In fiscal year 2008, Sun sold 4,532 $ millions in SPARC servers, and only 707 millions in x64 servers (source).
I don’t think it would have been wise for them to kill their biggest-selling product.
If you want to get a virus going, make it run on Symbian.
On ancient Symbian versions, perhaps. After S60v3 they added that darn platform security that won’t even let you execute your own code, let alone third-party viruses. Pirates periodically find cracks, but they tend to be model- and firmware version- specific.
True, but... if we can reach such achievements on a C64, it’s also because we can use nice development tools, running on much beefier machines, programmed using cycles-eating high level languages, with the comforts of a contemporary operating system. I don’t think Contiki was programmed on a C64 monitor cartridge, in 6510 assembly.
In order to really get an idea of how fast (or slow) Java is, I tried the following on my outdated machine, a 1600 MHz AMD Turion. First, I tried to measure the dreaded JVM cold startup time by running Apache Rhino:
peppe@tikal:~$ time java -jar/usr/share/java/js-1.7R2.jar -help
[...]
real 0m1.444s
user 0m0.232s
sys 0m0.084s
Then I’ve done it a second time to see what the delay becomes on a hot start:
peppe@tikal:~$ time java -jar/usr/share/java/js-1.7R2.jar -help
[...]
real 0m0.358s
user 0m0.252s
sys 0m0.036s
...that’s a little more than a third of a second. So there is a one-time delay to pay if you write your app in java, but it’s not so user-noticeable as many believe.
So far for the startup time. Then I tested the run time.
Probably the JVM cannot compete with native code as a byte-pusher. But how well does it fare when it comes to support high-level languages? I wrote two small nonsense programs, that aim to exercise some random high-level functions I expect to be common in today’s software. The two programs try to do exactly the same thing, the first in C, and the latter Java.
Link to the C source Link to the Java source
(sorry, slashdot didn’t let me put the snippets inline without making them unreadable)
I compiled and timed the C implementation:
peppe@tikal:~$ gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
Target: x86_64-linux-gnu
[...]
gcc version 4.4.0 (Ubuntu 4.4.0-6ubuntu2)
peppe@tikal:~$ gcc -O3 -march=athlon64 cperf.c -Wall -o cperf.exe
cperf.c: In function `main':
cperf.c:18: warning: ignoring return value of `asprintf', declared with attribute warn_unused_result
peppe@tikal:~$ time./cperf.exe
Not only Java performance was comparable to native, but Java was even faster in this case. And that included the JVM startup penalty.
Finally, about the JVM size versus the.NET framework size, the latest win32 version of the JRE weighs 15.50 MB (link), while the latest win32 version of the.NET framework weighs 231 MB (link).
That is because the way Windows loads USB drivers it pretty much is a new device to Windows.
Well, I do not know why the Windows wireless stack was designed this way, but I can say that this sucks. It’s an usability problem because an average user does not expect his gadget to behave differently depending on how he connects it to the computer. Even worse, the user could also be not the one who configured the network, and be very puzzled when prompted for a “WPA passkey”.
I have had this happen to customers in the past, here is what you do- But a cheapo USB extender, hell even a 1 foot one will work. Leave that plugged into a USB port in the back. Always plug your USB stick into that. Problem solved.
That’s not a solution. That’s a hassle I have to withstand for the sole reason that the user interface for the Windows wireless networking stack is ill-designed. Which is exactly the kind of things the AC poster said wouldn’t happen in Windows.
The solution would be for Windows XP to remember the network settings independently from the usb port that the network adapter is attached to, like Vista does.
My particular problem was with a laptop with five usb ports, belonging to my father, who barely understands what a wireless network is, let alone how to configure WPA.
I, for one, solved the problem using a priori knowledge of the operating system (with no assistance, in the form of hints or documentation, coming from itself) which led me to configure the WPA password five times, once for every usb port in the laptop, in the hope that in the future Windows wouldn’t decide that the wireless adapter is “new” again. Which is far from the “just working” philosophy that was advertised earlier in this thread.
