but what it requires to do this is wide adaptation, for a lot of people to think "second life" when it comes to doing these things online in social groups
I don't think usage needs to be too high. It really depends on the scope of the world (size and features) vs. the number of people online at any given time. I mean, you could have a successful world with 100 users as long as they are not spread out too thinnly. Nobody wants to walk through Second Life and see a ghost town.
I was only on SL for a weekend. Unfortunately technical difficulties made using it really difficult and at one point I was bombarded with pornographic "object spam." What I did see looked a lot like a really big, elaborate ghost town.
I seem to recall a new device for people with aperger's/autism to help clue them in on the feelings of others. I believe it worked on visual cues. I bet this would be a pretty good addition. Especially for phone calls.
Except that Linux does preemptive swapping long before you run out of RAM, so that if something suddenly needs it, there's no huge delay whilst things get swapped out.
Monitor swap usage on any healthy Linux system and you'll notice that usage remains pretty low most of the time. Anything you DO swap out should be largely unused anyway. So I don't really get how using flash for swap woudl wear it out faster unless you were using it as a substitute for more RAM.
All that prefetching garbage is only useful when you first boot up and start you apps. For normal operation, the dynamic disk cache, which Linux uses nearly all free RAM for, should take care of "preloading" (or is that postloading?) commonly accessed files/programs for you. Either way, you're gettign about the same overall effect.
You can have a similar effect now by using a flash drive as your root partition, or as a swap partition. Keep in mind that using it as a swap partition would make the drive age faster.
Why? If your machine is hitting swap that often, you need to get more RAM. That is a HUGE performance hit. Ideally, your system should barely touch swap. At least on Linux. I guess Windows can be pretty liberal about swapping things out...
Besides, what DOES OSX have that Linux doesn't, besides a price tag, and its specific eye candy? I mean hell, we can even have GNUstep on Linux... And don't say "Display PDF" because that doesn't affect me directly.
I started using Linux as my primary desktop somewhere around 1995. Before that it was mostly DOS. About a year ago I took a new job as sys admin at an art school where my desktop is a Mac. Now, I could have either installed Linux PPC on it or dug up a PC and installed Linux on that, but I thought maybe I should give OS X shot rather than just do what was comfortable for me. New job, new start, and all that.
I'd used OS X before but only casually. Never as my primary desktop. I had all the normal PC user complaints about responsiveness, cost, and whatnot. After a while I really started to appreciate the elegance of the whole "Mac" package. I like how things (mostly) Just Work. I like how the OS is integrated with the hardware. After using Macs almost exclusively (still have FreeBSD/Linux servers), I really have no desire to go back. I am not sure I can really explain exactly why. Macs are just so easy to work with. I don't hve to install a package or compile something every time I want to play with a piece of software. I can usually just download it to my desktop and run. Don't like it anymore? Drag it to the trash. Linux (Debian in my case) is just so much work to maintain. It isn't necessarily difficult, but it is work. Installing packages, resolving dependencies, tracking down backports to get the latest version of something, compiling a kernel to support hardware X.... ad nauseum. I'm just tired of it after 10 years.
And it isn't liek I am about the become a Windows user. That has to be the most annoying platform ever concieved. I say WIndows users are the suckers. At least users of other systems generally do so because they LIKE to, not becuase they feel they have to be everyone else does. When it comes down to it, Linux users LIKE to use Linux. Mac users love their Macs. Windows users simply tolerate Windows and pray that they don't get some kind of virus.
It is wierd. I have a perfectly good Pentium 4 2Ghz PC sitting right next to an old 1Ghz G4 at home and all I ever use these days is the G4. It is like 4x slower than the PC, but I just enjoy using it more.
When I worked for an ISP, the only interesting records kept (but not retained for long) were SMTP and DHCP logs. And what terrorist is using his/her ISPs email to transmit important terrorism related information? That leaves DHCP logs. So I guess if you know the IP of a terrorist at any given time, you can find who owns the line and their home address. If this is all we are talking about, I say "fine, whatever." The problem is that I get the impression that the FBI and DHS want more. LIke they want ISPs to actively monitor what customers are doing and keep things like packet header dumps of all traffic and shit like that... which is totally unreasonable (ethically and technically)
Still, I don't think it is quite the same as being sucked into a single game with a persistent "character" and no closure. At least when you end a game there is some sense of closure and you have a real real chance to stop and do something other than play video games... if only for a little while.:-P
Besides, even without WoW there are plenty of videogames to get addicted to, even in non-MMO group of computer RPGs. Titan Quest is currently sucking globs of my time despite really just being Diablo 2 for 2006.
