Also, from rumors I heard, the HP engineers who were working with Intel on the design of the Merced got fed up with how things were going there. That might have something to do with why they kinda wandered off on their own and did the McKinley design. (Note: this is rumor mixed with my personal speculation - don't take this as the official story.)
NT is a better design than 95/98 - that doesn't make it "good". Too much stuff running in ring-0. Bears a bit too much similarity to DOS and VMS (and win95/98) for my taste. Still tends to crash and bluescreen more than a "high-end" OS should. Win2k doesn't seem to be doing much better, and with all the extra bloat... well, you know how that goes.
Also, Windows 95/98 and NT are still very tied to 32-bit systems, esp. the ix86. Yes, NT got ported to PPC and MIPS (both of which are dead projects) and AXP (which apparently is now being abandoned as well). It ran in 32-bit mode on all the processors it ran on (fine for PPC, but AXP and recent MIPS designs are 64-bit, and that wastes a lot of potential).
To go 64-bit, Microsoft will probably end up redoing the whole API all over again, and all the apps will have to be rewritten to use the new APIs. It won't be pretty. (Think Win16->Win32, but probably an order of magnitude more painful.)
I wanna see G4 systems as badly as the next guy (I'm not a Mac fan, but I think the PPC chips are pretty cool), but the Merced has its roots in a whole new design. 64-bit bus, VLIW instruction set... there're a lot of changes. It's a big wait and see for now. McKinley will probably be significantly faster than the Merced tho... so don't go jumping to any conclusions about who'll beat who.
Ummm. I don't know quite how to respond to that, other than to say that YES, Apple developed TrueType. Microsoft licensed it from them for Windows 3.1, and has used it since then, but Apple did develop it. I'm not sure exactly how "open" a standard it is, because Apple expects a licensing fee to use their TrueType stuff... I dunno if a cleanroom implementation like FreeType gets by that tho. (I hope so...)
In many cases, WINE is the beter option. Some of the code in some apps is just native x86 instructions, and can be executed directly, with the library calls intercepted and mapped to WINE internal calls. (Take StarCraft for example - it's quite playable on my P100 in Wine, because all it does is ask DirectDraw and DirectSound for output contexts, then output directly to the devices - no Win32 calls, afaik). Bochs and VMware both emulate a complete x86 CPU (slow because x86 is not a fully-virtualizable architecture, so a lot of work has to be done in software). For some things, a fully-emulated environment might be better, but if you care about performance, WINE's way of doing things may be the best option.
and by the way.. it's nice that you can make people feel bad for changing their minds.. thats pretty weak
Well, I for one would agree with the previous guy - it's funny how quickly they'll change their minds about using animals to help humans when it involves a member of their family. Then, it's morals be damned, a human life is worth more! Maybe it's a little mean, but it's very telling how strong these people's morals really are. (i.e., not particularly)
at the outpouring of heartless indifference so common in the Slashdot community. Anyone critical of your fun is a PETA nut or meddling do gooder, it would seem.
Were you even AT LWE? The penguins (only 2 of them) were not being abused or mistreated, as far as I could tell. They seemed reasonably relaxed, or at least as relaxed as an animal could be in an unfamiliar setting. But certain people are making it out to be way worse than it really was.
At this website, the symbol of the penguin represents not Linux, but rather what a cold bunch you are. Sadly, the only warmth found at Slashdot is generated by the myraid, pointless flamewars.
I'm oh-so-impressed by your razor-sharp wit, Sir.
I wish the PETA-type pseudo-animal-rights people would get over themselves. At least the real animal-rights people aren't such media hounds.
Well, I was at the show. I'm certainly no expert on all things penguin, but the penguin that was there when I wandered over to the booth seemed pretty happy. ESR walked over and petted the penguin a bit, as did I. Now, these little guys have fair-sized beaks, and I think if they were annoyed with the situation, they'd be using them. Just MHO.
PETA wouldn't be so bad if they did something other than raise money to fund their organization. Only a small percentage of the money they raise actually goes to the causes theey claim to support. If you're gonna do the whole "animal rights" thing, at least join into an organization that's serious about something other than its own funding.
Note: I think a lot of the "animal rights" stuff is bullshit - like mink for mink coats? They didn't go hunt them, they were bred with that purpose in mind... they're not destroying wild populations that way (now anyway, it may not have been so in the past). Animal rights folks should be a little more choosy about their causes, and I think the groups that are SERIOUS about animal rights probably are moreso than PETA.
I've read the "Guys' Guide to Geek Girls", and it doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know. (Not that knowing any of it makes a damn bit of difference. When chicks hate you, chicks hate you...)
