From TFA:
"Well, since I don't want to kill my HDD I'm doing a test where PHP takes a value from simple MySQL table, increments a value and saves it back (using a set of functions that are typically used in web programming)"
What am I going to do?! I'm running complicated PHP scripts on my development machine... is my hard disk going to die? ..
but seriously, the author is converting the value received from an integer column in mysql to... an integer:
$i=intval($i)+1;
--
What happened to/. and why are the most incompetent articles imaginable being posted?
Opera's web server has a completely different target market than apache, and is so completely different that to compare Opera to Apache is like comparing benchmarks of serving static content to that which comes from a database -- yes, another silly comparison that TFA for some unknown reason actually makes. Apples ain't oranges!
As others have mentioned, to serve pages to anyone other than yourself, the requests will be sent through (and approved by) Opera's servers. Unite itself isn't open source, apache is. Apache can do almost anything any web developer can dream of. Unite is one dimensional.
As for your configuration "argument", are you still trying to install Apache from source or something? a WAMP install will put apache/mysql/php on your computer in a minute or two. Toss a blog app into the web folder, use a browser to enter its connection settings, and voila! you've got yourself a basic, but dynamic blog online in minutes, just for one example.
But besides using it for web development, running a website with PHP/any dynamic language off your home desktop would be exposing yourself to some serious risks, which is again yet another reason that a Unite/Apache+PHP comparison is completely senseless.
What is truly wrong is that TFA and its "benchmarks" made it onto/., where most of us actually know that dynamic!=static content. A far better, and insightful article on Unite was written by this guy: http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/06/16/thoughts-on-opera-unite/
--
The Opera fanboys are out tonight, and with mod points to spare. Hmm, it's not even a full moon.
"Backroom" deals are named that way for a reason -- they're very hard to prove, and thus unlikely to be reported in reputable publications that require absolute proof. Regardless, Microsoft is known for throwing its monopolistic weight around to its advantage, and being suspicious of such articles is likely not a bad thing.
Hmmm, my question back at you is, do you really think that TheTimes/Fox News (same ownership group=same thing) have "trustworthy investigative journalists"?
Though I'm not surprised that you haven't been modded up, simply because you're not saying what slashdotters want to hear, your comments are among the most insightful in this discussion.
The court is not at fault in this case, however the newspaper -- a part of the all-powerful News corp AKA Fox, is most definitely shooting itself and all other venues of reporting that use anonymous sources, in the foot.
BIND always has been buggy, and full of security issues as well. I've been running djbdns for years, and while the install is definitely not straightforward, I went with it mostly because BIND was even less straightforward to install.
Two months ago, the first ever security vulnerability was found in djbdns -- an extremely minor one that barely affects any servers, yet it was the first ever, in the entire history of djbdns. This speaks extremely well of the design of the set of tools that make up the djbdns system.
Really, with almost a decade of essentially flawless operation behind djbdns, and millions of domains being served by it, I have to question why BIND is relevant moving forward.
Agreed, though it is hard to get past the FUD factor:
"It will be complete devastation," said Professor Laskar.
IANAAstronomer, but I'd rather hear more about whether these calculations can be extrapolated onto other solar systems and the existence (or not) of other planets similar to earth, than how,"The planet is coming in at 10km per second..."
why should I be forced to purchase an inferior (for me) product in order to get a new computer?
Why should the world be held back to a 2001 era technology (say Hi IE6!), with major security issues and no advantages over Windows 7, for years to come?
XP will be supported well towards the middle of the next decade, which should be long after your office's machines are replaced. The longer they sell this now-ancient OS, the longer everyone will be tied to 2001 era technology. Do you remember how long it took for programmers and developers to finally get past the misery of supporting IE6?
Put yourself as an IT manager in a device company 5 years from now. You've developed drivers for the latest Windows and OSX, and now can move to writing them for lesser known systems. Will you write drivers for XP, now 15 years old, but still used by millions because of idiotic anti-trust suits, or go ahead and support linux?
