Ideally, GTK+ will be rewritten in Vala. That way, we get C compatibility together with being able to write code in a modern, high-level, C#-like language (with type inference, memory management and anonymous functions, to name a few features).
Qt had a license exemptions for the major open-source licenses, which makes the licensing situation really confusing. Since one of the exempted license was BSD, arguably their "holey" GPL license is effectively just the LGPL license, since you can write a wrapper around the parts of Qt that you want, BSD-license it, and write a proprietary app that uses it.
On the other hand, unless you jump through these hoops, there will be perfectly fine open-source licenses that are LGPL-compatible (but not GPL compatible) that you cannot use, either because its a minor license that Qt's lawyers have not seen, or because it's too new. It took a while for Qt to be GPL3 compatible, for example.
France and Japan actually rely heavily on nuclear energy for their electricity need; and France does already process spent fuel rods.
Its transportation to Japan is a controversial topic -- indeed, a main stumbling block would be on environmental (in case of an accident) and security (in case of a hijacking/terrorist act) grounds.
Or internationalize it. Have an international consortium be in charge of nuclear fuel processing, subject to Security Council veto over who they can sell to.
Need a space probe, need uranium for your power plant -- if everyone plays along, countries like Iran will have less justification for wanting an independent uranium processing capability.
This scam has been going on for thousands of years -- many religious relics are fake, most notably the heads of John the Baptist (Catholic News Agency; also referred to by Umberto Eco in his mediaeval novels).
More controversially, the Our Lady of Guadalupe icon in Mexico also has a very uncertain provenance.
There's no point limiting memory to 3GB. You either have two accessible slots for 2x2GB, or one accessible slot for 2GB.
Sure, you could solder in another 1GB, but in that case, why not ship with 2GB out of the box and leave room for another 2GB in a user-accessible slot? The price difference between 1GB and 2GB is minimal, and you don't get the embarrassment of watching Vista crawl on the base configuration.
OpenSSH is quite secure. Just because some Linux distributions patch the version they ship and introduce security vulnerabilities does not mean the OpenBSD team is responsible.
Makes me wonder: perhaps the OpenBSD team should design a secure browser next. OpenSSH does a lot of the things you mention -- loud warning if the server key changes under you, etc.
A solution is obvious -- state governments could own some banks themselves, that can pick up the slack in lending.
Anyone knows how the financial crisis is working out in Germany, where the Landers (states) have banks? Are there divergent lending patterns between public and private banks?
Touché. What's the percentage of uptime spent in BIOS interrupt handlers, though? Looking at the list of interrupts, most of the tasks seem optimizable by any decent compiler.
Doesn't handwritten assembly have the potential to be much faster than assembly compiled from C?
For a piece of software that gets run once per boot, speed is probably not very critical. A typical BIOS completes its run in a couple of seconds.
Using an optimizing C compiler also has a further potential benefit -- given that motherboards specifically target certain CPUs, you can optimize the BIOS code for that CPU family. Not sure how much improvement this will yield, though.
That would likely backfire -- witness Sun's on-again, off-again support for Solaris-on-Intel. If AMD were to suddenly introduce a new, killer low-power CPU, it would not get as much adoption by hardware vendors as if they did not discontinue the chip.
Yup. When it comes to user interfaces, it is bad enough; when it comes to, say, power-efficient hybrid drivetrains, who knows how much CO2 we have released to the atmosphere because Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford effectively partition the solution space and can't make use of each others' innovations (or rather, they can, but choose not to for business reasons)
The US computer market is pretty much saturated -- most sales are to people who already have computers.
In an economic downturn, with less disposable income, there will be more people extending the life of their older hardware, or buying cheaper replacements -- opening there for Linux.
I do wonder, actually, what effect this will have on Apple. They are already forecasting a 20% drop in revenue for 2009, and it might turn out to be even worse. No tentative release date for Snow Leopard yet, meaning they probably won't get it out until Q3 at the earliest. Will they be planning to lower price across the board, or to keep it up and stop outperforming the other major brands?
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Ideally, GTK+ will be rewritten in Vala. That way, we get C compatibility together with being able to write code in a modern, high-level, C#-like language (with type inference, memory management and anonymous functions, to name a few features).
Qt had a license exemptions for the major open-source licenses, which makes the licensing situation really confusing. Since one of the exempted license was BSD, arguably their "holey" GPL license is effectively just the LGPL license, since you can write a wrapper around the parts of Qt that you want, BSD-license it, and write a proprietary app that uses it.
On the other hand, unless you jump through these hoops, there will be perfectly fine open-source licenses that are LGPL-compatible (but not GPL compatible) that you cannot use, either because its a minor license that Qt's lawyers have not seen, or because it's too new. It took a while for Qt to be GPL3 compatible, for example.
