As far as a "solution" for Sametime, most of these don't come close. Sametime meetings don't even work properly without IE on Windows, I can't imagine how they are going to get the same functionality in Linux.
To be honest, Sametime Meetings are generally less stable than VNC, so for any serious cross-site discussion we tend to use VNC (and when I'm needed, I insist upon VNC for obvious reasons). That has the benefit of being usable from any platform around, being a more mature technology and being generally deployed.
I use an internally available Sametime client which does indeed allow searching for people across IBM, also allows the creation of groups based on management structures and a number of other nice pieces. I'd personally like to see it GPL'd and released. Whether that will ever happen I don't know.
If he wants open standards based computing, then he had better start mandating that all web applications are developed so that all relevant browsers can use them.
Actually thats precisely what the internal standards do say. I find that waving them under the nose of the respective developer is quite instructive. And occassionally successful - several web apps which used to be IE only work seamlessly under Firefox/Mozilla these days. The number of web apps which are IE-only is shrinking fast.
I can honestly say that a lot would have to be done with their own internal applications to bring them to Linux. Domino client won't run. Neither is a Sametime client available. Both were in heavy use in IBM Global Services, at least.
There are several linux Sametime clients available, ranging from Java to the Gaim meanwhile plugin. So that is not a problem (I run a different internal client which I find is superior to the Windows client).
The Windows Lotus Notes client runs fine on standard WINE (as in available from www.winehq.com) and internally packaged versions are available for employees. That is not a problem either - indeed I believe that the almost flawless execution of the windows client running on WINE has removed any immediate need to port the client to Linux natively.
As I still work for IBM, I see active communities of employees moving to Linux. I don't believe that the original pledge said that everyone would instantaneously move to Linux - for the most part, its a quiet revolution for us developers. I can't speak for other parts of the company. I do know that DB2 UDB continues to spread to more and more Linux platforms (x86, x86_64, IA64, PPC, z/OS) and that is clearly an area where IBM is pushing hard for complete coverage. Both my key productivity machines are 100% linux and I do not have to use Windows unless I am debugging Windows problems.
We already support linux x86, linux Itantium, linux x86_64, linux PPC and linux z/OS, Solaris/Sparc, HPUX and AIX (and others). Each platform needs a certain amount of testing before the product leaves the development floor. Service personnel need to be trained on the platform. Java implementations have to be tested for conformance. Stress tests have to be run. Functional tests have to be run. Even if not one line of code requires fixing to run DB2 on Solaris/x86, that doesn't mean we simply flick a button and wahey, DB2 on Solaris/x86.
As virtually no effort is needed for AMD64/x86-Solaris certification of IBM's AMD64/x86/Linux apps, it is obvious that IBM does not want customers to consider Solaris on AMD64 (or x86).
Virtually no effort?! Even Java products require significant testing effort when shipping them for a "new" platform and simply assuming that everything that works on Linux x86_64 will work seemlessly on Solaris x86_64 is a recipe for unhappy customers. As I work day-to-day on the DB2 UDB internals and I am just down the corridor from the DB2 linux support team, I can say with some authority that it would take a lot more than just adding a tick to the Solaris supported column on the marketing sheets to see DB2 on x86_64/Solaris.
I do not know of any plans to release DB2 on Solaris/x86_64 but I also am not aware of any plans NOT to release DB2 on Solaris/x86_64. Ultimately, it will come down the normal equation of testing and support effort required to get the release out and running against the customer demand. IBM is in the IT market to make money. If customers want DB2 on Solaris/x86_64 in sufficient numbers to make it financially viable, you can bet that there will be a release. There is no business proposition in sitting on your hands to spite Sun if there is financial reward to be had. This isn't a charity, nor is a playground spat.
The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
'But,' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Linux has existed on 64 bit platforms for a number of years, running on Sparc, Alpha, PowerPC, IA64, AMD64 and probably a couple I've forgotten. It's a more mature 64bit offering.