The thing with those is that they have a clear ending and not much replayability.
I also didn't like how he compared WoW to "the worst drugs on the market" or whatever. He said WoW was WORSE than those. Please. He played daily for a year and then quit with no desire to go back. Try that with heroin.
It was my understanding that KDElibs did have some freedesktop specifications implemented in them for support for basic support of other desktops too.
Can you drag/drop between GNOME and KDE applicaitons? Can you copy/paste non-trivial (non-text) objects between them? These would be two big ones that I can think of off the top of my head.
If you start pushing all this stuff into the actual application, we start getting messy programs that behave differently because the same specifications have been reimplemented in different ways over and over rather than standardizing on the base library -- Which is part of KDE's philosophy.
Right, and KDE and GNOME do things in rather different ways at the base library level.
How about instead of saying shadowy things like, "it certainly isn't an ideal arrangement" you give examples of what is wrong with it? The main thing I've heard is that it takes up more memory. This is not really an issue because memory is cheap. Another thing might be because it is tightly integrated with the desktop, and uses some special features that only KDE has, but it is hard for me to imagine any such feature that is useful to a word processor.
I haven't explored the KDE/GNOME app mixup specifically, but let me give a few examples of the kinds of problems a user might encounter.
1) Embedding an object from one app in another.
2) Sharing data such as your address book in multiple applications without using intermediary file formats.
3) Cut/paste of non-trivial (non-text) data types between applications.
4) Drag/drop between apps (perhaps belongs with #3)
5) Consistent user themes, preferences, styles, and overall application behavior.
6) Accessability. If you've got GNOME all set up with a screen reader or whatever (assuming it can do it at all), it may not work in a KDE apps.
Don't get me wrong, I think it is great that you can run KDE apps in GNOME if you really need to, but there are advantages to keeping things integrated. Just having X11 in common isn't much.
You do realize how short sighted that economic view is, dont you?
What view? I was only making sure you were aware that this move by Google probably wasn't a great investment beyond the publicity they'd get for it. It makes me wonder if perhaps they have gone a little too far. I mean, the public has a short attention span. Google only going to be be able to play this (expensive) card so many times.
How expensive does oil/coal etc have to get before this saves money?
Google is saving money on power by building their newest data center right next to a hydroelectric plant here in Oregon. The solar power thing is pure publicity.
In the short term this may cost money, but it does after all provide a renewable and free resource.
There is nothing free (money or resources) about building and replacing solar panels.
It is just like double glazed windows, for the first few years the total cost is greater, but you are always saving money and after some years the saving has outweighed the cost of replacing the windows. This break even comes much sooner when you factor in the always increasing cost of finite energy.
It is "just like" double glazed windows except that it doesn't really pay off... even in the long run.
Don't underestimate the value of having applications integrated each other and the desktop. While you can just install the KDE libs if you must run KOffice, it certainly isn't an ideal arrangement.
OK, to be serious, this is a wonderful leap. Granted, it took a company as flush with cash and as well organized as Google to make the switch, but even if they're much better suited to do so, they can at least be an example to strive for.
You do realize that they are probably losing money on this in exchange for the publicity, don't you?
But the main problem with adoption is the name. Nobody who has seen "Pulp Fiction" (an american film) can take the GIMP entirely seriously. A simple name change would massively increase adoption in pro circles, if you ask me. Yes, arty people are that picky.
Why would any "pro" use something like GIMP unless it was genuinely BETTER than Photoshop and not just "Good Enough?" Nothign against GIMP, but we're talking about people who are willign to spend thousands of dollars for high end cameras and other eqipment. The cost of the entire Adobe Creative Suite (gives you way more than just Photoshop) is minor in comparison. Really, I think GIMP advocates should be perfectly happy with adoption by more casual/amature users. There is nothing wrong with that.
And no, a name change isn't going to make any "pro" use GIMP. I'm tired of people complaining about the names of open source projects. Let the OSS developers have their fun with naming. Many of them spend all day at work under the oppressive demands of marketing drones.
You're not alone! I still use LILO because it's what I've used since 1997, and I'm too lazy to learn GRUB.
LILO can be very finicky and a system can easily become unbootable given bad parameters. An interactive boot shell that is filesystem aware (GRUB) can come in very handy. It is almost like having a real system firmware. Although if LILO works fine, there is probalby no reason to bother switching to GRUB. I mean, how often do you fiddle with boot parameters anyway?
For a MMO with such a small playerbase, SL seems to grab a lot of headlines. I can't help but compare it to VRML from a few years ago, although SL is way better implemented than VRML. On the other hand, SL is still seriously clunky, especially if you make something that's actually popular.
