These roles/policies are generally only formed at a company after a legal risk/threat is realized I think. I know as a lead dev, my priority is often given to me from above in terms like "We need to do this quickly, as this is a great opportunity for us, and it should work well with our existing tech. How long would this take you to get something meeting these requirements out the door?" Saying something longer than what they want to hear is usually a great way to get a response like "why would that take so long if we already have X and Y working" at best, a poor performance review is more likely. Note that the requirements almost never state any sort of open source compliance or other important details details. Given an open source library or framework is nearly always the quickest and cheapest route to get there, that's what ends up used, with the hope that it will be properly analysed in detail and the situation improved down the road. The problem is management, and the pressure on dev/engrs to do things "quickly by whatever means necessary" far far too often.
If you can't write a database-backed app that always uses prepared statements for every single insert, update and where clauses, in this day and age, you have no business releasing it, even internally. This is basic DB-related knowledge. It is trivial to prevent, with any effort at all.
Oh I can see it, some horri-bad dev write a "Select * from users...
If they had hashed, or even encrypted the passwords in the db, then at least they'd not be plain text in the source if they did a "SELECT *...". But no, this was likely shoddy at the very base levels, all the way up into the front end. I shudder to think about it. The full stack was garbage for this to happen.
I have a dell laptop with 8.1 on it I bought some months ago for work. I have all the latest drivers and windows is up to date. However, the WiFi randomly decides to disconnect, and then will reconnect only after clicking on the network icon in the task bar. It's not the access point, its only this laptop in windows. Also, the reported remaining time on battery is always higher by a factor of 8. Not making this up. Nothing I have found has fixed this.
In Ubuntu 14.04 though, I have zero issues like this, and it is a stock install. No hackery at all. None. Also, using the exact same applications that I use for work in windows my laptop is more responsive and has 2gb more free ram, and it doesn't hit my HD as much.
I'd work in Ubuntu but MS Lync is required for me to work with my team, and doesn't run in linux.
Firstly, being completely honest, I'm not satisfied with any OS I've ever run, but I dual boot win7 on my computers for games, and use Ubuntu the rest of the time. I'm a web developer/programmer, and I prefer working in the same environment (LAMP) my code is deployed on. It makes sense for me.
I love both windows and linux for different reasons, but I hate both of them for certain reasons too.
Windows 7, is by far the best windows ever. I've used them all, it's good. That said, I have had just as many stability issues as I had with XP...it's not perfect yet. On my laptop, for example, it decided to completely kill itself after an update, and nothing short of a re-install fixed it. This actually happened 2x...within 3 months. I still don't know why...but now that laptop only runs Ubuntu, cause it's too crappy for games anyway, and it's been rock solid for a year now.
On my desktop, win7 has been nothing short of a nightmare for me. I know I'm pretty much alone in this, but it's true. I would not trust win7 to important work on this machine. About 6 months after first installing win7 on it (64 bit from msdn), I got a new video card. Genuine advantage decided it was a different computer and tried locking me out. No biggie right? Just activate it. Well, that didn't work, I forget why. I re-installed. Later I got an ssd. I decided to clone my C: partition onto the ssd, as that was always easy in the past on hdds. Wrong. No matter the method I used to clone the partition onto the ssd, windows would not boot off of it (this is a fully supported intel ssd, it should have worked). Even the repair mode on the win7 disk couldn't properly find a windows installation, despite it being perfectly readable and everything (I've done this tons of times on regular hdds, with no problems). So, I ended up doing a clean install on the ssd. Everything was fine for a while. One day, win7 decided it couldn't update anymore. The error code was related to proxy settings, and trusted sites. I went through every single step in the supposed solutions to the error, but it would not be fixed. Nobody could help me out with it either. Stumped everyone that came across it. Since I only use it for gaming, it was not updated for 6 months, but then I decided enough was enough. Re-install. Currently it's working just fine...no issues. We'll see how long that lasts.
Overall, windows maintenance is the #1 reason I prefer linux for my default. On top of the hassles I've had with my desktop, I hate the way windows update works. It couldn't take any longer, and I hate that it tries to force you to reboot...it's stupid. I miss how easy it is to back up a list of software you have installed, and re-install it like in linux with repos. It takes so long to re-install software after a windows install. It's ridiculous. It takes me about 1/10th the time in linux to get everything I want installed...and I always have a LOT more installed in linux. I hate how windows handles drivers, they still, in win7 tend to mess up way too often. Viruses, I don't have problems with anymore, so I can't list that.
Linux though, I have problems with too. Every time linux's graphics stack starts getting good, fast, and stable, either xorg devs decide to break everything, or new desktop tech (compiz, kwin, gnome3, etc) breaks things with my catalyst driver. And there's the rub. Graphics in linux, across the board, is crap. You cannot find a high end card right now with a proprietary or opensource driver that is near as good as in windows. All have some missing functionality, and the opensource ones which everyone tries to recommend, perform like crap. If I were a games dev, I wouldn't make games for linux either...it's that bad. I get by just fine, cause I don't game that much, and my 4850 works fine for my uses. Applications. I wish linux had the application and game support windows had. It would sure be nice. Ubuntu in particular is terrible with regressions. I've never had an update to a new version of the di
No, see, YOU missed MY point. I was ONLY saying I didn't buy that broadcom cards are still causing your problems these days, since I've not known one to not work since after 8.04. I'm only saying LATELY they do seem to work great, if not even better than the supposed open source ones like atheros. I never told you you should use linux. I never said it wasn't hell sometimes (it is), and I haven't had to compile anything to get ANYTHING working in 3 years. That's why I said I don't believe you, because I haven't heard of a problem with a broadcom card by someone who had seriously just clicked the damn hardware applet and told it to use the broadcom driver. you could be having trouble...that's very possible, I just don't believe you cause everyone I know has a broadcom card and hasn't has issues in years. And I'm not a dev, I don't have to care. Do you care that my touchpad won't scroll in windows 7 on my dell laptop? No, and that's fine.