Well, only if myself, about half of my immediate colleagues, the Linux Technology Center people, all the people on the internal linux mailing lists and probably quite a few others don't count:-)
Given that one data point looks a bit borked, I'm wondering about the rest of the data...
He wasn't talking about the tool itself, rather the "real time highlighting of the selected area" for the lasso.
And the marching ants highlighting of the lasso line in the GIMP doesn't count? Just because it isn't the same as Paint.NET doesn't make it any less realtime or highlighting-like. Once defined, the selected area is immediately dragable or dockable to another image or layer. The selected lasso can be further modified if desired. If you are asking for a tool that dims the unselected area or brightens the selected area then that is a different matter.
Speaking of nice features: the lasso-select in this thing is pretty kick ass. Does any other software have similar real time highlighting of the selected area for the lasso?
What you mean, like the GIMP? Press "F" or click the third button in the tool pane and you are using lasso select.
I'm beginning to think that there are a bunch of people out there who just like to spout off without engaging their brain. The GIMP has a ton of great features, the dockable toolbars work fabulously, it has great support for the Wacom Intuous tablet I use and it does pretty much everything I need it to do. Plus plugins like Resynthesizer make removing spots and creating tilable textures from digital photos really easy. Criticise the tools you use, not the ones where you just visited the web page.
Name two developers that wrote/designed/coded the game you really like...
Without going to Google I'll give you three...
John Carmack, id software
TTimo, linux porter at id software
Ryan Gordan, Linux porting god responsible for keep UT2k4 hale and hearty on my native AMD64 linux box:-)
That wasn't too hard. I suspect that most seasoned Nintendo game players could name the minds behind Mario, etc. etc. Top developers do get exposure in the technical media.
Some parts of society may be all about visual appeal and instant gratification. That doesn't prevent other parts of society being a more thoughtful and insightful crowd.
I'd be curious to see what this would look like if you excluded immigrants - I suspect the US would place a lot higher relative to highly homogenous societies like the ones at the top.
Given that the percentage of immigrants (not born in the host country) in the US is lower (around 6%) than almost any other western country I can think of, I'm not sure what you expect to see. The UK is around 11%. Canada has something close to 20%. If you think that excluding immigrants would raise the US's score relative to the other countries, are you implying that immigrants have better math skills than the host country?
DVD region codes are an example of localisation, not globalisation. They are a poor attempt to keep a lid on globalisation at the expense of the consumer. They don't actually work in sane countries because you can go out and buy a region-free DVD player that ignores the region codes. It seems that getting a region-free DVD player in North America is a lot tougher than it is in Europe which pisses me off no end.
Still, with the advent of Dual layer burners and DeCSS, you can remove the region codes of the DVDs you own pretty easily.
He tends to introduce bugs into other people's code by refusing to step back and understand the whole system when he's in a rush to get work done. Then, the bug appears to have been caused by the developer who normally maintains that section so that developer ends up fixing it.
I've experienced this phenomenon several times, where one developers inability to see beyond their own part of the project causes all sorts of problems elsewhere. It's a serious issue - large projects tend to have all sorts of odd corners where you can get into a world of hurts if you don't spend time talking to other developers FIRST to find out how that area is supposed to be driven.
Now you can argue that this is the sign of a fragile codebase and that everything which shouldn't be done should be blocked by asserts, rigourous sanity testing and hardened code. Any time I get my hands into a function these days, hardening it so it can't be abused is high on my priority lists but there will probably always be gotchas which just can't be locked down on a function by function basis.