It also seems to be rather vulnerable to game killing griefing. I tried to start an account but the service was suffering "rolling grid resets" and object spamming all weekend. I just gave up.
With a well-trained Spamassassin filter, Postfix's UCE controls and Mail.app's junk filtering, about 10-20 spam a day made it into my inbox, out of maybe 300-400 total. I just switched to my ISP's servers with their filters instead and I see about the same numbers.
Well, I have a similar setup and my users don't see half that. There is something unique about your email address. Is it something like bob@domain.com? Is it published as your website contact without proper obfuscation?
Why? Modern filtering systems are pretty good. There is no reason why you, as a user, should be recieving much more than a few spams per week. It is kinda ugly for admins, but that is just part of the job.
It would be interesting if all email server admins suddenly opened the flood gates for a day or two. Maybe then the general population will gain a better appreciate of the scale of the matter.
I think most internet users still remember what it was like before spam filtering became common. Wait a few more years. Then users will take the filtering for granted.
Should your BMI and/or muscle mass really be fluctuating so much? I mean, is 2 months really enough time for you to atrophy like that? I certainly don't notice such extreme annual fluctuations.
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I don't think usage needs to be too high. It really depends on the scope of the world (size and features) vs. the number of people online at any given time. I mean, you could have a successful world with 100 users as long as they are not spread out too thinnly. Nobody wants to walk through Second Life and see a ghost town.
I was only on SL for a weekend. Unfortunately technical difficulties made using it really difficult and at one point I was bombarded with pornographic "object spam." What I did see looked a lot like a really big, elaborate ghost town.
-matthew
Small nit to pick.. Second Life doesn't charge a monthly fee. You pay for "Linden Dollars" to spend on things in the game.
-matthew
I seem to recall a new device for people with aperger's/autism to help clue them in on the feelings of others. I believe it worked on visual cues. I bet this would be a pretty good addition. Especially for phone calls.
-matthew
Monitor swap usage on any healthy Linux system and you'll notice that usage remains pretty low most of the time. Anything you DO swap out should be largely unused anyway. So I don't really get how using flash for swap woudl wear it out faster unless you were using it as a substitute for more RAM.
-matthew
All that prefetching garbage is only useful when you first boot up and start you apps. For normal operation, the dynamic disk cache, which Linux uses nearly all free RAM for, should take care of "preloading" (or is that postloading?) commonly accessed files/programs for you. Either way, you're gettign about the same overall effect.
-matthew
Why? If your machine is hitting swap that often, you need to get more RAM. That is a HUGE performance hit. Ideally, your system should barely touch swap. At least on Linux. I guess Windows can be pretty liberal about swapping things out...
-matthew
I started using Linux as my primary desktop somewhere around 1995. Before that it was mostly DOS. About a year ago I took a new job as sys admin at an art school where my desktop is a Mac. Now, I could have either installed Linux PPC on it or dug up a PC and installed Linux on that, but I thought maybe I should give OS X shot rather than just do what was comfortable for me. New job, new start, and all that.
I'd used OS X before but only casually. Never as my primary desktop. I had all the normal PC user complaints about responsiveness, cost, and whatnot. After a while I really started to appreciate the elegance of the whole "Mac" package. I like how things (mostly) Just Work. I like how the OS is integrated with the hardware. After using Macs almost exclusively (still have FreeBSD/Linux servers), I really have no desire to go back. I am not sure I can really explain exactly why. Macs are just so easy to work with. I don't hve to install a package or compile something every time I want to play with a piece of software. I can usually just download it to my desktop and run. Don't like it anymore? Drag it to the trash. Linux (Debian in my case) is just so much work to maintain. It isn't necessarily difficult, but it is work. Installing packages, resolving dependencies, tracking down backports to get the latest version of something, compiling a kernel to support hardware X.... ad nauseum. I'm just tired of it after 10 years.
And it isn't liek I am about the become a Windows user. That has to be the most annoying platform ever concieved. I say WIndows users are the suckers. At least users of other systems generally do so because they LIKE to, not becuase they feel they have to be everyone else does. When it comes down to it, Linux users LIKE to use Linux. Mac users love their Macs. Windows users simply tolerate Windows and pray that they don't get some kind of virus.
It is wierd. I have a perfectly good Pentium 4 2Ghz PC sitting right next to an old 1Ghz G4 at home and all I ever use these days is the G4. It is like 4x slower than the PC, but I just enjoy using it more.
-matthew
Um.. that is what Karma *is*.
If it isn't real, why did you admit that there are consequences to all acts?