I think most of us have had SOME dealing with Windows. I know I have. "Both angles"? Which other angle are we looking at it from? Windows is fragmented, but Bill & Co. are pointing fingers at everyone else saying "Look how fragmented is!" Linux has been changing pretty rapidly - improving hardware support, gaining support from hardware manufacturers, and gaining some serious applications.
How much have things changed in the Windows world of late? Not much - Windows 9x went to 98, and it still sucks - they just shoved in IE and a few bugfixes (which should have been in there LONG AGO) and USB drivers and a few other minor things. No significant changes in the GUI. It still crashes. It still bluescreens and hangs up and acts erratically. Not a huge change. NT still sucks as a serious server. No big changes there either.
Linux has its fragmentation, but for the most part, all the major distributions are staying with glibc2.x now, keeping up with the latest XFree86 releases, and there're utilities to convert packages for your distribution of choice. LSB will hopefully pull that together even more.
Linux is trying to move AWAY from fragmentation. Bill & Co. just don't care - fragmented or no, they're going to claim what they want, and market the crap out of their low-quality product.
I think this puts it best: "If buildings were built like software, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy 95% of civilization." That definitely applies to Microsoft software.
Note how much is being used as cache. In Linux, the way the memory management system works, memory listed as "free" is effectively wasted - better to have it used as cache.:)
MVS has a much better system (and I heard someone mention EROS) by which root doesn't exist, and root's functions are distributed among several admin users.
I believe that this has some relationship to the capabilities system that's been (partially) implemented in the Linux kernel. Does anyone know when we'll see Linux's capabilities system put to good use? It'll be nice to not have to make so much stuff u+s anymore.
It's really not any kind of straight across comparison. All the BogoMIPS count indicates is the length of a particular timing loop used in the kernel. If you take the BogoMIPS rating from even a pre-MMX Pentium and compare it to a Pentium/MMX, they will not match up MHz-for-MHz, neither processor or system bus speed. The same applies for all other families of processors as well. It's really not very meaningful at all. That's what the 'Bogo' means - as in 'bogus'.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The chip manufacturer ALWAYS makes a set of reference drivers that work with the chip in question on a reference design board (which most consumer boards don't deviate from much, if at all) so I'd expect them to provide reference Linux drivers. I for one hope this board's FOR REAL, and I hope the drivers will be open source. Here's hopin'...
They *REQUIRE* Windows because the drivers use some funky API, DirectX I believe, to simulate a DSP in the processor. GODS!
No, they require a software process running in the background that knows how to download DSP code to the device so it can do its job. All a WinModem is is a DSP with a little RAM wired to a couple phone jacks. And DirectX is an API for GAMES. It has nothing to do with soft modems.
Some of us care. I don't like Windows' default look - it's ugly. And there's not a hell of a lot that I can do to make it "un-ugly". For the "average (l)user", if they're happy with the default look, great. For those of us who like to customize our environment... well, for us, there's X. To each their own, I guess.
Re:I'm looking forward to the day they ditch X
on
Some KDE news
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· Score: 1
If you're thinking about Windows' mouse input setup where you can see the mouse pointer move, even generally when the OS crashes, I'd say don't waste your time. All it does is setup a separate process to handle the mouse pointer motion... great, but the motion and button-press action messages still end up in the same message queue for each app as they would normally, so all you gain is the APPEARANCE of better responsiveness. Pretty worthless IMO.
Re:I'm looking forward to the day they ditch X
on
Some KDE news
·
· Score: 1
I guess this means you don't know what XAA is, and you don't know how XFree 4 and AX/MetroX are set up.
XAA (X Acceleration Architecture) is being reworked by the XFree86 Group for XFree 4 to help speed up many common drawing operations. A version of it is already implemented in XFree 3.x's XF86_SVGA server.
MetroX/AcceleratedX do not have "device-specific" servers, they have modular drivers that the server loads at runtime to support the display device(s) in your system. XFree86 4.0 will work in the same way (with an ABI so that modules can be provided that will work on XFree86, no matter what x86-based Unix(-like) system you're using).
I'm assuming you weren't aware of most of this. Now you should be.
No, Billy boy doesn't pimp it right away - he stuffs it away for a rainy day when his public image needs that little extra boost, then whips it out and jumps around screaming "See! See! I'm a good guy too! Look at all the money I'm donating to all these good causes!"
That's the cheesiest to me - using your donations as weaponry in a war of words. Spare me, please. If he wants to make donations for the sake of making donations, that's fine. I don't want to see articles about it when his image isn't doing so well tho.
Remember, you don't die from AIDS, you die from a related illness, probably something a healthy body wouldn't even notice.