And to the Linux guys- yes you will occasionally come up with problems with Wifi in Windows, but that still doesn't let Linux off the hook [...] If you are running server Linux is great. If you are willing to trawl forums before every single purchase then it will run fine. But that just cut a good 95% of the market out, including all my customers. Sorry, No Sale.
Out of curiosity, are you obliged to refund a perfectly working product just because the customer is unhappy with it? Are Apple stores full of people bringing their machines back to the shop because they bought a gadget with no Mac drivers? And in the first place, wouldn’t “the right thing to do” be to explain to the customer the dangers of a Linux-based computer before he buys it?
I don’t think anybody ever thought or said that Linux can replace Windows on all computers sold, starting from tomorrow; Linux distributions do have usability problems (and they are being worked on.)
You say that the real showstopper for large scale Linux adoption is hardware support and I think that’s very true. But I also think it is important to note that for the customer, the support model of Linux is even better than the one of Windows! Because once a device driver is written for Linux, that device is supported nearly forever. On Windows, on the other hand, you only get support for the specific Windows version that device was designed for. Moreover, most gadgets only ever get one release of their drivers (WHQL-signed if you’re lucky), before their manufacturers switch to the next wave of device models, so users often have to live with bugs in harshly-released drivers, with no hope for somebody to fix them sooner or later.
So in the long run, even the average Joe WILL benefit if Linux is successful, because he will enjoy an even wider freedom to buy the devices he likes, without worrying if their drivers are 32- or 64-bits compiled, VXD- or WDM- or WDDM- based, WHQL-certified and so on.
If this is not happening right today, that’s because of “external” factors, unrelated from the good will of Linux developers or the technical design of the Linux kernel.
For some reason, Windows XP keeps forgetting my 24-characters-long WPA key every time I change the usb port where I connect my wireless adapter. It just doesn't work for me.
Because 10GW of wind power gives you a LOT less energy than 10GW of nuclear. Typical wind power capacity factors are 20-40% (wind doesn't always blow), typical (fission) nuclear capacity factors are 90%-ish. Thus nuclear plants are cheaper than wind even if they cost 3 times as much per GW.
In addition, wind power needs additional grid investment and lots of pumped storage to even out spikes in capacity to be suitable for base load power, while nuclear power plants are suitable from the get-go.
Nuclear power plants also need grid investments, because they keep producing maximum power even during the night, when nobody (locally) is wanting it.
This, too, has to be taken into account when talking about their efficiency.
I don’t know why you posted anonymously such an insightful message.
If internet is the way it is, that’s only because it was designed by public funded researchers, for the benefit of the state, with public protocols, without lucrative intent.
If it was designed by the phone companies, we would now have a connection-oriented, patent-ridden internet were our data transfers would be billed according to the type of communication, to the distance between us and the recipient of our message, to the contract we and/or the recipient have with the respective ISP and so on. Evil.
Outside America, the iPhone has been less successful than you might think.
Here in Italy, none of my friends has an iPhone, geek or not.
It's missing features that we’re used to see even on the cheapest Chinese-made phone on sale here (bluetooth, mms, video call).
Some examples:
If you’re working on a PHP site on a remote machine, an IDE will manage uploading via ftp only the files you’ve modified, taking care of dependencies.
If you’re working on a Java project, you can rename a Java class or move it in another package and the IDE will take care of refactoring all the code for you. This includes moving the source files in the file system, updating every class referencing that one, and even updating comments, if you want.
If you’re working on a C project, it can tell you where a preprocessor macro was defined and every instance where it has been used.
If you’re writing an XML document, such as an XHTML web page, it will tell you when your document does no longer validate, even while you’re typing.
Whatever project you make, an IDE can usually create every possibile kind of output package (jar, tar.gz...) with no need for you to manage Makefiles and update them when the dependencies change.
It’s nothing that you can’t do without an IDE - it’s just that an IDE lets you do it faster and with less effort.
And, in some IDEs you can usually embed your favourite editor - which, of course, should be VIM - if you like so.
0. Premise: proprietary software will stay indefinitely. Full stop. You may argue eternally, but complicated software like games, 3D applications, databases, CADs(Computer-aided Design), etc. which cost millions of dollars and years of man-hours to develop will never be open sourced. Software patents are about to stay forever.