--
XP lover = luddite
a business that is refusing to sell a software package that is the single most wanted package is clearly abusing a monopoly
How on earth can that be considered "abusing a monopoly"? XP is desired for low-powered and low memory computers, and is still being sold for them. For modern computers, the market has shown that consumers wish for an operating system with fancy graphic effects (see OSX, and the more popular managers for KDE/Gnome), with some levels of security (which XP lacks completely), and can take advantage of the latest technologies (dx10+, better driver handling,etc).
With Win7, the speed/memory complaints about Vista will be wiped, and Microsoft will properly kill off XP so that we can begin to move forward and escape a technology that was created alongside IE6.
How/. users continue to wish for an OS that is now ancient while OSX and Linux have long since surpassed it in so many respects is completely beyond me.
But back to the point, holding the world back tech-wise to 2001 by continuing to push XP would not do anything whatsoever to imply Microsoft is no longer using monopolistic practices.
--
XP lover = luddite
why then, is Google forced to blur faces on its streetview? Through your movements in public, your private actions can be traced. Thus in my very IANAL mind, this is inherently a violation of privacy.
Another question is whether it's legal to trace the position of someone when they leave those public roads -- the GPS doesn't exactly switch off when you pull into a private driveway, does it?
So, you're saying it's the "exact same quicklaunch", except it looks different, must be configured where the old one didn't, and yes, behaves slightly differently. I did try the toolbars, however the name of the location appears in the taskbar in an awkward manner, taking up far more space than the old, user-friendly bar. The space taken is not good for netbooks, and is more annoying than helpful.
I'm still running 7077 (which has no option for "hide notifications when inactive"), so maybe that is affecting my experience, but it still seems like unnecessary complication and bloat.
Oh and btw it's not the community's fault that you spent $500 on a retail system at wal-mart or best buy that has retardidly low system spec's and is over priced. So don't argue that either.
I liked all you wrote except the thing you told us not to argue with. I'll just say one thing:
I agree fully that TFA is a poor choice, but your anandtech link doesn't do much for me either. First, half the links led me to an error page. Slashdotted? I dunno, but their website needs some work.
Secondly, the performance comparisons are between 7/Vista/XP on 64 bit machines. I'd be willing to bet that the percentage of windows machines with 64 bit OSs are far less than 1%. Further, there's no report on memory usage and how it compares between the versions.
The best link I've found is based on the beta of Windows 7, but it's still more informative on a practical level than TFA as it actually compares the OSs on a machine with 1GB of RAM -- which is still far more common than those pumped up 4Giggers: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3236
Your observations match with my frustration at TFA. Each of those three test computers had at least 3GB of RAM. Well, Vista ran great with 3Gigs of RAM.
The problems were with entry-level computers with 1GB or less, and is why TFA is fine for rich gamers, but adds little to no valuable information for the masses that have highly popular entry-level laptops.
I disagree on the UI "improvements". Gone is a usable quick-launch menu, and notification icons no longer disappear when inactive (like a battery meter when the computer is plugged in). This makes the taskbar area of Windows 7 far more cluttered and space-consuming than Vista is.
Given that this is the part of the OS I interact with the most, I'm very disappointed in these Windows 7 "improvements". Of course, since you didn't actually describe or name any improvement in your post, it's hard to decipher what you're referring to.
That's great. Now how does Joe find out that wubi exists? Nowhere does ubuntu's website refer to a way to install without needing to burn a cd (or link to wubi itself). Try googling it, and come up with dozens of tutorials and howtos dated variously over the past 5+ years, each explaining a different method, many of which aren't useful anymore.
Just because geeks like ubuntu doesn't mean the majority of people should use it. And that's not a bad thing -- in the hands of a tech whiz, it's a usable OS, but for most people it's far too much hassle to be worth installing.
Windows and OSX are one-size-fits-all OSs. Ubuntu is for people who love repositories and command lines (and most people don't know and don't want to know what a repository or command line is).
jQuery is what JavaScript *should* have been all along.