Yeah, and I guess a lot of them are extremely rare. You can die from the common cold, once AIDS actually goes full-blown. Not something you'd normally think of as being fatal.
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Also, from rumors I heard, the HP engineers who were working with Intel on the design of the Merced got fed up with how things were going there. That might have something to do with why they kinda wandered off on their own and did the McKinley design. (Note: this is rumor mixed with my personal speculation - don't take this as the official story.)
NT is a better design than 95/98 - that doesn't make it "good". Too much stuff running in ring-0. Bears a bit too much similarity to DOS and VMS (and win95/98) for my taste. Still tends to crash and bluescreen more than a "high-end" OS should. Win2k doesn't seem to be doing much better, and with all the extra bloat... well, you know how that goes.
Also, Windows 95/98 and NT are still very tied to 32-bit systems, esp. the ix86. Yes, NT got ported to PPC and MIPS (both of which are dead projects) and AXP (which apparently is now being abandoned as well). It ran in 32-bit mode on all the processors it ran on (fine for PPC, but AXP and recent MIPS designs are 64-bit, and that wastes a lot of potential).
To go 64-bit, Microsoft will probably end up redoing the whole API all over again, and all the apps will have to be rewritten to use the new APIs. It won't be pretty. (Think Win16->Win32, but probably an order of magnitude more painful.)
I wanna see G4 systems as badly as the next guy (I'm not a Mac fan, but I think the PPC chips are pretty cool), but the Merced has its roots in a whole new design. 64-bit bus, VLIW instruction set... there're a lot of changes. It's a big wait and see for now. McKinley will probably be significantly faster than the Merced tho... so don't go jumping to any conclusions about who'll beat who.
Sub-pixel rendering has been around for a long time. Microsoft didn't invent it.
Ummm. I don't know quite how to respond to that, other than to say that YES, Apple developed TrueType. Microsoft licensed it from them for Windows 3.1, and has used it since then, but Apple did develop it. I'm not sure exactly how "open" a standard it is, because Apple expects a licensing fee to use their TrueType stuff... I dunno if a cleanroom implementation like FreeType gets by that tho. (I hope so...)
In many cases, WINE is the beter option. Some of the code in some apps is just native x86 instructions, and can be executed directly, with the library calls intercepted and mapped to WINE internal calls. (Take StarCraft for example - it's quite playable on my P100 in Wine, because all it does is ask DirectDraw and DirectSound for output contexts, then output directly to the devices - no Win32 calls, afaik). Bochs and VMware both emulate a complete x86 CPU (slow because x86 is not a fully-virtualizable architecture, so a lot of work has to be done in software). For some things, a fully-emulated environment might be better, but if you care about performance, WINE's way of doing things may be the best option.
and by the way.. it's nice that you can make people feel bad for changing their minds.. thats pretty weak
Well, I for one would agree with the previous guy - it's funny how quickly they'll change their minds about using animals to help humans when it involves a member of their family. Then, it's morals be damned, a human life is worth more! Maybe it's a little mean, but it's very telling how strong these people's morals really are. (i.e., not particularly)
Ok. Please, someone tell me this is a joke. This HAS to be a joke. RIGHT?
at the outpouring of heartless indifference so common in the Slashdot community. Anyone critical of your fun is a PETA nut or meddling do gooder, it would seem.
Were you even AT LWE? The penguins (only 2 of them) were not being abused or mistreated, as far as I could tell. They seemed reasonably relaxed, or at least as relaxed as an animal could be in an unfamiliar setting. But certain people are making it out to be way worse than it really was.
At this website, the symbol of the penguin represents not Linux, but rather what a cold bunch you are. Sadly, the only warmth found at Slashdot is generated by the myraid, pointless flamewars.
I'm oh-so-impressed by your razor-sharp wit, Sir.
I wish the PETA-type pseudo-animal-rights people would get over themselves. At least the real animal-rights people aren't such media hounds.
hope the little fellas are ok.
Well, I was at the show. I'm certainly no expert on all things penguin, but the penguin that was there when I wandered over to the booth seemed pretty happy. ESR walked over and petted the penguin a bit, as did I. Now, these little guys have fair-sized beaks, and I think if they were annoyed with the situation, they'd be using them. Just MHO.
PETA wouldn't be so bad if they did something other than raise money to fund their organization. Only a small percentage of the money they raise actually goes to the causes theey claim to support. If you're gonna do the whole "animal rights" thing, at least join into an organization that's serious about something other than its own funding.