And how this has to do with Linux?
1. No reliable sound system,
Alsa?
no reliable unified software audio mixing,
PulseAudio?
many (old or/and proprietary) applications still open audio output exclusively causing major user problems and headache.
Probably refering to the old proprietary flash plugin? The new one doesn't have that problem, and if you care about hackers not entering your computer, you shouldn't use the old one anyway.
By the way, we also have gnash now.
1.1 Insanely difficult to set up volume levels, audio recording... and in some situations even audio output.
1.2 Highly confusing, not self-explanatory mixer settings.
1.3 By default many distros do not set volume levels properly (no audio output/no sound recording).
Still ignoring the efforts PulseAudio. Now some people are upset because the volume mixer is TOO simple (btw I agree with them).
2. X system:
2.1 No good stable standardized API for developing GUI applications (like Win32 API). Both GTK and Qt are very unstable and often break backwards compatibility.
Pure BS. Qt is extremely stable, much better than MFC and sure A LOT much better than USER.EXE. In fact, even many commercial applications for Windows are starting to use it.
2.2 Very slow GUI (except when being run with composite window managers on top of OpenGL).
Perhaps repainting can be a bit slower, but try watching TV on Windows using any commercially available software of your choice, then do the same on Linux, and after that let's talk about slowness again.
Btw any graphics card produced after 2005 is able to do compositing.
2.3 Many GUI operations are not accelerated. No analogue of GDI or GDI+. Text antialiasing and other GUI operations are software rendered by GUI libraries (GTK->Cairo/QT->Xft).
No analogue of GDI? You mean we cannot draw lines and circles in Linux? Sounds new to me.
No acceleration? See EXA and XRender. Xft renders fonts via XRender.
No GDI+? See Arthur, Cairo.
2.4 Font rendering is implemented via high level GUI libraries, thus:
2.4.1 fontconfig fonts antialiasing settings cannot be applied on-the-fly.
Thus: each application can use the font rendering engine to do whatever it wants with fonts, other than drawing strings on the screen.
2.4.2 Fonts antialiasing only works for certain GUI toolkits (see 2.1).
False. Xft is part of X11 and can be used by every application. Even old-timers like xterm uses it. There's absolutely no reason to use server-side fonts anymore. What applications are you talking about, xbill?
2.4.3 Default fonts (often) look ugly.
De gustibus non disputandum est.
2.4.3.1 (Being resolved) By default most distros disable advanced fonts antialiasing.
That's because Microsoft owns a patent over sub-pixel rendering. Send your complaints to them.
2.4.3.2 By default most distros come without good or even compatible with Windows fonts.
Install msttcorefonts.
2.5 No double buffering.
We have composite these days. Before that, we had the X Double Buffering extension.
3. Problems stemming from the vast number of Linux distributives:
3.1 No unified configuration system for computer settings, devices and system services. E.g. distro A
Vizio? You say you're sticking to MS Office because you need Visio so much, and you don't even know its name?
Re:The Achilles heel of this...
on
Phoenix BIOSOS?
·
· Score: 1
More specifically: how many FOSS drivers *which are not maintained in the kernel tree* must I list?
5. Webcams (gspca).
gspca was merged into mainline kernel 2.6.27.
My point is that even when drivers are FOSS and the manufacturer has willingness Linux *users* can and do have problems.
I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find out why and who is to blame.
At least for gspca, most manufacturers had no willingness at all, as the drivers are mostly reverse engineered. I guess they are the ones to blame for the resulting bad quality of the code.
The problem with the 286 wasn’t multitasking of native protected-mode programs - it was that the 286 wasn’t feasible for multitasking of real-mode DOS programs under a controlling protected-mode operating system (it even involved tricks like using an undocumented LOADALL instruction or relying on external motherboard hardware to take the CPU out of protected mode).
The 386 was enhanced with the virtual 8086 mode specifically for this purpose.
What happened at Chernobyl (in a nutshell) was that the presence of steam in their water-regulated reactors increased the reaction rate. (This is called a "Void coefficient" greater than 1.) You can see where this leads: more steam --> more reactions --> more heat --> more steam (from boiling the water). That is what caused the meltdown, not the fact that the reactor (like every other power-operating reactor) "went critical".