Ergo, the more complex the codebase you are working with, the more care is required to keep it alive and in a good state of health. I resist working much longer than 50 hours in any given week unless I am doing mindless handle cranking at the end of it and I will not attempt to code complex stuff unless I'm really in the coding groove and my brain cells are humming well. While learning a new project, I've burned myself a few times by coding something while tired, having it pass all the tests I can reasonably throw at it and yet having overlooked some criteria that will cause problem in a less well travelled part of the codebase. And finding the problem inadvertantly introduced earlier may be the work of weeks, not hours. More importantly, if my mistake causes a problem elsewhere, it may not get back to me for a long time, wasting another developer's time trying to diagnose an obscure symptom.
Don't code on large projects when tired. It's almost NEVER worth it.
Doom III is a pretty amazing experience on a well spec'd linux box but most of my gaming time is spent with UT2004, partly because Onslaught is such an amazing multiplayer experience but also because of the mods available for UT2004 are plentiful.
Any decent AAA game has extensive modding capabilities and Epic have done well in encouraging mod-makers to expand upon UT2004. The NVidia-sponsored "Make Something Unreal" competition has resulted in some really impressive mods, from Alien Swarm to Red Orchestra and UnWheel, Clone Wars add to the fun. Hell - there is even a Golf game built on UT2004. Doom III will get it's top quality mods given time but for now UT2004 will continue to command my Linux gaming attention.
And while I spare a thought for Half life 2, I'm not going to fret too much. If Valve doesn't want my gaming money I'll continue shovelling cash towards Epic, id software, Grimm Software, Garage Games, Epic Interactive, Running With Scissors and any other company out there who feels that Linux gaming is worth the trouble.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
What about Vendetta Online?
on
Online World News
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
If space MMORGs are your thing, you might consider checking out Vendetta online, which is currently in Beta testing and features Windows, Linux and Mac clients.
This is the same Vendetta that had been alpha testing for ages, looked like it wasn't going to happen, got all but abandoned and yet somewhere from the ashes the developers have pulled out the stops and built a mission-based, group-orientated space fighting and trading MMORG. So far so good and if you see "Nexus 6" knocking around, give me a couple of shots across the bows and say hello.
True. And in the future, they may be even more prevalent than in Microsoft software. If it's truly MS' goal to switch all development to the managed.NET platform (and it should be), then overflow protection will be free during development and nearly free in terms of execution time.
That is one of the decisions to make when developing code - pick a language that fits your needs. Take Java/C#/lisp/whatever if you want a language that allows you to get the job done and provides the tools you need - the trade offs are less than maximum performance and maybe less control over garbage collection. If you need system level code and/or maximum performance, you might well choose C as being the "closest to the metal" while remaining (somewhat) architecture agnostic. The trade off is you had better be aware of memory management, the difference between stack and heap allocations, etc. C isn't going to be dropping off the list of useful languages any time soon but there is more choice now then there was 10 years ago.
On the other hand, it doesn't appear that there's any impetus in the open source community to rewrite components in a modern exception handling, bounds checking, type verifying language. In fact, I see a lot of reliance on C. It's not 1972 anymore, guys. Computers have grown to the point that abstraction is far more important than tiny optimizations. And powerful optimizations are still possible in modern languages!
Why do you think that the GNOME folks are looking at using C# to develop the high level components for the future GNOME stuff then? Developers in the open source community are free to choose the language that fits them the best - in many cases that is the language(s) that they are most comfortable. There are plenty of open source projects out there using Java and there are already more than a handful out there already relying on Mono. Impetus for change in an existing project comes when there is a need for change - you aren't going to throw away a lot of the code you have developed just because a new shiny language arrives.
Having said that all, C has the benefit of being glue-able to almost any other language out there and is a strong contender for central development on the basis of this alone. C plus Valgrind, static code analysis and a good test rig can allow you to bullet proof even C code to a fair degree. Maybe the CLR will allow bindings into all corners of all languages to be a reality. Maybe not.
As another poster points out, it's because Linux desktop sessions typically last so much longer than typical Windows sessions, mostly for historical and cultural reasons.
