> In reality, both major browsers (IE, Moz) use component architectures, not separate processes, so I'm not sure your example is truely relevant.
Which IMHO a mistake: on Solaris there is no decent Flash player, so if you happen to use a flash player plugin, Mozilla is unstable, and if you have no flash player, a plugin will popup all the time to propose to install one, how nice!
Yes, I know about the flash blocking extension, I'm just showing that the default doesn't make good sense..
The supermarket is 'monoprix', but there are many monoprix and only one is having the 'coloured basket' thing: the one from 'Boulevard Haussman' in Paris 09.
But I warn you: IMHO I don't think it is anything special to visit..
I agree that he is wildly overoptimistic.. getting nanomachine by 2020? Perhaps (I think it will take longer), but being able to put those nanomachine into our body and interact with our neurons usefully? Come on!
> If we get life extension that really works, it will probably work only for genetically modified humans.
I'm not so sure: using nanobots to repair our body would be a way to extend our life without modifying us genetically..
I confirm, the different colored basket are only available on thursday though.
It is also a way for the supermarket to make its publicity: it is a 'highend' supermarket with products a bit more expensive than usually.. OTOH the setup is really nice (I've seen Japanese tourists "visiting" this supermarket, no kidding).
> spend the 1 minute required to heck if the new printer they would like to buy is supported?
As a sysadmin (who used to use Sun HW) I had to buy a SCSI card, the vendor when asked if the card was compatible with Linux, proposed a 5 times more expensive board which was compatible, to avoid spending more I spend 2 hours checking compatibility with Linux and let's just that website indicating compatibility for Linux suck big times (even distribution's one) and finally made a student check for me if it was compatible or not..
We probably spend more in salary hours to check if the card was compatible than the cost saving, so I find your '1 minute to check' a bit optimistic to say the least!
> Funny how you say that they don't understand genetics, yet that is what they do for a living.
I would venture a guess that they understand it just a wee bit better than YOU do.
And? This is not a contest, they certainly understand it much better than us, but do they understand it enough to be 100% sure to not make a big mistake? That is the question, here.
> I also find the GM argument to be odd that people will say "You have to prove that it isn't harmful". To which scientists provide evidence that shows no harmful effects in studies. For some reason, that doesn't seem to be good enough.
Well, this is a trust problem: 1) studies done in carefully controled environement do not show interactions that will happen in different environements. 2) those studies are usually not started by 'uninterested third parties': if the GM food is produced those who will sell it will profit for it. We are able to do it for drugs where the same situation applies but as shown by stupid introduction of animals where they don't belong, once you have released a living thing in the nature, it is very,very hard to contain (even sterile plants could have bad interactions, even though it is less likely).
All this implies that you'd better be extra-carefull in testing GM, I'm not against GM but if it takes 10+ years of testing for one sort of GM to be really sure that it is harmless, then we just have to take the time..
As for the likening it to the release of software under GPL, this is just a stupid comparison.
> the registers you write to in machine code are virtual, and are mapped on to a larger hidden register file in realtime by the CPU
Yes, register renaming help but as the compiler don't see those hidden register, it may have to spill some value into the cache to free a register because it needs one and here the register renaming can't help you..
I think that the x86-64 good performance is partly because of this: going from 8 GPR to 16 is a big win, especially on x86 *ahem* less than orthogonal architecture). The difference between 16 and 32 GPRs is much less interesting..
Now for the courage to change Nautilus to spatial navigation, I don't think that there was so much fuss about changing the default (although maybe for the first release of spatial it would have been wiser to avoid changing the default and just advertise the option) but because apparently many people found hard to revert Nautilus behaviour to its previous state. IMHO, this was the real problem!
> I personally think it takes courage to clean off a dead base, and start anew, just as it took to change Nautilus to spatial navigation.
Well, I don't know too: starting anew for a let's say *controversed* feature.. >We don't need a grand unified desktop. Mixed feelings here, this mix of toolkit is a problem when you try to use a desktop on an old PC..
>> 1) 8 bit CPU are lower power than 32bit CPU's > Not so. Manufacturers, including ATMEL, run new and high volume products through the latest small geometry low voltage processes; Older 16/8/4bit parts in the main get left behind on higher power consumption lines, never to be die shrunk.
In theory you may be right, but older part are sometimes shrunk because: - it is cheaper to produce in the new process. - or the selling point is the ultra-low power consumption..
If I had moderator points, I would moderate you as troll.
Either you're trolling or are you too dumb to have noticed that there is quite a difference in game's genre and style of play available on Windows or on a PS2?