No, jQuery is a very good javascript framework, but its api should have no part -- at least yet -- in javascript itself.
Right now, the differences in coding an application with jQuery's framework compared to Ext/Prototype/GWT/etc are greater than the differences in coding javascript for IE vs Firefox. Frameworks are a personal choice of how you prefer to code, and one single framework should not be forced onto all coders.
To say jQuery is what JavaScript should have been is like saying that Ruby on Rails is what Ruby should have been, or that symfony or CakePHP is what PHP *should* have been. ie:apples vs oranges comparison.
While I hope, like the sibling poster mentioned, that the DOM api is improved, I certainly don't want jQuery to become the next standard of JavaScript.
I agree on Programmer and Designer, but around here we call HTML guys "integrators". The main skill of pure HTML/CSS coders usually involves integrating ready-made designs into web pages, hence the name integrator. They'll also know basic javascript, and understand how to work with various CMSs.
The only time that should have been wasted was reading the title: "The Guardian Shifts To Twitter After 188 Years of Ink".
That you clicked on the article and read a bunch of posts about a dead-obvious april fools joke was time that you wasted all by yourself. No need to blame anyone else for it.
--
And if you didn't get that it was a joke, then maybe you should go shoot yourself.
Are you implying that the Guardian moving to Twitter isn't easy enough to spot?
Slashdot has a mod for "Funny" -- humor is a part of this site, and it's not your run-of-the-mill news site. This was a simple inside joke related to technology that all regular readers should have "got" in a split second. If you don't like humor on/., then move along, but please don't spoil it for the rest of us by exposing obvious jokes, or modding such exposure as "informative".
--
now that I think of it, though, it is true that Funny receives no karma, while extremely obvious, dull and humorless posts aimed to spoil any fun are for some reason rewarded.
5 minutes after the article is posted, you feel the need to jump in and blow the joke?! I was hoping to enjoy the posts by people who didn't get it, but your pride at picking out a supposed anagram spoiled that.
I could have understood if you'd pointed out that it wasn't a real anagram, and is missing an 'L'.
Whoever modded you up as "informative" has absolutely no sense of humour. -1 spoiler would have been more sensible.
The original poster said he was already finishing a degree majoring in computer science. This should be plenty enough to get a motivated individual into an industry he likes, no? Spending 6+ years in the school bubble before even tasting the industry world would easily limit your development.
If you value your post grad, then there's no doubt that you'll learn more having already been out in the industry, than if you carry on a pure theory-only tack.
The problem is that most kids in university don't actually know what they enjoy. They may have an idea, but I have a feeling that choosing a grad program is oftentimes taking a stab in the dark that it'll be something the student will want to continue with.
So my suggestion: Don't Go Back To School! (well, not yet) Go get a job in a field you 'think' you may enjoy, and gain some perspective on the industry, and how your talents fit in. After a year or two of that, then make an informed choice of grad schools.
The knowledge and experience of a practical, real-world environment is invaluable to students entering grad schools, and far too many take the easy road of just staying in school.
If you want to differentiate yourself from others, make a better choice about an expensive and time-consuming postgrad education, and be more employable afterwards, do yourself a favor and get a job.
Fair enough... thanks for pointing out my error regarding IE8.
My intended point was that beta stats in general are worthless, because they're not based on real-life conditions, be it IE8, Firefox 3.1, or the latest Chrome beta. I couldn't care less about speed when the browser bugs out on me. --
Gotta love those car analogies!
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA:
.. /. and why are the most incompetent articles imaginable being posted?
"Well, since I don't want to kill my HDD I'm doing a test where PHP takes a value from simple MySQL table, increments a value and saves it back (using a set of functions that are typically used in web programming)"
What am I going to do?! I'm running complicated PHP scripts on my development machine... is my hard disk going to die?
but seriously, the author is converting the value received from an integer column in mysql to... an integer:
$i=intval($i)+1;
--
What happened to
Opera's web server has a completely different target market than apache, and is so completely different that to compare Opera to Apache is like comparing benchmarks of serving static content to that which comes from a database -- yes, another silly comparison that TFA for some unknown reason actually makes. Apples ain't oranges!
