He was being ironic, but your parent was making a somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment on the GP's mindless assertion that a virtual machine can get performance equal to or better than compiled code.
As if that whole "compiling to binary immediately before execution" was a constant time operation.
He has absolutely no technical expertise to make that decision. It should be left to a dedicated group of IT staff well versed in security.
This is like refusing to replace a car's transmission that's in serious danger of blowing up, simply because no one knows how to repair the new models.
I'm no fan of Vista, but XP only gives the appearance of reliability because it's had 10 years for people to work around its quirks and box it in. Its security problems outweigh any ease of use considerations.
The author makes the very good point that criticism is not what most people think it is- criticism should be positive as well as negative, and more importantly, constructive.
The problem isn't so much that critics aren't excepted though, rather that the only kind of criticism accepted as constructive is that expressed in patch form.
I don't think they really expect this to take off very much. They're just preparing for a few years down the road when a netbook capable of running Windows XP or Linux with all the bells and whistles will debut for something like $60-100, and probably start to replace the old-style cellphones in a lot of data plans.
I don't know what corporations or libraries you're working at, but aside from the small office where I was the admin over the summer, I haven't seen anywhere that wasn't locked down tight enough that installing a driver wouldn't require something that by most definitions would be called hacking.
It doesn't prohibit writers endorsing candidates. The paper itself cannot endorse a candidate.
As some have noted before, the whole notion of a paper having an institutional opinion on who should be elected is sort of dated. It used to mean that the person who owned the paper endorsed the candidate. Nowadays, the editors, in conference with their owning board, make a decision as to what endorsements will piss of the smallest portion of their readership.
Endorsements mean nothing. The important thing is maintaining thoughtful criticism.
And we'll be able to block it faster than you can say 'flashblock.'
Actually, I expect this will be something you have to enable from the get-go. OpenGL in emulation could bog down even a top of the line computer if advertisers do any sort of misuse.
I originally installed Flashblock on my older single-core 2.8ghz celeron because having a modest number of tabs (~8) with flash ads going would cause my CPU usage to hit 80%. That's enough to keep the fan spinning pretty high.
I suspect any use of OpenGL would cause similar concerns from the get go.
If Red Hat should ever go after FOSS, their extensive contributions to GPL projects should prevent them from doing anything malicious with these patents.
Though I would worry for those with more permissive licenses, the second that Red Hat contributes a line of code related to this patent to a FOSS project, that should be sufficient to argue that Red Hat placed the patent out for similar free use. I'd say this is more a question of preventing patent trolls from patenting something mind-numbingly obvious.
Of course, placing the patents under a GPL restriction would allow them to enforce the patents against proprietary use. That would be quite a turn.
Yes! God forbid anyone worry about the ratio of the circumference of a circle to it's diameter. That would never have any practical application. I mean, it's only the basis for every calculation involving angles or anything. No one ever uses anything other than rectangles and simple right triangles in engineering.
If I pirate a copy of Windows, ignoring the EULA and reverse engineering it to my heart's content, is Microsoft actually harmed?
I wasn't planning on buying a copy, so there's no monetary damages. Thus, you can't be damaged by someone pirating your software, and software licenses are actually worthless.
This is sarcasm, obviously. Microsoft and the GPL both rely on a sense of common decency, without it, they die.
Applying this doctrine here is equivalent to requiring that all government agency legal opinions be wholly owned by American law firms.
Linux would be the equivalent of relying on the longstanding body of international common law, and sewing it together with some U.S. government lawyer's work.
The games included in Ubuntu are a superset of those included in Windows. I suspect Ubuntu's extras are what he referred to. And I would agree, though I tend to use Ubuntu as a tool, not a toy.
Windows, on the other hand, I only boot up to play computer games.
Google is more focused on making the internet better. I for one would probably replace MSN with Google if it switched out on my Firefox (and Google knows there are many who would.)