Are you able to see the difference between DeusEx (designed for PC) and DeusEx2 (designed for XBox and PC)?
And there's the flight simulators games (IL2 rocks)..
> I really like them advancing the art for power-efficient CPU's.
I'm not sure they're "advancing the art" as you said, just making a smart commercial move: Intel with its PentiumM could also sell high performance low power CPU: I've seen a SpecInt bencmark where a PentiumM consuming 20W had the same result as a P4 consuming 80W! But as Intel or AMD sells their low power CPU more expensive than their 'normal' CPU, very few people buy one (and for PentiumM I don't think that desktop motherboards exist) and they don't have incentive to introduce cheap low power CPU..
This is market differentiation.. not necessarily related to tech capabilities of the vendor.
Excuse me but I use both: WinXP at home (for games) and RedHat Enterprise 9 at work.
Currently the icons on the backgroud of my Linux station have disappeared (maybe RedHat don't like KDE?) and the menu to lock my desktop doesn't work (the command line work), I could fix it by restarting X, but this would mean logging off so for me Linux is less "stable" than XP!
While this is anecdotal evidence (I'm sure someone with a badly configured XP may have more problem than with Linux), it shows that you shouldn't be so sure that it is easy to show an 'easy benefit' for people to use Linux!
And do you release that until the software patents are dropped, the one who will be bleeding are the customers?
A patent war will: - kill some companies --> less choice for the customers. - transfer money from some companies to patent holder --> the looser will have to increase the price of their products to pay for the license.
Ok the winner may reduce the prices of their product, but somehow I doubt it..
So while this may ultimately kill the software patent system, in the meantime be prepared to suffer!
"Fixing middle east", now that's funny, does the current state of Irak look like something which will help fixing middle east?
We all know that WMD were a lie: I didn't need current article to know it, even before the war the "proof" were laughable.. Only very naive people believed it: when you have the chief of the inspection squad who says that there are no WMD as far as he know and when a politician say otherwise showing only stupid photo, who do you believe?
But it is too late to change things, the USA decided to invade a country without any real reason, and it won't change anything. "Fixing" middle east, implies fixing Israel, which has been on war for *FIFTY years*, and does it show any sign of improvement after Irak invasion?
As for invading Iran *sigh*, don't you learn from mistake? I'm not totally against it if Iran doesn't stop its nuclear program, but it should really be a 'last option' move with the support of the UN, otherwise this will really fsck things: the USA will appear to be even more on a religious crusade against Islam (Bush really poured oil on the fire with its stupid sentence, well done!), and trust me nobody want to be part of a religious war..
If you work to improve something commonly used X, everybody will benefit from it: it will be used, so this is usefull. If you work to create 'from scratch' a new thing Y, there is a high probability that nobody (or very few people) will use it, so from this point of view it is useless.
Now of course, the usefulness of something has nothing to do with the pleasure of the developper working on it.
While I mostly agree with you, I think that you're a bit overoptimisitc.
> Ugliness: Yes, if you are using some of the older widgets, I'd agree. But you have a choice! QT/GTK are both good looking.
Yes, but in this case you have the complain that the GUI is a resource hog which becomes valid.
Run BeOS or Linux (with the same graphical features so KDE or Gnome not plain X) on an old computer and you'll see how much Linux is "bloated". Now of course this doesn't really matter because there are not enough BeOS apps to make it usable, but it still shows that technically Linux's GUI could be vastly improved, but I doubt that it will happen: too much work!
> Show me one example of a nuclear plant that is not a money sink.
Well, 80% of France electricity is produced by nuclear plants, so apparently it works so far..
As a French I'm a bit worried about the 'deconstruction' cost because AFAIK no nuclear plant has been dismantled yet, the cost are provisionned in the cost of electricity, now the only way to be sure that the estimation is good is when it'll happen.
Slashdot Mirror
> In reality, both major browsers (IE, Moz) use component architectures, not separate processes, so I'm not sure your example is truely relevant.
Which IMHO a mistake: on Solaris there is no decent Flash player, so if you happen to use a flash player plugin, Mozilla is unstable, and if you have no flash player, a plugin will popup all the time to propose to install one, how nice!
Yes, I know about the flash blocking extension, I'm just showing that the default doesn't make good sense..
The supermarket is 'monoprix', but there are many monoprix and only one is having the 'coloured basket' thing: the one from 'Boulevard Haussman' in Paris 09.
But I warn you: IMHO I don't think it is anything special to visit..
I agree that he is wildly overoptimistic.. getting nanomachine by 2020?