Modern nuclear reactors, on the other hand, have a Void coefficient less than 1. This means that the presence of steam (or other bubbles) in the reactor actually decreases the reaction rate, breaking the cycle above that led to the catastrophic meltdown at Chernobyl.
Actually, the void coefficient must be negative, not less than 1, in order for that to happen.
Some "modern" reactors such as CANDU have it positive but small, which means voids will increase the reactivity, but the phenomenon can be easily controlled.
You should compare apples to apples, in this case, smartphones to smartphones (6234 isn't one).
Even Nokia's cheaper smartphone will let you choose between an analog or a text clock (you can even fully customize their appearance with your own theme).
When the backlight goes off, the clock will be displayed in black over a white strip of pixels to let you read it easily. There's also a bar with the current date, and icons telling you anything you should know about the status of your phone (incoming messages, missed calls, quiet mode...) at a glance.
Indeed, the post you replied to was greatly exaggerated: the italian government will not censor youtube.
What is happening is that the parliament is planning legislation [italian language] to stop youtube from infringing copyright by hosting clips of tv shows recorded from the head of the government’s private tv networks.
Yet, it is to be noted that democratically elected members of senate [italian language] belonging to the currently ruling party, and even the head of the government himself, are often heard praising fascism, which, as we know, was quite far from democracy.
And just for precision’s sake, even if Italy’s legal system is not based on common law, precedents do have importance, and a well-behaving judge will not ignore them.
Slashdot Mirror
In fiscal year 2008, Sun sold 4,532 $ millions in SPARC servers, and only 707 millions in x64 servers (source).
I don’t think it would have been wise for them to kill their biggest-selling product.
If you want to get a virus going, make it run on Symbian.
On ancient Symbian versions, perhaps. After S60v3 they added that darn platform security that won’t even let you execute your own code, let alone third-party viruses.
Pirates periodically find cracks, but they tend to be model- and firmware version- specific.
True, but... if we can reach such achievements on a C64, it’s also because we can use nice development tools, running on much beefier machines, programmed using cycles-eating high level languages, with the comforts of a contemporary operating system. I don’t think Contiki was programmed on a C64 monitor cartridge, in 6510 assembly.
In order to really get an idea of how fast (or slow) Java is, I tried the following on my outdated machine, a 1600 MHz AMD Turion. First, I tried to measure the dreaded JVM cold startup time by running Apache Rhino:
peppe@tikal:~$ time java -jar
[...]
real 0m1.444s
user 0m0.232s
sys 0m0.084s
Then I’ve done it a second time to see what the delay becomes on a hot start:
peppe@tikal:~$ time java -jar
[...]
real 0m0.358s
user 0m0.252s
sys 0m0.036s
...that’s a little more than a third of a second. So there is a one-time delay to pay if you write your app in java, but it’s not so user-noticeable as many believe.
So far for the startup time. Then I tested the run time.
Probably the JVM cannot compete with native code as a byte-pusher. But how well does it fare when it comes to support high-level languages? I wrote two small nonsense programs, that aim to exercise some random high-level functions I expect to be common in today’s software. The two programs try to do exactly the same thing, the first in C, and the latter Java.
Link to the C source
Link to the Java source
(sorry, slashdot didn’t let me put the snippets inline without making them unreadable)
I compiled and timed the C implementation:
peppe@tikal:~$ gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
Target: x86_64-linux-gnu
[...]
gcc version 4.4.0 (Ubuntu 4.4.0-6ubuntu2)
peppe@tikal:~$ gcc -O3 -march=athlon64 cperf.c -Wall -o cperf.exe
cperf.c: In function `main':
cperf.c:18: warning: ignoring return value of `asprintf', declared with attribute warn_unused_result
peppe@tikal:~$ time
real 0m43.429s
user 0m43.351s
sys 0m0.028s
...then I did the same with the Java version:
peppe@tikal:~$ javac -version
javac 1.6.0_14
peppe@tikal:~$ javac JavaPerf.java
peppe@tikal:~$ time java JavaPerf
real 0m28.300s
user 0m27.770s
sys 0m0.464s
Not only Java performance was comparable to native, but Java was even faster in this case. And that included the JVM startup penalty.