It varies across my Linux machines enormously. My laptop gets shutdown every night (Fedora Core 2). My home machine runs Mandrake Cooker and sees a bust up every 6 weeks or so when something breaks in Cooker but I expect that - that's the price for running a bleeding-edge distro and the benefits of having the latest stuff is worth the hassle as far as I'm concerned.
Now my work desktop (Mandrake Community) sees heavy duty usage both for local and remote operations. Its current uptime is 73 days, with the last reboot(s) due to a power cut(s). It runs a wide range of scripts, programs and apps, from Lotus Notes 6.51 (on WINE), Mozilla 1.7, OpenOffice.org. Just for kicks it also runs 3D screensavers (from xscreensaver) and has a "live" backdrop courtesy of xplanet.
On this machine, gdm and X has been operational without a break since 5th July and X has racked up 3 pure days of CPU time (probably mostly due to xscreensaver:-) ). System updates and vulnerabilities have been patched several times in that period.
Then why does Windows XP boot twice as fast as most Linux distros?
Because XP writes much of the system settings to disk at shutdown to speed up subsequent boots. If you add the XP close down and start up times together and compare them to the equivalents for a Linux box, I think you'll find that Linux wins. The slow shutdown times on XP drive me crazy when I'm in a hurry - you can't leave until it's fully powered down in case it doesn't complete.
That said, my laptop (1.5Ghz) boots in under 45 seconds on FC2. Hardly a massive amount of time. And I've not bothered to streamline it - I could probably knock another 10 seconds off that with a little fiddling and delayed startups.
... whether this is a troll, an attempt to get a "funny" moderation (oh look - "X" is wider than "i" - maybe we need a "funny peculiar" mod) or a lack of understanding about proportional fonts.
Either way, the "Xtns" looks just fine to me. It's not a font I would choose to use myself, being a convert to the extremely readable Vera Bitstream series but that's a personal choice.
Perceived rotation and fields of view
on
Walking In A VR Future
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I suffer from this very badly. I couldn't play the early Doom or Quake games. I tried out a VR game at Great Adventure around 1995/1996 and it made me horribly sick and dizzy.
For me, I recently pulled out my old Doom WADs when the Doomsday (aka jDoom) engine was ported to Linux. And after about 20 minutes of insane play, I had to go outside and recover from severe nausea.
Now, the original Wolfenstein used to give me major problems but Doom wasn't an issue. So I poked around the options and discovered a setting to change the field-of-view from 95 degrees down to 90 degrees. And lo and behold, no more chunder rumbles.
Now it might just be that the frame rate changed because the amount of geometry being rendered was slightly reduced, but my money would be that because I sit far back from the screen with the keyboard out in front of me, my view onto the virtual world beyond the screen needs a narrower field of view than someone who is sitting with their eyeballs an inch from the monitor. The perceived world through the screen should reasonably match the expectations given the viewers position if it is to be believable and I wonder whether that nausea is caused by a mismatch between the perceived world when rotating the camera.
Slashdot Mirror
To be honest, Sametime Meetings are generally less stable than VNC, so for any serious cross-site discussion we tend to use VNC (and when I'm needed, I insist upon VNC for obvious reasons). That has the benefit of being usable from any platform around, being a more mature technology and being generally deployed.
I use an internally available Sametime client which does indeed allow searching for people across IBM, also allows the creation of groups based on management structures and a number of other nice pieces. I'd personally like to see it GPL'd and released. Whether that will ever happen I don't know.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Actually thats precisely what the internal standards do say. I find that waving them under the nose of the respective developer is quite instructive. And occassionally successful - several web apps which used to be IE only work seamlessly under Firefox/Mozilla these days. The number of web apps which are IE-only is shrinking fast.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
I can honestly say that a lot would have to be done with their own internal applications to bring them to Linux. Domino client won't run. Neither is a Sametime client available. Both were in heavy use in IBM Global Services, at least.
There are several linux Sametime clients available, ranging from Java to the Gaim meanwhile plugin. So that is not a problem (I run a different internal client which I find is superior to the Windows client).