I gotta say, I don't believe you. I have a dell, with a broadcom card, and I also have a different broadcom card from a compaq/hp laptop that died on me just outside of warranty. BOTH of these cards work nearly out of the box in ubuntu, and have since 8.04, which is what I was running on the laptop that fried on me. The ONLY setup required, is to activate the driver for broadcom wireless cards on the restricted-drivers-manager thing that pops up when you first run ubuntu. I have never had an issue with this since 8.04 (I'm currently running 10.04, and have used every version in between). Previous to 8.04, yes, it was an issue, and I remember compiling ndiswrapper from source to get it working, which was hell, as I was new-ish to linux back then.
Interestingly, I also have a atheros 5006 card, which supposedly works great in ubuntu, and did for a while, but since 9.04, when they went to the hal-less driver, it won't come up from resume, drops my signal all the time, and sometimes I have to cold boot my laptop to fix it, after removing all power...ONLY in linux though, not in windows, doesn't happen in windows. Broadcom cards for me have never had any of these issues, so I am using it. Go figure.
Can't speak for realtek, never owned anything of theirs.
People that prefer linux will like to believe that windows will not ever be reliable, and people who prefer windows tend to believe that linux won't be.
I've seen this time and time again, both through myself, and my friends/acquaintances.
Just two recent examples of this:
A friend of mine bought a really nice Asus i5 gaming laptop with win7 home premium preloaded on Thur last week. I envy his laptop. It's awesome. Anyway, on Friday, after only running the laptop 2 times, he turned it on, only to find that win7 wouldn't boot. Luckily Asus provided a recovery disk (some OEMS require you to burn your own, he wouldn't have done that that soon). My very first reaction (as I do prefer linux, and I myself happen to have many issues just like this one with any and all windows oses, my friends will confirm that I do for some reason, whereas they do not usually...) was to start laughing, and I remember saying "When will MS get their ^(&# straight?". Now, we all know that it's possible it was his fault, not win7, but it wasn't my first reaction.
Likewise, a different friend of mine has a win7/ubuntu dual boot setup on his desktop, and at one time had xp and ubuntu via wubi on his laptop. He very very rarely uses ubuntu, and I honestly don't even know why he insists on having it installed. His antivirus program thought the wubi virtual disk of ubuntu was a virus, and deleted/broke it. He instantly blamed ubuntu for being unstable (who wouldn't). It was only later, after it happened again and we caught his antivirus in the act that we figured out what was happening. This same friend had a sata cable fail on his desktop which was hooked up to the drive with ubuntu on it. Because of this, his computer wouldn't boot, although oddly enough the drive did show up in bios. He blamed ubuntu instantly for the grub error that appeared when grub couldn't find that drive, and had me come over and help him "fix ubuntu". Well, we figured out pretty quick that he just had a bad sata cable, and after replacing it, everything was perfect.
In both cases, the operating system might not have been at fault. (ok, so ubuntu wasn't in these cases, but I've seen it become unbootable on a netbook after a regular "apt-get upgrade" too..., and the win7 issue might have been my friends fault too, I don't know.) However, it just goes to show how our personal feelings about our favorite operating systems get in the way of factual information about them, and many times people say things and bash them before they think about it. The same goes for both windows and linux.
If the Ipad is going to revolutionize anything, it's going to be big media. Itunes pretty much did it a while ago with the hurting music industry, and I believe the Ipad is another venture to keep big media happy and make apple a fortune. I personally don't think the ipad is that appealing, and I will probably never own one, but I DO think it's an attractive platform for big media, and maybe that is why it is being hyped so much. Big media sees it as a possible answer to some of it's problems, so if it can make this thing popular enough, then it has a way to prolong it's survival.
What I think is interesting about this though, is that if advertising via big media still works, then obviously big media is doing just fine. If newspaper is failing, fine, just move it to a more current medium. I don't see an issue here. There is plenty of room to expand to digital mediums instead of printing everything. If you don't want it to be a (mostly) open technology like the internet, fine...pretty sure there is enough similarly-minded money out there to back whatever your silly idea is. I believe this is exactly what the ipad was created for.
Shouldn't slashdot be using html5 instead of flash for this? Some people can't use flash at work and doing it in html5 would make it possible because every browser is compatible with the html5 devices tag that enables webcams in html5.
Also, there should be a mute button, or volume controls. I'm too stupid to mute only the player, and I want to be able to listen to my own music and watch at the same time.
And finally, I love today. (My new i9 super gaming desktop from dell came in the mail today!)