/., where most of us actually know that dynamic!=static content. A far better, and insightful article on Unite was written by this guy: http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/06/16/thoughts-on-opera-unite/
As others have mentioned, to serve pages to anyone other than yourself, the requests will be sent through (and approved by) Opera's servers. Unite itself isn't open source, apache is. Apache can do almost anything any web developer can dream of. Unite is one dimensional.
As for your configuration "argument", are you still trying to install Apache from source or something? a WAMP install will put apache/mysql/php on your computer in a minute or two. Toss a blog app into the web folder, use a browser to enter its connection settings, and voila! you've got yourself a basic, but dynamic blog online in minutes, just for one example.
But besides using it for web development, running a website with PHP/any dynamic language off your home desktop would be exposing yourself to some serious risks, which is again yet another reason that a Unite/Apache+PHP comparison is completely senseless.
What is truly wrong is that TFA and its "benchmarks" made it onto
--
The Opera fanboys are out tonight, and with mod points to spare. Hmm, it's not even a full moon.
Slashdot needs a "-1 Citation Needed" option.
How about a /. article on the MS paying bloggers off:
... they should do a delicate dance," Kempin wrote to Ballmer
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/19/microsoft_killed_dell_linux_states/
...
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/28/0428236
"I'm thinking of hitting the OEMs harder than in the past with anti-Linux.
Mostly, though, you'll find that most reports of Microsoft paying off journalists/bloggers/whoever are on sites like this one: http://boycottnovell.com/2009/04/25/microsoft-censorship-on-the-surface/
"Backroom" deals are named that way for a reason -- they're very hard to prove, and thus unlikely to be reported in reputable publications that require absolute proof. Regardless, Microsoft is known for throwing its monopolistic weight around to its advantage, and being suspicious of such articles is likely not a bad thing.
Hmmm, my question back at you is, do you really think that TheTimes/Fox News (same ownership group=same thing) have "trustworthy investigative journalists"?
Though I'm not surprised that you haven't been modded up, simply because you're not saying what slashdotters want to hear, your comments are among the most insightful in this discussion.
The court is not at fault in this case, however the newspaper -- a part of the all-powerful News corp AKA Fox, is most definitely shooting itself and all other venues of reporting that use anonymous sources, in the foot.
BIND always has been buggy, and full of security issues as well. I've been running djbdns for years, and while the install is definitely not straightforward, I went with it mostly because BIND was even less straightforward to install.
Two months ago, the first ever security vulnerability was found in djbdns -- an extremely minor one that barely affects any servers, yet it was the first ever, in the entire history of djbdns. This speaks extremely well of the design of the set of tools that make up the djbdns system.
Really, with almost a decade of essentially flawless operation behind djbdns, and millions of domains being served by it, I have to question why BIND is relevant moving forward.
Agreed, though it is hard to get past the FUD factor:
"It will be complete devastation," said Professor Laskar.
IANAAstronomer, but I'd rather hear more about whether these calculations can be extrapolated onto other solar systems and the existence (or not) of other planets similar to earth, than how,"The planet is coming in at 10km per second..."
No, no... just look around you, up, down or anywhere!
Technically, since the milky way is the galaxy that we live in, we're completely surrounded by it.
If 1/5 of the world can't see the milky way, then they must either be blind, or live in complete darkness. Light pollution is their savior!
why should I be forced to purchase an inferior (for me) product in order to get a new computer?
Why should the world be held back to a 2001 era technology (say Hi IE6!), with major security issues and no advantages over Windows 7, for years to come?
XP will be supported well towards the middle of the next decade, which should be long after your office's machines are replaced. The longer they sell this now-ancient OS, the longer everyone will be tied to 2001 era technology. Do you remember how long it took for programmers and developers to finally get past the misery of supporting IE6?
