Google's great for finding software, but I find that if I want opinions, I need the input of people. Find what you want with google. Find out if it's any good by asking people who've had experience with similar problems to your own.
Also, if I don't know the technical term for something, describing it in simple words will enable people to realise what I need, whereas google will be no good.
I know it's unfashionable, but uk.comp.os.linux is an incredibly good place to hear the pluses and minuses of any software for any task you desire. There are some really helpful/knowledgeable people there.
The constitution isn't a list of what goverment should do it's a restriction on what the government can do, what powers it has.
That's simply untrue, and demonstrates a monstrously superficial understanding of civics. Lay off the Libertarian Kool-Aid for a minute and read this:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and
provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States
Still "promoting the general welfare" is left for states and citizens. It's pretty clear that that is not a delimitation of Federal power.
You're saying this is wrong? Monopolies operate more efficiently than private companies who are in competition with each other to provide the most desirable service to the customer?
I'm saying its not axiomatically true, yes. It's certainly nowhere near as clear cut as you seem to think, no matter what libertarian economists tell you. If you think that economics is a science like physics, with clearly developed and verified "truths", you're fooling yourself.
If expenditures were more transparent, I think most people would feel better about government spending. Of course, many politicians resist this because it would put a stop to the back-room deal making that they prefer.
Can't argue with that. And I do sympathise with you over the state of your local government.
You, however, conveniently ignore all the money that is wasted on pork barrel spending and useless social programs, loopholes
Pointing out that some government money is not wasted, does not mean that I believe no government money is ever wasted? Why do so many people fail to grasp this simple idea?
And if you seriously believe that money spent rescuing people in New Orleans is wasted, this conversation is over. I don't to people who value money over human life.
XServers already do that. IIRC, it's called SaveUnders. This kind of caching is not what is usually meant by acceleration, which is the handing off of processing to a dedicated graphics chip.
[roads] are not a profitable enterprise, unless you start charging more tolls to use these roads
You'll find very few things are profitable enterprises until you start charging for them.
Common sense dictates that there's no reason why the government closes off entire lucrative markets when private companies, concerned with efficiency and customer satisfaction rather than the status quo, would deal with things more efficiently
There are two problems here: i) the implicit assumption that the free market necessarily "would deal with things more efficiently." ii) The free market is great at providing things that are not necessities. Now, you might argue that private health care is a more efficient system than state systems, in as much as it reduces the average price of a given operation. But if the human price of that is that those in poverty have a disproportionate death rate, is that a price worth paying? Would you really be proud of living in a country that allows its poor to die of curable diseases for want of enough money to pay for medical services? Similarly, if public education were abolished, are you prepared for how an uneducated underclass would affect the social fabric? Because some things can't be measured in dollars and cents.
And besides, the federal government is mandated to provide service for the common good (in the words of the US Constitution). A line is clearly to be drawn. Very few people would propose the government provide every household with a DVD player through taxation. But, it's not immediately apparent to me where this line should be drawn.
Federal Government is notoriously bad at spending taxpayer money wisely, either through bloated budgets, pork-barrel projects or crony capitalism.
You'll hear no argument from me on that. However, here's the original thing I do disagree with
Any time they're spending less money, you should be happy, because it's your money they're saving.
This poster cannot or will not distinguish between money wasted, and money spent. At the risk of being slightly distasteful, Federal money spent on (for example) readying the Emergency Response Teams, aiding evacuations or strengthening the New Orleans levees would not be considered wasted. We should not be happy that this money was not spent, because of the massive human cost.
That was what I meant by "knee jerk libertarianism" -- that "governments are bad, m'kay" attitude, summarised above.
Great. Pay-as-you-go policing and a subscription-only Army (haven't paid? fight your own war). And a lack of free education... that's just fine as long as you don't mind generating a massive underclass.
What could possibly go wrong?
The Federal Government will not spend your money wisely, because it is not their money
You don't think the money the federal government is spending rescuing Louisians from the roofs of their houses isn't being wisely spent? You don't think the money spent paying the FDNY so they could run into the Twin Towers and rescue people like you wasn't wisely spent?
I didn't say governments are completely and unambiguously great -- just that they're not unambiguously bad. Money spent by government is not necessarily wasted, which is what the original comment implied.
Any time they're spending less money, you should be happy, because it's your money they're saving.
That's right. Because we all know that government's never do anything beneficial to the community: like roads, education for those who couldn't otherwise afford it, public transportation, water supplies, defense, the police...
You open-source guys should write an open-source reader for Windows (and Linux?).
There are several for Linux already, mostly based on Ghostscript (because PDF and PostScript share many characteristics). I can't imagine there isn't a free postscript viewer for Windows that doesn't handle PDFs.