Finally, about the JVM size versus the .NET framework size, the latest win32 version of the JRE weighs 15.50 MB (link), while the latest win32 version of the .NET framework weighs 231 MB (link).
That is because the way Windows loads USB drivers it pretty much is a new device to Windows.
Well, I do not know why the Windows wireless stack was designed this way, but I can say that this sucks. It’s an usability problem because an average user does not expect his gadget to behave differently depending on how he connects it to the computer. Even worse, the user could also be not the one who configured the network, and be very puzzled when prompted for a “WPA passkey”.
I have had this happen to customers in the past, here is what you do- But a cheapo USB extender, hell even a 1 foot one will work. Leave that plugged into a USB port in the back. Always plug your USB stick into that. Problem solved.
That’s not a solution. That’s a hassle I have to withstand for the sole reason that the user interface for the Windows wireless networking stack is ill-designed. Which is exactly the kind of things the AC poster said wouldn’t happen in Windows.
The solution would be for Windows XP to remember the network settings independently from the usb port that the network adapter is attached to, like Vista does.
My particular problem was with a laptop with five usb ports, belonging to my father, who barely understands what a wireless network is, let alone how to configure WPA.
I, for one, solved the problem using a priori knowledge of the operating system (with no assistance, in the form of hints or documentation, coming from itself) which led me to configure the WPA password five times, once for every usb port in the laptop, in the hope that in the future Windows wouldn’t decide that the wireless adapter is “new” again.
Which is far from the “just working” philosophy that was advertised earlier in this thread.
And to the Linux guys- yes you will occasionally come up with problems with Wifi in Windows, but that still doesn't let Linux off the hook [...] If you are running server Linux is great. If you are willing to trawl forums before every single purchase then it will run fine. But that just cut a good 95% of the market out, including all my customers. Sorry, No Sale.
Out of curiosity, are you obliged to refund a perfectly working product just because the customer is unhappy with it? Are Apple stores full of people bringing their machines back to the shop because they bought a gadget with no Mac drivers? And in the first place, wouldn’t “the right thing to do” be to explain to the customer the dangers of a Linux-based computer before he buys it?
I don’t think anybody ever thought or said that Linux can replace Windows on all computers sold, starting from tomorrow; Linux distributions do have usability problems (and they are being worked on.)
You say that the real showstopper for large scale Linux adoption is hardware support and I think that’s very true. But I also think it is important to note that for the customer, the support model of Linux is even better than the one of Windows! Because once a device driver is written for Linux, that device is supported nearly forever. On Windows, on the other hand, you only get support for the specific Windows version that device was designed for. Moreover, most gadgets only ever get one release of their drivers (WHQL-signed if you’re lucky), before their manufacturers switch to the next wave of device models, so users often have to live with bugs in harshly-released drivers, with no hope for somebody to fix them sooner or later.
So in the long run, even the average Joe WILL benefit if Linux is successful, because he will enjoy an even wider freedom to buy the devices he likes, without worrying if their drivers are 32- or 64-bits compiled, VXD- or WDM- or WDDM- based, WHQL-certified and so on.
If this is not happening right today, that’s because of “external” factors, unrelated from the good will of Linux developers or the technical design of the Linux kernel.
Here.
For some reason, Windows XP keeps forgetting my 24-characters-long WPA key every time I change the usb port where I connect my wireless adapter. It just doesn't work for me.
You forgot High Sierra, ISO9660, UDF.
And WinFS. Oh, wait...
No kernel modelsetting in 2.6.30 for anything but Intel chips.
There is some work in progress for ATI chips, but nothing in the mainline kernel.
In the meantime you can use uvesafb in the current kernel to get a framebuffer console if you like it. But you will get a bad vt switching experience.
Because 10GW of wind power gives you a LOT less energy than 10GW of nuclear. Typical wind power capacity factors are 20-40% (wind doesn't always blow), typical (fission) nuclear capacity factors are 90%-ish. Thus nuclear plants are cheaper than wind even if they cost 3 times as much per GW.