Put yourself as an IT manager in a device company 5 years from now. You've developed drivers for the latest Windows and OSX, and now can move to writing them for lesser known systems. Will you write drivers for XP, now 15 years old, but still used by millions because of idiotic anti-trust suits, or go ahead and support linux?
--
XP lover = luddite
a business that is refusing to sell a software package that is the single most wanted package is clearly abusing a monopoly
How on earth can that be considered "abusing a monopoly"? XP is desired for low-powered and low memory computers, and is still being sold for them. For modern computers, the market has shown that consumers wish for an operating system with fancy graphic effects (see OSX, and the more popular managers for KDE/Gnome), with some levels of security (which XP lacks completely), and can take advantage of the latest technologies (dx10+, better driver handling,etc).
/. users continue to wish for an OS that is now ancient while OSX and Linux have long since surpassed it in so many respects is completely beyond me.
With Win7, the speed/memory complaints about Vista will be wiped, and Microsoft will properly kill off XP so that we can begin to move forward and escape a technology that was created alongside IE6.
How
But back to the point, holding the world back tech-wise to 2001 by continuing to push XP would not do anything whatsoever to imply Microsoft is no longer using monopolistic practices.
--
XP lover = luddite
why then, is Google forced to blur faces on its streetview? Through your movements in public, your private actions can be traced. Thus in my very IANAL mind, this is inherently a violation of privacy.
Another question is whether it's legal to trace the position of someone when they leave those public roads -- the GPS doesn't exactly switch off when you pull into a private driveway, does it?
So, you're saying it's the "exact same quicklaunch", except it looks different, must be configured where the old one didn't, and yes, behaves slightly differently. I did try the toolbars, however the name of the location appears in the taskbar in an awkward manner, taking up far more space than the old, user-friendly bar. The space taken is not good for netbooks, and is more annoying than helpful.
I'm still running 7077 (which has no option for "hide notifications when inactive"), so maybe that is affecting my experience, but it still seems like unnecessary complication and bloat.
Oh and btw it's not the community's fault that you spent $500 on a retail system at wal-mart or best buy that has retardidly low system spec's and is over priced. So don't argue that either.
I liked all you wrote except the thing you told us not to argue with. I'll just say one thing:
Vista-Capable
I agree fully that TFA is a poor choice, but your anandtech link doesn't do much for me either. First, half the links led me to an error page. Slashdotted? I dunno, but their website needs some work.
Secondly, the performance comparisons are between 7/Vista/XP on 64 bit machines. I'd be willing to bet that the percentage of windows machines with 64 bit OSs are far less than 1%. Further, there's no report on memory usage and how it compares between the versions.
The best link I've found is based on the beta of Windows 7, but it's still more informative on a practical level than TFA as it actually compares the OSs on a machine with 1GB of RAM -- which is still far more common than those pumped up 4Giggers:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3236
Your observations match with my frustration at TFA. Each of those three test computers had at least 3GB of RAM. Well, Vista ran great with 3Gigs of RAM.
The problems were with entry-level computers with 1GB or less, and is why TFA is fine for rich gamers, but adds little to no valuable information for the masses that have highly popular entry-level laptops.
I disagree on the UI "improvements". Gone is a usable quick-launch menu, and notification icons no longer disappear when inactive (like a battery meter when the computer is plugged in). This makes the taskbar area of Windows 7 far more cluttered and space-consuming than Vista is.
Given that this is the part of the OS I interact with the most, I'm very disappointed in these Windows 7 "improvements". Of course, since you didn't actually describe or name any improvement in your post, it's hard to decipher what you're referring to.
That's great. Now how does Joe find out that wubi exists? Nowhere does ubuntu's website refer to a way to install without needing to burn a cd (or link to wubi itself). Try googling it, and come up with dozens of tutorials and howtos dated variously over the past 5+ years, each explaining a different method, many of which aren't useful anymore.