Also, lets not forget that (at least a year ago) something like 80% of Firefox's funding was from google. You could argue that it's only because firefox defaults to google for search...but funding 80% of their expenses is a pretty large stake in a company (firefox/mozilla) that doesn't really have to exist for google to still turn a huge profit. Especially now that chrome exists and is doing pretty well for itself. Yeah, they might stop funding firefox now that they have a competing product...but who cares...chrome is open too...and recently I'm actually really starting to like it more anyway.
I see another scenario...
Google stops supporting IE, Microsoft is justified in forcing bing as the default search on ANY IE install, all the people who just use IE cause it's installed (quite a few I believe) will use bing, and see how pretty bing is, and be seduced into thinking google is crap. (bing does look good, I prefer google though, for many reasons) So if anything, I believe a move like that would hurt them.
That, and do forget that more bodies doesn't always relate to getting a project done any faster. You have to consider training the new employee/s in and the time it takes them to become familiar enough with the project to become productive. Also, nobody that has been on the team for a while is going to want to spend time helping the new guy if he is being rushed to get important things done. It's going to be a while before the team is more productive due to the new hire/s. That, and sometimes more people just means more people will be in the way.
This guy is pulling numbers out of his butt, assuming random ratios of speed differences...
I know it's already all been said but really...the author needs to try this:
Program a small application in php, and one in c++. All the data must be stored in a database, on a remote machine (which is the way it would be done for a huge site). Now, hardcode in some data for your first benchmark of php vs c++ to get an idea for raw php vs c++ performance doing the same task, now, comment all that out, and get the data from the database, and time that. Guess what, I bet the times become pretty darn similar in the latter test. No, php isn't going to be QUITE as fast...but it's gonna be really close for REAL web-application type workloads where latency from your sql server and loading all the other page content come into play. Your clients are never going to notice the difference on the majority of applications, and I don't believe that most time is spent processing php or c++ code on a web application either. It's waiting for the DB, and uploading content to clients. If you truely are doing extremely data heavy tasks and lots of floating point math or something, then yes...C++ is probably a better tool, but even then, there's no reason not to use php for the non-data heavy stuff...
I know I'm just a youngster web programmer who only graduated from college a while ago and who deserves little respect on slashdot compared to some of you, but I do have a decent amount of experience with quite a few programming languages. I learned C++ first, and know it pretty well for someone who doesn't use it constantly any more. I think I'm very very good with PHP...and so does my boss. Given that information, I have something to say.
If someone told me to program an entire web application from top to bottom in C++, I'd probably quit on the spot, and walk out laughing all the way to the parking lot. I like C++ for lots of things, but there is no way in hell you would EVER get me to program an entire web application in c++. It would take 10x longer at LEAST to develop than it would for me to do in even Java, with which I actually have less knowledge of (but still a good working knowledge of), and I don't consider ideal for web apps. The debugging for C++ on something like that would probably drive me completely insane. I say me, because I'm assuming that I'm building this web app and only me...like I can do very quickly in php or python or nearly any other language that does web stuff well, otherwise it would be me and all my co-workers.
Languages that are traditionally used for web development are used for a reason...and it's not how fast/efficient they run. It's for the difference in expense of the developers (HUGE factor really), for how well the language suits the web in it's core libraries, and how well it integrates with web servers, database abstraction libraries...well I could go on forever really. I'm not saying that C++ couldn't get libraries built for it that made its appealing as say, ruby (on rails), php, or python, but lets face it, it would take a very long time to get to that point where everything was as seamless and easy as it is in current web languages...not to mention getting hosting companies to let you run a c++ app YOU programmed on their servers (they'd have to be stupid...really freakin stupid). C++ will just never be popular enough for web stuff to be attractive to developers...that's the bottom line. Lack of efficiency is such a tiny price to pay compared to these other factors.
You just CANNOT have geeky programmer types figure out human body language well enough to create a set of working rules to program into a robot! Why? Well let's see, most geeky programmer types (myself included) already have a certain social awkwardness and trouble recognizing/reacting to human social quirks as it is, for the main reason that they generally don't associate as often with non-geeky people. Now, I'm not saying this is always true of course, but I think it's at least generally the case, and probably more so with people who mess around with robots all day. I think before we see robots that act and seem human, will be the day that normal cheerleaders and soccermoms can work on robot's AIs without realizing what they are doing(which I'm guessing is going to be a long while, unless you count the furby...).
My sister was throwing out a 1.6ghz celeron M based laptop because she bought a new laptop, and the display was broken on the old one (she never bothered to have anyone fix it, even though it wasn't that expensive to fix...). I just completely removed the screen, since I don't care to use it as a laptop, and fixing it costs money I don't want to spend. Anyway, I've been running it as a web server/NAS/file server for about 4 months now, and it does really well. I don't know the numbers for power usage, but I know it's better than the dell thin-client machine with a p3 at 1ghz I was using before. It's also quicker, as this celeron M is basically a core2 solo... Can't do much better than free... Although I would LOVE to get my hands on a sheevaplug. I just may buy one...
I will definitely agree that release quality of ubuntu has deteriorated but I'm pretty sure some of your issues are hardware specific (I realize this doesn't make it any better...).