It's more a question of killing the abomination that is IE and ensuring all browsers are open source and coded to standards. But then maybe I give Google too much credit.
This actually would be a Good Thing in a lot of ways.
Now that Google's got Chrome, Mozilla's in danger of losing their primary patron. If MS takes over maintenance of the Gecko project, then each of the major players in the OS market is equally engaged in the browser market, and no one can afford to fall behind.
Granted, they would probably poison the Gecko well, but that might be happening anyway. And at least they would lose the anticompetitive advantage given them by IE. I'd be willing to give up Firefox to get rid of Trident. FF is getting really slow on Linux anyway.
As far as the web browsing goes, the iPhone is as open as reasonably possible. The lack of flash, java, etc. is not a monopolistic move - it's because flash, java, etc. are too much processor hogs to put on such a machine. My 2.8 ghz Celeron buckles under the weight of modern flash ads, to the point that Flashblock is almost a necessity for browsing the internet (that or simply removing flash.)
I don't deny their app store is abominable, but their browser is as good as you could find looking for open, interoperable standards on the hardware tier represented by the iPhone.
For reference, compare iPhone.facebook.com (custom designed for iPhone) in Safari, Firefox, Opera and IE.
IE looks like vomit but that's MS's own damn fault. The rest are comparable and a shining example of interoperability.
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99% of what makes Linux inferior to Windows is the lack of drivers that are not written with the x86 ISA + Windows OS in mind.
Half of the functionality there is due to x86, not Windows.
Microsoft probably is praying that ARM stays out of the laptop market.
He was being ironic, but your parent was making a somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment on the GP's mindless assertion that a virtual machine can get performance equal to or better than compiled code.
As if that whole "compiling to binary immediately before execution" was a constant time operation.
He has absolutely no technical expertise to make that decision. It should be left to a dedicated group of IT staff well versed in security.
This is like refusing to replace a car's transmission that's in serious danger of blowing up, simply because no one knows how to repair the new models.
I'm no fan of Vista, but XP only gives the appearance of reliability because it's had 10 years for people to work around its quirks and box it in. Its security problems outweigh any ease of use considerations.
RTFA.
The author makes the very good point that criticism is not what most people think it is- criticism should be positive as well as negative, and more importantly, constructive.
The problem isn't so much that critics aren't excepted though, rather that the only kind of criticism accepted as constructive is that expressed in patch form.
Actually, I'd call that a proper April Fool's hoax.
Anyone can write a fake story.
I don't think they really expect this to take off very much. They're just preparing for a few years down the road when a netbook capable of running Windows XP or Linux with all the bells and whistles will debut for something like $60-100, and probably start to replace the old-style cellphones in a lot of data plans.
I don't know what corporations or libraries you're working at, but aside from the small office where I was the admin over the summer, I haven't seen anywhere that wasn't locked down tight enough that installing a driver wouldn't require something that by most definitions would be called hacking.
The BBC does just fine.
Better than any of the crapfest of multinational media organizations in this country.
It doesn't prohibit writers endorsing candidates. The paper itself cannot endorse a candidate.
As some have noted before, the whole notion of a paper having an institutional opinion on who should be elected is sort of dated. It used to mean that the person who owned the paper endorsed the candidate. Nowadays, the editors, in conference with their owning board, make a decision as to what endorsements will piss of the smallest portion of their readership.
Endorsements mean nothing. The important thing is maintaining thoughtful criticism.
We've actually had that for a while now.
Someone just forgot to tell the suits that they couldn't really commoditize culture without some serious problems creeping in.
And we'll be able to block it faster than you can say 'flashblock.'
Actually, I expect this will be something you have to enable from the get-go. OpenGL in emulation could bog down even a top of the line computer if advertisers do any sort of misuse.
I originally installed Flashblock on my older single-core 2.8ghz celeron because having a modest number of tabs (~8) with flash ads going would cause my CPU usage to hit 80%. That's enough to keep the fan spinning pretty high.