Just because geeks like ubuntu doesn't mean the majority of people should use it. And that's not a bad thing -- in the hands of a tech whiz, it's a usable OS, but for most people it's far too much hassle to be worth installing.
Windows and OSX are one-size-fits-all OSs. Ubuntu is for people who love repositories and command lines (and most people don't know and don't want to know what a repository or command line is).
jQuery is what JavaScript *should* have been all along.
No, jQuery is a very good javascript framework, but its api should have no part -- at least yet -- in javascript itself.
Right now, the differences in coding an application with jQuery's framework compared to Ext/Prototype/GWT/etc are greater than the differences in coding javascript for IE vs Firefox. Frameworks are a personal choice of how you prefer to code, and one single framework should not be forced onto all coders.
To say jQuery is what JavaScript should have been is like saying that Ruby on Rails is what Ruby should have been, or that symfony or CakePHP is what PHP *should* have been. ie:apples vs oranges comparison.
While I hope, like the sibling poster mentioned, that the DOM api is improved, I certainly don't want jQuery to become the next standard of JavaScript.
Nah, Betty's really an "integrator".
I agree on Programmer and Designer, but around here we call HTML guys "integrators". The main skill of pure HTML/CSS coders usually involves integrating ready-made designs into web pages, hence the name integrator. They'll also know basic javascript, and understand how to work with various CMSs.
The only time that should have been wasted was reading the title: "The Guardian Shifts To Twitter After 188 Years of Ink".
That you clicked on the article and read a bunch of posts about a dead-obvious april fools joke was time that you wasted all by yourself. No need to blame anyone else for it.
--
And if you didn't get that it was a joke, then maybe you should go shoot yourself.
Are you implying that the Guardian moving to Twitter isn't easy enough to spot?
/., then move along, but please don't spoil it for the rest of us by exposing obvious jokes, or modding such exposure as "informative".
Slashdot has a mod for "Funny" -- humor is a part of this site, and it's not your run-of-the-mill news site. This was a simple inside joke related to technology that all regular readers should have "got" in a split second. If you don't like humor on
--
now that I think of it, though, it is true that Funny receives no karma, while extremely obvious, dull and humorless posts aimed to spoil any fun are for some reason rewarded.
5 minutes after the article is posted, you feel the need to jump in and blow the joke?! I was hoping to enjoy the posts by people who didn't get it, but your pride at picking out a supposed anagram spoiled that.
I could have understood if you'd pointed out that it wasn't a real anagram, and is missing an 'L'.
Whoever modded you up as "informative" has absolutely no sense of humour. -1 spoiler would have been more sensible.
The original poster said he was already finishing a degree majoring in computer science. This should be plenty enough to get a motivated individual into an industry he likes, no? Spending 6+ years in the school bubble before even tasting the industry world would easily limit your development.
If you value your post grad, then there's no doubt that you'll learn more having already been out in the industry, than if you carry on a pure theory-only tack.
The problem is that most kids in university don't actually know what they enjoy. They may have an idea, but I have a feeling that choosing a grad program is oftentimes taking a stab in the dark that it'll be something the student will want to continue with.
So my suggestion: Don't Go Back To School! (well, not yet) Go get a job in a field you 'think' you may enjoy, and gain some perspective on the industry, and how your talents fit in. After a year or two of that, then make an informed choice of grad schools.
The knowledge and experience of a practical, real-world environment is invaluable to students entering grad schools, and far too many take the easy road of just staying in school.
If you want to differentiate yourself from others, make a better choice about an expensive and time-consuming postgrad education, and be more employable afterwards, do yourself a favor and get a job.
Fair enough... thanks for pointing out my error regarding IE8.
My intended point was that beta stats in general are worthless, because they're not based on real-life conditions, be it IE8, Firefox 3.1, or the latest Chrome beta. I couldn't care less about speed when the browser bugs out on me.
--
Gotta love those car analogies!