For example, I have a crap laptop with intel965 graphics, and 9.04 and 9.10 are the only releases that actually made hack free multi-monitor support a reality for me. Before that, I always had to hack xorg. Also, Kubuntu 9.10 alpha 6 worked with both vga and svideo out for me out of the box (you have to go into system settings...), but I didn't test hdmi yet cause I dont' have a cable right now. Pulse audio was TERRIBLE in 9.10alpha 6, and not good at all in 9.04 either, and crapped out on me almost weekly, but right now (9.10beta) it's working impressively well, so much so that I'm actually not hating pulseaudio (that's saying alot). So, for me, pulse and my video are MUCH better than they have been in the past. I agree though, ubuntu needs MUCH better regression testing, and also they need to make sure that things actually work as they are supposed to before they try to put it in a distro. I think fedora tends to do better with this, but that said, I've personally had better luck getting ubuntu working in the end than I have with fedora. Generally ubuntu works a bit better with my hardware(I've tested/run every single fedora release since 4)...but I know for a fact this isn't true for everyone.
I feel about the same way...and I have no idea why!
I actually started out my linux experience with red hat, then I tried the fedora releases starting with 4 (which I ran for a while...) and I think running them dual booted with xp through I think fedora 6 or 7.
My computer fried one day (hardware issue), and I didn't have a way to run linux for about a year (I was in college, and I just used winXP in the labs that year). After that I got my first introduction to ubuntu (6.06 I think) in the Computer Science lab (and didn't notice much difference since I couldn't do any administration, no sudo rights...). About that same time I got a laptop, and by the recommendation of a friend who LOVED/S ubuntu, I installed ubuntu instead of fedora.
I have tried out every single ubuntu, fedora, (open)suse, and many other distros (including some pretty obscure and/or minimalist ones), and I always find that for me, on my hardware, ubuntu tends to "just work" the best and gives me the best user experience, and fedora releases always seem to have an issue that I can't easily work around, or something that just bothers me that I don't want to live with. Suse is usually about the same way, although I LOVE yast (ubuntu needs an equivalent!). I actually always have to have the best luck with debian based distros, and I have no clue why, since I feel I know how to use both red hat based distros and debian based distros about equally actually.
I would like to use fedora more, as I feel it's technically superior usually on any given release (and blue is nicer to look at than brown), but it just never feels quite right, and things tend to not go as smoothly as the ubuntu distro at the current time...so I continue to run ubuntu, and experiment with everything else.
I am an OS fanatic though I think. My laptop is nearly always running some new beta of some distro or some experimental OS (plan9 anyone?) alongside my normal defaults (which is ubuntu9.10 with win7 right now, but I rarely boot win7...I never have a reason to except the occasional game that doesn't work in wine, and I actually prefer both gnome and kde over window's UI by a HUGE margin).
I see a far greater problem than this especially with the password app. Suppose they start putting these keyboards on laptops and other devices, or different models of the keyboard are made. Say you need to type your password and you have a different keyboard then the one you usually use...or even the keyboard starts to wear out... What then? Certainly this technology isn't ready for anything but desktop apps, as there would be no way to tap into how the person typed the password into a web app. I don't know, it doesn't seem like a good idea for passwords, since the devices performance in sure to change over time, whereas your typing may not, OR it may, which is a problem too, especially if you are injured, like when I broke my right hand middle finger a couple months ago...
On other stuff, that doesnt' have to do with passwords, there still is the problem of the keyboard wearing out or your typing changing, which suddenly renders any computer learning techniques broken...
Actually, I'm not so sure that making a good IDE for something that supports nearly the same as flash does for html5 and js WOULD be that big a problem. I used to develop in flash a great deal 3 years ago, but I have been doing web programming since then. (mostly php, mysql, but I am really good with javascript as well)
I don't see why, with all the capability we ALREADY have with javascript and html5, couldn't make an IDE for making similar content in a application that is browser/web based and is nearly 100% html5 and javascript (python/php/ruby would be needed some I'm thinking). If one were to develop a good api for frame-based animation using javascript and html5, why then couldn't html5 and javascript form a good ide interface and "compiling"(scripting language needed here) the necessary javascript/html5 to make your content run?
Would a javascript API be as nice as flashes? no, probably not...as actionscript is actually a decent OOP language in many respects (yes javascript can be OOP, but it's just not the same/equivalent). Do I think the results could be as nice? With some good backing and committed development, possibly. Do I see any reason an IDE as rich as flash's couldn't be developed using html5, js, and maybe some other scripting language like python/php/ruby? No, not really. So, really, if I'm right (most likely I'm not), the only thing holding JS and html5 back is lack of will/means to compete head to head with adobe.
Call me out if I'm wrong...but I think it could be done. (and if anyone wants to hire my help, contact me...heh)
My experience is not quite as bad, but I will admit that windowsXP tends to best my battery life in ubuntu 9.04 by about 15 to 20 minutes. I'm pretty sure it's about equal to ubuntu in win7, but I know it wasn't as good as ubuntu in vista. This is on an inspiron 1525. Battery life for laptops I have found is usually a bit worse in linux, but I've never heard that it performs as badly as this post. I'm saying it isn't that bad for you...I'm sure it is. Lets face it, stuff breaks in linux all the time. My intel graphics drivers are the PERFECT example of poor/unpredictable performance in linux.
