I would certainly choose it if I were to buy an XP licence since I really do not want the Windows Media Player. Why? Well, because it just isn't any good. It is a sluggish resource hog and where I run Windows it has been replaced by alternatives that are much faster and less prone to crash.
How would this have been viewed 5 years ago?
on
Google Terror Threat
·
· Score: 1
I have to admit that when satelite imagery was made available to the general public (by Google and others) with really simple to use interfaces, I did think about possible use of this by terrorists. I then asked myself whether this would even have been an issue that I would have thought about 5 years ago.
I don't think it would.
I don't think this thought would even make the top 3 list of most people who try to see new developments in the context of how they might change the world and how we do things. Not unless you were working in some sort of security related field.
Then I must be awfully clever, because most of the software I've written the past decade can easily be partitioned to run on multiple CPUs concurrently and benefit from it. In fact, most of it already does.
The problem isn't really that this is hard to do, but the fact that mainstream availability and awareness of hardware that does it is a pretty recent phenomenon so it isn't something most software firms prioritize.
(Note that I am not saying the technology hasn't been available. I've used multi-CPU computers for a long time, and I've run Linux on SMP machines for a decade)
As has been pointed out again and again: almost all modern desktop machines run tens of processes or even hundreds -- often with two or more processes in runnable state during actual use of the PC. You can benefit *immediately* from more CPUs even without having multithreaded software.
You are right about Java though. In fact, the exciting stuff, in my humble opinion, of the 1.5/5.0 release isn't so much the generics, autoboxing and enums, as it is the JSR 166 implementation -- ie. the java.util.concurrent classes, which make it even easier to write more easily maintainable, concurrent code.
Every time someone mentions systems with more processors or more cores, there is a lot of whining from people who think that making software take advantage of more processors is such a monumental task.
It isn't. And it isn't just scientific data chugging which would benefit from increased availability of actual concurrent processing in typical desktop computers; there are currently many of these PCs that already to things that can be paralellized.
For instance image processing. For many kinds of image processing it isn't even hard to partition the problem so that you can make use of more than one processor. I use my PC for processing pictures taken with a digital SLR. A lot of people I know do video editing on a PC and even people who have small home studios for music production centered around their PCs or Macs.
Even if you are not running multithreaded applications that are heavily CPU-bound, multiple CPUs or CPU cores is useful. Currently my desktop computer runs 108 processes. between 3 and 6 of these processes were on cursory inspection marked as "runnable", yet I have only one CPU. I'd probably benefit from another CPU or three because right now I'm not really doing anything that requires a lot of CPU grunt.
There is no problem. It isn't as hard as people say to make use of more processors, more cores or more low-level support for multithreading. If anyone is trying to make you believe there's a big problem, you can safely ignore them.
I think you've touched upon why so many people think that, for instance, Perl sucks: there is no end to the people who encourage you to be sloppy; hence there is an incredible amount of sloppy, unreadable, unmaintainable Perl code. In fact, if you read Perl books by some of the most prominent Perl gurus they often push the TMTOWTDI-slogan, which makes me wonder: why are these people teaching other people how to program?
I've worked with a lot of TMTOWTDI'idians and I can't say I enjoy it. It is very limiting in that you tend to throw away their code rather than maintain it -- because it is cheaper to reimplement than to repair.
There is nothing wrong in self discipline when using languages that does not impose it. There is nothing wrong in broadening the spectrum of scenarios in which a language could be used by adjusting your level of self-discipline and tidyness. The distinction between "scripting language" and "language" is pretty much an academic one. Beware of people who think there is a very clear distinction.
I was a bit unclear. I was talking about intent, not physical prevention of abuse taking place. What I want is that the intent of data collection is published and then followed up and that abuse of data is punishable. As much information as possible (from a security point of view) on how the data is handled should be available.
For instance, I have no idea what the data gathered by the INS employees at airports is used for and who gets access to it. I know nothing about what analysis it is used in, I have no way of making sure it is correct and I have no way of knowing what procedures are in place to prevent unathorized access or proper deletion (or pruning) when the data is no longer needed.
Since it is largely undefined what happens to these data we can't even say what constitutes abuse. It can easily be argued that no action sanctioned by a government official represents abuse. Including handing the records over to other countries' governments as part of some unrelated agenda.