Perhaps (I think it will take longer), but being able to put those nanomachine into our body and interact with our neurons usefully? Come on!
> If we get life extension that really works, it will probably work only for genetically modified humans.
I'm not so sure: using nanobots to repair our body would be a way to extend our life without modifying us genetically..
Its mostly the same thing: a huge majority of consumer won't ever install another OS on their computer.
So 'preinstall lockin' --> consumer lockin.
I confirm, the different colored basket are only available on thursday though.
It is also a way for the supermarket to make its publicity: it is a 'highend' supermarket with products a bit more expensive than usually.. OTOH the setup is really nice (I've seen Japanese tourists "visiting" this supermarket, no kidding).
> spend the 1 minute required to heck if the new printer they would like to buy is supported?
As a sysadmin (who used to use Sun HW) I had to buy a SCSI card, the vendor when asked if the card was compatible with Linux, proposed a 5 times more expensive board which was compatible, to avoid spending more I spend 2 hours checking compatibility with Linux and let's just that website indicating compatibility for Linux suck big times (even distribution's one) and finally made a student check for me if it was compatible or not..
We probably spend more in salary hours to check if the card was compatible than the cost saving, so I find your '1 minute to check' a bit optimistic to say the least!
> Funny how you say that they don't understand genetics, yet that is what they do for a living.
I would venture a guess that they understand it just a wee bit better than YOU do.
And? This is not a contest, they certainly understand it much better than us, but do they understand it enough to be 100% sure to not make a big mistake? That is the question, here.
> I also find the GM argument to be odd that people will say "You have to prove that it isn't harmful". To which scientists provide evidence that shows no harmful effects in studies. For some reason, that doesn't seem to be good enough.
Well, this is a trust problem:
1) studies done in carefully controled environement do not show interactions that will happen in different environements.
2) those studies are usually not started by 'uninterested third parties': if the GM food is produced those who will sell it will profit for it.
We are able to do it for drugs where the same situation applies but as shown by stupid introduction of animals where they don't belong, once you have released a living thing in the nature, it is very,very hard to contain (even sterile plants could have bad interactions, even though it is less likely).
All this implies that you'd better be extra-carefull in testing GM, I'm not against GM but if it takes 10+ years of testing for one sort of GM to be really sure that it is harmless, then we just have to take the time..
As for the likening it to the release of software under GPL, this is just a stupid comparison.
> the registers you write to in machine code are virtual, and are mapped on to a larger hidden register file in realtime by the CPU
Yes, register renaming help but as the compiler don't see those hidden register, it may have to spill some value into the cache to free a register because it needs one and here the register renaming can't help you..
I think that the x86-64 good performance is partly because of this: going from 8 GPR to 16 is a big win, especially on x86 *ahem* less than orthogonal architecture).
The difference between 16 and 32 GPRs is much less interesting..
Ok, I misunderstood what you said, sorry.
Now for the courage to change Nautilus to spatial navigation, I don't think that there was so much fuss about changing the default (although maybe for the first release of spatial it would have been wiser to avoid changing the default and just advertise the option) but because apparently many people found hard to revert Nautilus behaviour to its previous state.
IMHO, this was the real problem!
> I personally think it takes courage to clean off a dead base, and start anew, just as it took to change Nautilus to spatial navigation.
Well, I don't know too: starting anew for a let's say *controversed* feature..
>We don't need a grand unified desktop.
Mixed feelings here, this mix of toolkit is a problem when you try to use a desktop on an old PC..
You're sure?
AFAIK this isn't true.. Do you have links?
>FreeBSD: Open Source without that fishy smell
;-)
You don't like OpenBSD?
>> 1) 8 bit CPU are lower power than 32bit CPU's
o ld=-1&commentsort=0&tid=137&mode=nested&cid=104735 14
> Not so. Manufacturers, including ATMEL, run new and high volume products through the latest small geometry low voltage processes; Older 16/8/4bit parts in the main get left behind on higher power consumption lines, never to be die shrunk.
In theory you may be right, but older part are sometimes shrunk because:
- it is cheaper to produce in the new process.
- or the selling point is the ultra-low power consumption..
Look at this post for a reality check:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=124929&thresh
That's why the yencoding format was created: to have a lower increase..
But I don't think that it will replace base64 anytime soon, unfortunately.
If I had moderator points, I would moderate you as troll.
Either you're trolling or are you too dumb to have noticed that there is quite a difference in game's genre and style of play available on Windows or on a PS2?
Are you able to see the difference between DeusEx (designed for PC) and DeusEx2 (designed for XBox and PC)?