The Windows Lotus Notes client runs fine on standard WINE (as in available from www.winehq.com) and internally packaged versions are available for employees. That is not a problem either - indeed I believe that the almost flawless execution of the windows client running on WINE has removed any immediate need to port the client to Linux natively.
As I still work for IBM, I see active communities of employees moving to Linux. I don't believe that the original pledge said that everyone would instantaneously move to Linux - for the most part, its a quiet revolution for us developers. I can't speak for other parts of the company. I do know that DB2 UDB continues to spread to more and more Linux platforms (x86, x86_64, IA64, PPC, z/OS) and that is clearly an area where IBM is pushing hard for complete coverage. Both my key productivity machines are 100% linux and I do not have to use Windows unless I am debugging Windows problems.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
As virtually no effort is needed for AMD64/x86-Solaris certification of IBM's AMD64/x86/Linux apps, it is obvious that IBM does not want customers to consider Solaris on AMD64 (or x86).
Virtually no effort?! Even Java products require significant testing effort when shipping them for a "new" platform and simply assuming that everything that works on Linux x86_64 will work seemlessly on Solaris x86_64 is a recipe for unhappy customers. As I work day-to-day on the DB2 UDB internals and I am just down the corridor from the DB2 linux support team, I can say with some authority that it would take a lot more than just adding a tick to the Solaris supported column on the marketing sheets to see DB2 on x86_64/Solaris.
I do not know of any plans to release DB2 on Solaris/x86_64 but I also am not aware of any plans NOT to release DB2 on Solaris/x86_64. Ultimately, it will come down the normal equation of testing and support effort required to get the release out and running against the customer demand. IBM is in the IT market to make money. If customers want DB2 on Solaris/x86_64 in sufficient numbers to make it financially viable, you can bet that there will be a release. There is no business proposition in sitting on your hands to spite Sun if there is financial reward to be had. This isn't a charity, nor is a playground spat.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
'But,' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Linux has existed on 64 bit platforms for a number of years, running on Sparc, Alpha, PowerPC, IA64, AMD64 and probably a couple I've forgotten. It's a more mature 64bit offering.
Well, only if myself, about half of my immediate colleagues, the Linux Technology Center people, all the people on the internal linux mailing lists and probably quite a few others don't count :-)
Given that one data point looks a bit borked, I'm wondering about the rest of the data...
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
He wasn't talking about the tool itself, rather the "real time highlighting of the selected area" for the lasso.
And the marching ants highlighting of the lasso line in the GIMP doesn't count? Just because it isn't the same as Paint.NET doesn't make it any less realtime or highlighting-like. Once defined, the selected area is immediately dragable or dockable to another image or layer. The selected lasso can be further modified if desired. If you are asking for a tool that dims the unselected area or brightens the selected area then that is a different matter.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Speaking of nice features: the lasso-select in this thing is pretty kick ass. Does any other software have similar real time highlighting of the selected area for the lasso?
What you mean, like the GIMP? Press "F" or click the third button in the tool pane and you are using lasso select.
I'm beginning to think that there are a bunch of people out there who just like to spout off without engaging their brain. The GIMP has a ton of great features, the dockable toolbars work fabulously, it has great support for the Wacom Intuous tablet I use and it does pretty much everything I need it to do. Plus plugins like Resynthesizer make removing spots and creating tilable textures from digital photos really easy. Criticise the tools you use, not the ones where you just visited the web page.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Without going to Google I'll give you three...
That wasn't too hard. I suspect that most seasoned Nintendo game players could name the minds behind Mario, etc. etc. Top developers do get exposure in the technical media.
Some parts of society may be all about visual appeal and instant gratification. That doesn't prevent other parts of society being a more thoughtful and insightful crowd.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Given that the percentage of immigrants (not born in the host country) in the US is lower (around 6%) than almost any other western country I can think of, I'm not sure what you expect to see. The UK is around 11%. Canada has something close to 20%. If you think that excluding immigrants would raise the US's score relative to the other countries, are you implying that immigrants have better math skills than the host country?