Ask yourself why you chose the webserver you chose and the particular platform it runs on. Was it because of speed alone? Most likely not. And if you do need more speed than standard Apache on Linux gives you, what would you do? Buy more servers? Perhaps. It probably costs less to have 3x the number of Linux servers measured in licence cost, in time spent developing for them and keeping them running.
Of course, like everything else: it depends.
Besides, if you need more performance: design better web apps. Seriously. Most web apps have bottlenecks that are due to bad design and do not reflect the performance potential of the underlying technology at all. I am constantly amazed at the sub-optimal solutions developers pick when solving a particular problem. Scaling up systems isn't really all that magic. It is mainly about knowing what problem you are trying to solve.
I'm not really interested in these benchmarks anymore. I was perhaps 10 years ago, when webservers weren't that good and there were some real performance gains available through relatively simple tricks. But now most any webserver will do because web sites are usually constrained by other factors. Like bandwith and the running times of their web apps.
Microsoft lost this round of web server platform wars. Perhaps Longhorn will put a dent in the market, but you'll never know. Microsoft have this fantastic way of creating a lot of buzz for their OS releases, and when they finally materialize it isn't really that much of a quantum leap.
It is not so much that something is free that makes the alternatives (illegal or not) more attractive -- it is more that it is free of Real Networks' horrible annoyware.
They could be handing out their entire catalogue for free for all I care; I still would not bother to use it because I don't want to have any product from Real Networks installed on my machine. I'd rather go buy the CDs in a store, rip them and put them on my mp3-player.
If you ask me, this is really simple. Someone in Nikon management showed some really, really poor judgement and decided to screw their customers in order to sell more of a rather low-priced product (Nikon Capture). They didn't have the sense to revert this obvious policy-mistake so they've now pissed off even more customers.
If this is how they repay you after splashing out thousands of dollars for their D2X, then obviously, they do not deserve their customers
I own a Nikon D70. I feel somewhat betrayed by Nikon for this. Until I can see where this is going I am not going to buy that F/2.8 28-70mm zoom lens I was drooling all over because I am considering whether I want to risk investing in a manufacturer who treats their customers like this. What next? Are they going to compromise the NEF format further in the future?
If you are considering getting a D70s or D50, please don't. At least not until Nikon stop these childish games.
As for myself, I am inclined to sell off my Nikon equipment and go buy a Canon instead unless Nikon reverts this nonsense policy.
Whenever I come across sites that use Real Media exclusively, I never bother to watch their video content because the last thing I need is to install Real Media's annoying ad-infested spyware. I have yet to come across something I want to see so badly that I am willing to take the risk of installing one of Real Media's players.
Of course I am not going to trust Real Media enough to run their software. They've used up their quota and I exactly NOW is the time to do your bit to show them that they should take their users more seriously -- now that they've found that they must mend their ways. Don't fall for their quivering lower lip and the "please, we'll be good now!" act.
Who gives a rat's ass if this is a first or not!? If you're into firsts then go buy a stack of Guiness Book of Records -- it has plenty of fodder for you.
What is cool is that he is a major recording artist (whether you like his music or not) and that he has made it trivial (rather than just "possible") for the masses to remix his music.
It's not like it wasn't worth doing if someone had done it before.
I was never asked what I wanted. The owners of the websites just went ahead and assumed that I would be okay with them watering down their content with visually offsensive rubbish. It is the least intelligent way to make money on the net and I can't say I am too sorry if this doesn't make it as a model for financing websites.
I'd much rather pay for content and have it presented to me in a more decent fashion. I do, in fact, pay for access to some websites. Traditional newspaper sales here in Norway are declining. If they are going to make the money back in advertising it is going to be hard to identify the actual content among all the visual (and aural) clutter on the page. Sooner or later they will have to consider premium services, and when they do, they will need to get their act together.
He should have to compensate folks. There's no easy way at this point to do fair repayment to everyone he harmed, but he could at least have his wages heavily garnished for a nice, long time, and use it for tax reduction.
Monetary compensation makes sense when people have the financial means. If you take away his future all you do is push the guy to become even more of a criminal. Punishment is pointless if there is no point after which your debt to society is settled.
Community service. Instead of sticking him in a prison for a fraction of what he was sentenced to, they should put one of those tracking devices on his ankle, put him in an orange jumpsuit that says "CONVICTED SPAMMER" on the back and have him pick up litter along public roads. Preferably somewhere with a low speed limit so people can take a good look at him.