Slashdot Mirror
These roles/policies are generally only formed at a company after a legal risk/threat is realized I think. I know as a lead dev, my priority is often given to me from above in terms like "We need to do this quickly, as this is a great opportunity for us, and it should work well with our existing tech. How long would this take you to get something meeting these requirements out the door?" Saying something longer than what they want to hear is usually a great way to get a response like "why would that take so long if we already have X and Y working" at best, a poor performance review is more likely. Note that the requirements almost never state any sort of open source compliance or other important details details. Given an open source library or framework is nearly always the quickest and cheapest route to get there, that's what ends up used, with the hope that it will be properly analysed in detail and the situation improved down the road. The problem is management, and the pressure on dev/engrs to do things "quickly by whatever means necessary" far far too often.
If you can't write a database-backed app that always uses prepared statements for every single insert, update and where clauses, in this day and age, you have no business releasing it, even internally. This is basic DB-related knowledge. It is trivial to prevent, with any effort at all.
Oh I can see it, some horri-bad dev write a "Select * from users...
If they had hashed, or even encrypted the passwords in the db, then at least they'd not be plain text in the source if they did a "SELECT *...". But no, this was likely shoddy at the very base levels, all the way up into the front end. I shudder to think about it. The full stack was garbage for this to happen.
I have a dell laptop with 8.1 on it I bought some months ago for work. I have all the latest drivers and windows is up to date. However, the WiFi randomly decides to disconnect, and then will reconnect only after clicking on the network icon in the task bar. It's not the access point, its only this laptop in windows. Also, the reported remaining time on battery is always higher by a factor of 8. Not making this up. Nothing I have found has fixed this. In Ubuntu 14.04 though, I have zero issues like this, and it is a stock install. No hackery at all. None. Also, using the exact same applications that I use for work in windows my laptop is more responsive and has 2gb more free ram, and it doesn't hit my HD as much. I'd work in Ubuntu but MS Lync is required for me to work with my team, and doesn't run in linux.
Firstly, being completely honest, I'm not satisfied with any OS I've ever run, but I dual boot win7 on my computers for games, and use Ubuntu the rest of the time. I'm a web developer/programmer, and I prefer working in the same environment (LAMP) my code is deployed on. It makes sense for me.
I love both windows and linux for different reasons, but I hate both of them for certain reasons too.
Windows 7, is by far the best windows ever. I've used them all, it's good. That said, I have had just as many stability issues as I had with XP...it's not perfect yet. On my laptop, for example, it decided to completely kill itself after an update, and nothing short of a re-install fixed it. This actually happened 2x...within 3 months. I still don't know why...but now that laptop only runs Ubuntu, cause it's too crappy for games anyway, and it's been rock solid for a year now.
On my desktop, win7 has been nothing short of a nightmare for me. I know I'm pretty much alone in this, but it's true. I would not trust win7 to important work on this machine. About 6 months after first installing win7 on it (64 bit from msdn), I got a new video card. Genuine advantage decided it was a different computer and tried locking me out. No biggie right? Just activate it. Well, that didn't work, I forget why. I re-installed. Later I got an ssd. I decided to clone my C: partition onto the ssd, as that was always easy in the past on hdds. Wrong. No matter the method I used to clone the partition onto the ssd, windows would not boot off of it (this is a fully supported intel ssd, it should have worked). Even the repair mode on the win7 disk couldn't properly find a windows installation, despite it being perfectly readable and everything (I've done this tons of times on regular hdds, with no problems). So, I ended up doing a clean install on the ssd. Everything was fine for a while. One day, win7 decided it couldn't update anymore. The error code was related to proxy settings, and trusted sites. I went through every single step in the supposed solutions to the error, but it would not be fixed. Nobody could help me out with it either. Stumped everyone that came across it. Since I only use it for gaming, it was not updated for 6 months, but then I decided enough was enough. Re-install. Currently it's working just fine...no issues. We'll see how long that lasts.
Overall, windows maintenance is the #1 reason I prefer linux for my default. On top of the hassles I've had with my desktop, I hate the way windows update works. It couldn't take any longer, and I hate that it tries to force you to reboot...it's stupid. I miss how easy it is to back up a list of software you have installed, and re-install it like in linux with repos. It takes so long to re-install software after a windows install. It's ridiculous. It takes me about 1/10th the time in linux to get everything I want installed...and I always have a LOT more installed in linux. I hate how windows handles drivers, they still, in win7 tend to mess up way too often. Viruses, I don't have problems with anymore, so I can't list that.
Linux though, I have problems with too. Every time linux's graphics stack starts getting good, fast, and stable, either xorg devs decide to break everything, or new desktop tech (compiz, kwin, gnome3, etc) breaks things with my catalyst driver. And there's the rub. Graphics in linux, across the board, is crap. You cannot find a high end card right now with a proprietary or opensource driver that is near as good as in windows. All have some missing functionality, and the opensource ones which everyone tries to recommend, perform like crap. If I were a games dev, I wouldn't make games for linux either...it's that bad. I get by just fine, cause I don't game that much, and my 4850 works fine for my uses. Applications. I wish linux had the application and game support windows had. It would sure be nice. Ubuntu in particular is terrible with regressions. I've never had an update to a new version of the di
No, see, YOU missed MY point. I was ONLY saying I didn't buy that broadcom cards are still causing your problems these days, since I've not known one to not work since after 8.04. I'm only saying LATELY they do seem to work great, if not even better than the supposed open source ones like atheros. I never told you you should use linux. I never said it wasn't hell sometimes (it is), and I haven't had to compile anything to get ANYTHING working in 3 years. That's why I said I don't believe you, because I haven't heard of a problem with a broadcom card by someone who had seriously just clicked the damn hardware applet and told it to use the broadcom driver. you could be having trouble...that's very possible, I just don't believe you cause everyone I know has a broadcom card and hasn't has issues in years. And I'm not a dev, I don't have to care. Do you care that my touchpad won't scroll in windows 7 on my dell laptop? No, and that's fine.