I suspect any use of OpenGL would cause similar concerns from the get go.
If by 'behind,' you mean, 'uses the same graphics as FPS from a few years back, generating 32-64 times more units,' then sure.
If Red Hat should ever go after FOSS, their extensive contributions to GPL projects should prevent them from doing anything malicious with these patents.
Though I would worry for those with more permissive licenses, the second that Red Hat contributes a line of code related to this patent to a FOSS project, that should be sufficient to argue that Red Hat placed the patent out for similar free use. I'd say this is more a question of preventing patent trolls from patenting something mind-numbingly obvious.
Of course, placing the patents under a GPL restriction would allow them to enforce the patents against proprietary use. That would be quite a turn.
Yes! God forbid anyone worry about the ratio of the circumference of a circle to it's diameter. That would never have any practical application. I mean, it's only the basis for every calculation involving angles or anything. No one ever uses anything other than rectangles and simple right triangles in engineering.
If I pirate a copy of Windows, ignoring the EULA and reverse engineering it to my heart's content, is Microsoft actually harmed?
I wasn't planning on buying a copy, so there's no monetary damages. Thus, you can't be damaged by someone pirating your software, and software licenses are actually worthless.
This is sarcasm, obviously. Microsoft and the GPL both rely on a sense of common decency, without it, they die.
I use Emacs, and I love what Mozilla's done with the location bar in 3.0. I'm actually hoping 3.5 doesn't screw it up.
And if MS paid Mozilla to license Firefox as an IE replacement, you really think those numbers would fall?
Any revenue produced by MSIE would be better produced by MS Firefox.
This isn't stuff. It's code.
Applying this doctrine here is equivalent to requiring that all government agency legal opinions be wholly owned by American law firms.
Linux would be the equivalent of relying on the longstanding body of international common law, and sewing it together with some U.S. government lawyer's work.
The games included in Ubuntu are a superset of those included in Windows. I suspect Ubuntu's extras are what he referred to. And I would agree, though I tend to use Ubuntu as a tool, not a toy.
Windows, on the other hand, I only boot up to play computer games.
Jesus sounds like a good name to me.
Google is more focused on making the internet better. I for one would probably replace MSN with Google if it switched out on my Firefox (and Google knows there are many who would.)
It's more a question of killing the abomination that is IE and ensuring all browsers are open source and coded to standards. But then maybe I give Google too much credit.
I'd say Safari on iPhone vs. Fennec on Nokia is going to be the primary arena in which people see any comparison.
On the modern desktop, speed is much harder to notice.
Those jobs might not exist if the company hadn't been price fixing. Lack of significant consequences means a lack of significant laws.
This actually would be a Good Thing in a lot of ways.
Now that Google's got Chrome, Mozilla's in danger of losing their primary patron. If MS takes over maintenance of the Gecko project, then each of the major players in the OS market is equally engaged in the browser market, and no one can afford to fall behind.
Granted, they would probably poison the Gecko well, but that might be happening anyway. And at least they would lose the anticompetitive advantage given them by IE. I'd be willing to give up Firefox to get rid of Trident. FF is getting really slow on Linux anyway.
As far as the web browsing goes, the iPhone is as open as reasonably possible. The lack of flash, java, etc. is not a monopolistic move - it's because flash, java, etc. are too much processor hogs to put on such a machine. My 2.8 ghz Celeron buckles under the weight of modern flash ads, to the point that Flashblock is almost a necessity for browsing the internet (that or simply removing flash.)
I don't deny their app store is abominable, but their browser is as good as you could find looking for open, interoperable standards on the hardware tier represented by the iPhone.
For reference, compare iPhone.facebook.com (custom designed for iPhone) in Safari, Firefox, Opera and IE.
IE looks like vomit but that's MS's own damn fault. The rest are comparable and a shining example of interoperability.