Qt 4.5 has an excellent GTK style that makes Qt and KDE applications look just like GTK/GNOME applications, down to button ordering.
Also, Qt Creator, their new C++ IDE, is a good illustration of what a Qt application can look like. Delicious.
France and Japan actually rely heavily on nuclear energy for their electricity need; and France does already process spent fuel rods.
Its transportation to Japan is a controversial topic -- indeed, a main stumbling block would be on environmental (in case of an accident) and security (in case of a hijacking/terrorist act) grounds.
Parent post is modded funny, but you can actually use solar sails as means of propulsion.
Of course, it only works within the orbits of the inner planets...
Or internationalize it. Have an international consortium be in charge of nuclear fuel processing, subject to Security Council veto over who they can sell to.
Need a space probe, need uranium for your power plant -- if everyone plays along, countries like Iran will have less justification for wanting an independent uranium processing capability.
I didn't know they employ Comical Ali now :)
Been to Mars Hill once -- it's a discomforting combination of slick stage presentation and right-wing Christian fundamentalism.
This scam has been going on for thousands of years -- many religious relics are fake, most notably the heads of John the Baptist (Catholic News Agency; also referred to by Umberto Eco in his mediaeval novels).
More controversially, the Our Lady of Guadalupe icon in Mexico also has a very uncertain provenance.
There's no point limiting memory to 3GB. You either have two accessible slots for 2x2GB, or one accessible slot for 2GB.
Sure, you could solder in another 1GB, but in that case, why not ship with 2GB out of the box and leave room for another 2GB in a user-accessible slot? The price difference between 1GB and 2GB is minimal, and you don't get the embarrassment of watching Vista crawl on the base configuration.
Sorry, but I'm not paying twice what I spent on a (quite nice) Inspiron only to get a laptop with less vertical pixels.
Why not 1440x800? That's almost the same aspect ratio. Or 1366x800.
It *does* look rather gorgeous, though.
or owning a flying car without a pilot permit.
and miss out on MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3?
OpenSSH is quite secure. Just because some Linux distributions patch the version they ship and introduce security vulnerabilities does not mean the OpenBSD team is responsible.
Makes me wonder: perhaps the OpenBSD team should design a secure browser next. OpenSSH does a lot of the things you mention -- loud warning if the server key changes under you, etc.
Apple uses the same integrated GPUs, though, and OS X looks decent enough on MacBooks?
Granted, Vista has more "bling" turned on by default over OS X, but this might be another case of unoptimized software making the hardware looks bad.
(not saying ATi and nVidia -- even their older chipsets -- are not faster than Intel's, but that even Intel's should suffice)
The Banshee developers beg to differ.
pkg-config, you mean?
A solution is obvious -- state governments could own some banks themselves, that can pick up the slack in lending.
Anyone knows how the financial crisis is working out in Germany, where the Landers (states) have banks? Are there divergent lending patterns between public and private banks?
Touché. What's the percentage of uptime spent in BIOS interrupt handlers, though? Looking at the list of interrupts, most of the tasks seem optimizable by any decent compiler.
Doesn't handwritten assembly have the potential to be much faster than assembly compiled from C?
For a piece of software that gets run once per boot, speed is probably not very critical. A typical BIOS completes its run in a couple of seconds.
Using an optimizing C compiler also has a further potential benefit -- given that motherboards specifically target certain CPUs, you can optimize the BIOS code for that CPU family. Not sure how much improvement this will yield, though.
That would likely backfire -- witness Sun's on-again, off-again support for Solaris-on-Intel. If AMD were to suddenly introduce a new, killer low-power CPU, it would not get as much adoption by hardware vendors as if they did not discontinue the chip.
Yup. When it comes to user interfaces, it is bad enough; when it comes to, say, power-efficient hybrid drivetrains, who knows how much CO2 we have released to the atmosphere because Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford effectively partition the solution space and can't make use of each others' innovations (or rather, they can, but choose not to for business reasons)
Here it is: Against Intellectual Monopoly (Boldrin and Levine).
Really insightful read; I forward it to anyone who still have the patent cotton-wool over their eyes.
The US computer market is pretty much saturated -- most sales are to people who already have computers.
In an economic downturn, with less disposable income, there will be more people extending the life of their older hardware, or buying cheaper replacements -- opening there for Linux.
I do wonder, actually, what effect this will have on Apple. They are already forecasting a 20% drop in revenue for 2009, and it might turn out to be even worse. No tentative release date for Snow Leopard yet, meaning they probably won't get it out until Q3 at the earliest. Will they be planning to lower price across the board, or to keep it up and stop outperforming the other major brands?