JPEG viewer, and the effort isn't really worth it.
The standard UNIX behavior of "mv /tmp/foo/ /bar/foo/" is to make "/bar/foo/foo/" if "/bar/foo/" is already a directory. If "/bar/foo" is a non-directory file, mv(1) will refuse to remove it, even with --force.
Which user? One could expand it to /Preferences/user1/settings and so forth, but how is that better than /home/user1/.settings ? Having all the .settings files in a home directory means that backing up, restoring and transferring /home saves all those files at the same time. Thus, it is less fragile than storing them anywhere else.
In short, /Preferences is a stupid idea.
How much is your time worth, though? A lot of data can be recreated if given enough time to work on it. However, I'd rather buy an external drive as a mirror for all that audio so that I won't have to re-rip it should my internal drive fail. Given that hard drive capacities are growing faster than my music collection, it's really not very expensive to do.
I'm sure Sony claimed they could pull it off at some point, since they tend to wildly overstate the capabilities of their devices while early in development. But in reality, the Cell's massively parallel architecture isn't well suited for emulation (a very serial problem) and HLEing the entire Graphics Synthesizer to offload it to the RSX chip isn't likely.
But from a less technical perspective, Sony's engineers have had a long time to try and offload the PS2 functions from those chips and avoid this PR headache. If they had any intention of finishing such emulation, they would've done so by now.
It wasn't done completely at the software level; the PS3 could emulate the CPU (somewhat), but still needed the PS2's graphics chip. Now that the graphics chip is being removed, backwards compatibility is no longer possible. The PS3 simply doesn't have enough power to emulate the entire PS2 anywhere near real time.
Given the success of the DS, I felt the Wii's dominance was assured for many of the same reasons. Both are aimed at broad demographics, both are differentiated from the competition (in terms of possible control schemes, especially), both are cheaper than the competition and both feature real backwards compatibility.
My biggest surprise is that so many analysts and 3rd parties were caught off guard by the Wii.
If any of us started distributing Id's copyrighted materials in violation of their license, I'm sure it'd take less than a week for their legal team to put an end to it.
And I'm sure they wouldn't be very nice about it, either.
If you don't want your apps disappearing from the other screen when switching virtual desktops, why not make them sticky with your window manager? I would expect that'd be less of a headache than classic-style X11 multihead.