-matthew
When I worked for an ISP, the only interesting records kept (but not retained for long) were SMTP and DHCP logs. And what terrorist is using his/her ISPs email to transmit important terrorism related information? That leaves DHCP logs. So I guess if you know the IP of a terrorist at any given time, you can find who owns the line and their home address. If this is all we are talking about, I say "fine, whatever." The problem is that I get the impression that the FBI and DHS want more. LIke they want ISPs to actively monitor what customers are doing and keep things like packet header dumps of all traffic and shit like that... which is totally unreasonable (ethically and technically)
-matthew
Still, I don't think it is quite the same as being sucked into a single game with a persistent "character" and no closure. At least when you end a game there is some sense of closure and you have a real real chance to stop and do something other than play video games... if only for a little while. :-P
-matthew
The thing with those is that they have a clear ending and not much replayability.
-matthew
I also didn't like how he compared WoW to "the worst drugs on the market" or whatever. He said WoW was WORSE than those. Please. He played daily for a year and then quit with no desire to go back. Try that with heroin.
Can you drag/drop between GNOME and KDE applicaitons? Can you copy/paste non-trivial (non-text) objects between them? These would be two big ones that I can think of off the top of my head.
Right, and KDE and GNOME do things in rather different ways at the base library level.
-matthew
I haven't explored the KDE/GNOME app mixup specifically, but let me give a few examples of the kinds of problems a user might encounter.
1) Embedding an object from one app in another.
2) Sharing data such as your address book in multiple applications without using intermediary file formats.
3) Cut/paste of non-trivial (non-text) data types between applications.
4) Drag/drop between apps (perhaps belongs with #3)
5) Consistent user themes, preferences, styles, and overall application behavior.
6) Accessability. If you've got GNOME all set up with a screen reader or whatever (assuming it can do it at all), it may not work in a KDE apps.
Don't get me wrong, I think it is great that you can run KDE apps in GNOME if you really need to, but there are advantages to keeping things integrated. Just having X11 in common isn't much.
-matthew
What view? I was only making sure you were aware that this move by Google probably wasn't a great investment beyond the publicity they'd get for it. It makes me wonder if perhaps they have gone a little too far. I mean, the public has a short attention span. Google only going to be be able to play this (expensive) card so many times.
Google is saving money on power by building their newest data center right next to a hydroelectric plant here in Oregon. The solar power thing is pure publicity.
There is nothing free (money or resources) about building and replacing solar panels.
It is "just like" double glazed windows except that it doesn't really pay off... even in the long run.
-matthew
Don't underestimate the value of having applications integrated each other and the desktop. While you can just install the KDE libs if you must run KOffice, it certainly isn't an ideal arrangement.
-matthew
You do realize that they are probably losing money on this in exchange for the publicity, don't you?
-matthew
Still, 1.6 Megawatts is impressive... for solar power.
-matthew
Why would any "pro" use something like GIMP unless it was genuinely BETTER than Photoshop and not just "Good Enough?" Nothign against GIMP, but we're talking about people who are willign to spend thousands of dollars for high end cameras and other eqipment. The cost of the entire Adobe Creative Suite (gives you way more than just Photoshop) is minor in comparison. Really, I think GIMP advocates should be perfectly happy with adoption by more casual/amature users. There is nothing wrong with that.
And no, a name change isn't going to make any "pro" use GIMP. I'm tired of people complaining about the names of open source projects. Let the OSS developers have their fun with naming. Many of them spend all day at work under the oppressive demands of marketing drones.
-matthew
LILO can be very finicky and a system can easily become unbootable given bad parameters. An interactive boot shell that is filesystem aware (GRUB) can come in very handy. It is almost like having a real system firmware. Although if LILO works fine, there is probalby no reason to bother switching to GRUB. I mean, how often do you fiddle with boot parameters anyway?
-matthew
It also seems to be rather vulnerable to game killing griefing. I tried to start an account but the service was suffering "rolling grid resets" and object spamming all weekend. I just gave up.
-matthew
Well, I have a similar setup and my users don't see half that. There is something unique about your email address. Is it something like bob@domain.com? Is it published as your website contact without proper obfuscation?
-matthew
Why? Modern filtering systems are pretty good. There is no reason why you, as a user, should be recieving much more than a few spams per week. It is kinda ugly for admins, but that is just part of the job.
-matthew
I think most internet users still remember what it was like before spam filtering became common. Wait a few more years. Then users will take the filtering for granted.
-matthew
Should your BMI and/or muscle mass really be fluctuating so much? I mean, is 2 months really enough time for you to atrophy like that? I certainly don't notice such extreme annual fluctuations.
-matthew