Just throwing him in jail costs too much money. It's not like his is a violent crime, so there is no point in locking him up to protect society. This way it is more affordable. Picking up other people's trash 12 hours per day, 6 days per week for 4-5 years sounds like a fitting punishment for infrastructural sabotage.
...for all those who are silly enough to expect a 6 hour epic where every line they regurgitate at other species of Homo Sapiens Geekus to identify themselves as such in social contexts: duh! What'd ya expect!?
If someone was making a movie about your life, it would most likely be a 40 minute TV special with the notoriously unfunny Bob Saget or Tori Spelling portraying you. Of course you'd be upset.
It's a movie based on a book fer cryin' out loud! They never turn out like the book unless you pump billions of dollars into the project and hire the bearded madman from NZ; and even then you don't get annoying characters like Tom Bombadil, so the purists will still have something to whine about.
I'm glad it has been at least 10 years since I read HHGTTG. I might even be able to enjoy the movie.
Windows actually starts pretty fast, not much more than 15 seconds. This is because it is still loading stuff after it displays the desktop, while you are trying to start up Word, Firefox and whatnot.
The problem with windows is that it is still so bloody disk-intensive. Judging by the sounds the system makes during startup I'd say there's a million things Windows needs to do with disk structures that have not been optimized at all.
Is BeOS going to be another floater that won't flush, like the Amiga? Every time you think you've heard the last of it, it pops back up again, and you have to listen to all the fans go on about how special it is.
Why can't they go after a market where it is needed? For instance, there are more and more ATMs popping up running windows and misbehaving in ways that you didn't think was possible for such a critical system.
Obviously BeOS, or whatever the marketroids call it this week, is stable, lean, fast, and seems to support media processing well. Why not go for the upscale embedded market? Why not go for set-top boxes, portable media players etc?
No business is going to jump ship and switch from Windows, OSX, Linux or whatever they run, to BeOS as their primary desktop OS. Come on.
why is it that any, even moderately, popular piece of software gets bloated so badly it eventually becomes unusable? just look at what happened to browsers, just look at winamp, just look at the toolbars and media players.
Acrobat Reader has steadily become more and more obese to the point where xpdf is now my default PDF viewer. I'm no big fan of xpdf, but it beats waiting around for Acrobat Reader to load code I will never need.
but why!? can someone from Adobe please tell me why we need this?
Whenever I see something like this I am struck by how silly these intellectual property disputes are. Okay, so Hasbro has to defend its intellectual property so we all agree they have to do something (no, seriously, this is not in dispute here), but I'd wish they would do something a bit more intelligent than just threatening the guy.
What they really ought to do is make him a business proposition. They hire him to maintain and further develop the site, since there is obviously a market for it, and for their cash they get a community of 100.000 players, a system that apparently works already and someone who can drive it on.
You'd have to be pretty daft to not see an opportunity here, but then again, where do you think all the people in the financial sector come from:-).
during the past 15 years a lot of things have happened with regard to CPUs and the way we write software and indeed what our software does. you should take this into consideration and periodically re-evaluate your axioms. what you find might surprise you.
for instance, if you look at the past 5 years, CPUs have become incredibly fast, while memory latencies haven't really improved that much. for instance this means that in many scenarios, caching intermediate results in large tables may not always be faster than re-calculating them. it can also mean that memory locality is important for some applications.
none of my classical textbooks even consider this. they more or less take for granted that the world isn't changing.
Slashdot Mirror
I love that name. Not many product names manage to include a promise in them -- which is then broken.
Given an analogous response in a movie piracy case: what would the MPAA do? Drop the issue?
Hardly.
-Bjørn
Perhaps you should try decaf?
I use VLC.
I would certainly choose it if I were to buy an XP licence since I really do not want the Windows Media Player. Why? Well, because it just isn't any good. It is a sluggish resource hog and where I run Windows it has been replaced by alternatives that are much faster and less prone to crash.
I don't think it would.
I don't think this thought would even make the top 3 list of most people who try to see new developments in the context of how they might change the world and how we do things. Not unless you were working in some sort of security related field.
Things have changed a lot in just 5 years.