I gotta say, I don't believe you. I have a dell, with a broadcom card, and I also have a different broadcom card from a compaq/hp laptop that died on me just outside of warranty. BOTH of these cards work nearly out of the box in ubuntu, and have since 8.04, which is what I was running on the laptop that fried on me. The ONLY setup required, is to activate the driver for broadcom wireless cards on the restricted-drivers-manager thing that pops up when you first run ubuntu. I have never had an issue with this since 8.04 (I'm currently running 10.04, and have used every version in between). Previous to 8.04, yes, it was an issue, and I remember compiling ndiswrapper from source to get it working, which was hell, as I was new-ish to linux back then. Interestingly, I also have a atheros 5006 card, which supposedly works great in ubuntu, and did for a while, but since 9.04, when they went to the hal-less driver, it won't come up from resume, drops my signal all the time, and sometimes I have to cold boot my laptop to fix it, after removing all power...ONLY in linux though, not in windows, doesn't happen in windows. Broadcom cards for me have never had any of these issues, so I am using it. Go figure. Can't speak for realtek, never owned anything of theirs.
People that prefer linux will like to believe that windows will not ever be reliable, and people who prefer windows tend to believe that linux won't be.
I've seen this time and time again, both through myself, and my friends/acquaintances.
Just two recent examples of this:
A friend of mine bought a really nice Asus i5 gaming laptop with win7 home premium preloaded on Thur last week. I envy his laptop. It's awesome. Anyway, on Friday, after only running the laptop 2 times, he turned it on, only to find that win7 wouldn't boot. Luckily Asus provided a recovery disk (some OEMS require you to burn your own, he wouldn't have done that that soon). My very first reaction (as I do prefer linux, and I myself happen to have many issues just like this one with any and all windows oses, my friends will confirm that I do for some reason, whereas they do not usually...) was to start laughing, and I remember saying "When will MS get their ^(&# straight?". Now, we all know that it's possible it was his fault, not win7, but it wasn't my first reaction.
Likewise, a different friend of mine has a win7/ubuntu dual boot setup on his desktop, and at one time had xp and ubuntu via wubi on his laptop. He very very rarely uses ubuntu, and I honestly don't even know why he insists on having it installed. His antivirus program thought the wubi virtual disk of ubuntu was a virus, and deleted/broke it. He instantly blamed ubuntu for being unstable (who wouldn't). It was only later, after it happened again and we caught his antivirus in the act that we figured out what was happening. This same friend had a sata cable fail on his desktop which was hooked up to the drive with ubuntu on it. Because of this, his computer wouldn't boot, although oddly enough the drive did show up in bios. He blamed ubuntu instantly for the grub error that appeared when grub couldn't find that drive, and had me come over and help him "fix ubuntu". Well, we figured out pretty quick that he just had a bad sata cable, and after replacing it, everything was perfect.
In both cases, the operating system might not have been at fault. (ok, so ubuntu wasn't in these cases, but I've seen it become unbootable on a netbook after a regular "apt-get upgrade" too..., and the win7 issue might have been my friends fault too, I don't know.) However, it just goes to show how our personal feelings about our favorite operating systems get in the way of factual information about them, and many times people say things and bash them before they think about it. The same goes for both windows and linux.
If the Ipad is going to revolutionize anything, it's going to be big media. Itunes pretty much did it a while ago with the hurting music industry, and I believe the Ipad is another venture to keep big media happy and make apple a fortune. I personally don't think the ipad is that appealing, and I will probably never own one, but I DO think it's an attractive platform for big media, and maybe that is why it is being hyped so much. Big media sees it as a possible answer to some of it's problems, so if it can make this thing popular enough, then it has a way to prolong it's survival.
What I think is interesting about this though, is that if advertising via big media still works, then obviously big media is doing just fine. If newspaper is failing, fine, just move it to a more current medium. I don't see an issue here. There is plenty of room to expand to digital mediums instead of printing everything. If you don't want it to be a (mostly) open technology like the internet, fine...pretty sure there is enough similarly-minded money out there to back whatever your silly idea is. I believe this is exactly what the ipad was created for.
you sir, you just made my day!
Shouldn't slashdot be using html5 instead of flash for this? Some people can't use flash at work and doing it in html5 would make it possible because every browser is compatible with the html5 devices tag that enables webcams in html5.
Also, there should be a mute button, or volume controls. I'm too stupid to mute only the player, and I want to be able to listen to my own music and watch at the same time.
And finally, I love today. (My new i9 super gaming desktop from dell came in the mail today!)