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Still, with the advent of Dual layer burners and DeCSS, you can remove the region codes of the DVDs you own pretty easily.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
I've experienced this phenomenon several times, where one developers inability to see beyond their own part of the project causes all sorts of problems elsewhere. It's a serious issue - large projects tend to have all sorts of odd corners where you can get into a world of hurts if you don't spend time talking to other developers FIRST to find out how that area is supposed to be driven.
Now you can argue that this is the sign of a fragile codebase and that everything which shouldn't be done should be blocked by asserts, rigourous sanity testing and hardened code. Any time I get my hands into a function these days, hardening it so it can't be abused is high on my priority lists but there will probably always be gotchas which just can't be locked down on a function by function basis.
Ergo, the more complex the codebase you are working with, the more care is required to keep it alive and in a good state of health. I resist working much longer than 50 hours in any given week unless I am doing mindless handle cranking at the end of it and I will not attempt to code complex stuff unless I'm really in the coding groove and my brain cells are humming well. While learning a new project, I've burned myself a few times by coding something while tired, having it pass all the tests I can reasonably throw at it and yet having overlooked some criteria that will cause problem in a less well travelled part of the codebase. And finding the problem inadvertantly introduced earlier may be the work of weeks, not hours. More importantly, if my mistake causes a problem elsewhere, it may not get back to me for a long time, wasting another developer's time trying to diagnose an obscure symptom.
Don't code on large projects when tired. It's almost NEVER worth it.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Oh dear, slashdot will serious disrupt the Amazon review system, for the Fracisco comment mentioned above:
6963 of 7162 people found the following review helpful.
Wow that's like 2.8 percent package loss. That's worse than the post office :-)
Any decent AAA game has extensive modding capabilities and Epic have done well in encouraging mod-makers to expand upon UT2004. The NVidia-sponsored "Make Something Unreal" competition has resulted in some really impressive mods, from Alien Swarm to Red Orchestra and UnWheel, Clone Wars add to the fun. Hell - there is even a Golf game built on UT2004. Doom III will get it's top quality mods given time but for now UT2004 will continue to command my Linux gaming attention.
And while I spare a thought for Half life 2, I'm not going to fret too much. If Valve doesn't want my gaming money I'll continue shovelling cash towards Epic, id software, Grimm Software, Garage Games, Epic Interactive, Running With Scissors and any other company out there who feels that Linux gaming is worth the trouble.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
If space MMORGs are your thing, you might consider checking out Vendetta online, which is currently in Beta testing and features Windows, Linux and Mac clients.
This is the same Vendetta that had been alpha testing for ages, looked like it wasn't going to happen, got all but abandoned and yet somewhere from the ashes the developers have pulled out the stops and built a mission-based, group-orientated space fighting and trading MMORG. So far so good and if you see "Nexus 6" knocking around, give me a couple of shots across the bows and say hello.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
True. And in the future, they may be even more prevalent than in Microsoft software. If it's truly MS' goal to switch all development to the managed .NET platform (and it should be), then overflow protection will be free during development and nearly free in terms of execution time.
That is one of the decisions to make when developing code - pick a language that fits your needs. Take Java/C#/lisp/whatever if you want a language that allows you to get the job done and provides the tools you need - the trade offs are less than maximum performance and maybe less control over garbage collection. If you need system level code and/or maximum performance, you might well choose C as being the "closest to the metal" while remaining (somewhat) architecture agnostic. The trade off is you had better be aware of memory management, the difference between stack and heap allocations, etc. C isn't going to be dropping off the list of useful languages any time soon but there is more choice now then there was 10 years ago.