The problem isn't really that this is hard to do, but the fact that mainstream availability and awareness of hardware that does it is a pretty recent phenomenon so it isn't something most software firms prioritize.
(Note that I am not saying the technology hasn't been available. I've used multi-CPU computers for a long time, and I've run Linux on SMP machines for a decade)
As has been pointed out again and again: almost all modern desktop machines run tens of processes or even hundreds -- often with two or more processes in runnable state during actual use of the PC. You can benefit *immediately* from more CPUs even without having multithreaded software.
You are right about Java though. In fact, the exciting stuff, in my humble opinion, of the 1.5/5.0 release isn't so much the generics, autoboxing and enums, as it is the JSR 166 implementation -- ie. the java.util.concurrent classes, which make it even easier to write more easily maintainable, concurrent code.
It isn't. And it isn't just scientific data chugging which would benefit from increased availability of actual concurrent processing in typical desktop computers; there are currently many of these PCs that already to things that can be paralellized.
For instance image processing. For many kinds of image processing it isn't even hard to partition the problem so that you can make use of more than one processor. I use my PC for processing pictures taken with a digital SLR. A lot of people I know do video editing on a PC and even people who have small home studios for music production centered around their PCs or Macs.
Even if you are not running multithreaded applications that are heavily CPU-bound, multiple CPUs or CPU cores is useful. Currently my desktop computer runs 108 processes. between 3 and 6 of these processes were on cursory inspection marked as "runnable", yet I have only one CPU. I'd probably benefit from another CPU or three because right now I'm not really doing anything that requires a lot of CPU grunt.
There is no problem. It isn't as hard as people say to make use of more processors, more cores or more low-level support for multithreading. If anyone is trying to make you believe there's a big problem, you can safely ignore them.
I've worked with a lot of TMTOWTDI'idians and I can't say I enjoy it. It is very limiting in that you tend to throw away their code rather than maintain it -- because it is cheaper to reimplement than to repair.
There is nothing wrong in self discipline when using languages that does not impose it. There is nothing wrong in broadening the spectrum of scenarios in which a language could be used by adjusting your level of self-discipline and tidyness. The distinction between "scripting language" and "language" is pretty much an academic one. Beware of people who think there is a very clear distinction.
For instance, I have no idea what the data gathered by the INS employees at airports is used for and who gets access to it. I know nothing about what analysis it is used in, I have no way of making sure it is correct and I have no way of knowing what procedures are in place to prevent unathorized access or proper deletion (or pruning) when the data is no longer needed.
Since it is largely undefined what happens to these data we can't even say what constitutes abuse. It can easily be argued that no action sanctioned by a government official represents abuse. Including handing the records over to other countries' governments as part of some unrelated agenda.
Ask yourself why you chose the webserver you chose and the particular platform it runs on. Was it because of speed alone? Most likely not. And if you do need more speed than standard Apache on Linux gives you, what would you do? Buy more servers? Perhaps. It probably costs less to have 3x the number of Linux servers measured in licence cost, in time spent developing for them and keeping them running.
Of course, like everything else: it depends.
Besides, if you need more performance: design better web apps. Seriously. Most web apps have bottlenecks that are due to bad design and do not reflect the performance potential of the underlying technology at all. I am constantly amazed at the sub-optimal solutions developers pick when solving a particular problem. Scaling up systems isn't really all that magic. It is mainly about knowing what problem you are trying to solve.
I'm not really interested in these benchmarks anymore. I was perhaps 10 years ago, when webservers weren't that good and there were some real performance gains available through relatively simple tricks. But now most any webserver will do because web sites are usually constrained by other factors. Like bandwith and the running times of their web apps.
Microsoft lost this round of web server platform wars. Perhaps Longhorn will put a dent in the market, but you'll never know. Microsoft have this fantastic way of creating a lot of buzz for their OS releases, and when they finally materialize it isn't really that much of a quantum leap.
They could be handing out their entire catalogue for free for all I care; I still would not bother to use it because I don't want to have any product from Real Networks installed on my machine. I'd rather go buy the CDs in a store, rip them and put them on my mp3-player.
Seriously.
If this is how they repay you after splashing out thousands of dollars for their D2X, then obviously, they do not deserve their customers
I own a Nikon D70. I feel somewhat betrayed by Nikon for this. Until I can see where this is going I am not going to buy that F/2.8 28-70mm zoom lens I was drooling all over because I am considering whether I want to risk investing in a manufacturer who treats their customers like this. What next? Are they going to compromise the NEF format further in the future?