Also, lets not forget that (at least a year ago) something like 80% of Firefox's funding was from google. You could argue that it's only because firefox defaults to google for search...but funding 80% of their expenses is a pretty large stake in a company (firefox/mozilla) that doesn't really have to exist for google to still turn a huge profit. Especially now that chrome exists and is doing pretty well for itself. Yeah, they might stop funding firefox now that they have a competing product...but who cares...chrome is open too...and recently I'm actually really starting to like it more anyway.
I see another scenario... Google stops supporting IE, Microsoft is justified in forcing bing as the default search on ANY IE install, all the people who just use IE cause it's installed (quite a few I believe) will use bing, and see how pretty bing is, and be seduced into thinking google is crap. (bing does look good, I prefer google though, for many reasons) So if anything, I believe a move like that would hurt them.
That, and do forget that more bodies doesn't always relate to getting a project done any faster. You have to consider training the new employee/s in and the time it takes them to become familiar enough with the project to become productive. Also, nobody that has been on the team for a while is going to want to spend time helping the new guy if he is being rushed to get important things done. It's going to be a while before the team is more productive due to the new hire/s. That, and sometimes more people just means more people will be in the way.
I know it's already all been said but really...the author needs to try this:
Program a small application in php, and one in c++. All the data must be stored in a database, on a remote machine (which is the way it would be done for a huge site). Now, hardcode in some data for your first benchmark of php vs c++ to get an idea for raw php vs c++ performance doing the same task, now, comment all that out, and get the data from the database, and time that. Guess what, I bet the times become pretty darn similar in the latter test. No, php isn't going to be QUITE as fast...but it's gonna be really close for REAL web-application type workloads where latency from your sql server and loading all the other page content come into play. Your clients are never going to notice the difference on the majority of applications, and I don't believe that most time is spent processing php or c++ code on a web application either. It's waiting for the DB, and uploading content to clients. If you truely are doing extremely data heavy tasks and lots of floating point math or something, then yes...C++ is probably a better tool, but even then, there's no reason not to use php for the non-data heavy stuff...
I know I'm just a youngster web programmer who only graduated from college a while ago and who deserves little respect on slashdot compared to some of you, but I do have a decent amount of experience with quite a few programming languages. I learned C++ first, and know it pretty well for someone who doesn't use it constantly any more. I think I'm very very good with PHP...and so does my boss. Given that information, I have something to say.
If someone told me to program an entire web application from top to bottom in C++, I'd probably quit on the spot, and walk out laughing all the way to the parking lot. I like C++ for lots of things, but there is no way in hell you would EVER get me to program an entire web application in c++. It would take 10x longer at LEAST to develop than it would for me to do in even Java, with which I actually have less knowledge of (but still a good working knowledge of), and I don't consider ideal for web apps. The debugging for C++ on something like that would probably drive me completely insane. I say me, because I'm assuming that I'm building this web app and only me...like I can do very quickly in php or python or nearly any other language that does web stuff well, otherwise it would be me and all my co-workers.
Languages that are traditionally used for web development are used for a reason...and it's not how fast/efficient they run. It's for the difference in expense of the developers (HUGE factor really), for how well the language suits the web in it's core libraries, and how well it integrates with web servers, database abstraction libraries...well I could go on forever really. I'm not saying that C++ couldn't get libraries built for it that made its appealing as say, ruby (on rails), php, or python, but lets face it, it would take a very long time to get to that point where everything was as seamless and easy as it is in current web languages...not to mention getting hosting companies to let you run a c++ app YOU programmed on their servers (they'd have to be stupid...really freakin stupid). C++ will just never be popular enough for web stuff to be attractive to developers...that's the bottom line. Lack of efficiency is such a tiny price to pay compared to these other factors.
You just CANNOT have geeky programmer types figure out human body language well enough to create a set of working rules to program into a robot! Why? Well let's see, most geeky programmer types (myself included) already have a certain social awkwardness and trouble recognizing/reacting to human social quirks as it is, for the main reason that they generally don't associate as often with non-geeky people. Now, I'm not saying this is always true of course, but I think it's at least generally the case, and probably more so with people who mess around with robots all day. I think before we see robots that act and seem human, will be the day that normal cheerleaders and soccermoms can work on robot's AIs without realizing what they are doing(which I'm guessing is going to be a long while, unless you count the furby...).
My sister was throwing out a 1.6ghz celeron M based laptop because she bought a new laptop, and the display was broken on the old one (she never bothered to have anyone fix it, even though it wasn't that expensive to fix...). I just completely removed the screen, since I don't care to use it as a laptop, and fixing it costs money I don't want to spend. Anyway, I've been running it as a web server/NAS/file server for about 4 months now, and it does really well. I don't know the numbers for power usage, but I know it's better than the dell thin-client machine with a p3 at 1ghz I was using before. It's also quicker, as this celeron M is basically a core2 solo... Can't do much better than free... Although I would LOVE to get my hands on a sheevaplug. I just may buy one...