And there's the flight simulators games (IL2 rocks)..
>> [cut] he said to me... "What's this about usability?[cut]
o ok/fog0000000249.html
This is quite normal: something that's you're used to is obviously much more easy to use than something new. See http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/uib
Also arguing about the look is fruitless: to each his own taste..
> I really like them advancing the art for power-efficient CPU's.
I'm not sure they're "advancing the art" as you said, just making a smart commercial move: Intel with its PentiumM could also sell high performance low power CPU: I've seen a SpecInt bencmark where a PentiumM consuming 20W had the same result as a P4 consuming 80W!
But as Intel or AMD sells their low power CPU more expensive than their 'normal' CPU, very few people buy one (and for PentiumM I don't think that desktop motherboards exist) and they don't have incentive to introduce cheap low power CPU..
This is market differentiation.. not necessarily related to tech capabilities of the vendor.
Excuse me but I use both: WinXP at home (for games) and RedHat Enterprise 9 at work.
Currently the icons on the backgroud of my Linux station have disappeared (maybe RedHat don't like KDE?) and the menu to lock my desktop doesn't work (the command line work), I could fix it by restarting X, but this would mean logging off so for me Linux is less "stable" than XP!
While this is anecdotal evidence (I'm sure someone with a badly configured XP may have more problem than with Linux), it shows that you shouldn't be so sure that it is easy to show an 'easy benefit' for people to use Linux!
>start the conflict until it bleeds everyone dry
And do you release that until the software patents are dropped, the one who will be bleeding are the customers?
A patent war will:
- kill some companies --> less choice for the customers.
- transfer money from some companies to patent holder --> the looser will have to increase the price of their products to pay for the license.
Ok the winner may reduce the prices of their product, but somehow I doubt it..
So while this may ultimately kill the software patent system, in the meantime be prepared to suffer!
"Fixing middle east", now that's funny, does the current state of Irak look like something which will help fixing middle east?
We all know that WMD were a lie: I didn't need current article to know it, even before the war the "proof" were laughable.. Only very naive people believed it: when you have the chief of the inspection squad who says that there are no WMD as far as he know and when a politician say otherwise showing only stupid photo, who do you believe?
But it is too late to change things, the USA decided to invade a country without any real reason, and it won't change anything. "Fixing" middle east, implies fixing Israel, which has been on war for *FIFTY years*, and does it show any sign of improvement after Irak invasion?
As for invading Iran *sigh*, don't you learn from mistake? I'm not totally against it if Iran doesn't stop its nuclear program, but it should really be a 'last option' move with the support of the UN, otherwise this will really fsck things:
the USA will appear to be even more on a religious crusade against Islam (Bush really poured oil on the fire with its stupid sentence, well done!), and trust me nobody want to be part of a religious war..
So? Both side can be perfectly right!
If you work to improve something commonly used X, everybody will benefit from it: it will be used, so this is usefull.
If you work to create 'from scratch' a new thing Y, there is a high probability that nobody (or very few people) will use it, so from this point of view it is useless.
Now of course, the usefulness of something has nothing to do with the pleasure of the developper working on it.
So in this case, the correct wording is I wish you luck or good luck.
Usually, only religious people say "our prayers are with X", it would be very weird for an atheist or agnostic to say this..
While I mostly agree with you, I think that you're a bit overoptimisitc.
> Ugliness: Yes, if you are using some of the older widgets, I'd agree. But you have a choice! QT/GTK are both good looking.
Yes, but in this case you have the complain that the GUI is a resource hog which becomes valid.
Run BeOS or Linux (with the same graphical features so KDE or Gnome not plain X) on an old computer and you'll see how much Linux is "bloated".
Now of course this doesn't really matter because there are not enough BeOS apps to make it usable, but it still shows that technically Linux's GUI could be vastly improved, but I doubt that it will happen: too much work!
> Show me one example of a nuclear plant that is not a money sink.
Well, 80% of France electricity is produced by nuclear plants, so apparently it works so far..
As a French I'm a bit worried about the 'deconstruction' cost because AFAIK no nuclear plant has been dismantled yet, the cost are provisionned in the cost of electricity, now the only way to be sure that the estimation is good is when it'll happen.
> Which brings up the question, why do you want your repositories to be human editable? [cut] with XXX, that's guaranteed not to happen.
Yeah, right with *any XXX* corruptions can and will happen (rarely yes, but it will) unless your SW is garanteed to be bugfree..
Note that even with a human editable SW, the corruption can be so severe that you can't fix it (or it is time consuming).
So backup..