If you are considering getting a D70s or D50, please don't. At least not until Nikon stop these childish games.
As for myself, I am inclined to sell off my Nikon equipment and go buy a Canon instead unless Nikon reverts this nonsense policy.
Whenever I come across sites that use Real Media exclusively, I never bother to watch their video content because the last thing I need is to install Real Media's annoying ad-infested spyware. I have yet to come across something I want to see so badly that I am willing to take the risk of installing one of Real Media's players.
Of course I am not going to trust Real Media enough to run their software. They've used up their quota and I exactly NOW is the time to do your bit to show them that they should take their users more seriously -- now that they've found that they must mend their ways. Don't fall for their quivering lower lip and the "please, we'll be good now!" act.
What is cool is that he is a major recording artist (whether you like his music or not) and that he has made it trivial (rather than just "possible") for the masses to remix his music.
It's not like it wasn't worth doing if someone had done it before.
I'd much rather pay for content and have it presented to me in a more decent fashion. I do, in fact, pay for access to some websites. Traditional newspaper sales here in Norway are declining. If they are going to make the money back in advertising it is going to be hard to identify the actual content among all the visual (and aural) clutter on the page. Sooner or later they will have to consider premium services, and when they do, they will need to get their act together.
Monetary compensation makes sense when people have the financial means. If you take away his future all you do is push the guy to become even more of a criminal. Punishment is pointless if there is no point after which your debt to society is settled.
Community service. Instead of sticking him in a prison for a fraction of what he was sentenced to, they should put one of those tracking devices on his ankle, put him in an orange jumpsuit that says "CONVICTED SPAMMER" on the back and have him pick up litter along public roads. Preferably somewhere with a low speed limit so people can take a good look at him.
Just throwing him in jail costs too much money. It's not like his is a violent crime, so there is no point in locking him up to protect society. This way it is more affordable. Picking up other people's trash 12 hours per day, 6 days per week for 4-5 years sounds like a fitting punishment for infrastructural sabotage.
If someone was making a movie about your life, it would most likely be a 40 minute TV special with the notoriously unfunny Bob Saget or Tori Spelling portraying you. Of course you'd be upset.
It's a movie based on a book fer cryin' out loud! They never turn out like the book unless you pump billions of dollars into the project and hire the bearded madman from NZ; and even then you don't get annoying characters like Tom Bombadil, so the purists will still have something to whine about.
I'm glad it has been at least 10 years since I read HHGTTG. I might even be able to enjoy the movie.
Indeed, but it is a lot easier to fix on Linux since the whole system is a lot easier to investigate and modify.
The problem with windows is that it is still so bloody disk-intensive. Judging by the sounds the system makes during startup I'd say there's a million things Windows needs to do with disk structures that have not been optimized at all.
Why can't they go after a market where it is needed? For instance, there are more and more ATMs popping up running windows and misbehaving in ways that you didn't think was possible for such a critical system.
Obviously BeOS, or whatever the marketroids call it this week, is stable, lean, fast, and seems to support media processing well. Why not go for the upscale embedded market? Why not go for set-top boxes, portable media players etc?
No business is going to jump ship and switch from Windows, OSX, Linux or whatever they run, to BeOS as their primary desktop OS. Come on.
Who cares what the boot time is? You shouldn't have to shut down and reboot all the time.
Acrobat Reader has steadily become more and more obese to the point where xpdf is now my default PDF viewer. I'm no big fan of xpdf, but it beats waiting around for Acrobat Reader to load code I will never need.
but why!? can someone from Adobe please tell me why we need this?
What they really ought to do is make him a business proposition. They hire him to maintain and further develop the site, since there is obviously a market for it, and for their cash they get a community of 100.000 players, a system that apparently works already and someone who can drive it on.
You'd have to be pretty daft to not see an opportunity here, but then again, where do you think all the people in the financial sector come from :-).
for instance, if you look at the past 5 years, CPUs have become incredibly fast, while memory latencies haven't really improved that much. for instance this means that in many scenarios, caching intermediate results in large tables may not always be faster than re-calculating them. it can also mean that memory locality is important for some applications.
none of my classical textbooks even consider this. they more or less take for granted that the world isn't changing.