I will definitely agree that release quality of ubuntu has deteriorated but I'm pretty sure some of your issues are hardware specific (I realize this doesn't make it any better...). For example, I have a crap laptop with intel965 graphics, and 9.04 and 9.10 are the only releases that actually made hack free multi-monitor support a reality for me. Before that, I always had to hack xorg. Also, Kubuntu 9.10 alpha 6 worked with both vga and svideo out for me out of the box (you have to go into system settings...), but I didn't test hdmi yet cause I dont' have a cable right now. Pulse audio was TERRIBLE in 9.10alpha 6, and not good at all in 9.04 either, and crapped out on me almost weekly, but right now (9.10beta) it's working impressively well, so much so that I'm actually not hating pulseaudio (that's saying alot). So, for me, pulse and my video are MUCH better than they have been in the past. I agree though, ubuntu needs MUCH better regression testing, and also they need to make sure that things actually work as they are supposed to before they try to put it in a distro. I think fedora tends to do better with this, but that said, I've personally had better luck getting ubuntu working in the end than I have with fedora. Generally ubuntu works a bit better with my hardware(I've tested/run every single fedora release since 4)...but I know for a fact this isn't true for everyone.
I actually started out my linux experience with red hat, then I tried the fedora releases starting with 4 (which I ran for a while...) and I think running them dual booted with xp through I think fedora 6 or 7.
My computer fried one day (hardware issue), and I didn't have a way to run linux for about a year (I was in college, and I just used winXP in the labs that year). After that I got my first introduction to ubuntu (6.06 I think) in the Computer Science lab (and didn't notice much difference since I couldn't do any administration, no sudo rights...). About that same time I got a laptop, and by the recommendation of a friend who LOVED/S ubuntu, I installed ubuntu instead of fedora.
I have tried out every single ubuntu, fedora, (open)suse, and many other distros (including some pretty obscure and/or minimalist ones), and I always find that for me, on my hardware, ubuntu tends to "just work" the best and gives me the best user experience, and fedora releases always seem to have an issue that I can't easily work around, or something that just bothers me that I don't want to live with. Suse is usually about the same way, although I LOVE yast (ubuntu needs an equivalent!). I actually always have to have the best luck with debian based distros, and I have no clue why, since I feel I know how to use both red hat based distros and debian based distros about equally actually.
I would like to use fedora more, as I feel it's technically superior usually on any given release (and blue is nicer to look at than brown), but it just never feels quite right, and things tend to not go as smoothly as the ubuntu distro at the current time...so I continue to run ubuntu, and experiment with everything else.
I am an OS fanatic though I think. My laptop is nearly always running some new beta of some distro or some experimental OS (plan9 anyone?) alongside my normal defaults (which is ubuntu9.10 with win7 right now, but I rarely boot win7...I never have a reason to except the occasional game that doesn't work in wine, and I actually prefer both gnome and kde over window's UI by a HUGE margin).
Actually, broke it at a concert...someone ran into me really hard. Not fun.
I see a far greater problem than this especially with the password app. Suppose they start putting these keyboards on laptops and other devices, or different models of the keyboard are made. Say you need to type your password and you have a different keyboard then the one you usually use...or even the keyboard starts to wear out... What then? Certainly this technology isn't ready for anything but desktop apps, as there would be no way to tap into how the person typed the password into a web app. I don't know, it doesn't seem like a good idea for passwords, since the devices performance in sure to change over time, whereas your typing may not, OR it may, which is a problem too, especially if you are injured, like when I broke my right hand middle finger a couple months ago...
On other stuff, that doesnt' have to do with passwords, there still is the problem of the keyboard wearing out or your typing changing, which suddenly renders any computer learning techniques broken...
Actually, I'm not so sure that making a good IDE for something that supports nearly the same as flash does for html5 and js WOULD be that big a problem. I used to develop in flash a great deal 3 years ago, but I have been doing web programming since then. (mostly php, mysql, but I am really good with javascript as well)
I don't see why, with all the capability we ALREADY have with javascript and html5, couldn't make an IDE for making similar content in a application that is browser/web based and is nearly 100% html5 and javascript (python/php/ruby would be needed some I'm thinking). If one were to develop a good api for frame-based animation using javascript and html5, why then couldn't html5 and javascript form a good ide interface and "compiling"(scripting language needed here) the necessary javascript/html5 to make your content run?
Would a javascript API be as nice as flashes? no, probably not...as actionscript is actually a decent OOP language in many respects (yes javascript can be OOP, but it's just not the same/equivalent). Do I think the results could be as nice? With some good backing and committed development, possibly. Do I see any reason an IDE as rich as flash's couldn't be developed using html5, js, and maybe some other scripting language like python/php/ruby? No, not really. So, really, if I'm right (most likely I'm not), the only thing holding JS and html5 back is lack of will/means to compete head to head with adobe.
Call me out if I'm wrong...but I think it could be done. (and if anyone wants to hire my help, contact me...heh)
I read on their website on the "Gallery" tab that it's atx & mini atx form factor. (somehow the specifications are in the gallery...no clue why...)
I thought that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExfatexFat was basically a 64 bit extension to fat32...but I could be wrong.
My experience is not quite as bad, but I will admit that windowsXP tends to best my battery life in ubuntu 9.04 by about 15 to 20 minutes. I'm pretty sure it's about equal to ubuntu in win7, but I know it wasn't as good as ubuntu in vista. This is on an inspiron 1525. Battery life for laptops I have found is usually a bit worse in linux, but I've never heard that it performs as badly as this post. I'm saying it isn't that bad for you...I'm sure it is. Lets face it, stuff breaks in linux all the time. My intel graphics drivers are the PERFECT example of poor/unpredictable performance in linux.