In addition, wind power needs additional grid investment and lots of pumped storage to even out spikes in capacity to be suitable for base load power, while nuclear power plants are suitable from the get-go.
Nuclear power plants also need grid investments, because they keep producing maximum power even during the night, when nobody (locally) is wanting it.
This, too, has to be taken into account when talking about their efficiency.
I don’t know why you posted anonymously such an insightful message.
If internet is the way it is, that’s only because it was designed by public funded researchers, for the benefit of the state, with public protocols, without lucrative intent.
If it was designed by the phone companies, we would now have a connection-oriented, patent-ridden internet were our data transfers would be billed according to the type of communication, to the distance between us and the recipient of our message, to the contract we and/or the recipient have with the respective ISP and so on. Evil.
This isn't communism in the sense that a government would implement communism (ie all property's held in common)
No government can implement communism. According to Marx, in a communist society, the state “withers away”.
Outside America, the iPhone has been less successful than you might think.
Here in Italy, none of my friends has an iPhone, geek or not.
It's missing features that we’re used to see even on the cheapest Chinese-made phone on sale here (bluetooth, mms, video call).
Some examples:
If you’re working on a PHP site on a remote machine, an IDE will manage uploading via ftp only the files you’ve modified, taking care of dependencies.
If you’re working on a Java project, you can rename a Java class or move it in another package and the IDE will take care of refactoring all the code for you. This includes moving the source files in the file system, updating every class referencing that one, and even updating comments, if you want.
If you’re working on a C project, it can tell you where a preprocessor macro was defined and every instance where it has been used.
If you’re writing an XML document, such as an XHTML web page, it will tell you when your document does no longer validate, even while you’re typing.
Whatever project you make, an IDE can usually create every possibile kind of output package (jar, tar.gz...) with no need for you to manage Makefiles and update them when the dependencies change.
It’s nothing that you can’t do without an IDE - it’s just that an IDE lets you do it faster and with less effort.
And, in some IDEs you can usually embed your favourite editor - which, of course, should be VIM - if you like so.
I think you’re missing the "I" in "IDE".
0. Premise: proprietary software will stay indefinitely. Full stop. You may argue eternally, but complicated software like games, 3D applications, databases, CADs(Computer-aided Design), etc. which cost millions of dollars and years of man-hours to develop will never be open sourced. Software patents are about to stay forever.
And how this has to do with Linux?
1. No reliable sound system,
Alsa?
no reliable unified software audio mixing,
PulseAudio?
many (old or/and proprietary) applications still open audio output exclusively causing major user problems and headache.
Probably refering to the old proprietary flash plugin? The new one doesn't have that problem, and if you care about hackers not entering your computer, you shouldn't use the old one anyway. By the way, we also have gnash now.
1.1 Insanely difficult to set up volume levels, audio recording ... and in some situations even audio output.
1.2 Highly confusing, not self-explanatory mixer settings.
1.3 By default many distros do not set volume levels properly (no audio output/no sound recording).
Still ignoring the efforts PulseAudio. Now some people are upset because the volume mixer is TOO simple (btw I agree with them).
2. X system: 2.1 No good stable standardized API for developing GUI applications (like Win32 API). Both GTK and Qt are very unstable and often break backwards compatibility.
Pure BS. Qt is extremely stable, much better than MFC and sure A LOT much better than USER.EXE. In fact, even many commercial applications for Windows are starting to use it.
2.2 Very slow GUI (except when being run with composite window managers on top of OpenGL).
Perhaps repainting can be a bit slower, but try watching TV on Windows using any commercially available software of your choice, then do the same on Linux, and after that let's talk about slowness again. Btw any graphics card produced after 2005 is able to do compositing.
2.3 Many GUI operations are not accelerated. No analogue of GDI or GDI+. Text antialiasing and other GUI operations are software rendered by GUI libraries (GTK->Cairo/QT->Xft).
No analogue of GDI? You mean we cannot draw lines and circles in Linux? Sounds new to me. No acceleration? See EXA and XRender. Xft renders fonts via XRender. No GDI+? See Arthur, Cairo.