On the other hand, it doesn't appear that there's any impetus in the open source community to rewrite components in a modern exception handling, bounds checking, type verifying language. In fact, I see a lot of reliance on C. It's not 1972 anymore, guys. Computers have grown to the point that abstraction is far more important than tiny optimizations. And powerful optimizations are still possible in modern languages!
Why do you think that the GNOME folks are looking at using C# to develop the high level components for the future GNOME stuff then? Developers in the open source community are free to choose the language that fits them the best - in many cases that is the language(s) that they are most comfortable. There are plenty of open source projects out there using Java and there are already more than a handful out there already relying on Mono. Impetus for change in an existing project comes when there is a need for change - you aren't going to throw away a lot of the code you have developed just because a new shiny language arrives.
Having said that all, C has the benefit of being glue-able to almost any other language out there and is a strong contender for central development on the basis of this alone. C plus Valgrind, static code analysis and a good test rig can allow you to bullet proof even C code to a fair degree. Maybe the CLR will allow bindings into all corners of all languages to be a reality. Maybe not.
YMMV. Especially with C.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
As another poster points out, it's because Linux desktop sessions typically last so much longer than typical Windows sessions, mostly for historical and cultural reasons.
It varies across my Linux machines enormously. My laptop gets shutdown every night (Fedora Core 2). My home machine runs Mandrake Cooker and sees a bust up every 6 weeks or so when something breaks in Cooker but I expect that - that's the price for running a bleeding-edge distro and the benefits of having the latest stuff is worth the hassle as far as I'm concerned.
Now my work desktop (Mandrake Community) sees heavy duty usage both for local and remote operations. Its current uptime is 73 days, with the last reboot(s) due to a power cut(s). It runs a wide range of scripts, programs and apps, from Lotus Notes 6.51 (on WINE), Mozilla 1.7, OpenOffice.org. Just for kicks it also runs 3D screensavers (from xscreensaver) and has a "live" backdrop courtesy of xplanet.
On this machine, gdm and X has been operational without a break since 5th July and X has racked up 3 pure days of CPU time (probably mostly due to xscreensaver :-) ). System updates and vulnerabilities have been patched several times in that period.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Because XP writes much of the system settings to disk at shutdown to speed up subsequent boots. If you add the XP close down and start up times together and compare them to the equivalents for a Linux box, I think you'll find that Linux wins. The slow shutdown times on XP drive me crazy when I'm in a hurry - you can't leave until it's fully powered down in case it doesn't complete.
That said, my laptop (1.5Ghz) boots in under 45 seconds on FC2. Hardly a massive amount of time. And I've not bothered to streamline it - I could probably knock another 10 seconds off that with a little fiddling and delayed startups.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Either way, the "Xtns" looks just fine to me. It's not a font I would choose to use myself, being a convert to the extremely readable Vera Bitstream series but that's a personal choice.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
I fact, I've been waiting for free-download Oracle/DB2 "personal database" or some limited opensource release of Oracle/DB2 for a while.
So, err, maybe you wanted this?
DB2 UDB Personal Developer Edition
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
For me, I recently pulled out my old Doom WADs when the Doomsday (aka jDoom) engine was ported to Linux. And after about 20 minutes of insane play, I had to go outside and recover from severe nausea.
Now, the original Wolfenstein used to give me major problems but Doom wasn't an issue. So I poked around the options and discovered a setting to change the field-of-view from 95 degrees down to 90 degrees. And lo and behold, no more chunder rumbles.
Now it might just be that the frame rate changed because the amount of geometry being rendered was slightly reduced, but my money would be that because I sit far back from the screen with the keyboard out in front of me, my view onto the virtual world beyond the screen needs a narrower field of view than someone who is sitting with their eyeballs an inch from the monitor. The perceived world through the screen should reasonably match the expectations given the viewers position if it is to be believable and I wonder whether that nausea is caused by a mismatch between the perceived world when rotating the camera.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Cheers,
Toby Haynes