Note: I think a lot of the "animal rights" stuff is bullshit - like mink for mink coats? They didn't go hunt them, they were bred with that purpose in mind... they're not destroying wild populations that way (now anyway, it may not have been so in the past). Animal rights folks should be a little more choosy about their causes, and I think the groups that are SERIOUS about animal rights probably are moreso than PETA.
Actually, you might be referring to People Eating Tasty Animals, which I might not mind becoming a member of myself. :)
I've read the "Guys' Guide to Geek Girls", and it doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know. (Not that knowing any of it makes a damn bit of difference. When chicks hate you, chicks hate you...)
I suppose this is not the place to mention what 'going for a slash' means in the UK, either?
Well? What DOES it mean? I, for one, would like to know...
I think most of us have had SOME dealing with Windows. I know I have. "Both angles"? Which other angle are we looking at it from? Windows is fragmented, but Bill & Co. are pointing fingers at everyone else saying "Look how fragmented is!" Linux has been changing pretty rapidly - improving hardware support, gaining support from hardware manufacturers, and gaining some serious applications.
How much have things changed in the Windows world of late? Not much - Windows 9x went to 98, and it still sucks - they just shoved in IE and a few bugfixes (which should have been in there LONG AGO) and USB drivers and a few other minor things. No significant changes in the GUI. It still crashes. It still bluescreens and hangs up and acts erratically. Not a huge change. NT still sucks as a serious server. No big changes there either.
Linux has its fragmentation, but for the most part, all the major distributions are staying with glibc2.x now, keeping up with the latest XFree86 releases, and there're utilities to convert packages for your distribution of choice. LSB will hopefully pull that together even more.
Linux is trying to move AWAY from fragmentation. Bill & Co. just don't care - fragmented or no, they're going to claim what they want, and market the crap out of their low-quality product.
I think this puts it best: "If buildings were built like software, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy 95% of civilization." That definitely applies to Microsoft software.
Note how much is being used as cache. In Linux, the way the memory management system works, memory listed as "free" is effectively wasted - better to have it used as cache. :)
MVS has a much better system (and I heard someone mention EROS) by which root doesn't exist, and root's functions are distributed among several admin users.
I believe that this has some relationship to the capabilities system that's been (partially) implemented in the Linux kernel. Does anyone know when we'll see Linux's capabilities system put to good use? It'll be nice to not have to make so much stuff u+s anymore.
It's really not any kind of straight across comparison. All the BogoMIPS count indicates is the length of a particular timing loop used in the kernel. If you take the BogoMIPS rating from even a pre-MMX Pentium and compare it to a Pentium/MMX, they will not match up MHz-for-MHz, neither processor or system bus speed. The same applies for all other families of processors as well. It's really not very meaningful at all. That's what the 'Bogo' means - as in 'bogus'.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The chip manufacturer ALWAYS makes a set of reference drivers that work with the chip in question on a reference design board (which most consumer boards don't deviate from much, if at all) so I'd expect them to provide reference Linux drivers. I for one hope this board's FOR REAL, and I hope the drivers will be open source. Here's hopin'...
They *REQUIRE* Windows because the drivers use some funky API, DirectX I believe, to simulate a DSP in the processor. GODS!
No, they require a software process running in the background that knows how to download DSP code to the device so it can do its job. All a WinModem is is a DSP with a little RAM wired to a couple phone jacks. And DirectX is an API for GAMES. It has nothing to do with soft modems.
Some of us care. I don't like Windows' default look - it's ugly. And there's not a hell of a lot that I can do to make it "un-ugly". For the "average (l)user", if they're happy with the default look, great. For those of us who like to customize our environment... well, for us, there's X. To each their own, I guess.
If you're thinking about Windows' mouse input setup where you can see the mouse pointer move, even generally when the OS crashes, I'd say don't waste your time. All it does is setup a separate process to handle the mouse pointer motion... great, but the motion and button-press action messages still end up in the same message queue for each app as they would normally, so all you gain is the APPEARANCE of better responsiveness. Pretty worthless IMO.
I'm assuming you weren't aware of most of this. Now you should be.
No, Billy boy doesn't pimp it right away - he stuffs it away for a rainy day when his public image needs that little extra boost, then whips it out and jumps around screaming "See! See! I'm a good guy too! Look at all the money I'm donating to all these good causes!"
That's the cheesiest to me - using your donations as weaponry in a war of words. Spare me, please. If he wants to make donations for the sake of making donations, that's fine. I don't want to see articles about it when his image isn't doing so well tho.
Remember, you don't die from AIDS, you die from a related illness, probably something a healthy body wouldn't even notice.
Yeah, and I guess a lot of them are extremely rare. You can die from the common cold, once AIDS actually goes full-blown. Not something you'd normally think of as being fatal.