2.4 Font rendering is implemented via high level GUI libraries, thus: 2.4.1 fontconfig fonts antialiasing settings cannot be applied on-the-fly.
Thus: each application can use the font rendering engine to do whatever it wants with fonts, other than drawing strings on the screen.
2.4.2 Fonts antialiasing only works for certain GUI toolkits (see 2.1).
False. Xft is part of X11 and can be used by every application. Even old-timers like xterm uses it. There's absolutely no reason to use server-side fonts anymore. What applications are you talking about, xbill?
2.4.3 Default fonts (often) look ugly.
De gustibus non disputandum est.
2.4.3.1 (Being resolved) By default most distros disable advanced fonts antialiasing.
That's because Microsoft owns a patent over sub-pixel rendering. Send your complaints to them.
2.4.3.2 By default most distros come without good or even compatible with Windows fonts.
Install msttcorefonts.
2.5 No double buffering.
We have composite these days. Before that, we had the X Double Buffering extension.
3. Problems stemming from the vast number of Linux distributives: 3.1 No unified configuration system for computer settings, devices and system services. E.g. distro A
Vizio? You say you're sticking to MS Office because you need Visio so much, and you don't even know its name?
More specifically: how many FOSS drivers *which are not maintained in the kernel tree* must I list?
5. Webcams (gspca).
gspca was merged into mainline kernel 2.6.27.
My point is that even when drivers are FOSS and the manufacturer has willingness Linux *users* can and do have problems.
I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find out why and who is to blame.
At least for gspca, most manufacturers had no willingness at all, as the drivers are mostly reverse engineered. I guess they are the ones to blame for the resulting bad quality of the code.
The problem with the 286 wasn’t multitasking of native protected-mode programs - it was that the 286 wasn’t feasible for multitasking of real-mode DOS programs under a controlling protected-mode operating system (it even involved tricks like using an undocumented LOADALL instruction or relying on external motherboard hardware to take the CPU out of protected mode).
The 386 was enhanced with the virtual 8086 mode specifically for this purpose.
What happened at Chernobyl (in a nutshell) was that the presence of steam in their water-regulated reactors increased the reaction rate. (This is called a "Void coefficient" greater than 1.) You can see where this leads: more steam --> more reactions --> more heat --> more steam (from boiling the water). That is what caused the meltdown, not the fact that the reactor (like every other power-operating reactor) "went critical". Modern nuclear reactors, on the other hand, have a Void coefficient less than 1. This means that the presence of steam (or other bubbles) in the reactor actually decreases the reaction rate, breaking the cycle above that led to the catastrophic meltdown at Chernobyl.
Actually, the void coefficient must be negative, not less than 1, in order for that to happen.
Some "modern" reactors such as CANDU have it positive but small, which means voids will increase the reactivity, but the phenomenon can be easily controlled.
By that time, CS5 will be out, you'll need it, and it won't run natively :) .
There's no javaws program in the current version of the 64-bit JRE.
It's Java 7 that has been GPLed. Java 6 still has the usual Java license, it's no surprise that it is not open source by any definition.
IcedTea is derived from Java 7 and as such you can install it freely through your package manager without accepting any nasty license.
You should compare apples to apples, in this case, smartphones to smartphones (6234 isn't one).
Even Nokia's cheaper smartphone will let you choose between an analog or a text clock (you can even fully customize their appearance with your own theme).
When the backlight goes off, the clock will be displayed in black over a white strip of pixels to let you read it easily. There's also a bar with the current date, and icons telling you anything you should know about the status of your phone (incoming messages, missed calls, quiet mode...) at a glance.
Indeed, the post you replied to was greatly exaggerated: the italian government will not censor youtube.
What is happening is that the parliament is planning legislation [italian language] to stop youtube from infringing copyright by hosting clips of tv shows recorded from the head of the government’s private tv networks.
Yet, it is to be noted that democratically elected members of senate [italian language] belonging to the currently ruling party, and even the head of the government himself, are often heard praising fascism, which, as we know, was quite far from democracy.
And just for precision’s sake, even if Italy’s legal system is not based on common law, precedents do have importance, and a well-behaving judge will not ignore them.