But the long (noticeable) delays are invariably caused by the app needing to restore itself from swap (as your compile, and Linux's natural inclination to indiscriminately cache all the files you just touched, forced it out of resident memory). Sorry, but all the graphic acceleration won't speed that up.
I need to know what is my CPU/Board temperature, and if the program monitoring those data is grabbing 2% of my CPU
But an xload-a-like would do that job perfectly acceptably. And xload didn't use 2% of the CPU on my i386, let alone anything reasonable modern. And you don't need that updating more frequently than once a second, so if its really taking 2% of your CPU, that's one seriously badly written app.
... it is about the eye candy. Nothing wrong with that though, although I do wish that everyone would just be honest about it
Bingo. I can't agree more with this point (I'm not really a curmudgeon about it, I just play one on slashdot). But the really weird thing is people who say "We'll never compete with Windows until..." where the sentence ends with something that is incredibly superficial. It's like saying "GM will never compete with Ford, until their cars are available in Metallic Paint!".
The rate at which windows are drawn is not a heavy drain on my productivity. How about you?
Speeding screen updating in power-demanding apps (e.g. video)
Well, sure. It'll be helpful for specialist rendering apps. But my PC already plays DVDs full screen even without acceleration, so I don't think thats much of a win for most of us
Freeing your CPU to concentrate in your programs' data instead of in the screen's eye candy
Yes folks. The truth is out at last. It's all about the eye candy. No wonder most desktops these days look like they've been designed by a hyperactive 12-year-old with colour blindness and a serious Sunny Delight dependency
Making your screen convey more information about your computer's and your data's status.
But it won't speed up the gathering of this information, which will remain CPU/disk bound. So, unless you're talking about eye candy again, this won't actually improve my experience, either.
Read it when it appear on LWN.net. And it is a good article. And he clearly says why 3d acceleration is preferable to 2d... but what does 3D acceleration get the average desktop user. Games, I'll grant you... but when I'm coding, or word processing, or sending email, then the time it takes my crappy video card to paint windows on the screen is not a major drain on my time.
When we have an X with a level of fully-3d-accelerated OpenGL sophistication which is within an order of magnitude of Quartz 2D Extreme's I will be happy.
Spare me the Ricer stuff, what does it do?
i) How will it improve my productivity at work?
ii) How will it make my home computing experience better?
Along similar lines, part of the Apple Corp (Beatles record label) v. Apple Computer settlement was that the computer company stay out of the music industry to avoid trademark confusion. So when Macs started making sounds for the first time, the default sound was called "SoSuMi".
It's the login screen. No-one needs to know its name. It appears on boot. There's a little space for your user name and a nifty little menu at the bottom.
It's called gdm. So what? You no more have to know that than you have to know what GDI.exe does in the Windows shell.
Slashdot Mirror
Google's great for finding software, but I find that if I want opinions, I need the input of people. Find what you want with google. Find out if it's any good by asking people who've had experience with similar problems to your own.
Also, if I don't know the technical term for something, describing it in simple words will enable people to realise what I need, whereas google will be no good.
I know it's unfashionable, but uk.comp.os.linux is an incredibly good place to hear the pluses and minuses of any software for any task you desire. There are some really helpful/knowledgeable people there.
And if you seriously believe that money spent rescuing people in New Orleans is wasted, this conversation is over. I don't to people who value money over human life.
XServers already do that. IIRC, it's called SaveUnders. This kind of
caching is not what is usually meant by acceleration, which is the handing off of processing to a dedicated graphics chip.
If he really meant what you say, I do agree.
I still don't read it like that though (the line about "takes money by force" tells me exactly where he's coming from.)
i) the implicit assumption that the free market necessarily "would deal with things more efficiently."
ii) The free market is great at providing things that are not necessities. Now, you might argue that private health care is a more efficient system than state systems, in as much as it reduces the average price of a given operation. But if the human price of that is that those in poverty have a disproportionate death rate, is that a price worth paying? Would you really be proud of living in a country that allows its poor to die of curable diseases for want of enough money to pay for medical services? Similarly, if public education were abolished, are you prepared for how an uneducated underclass would affect the social fabric? Because some things can't be measured in dollars and cents.
And besides, the federal government is mandated to provide service for the common good (in the words of the US Constitution). A line is clearly to be drawn. Very few people would propose the government provide every household with a DVD player through taxation. But, it's not immediately apparent to me where this line should be drawn.
That was what I meant by "knee jerk libertarianism" -- that "governments are bad, m'kay" attitude, summarised above.
What could possibly go wrong?You don't think the money the federal government is spending rescuing Louisians from the roofs of their houses isn't being wisely spent? You don't think the money spent paying the FDNY so they could run into the Twin Towers and rescue people like you wasn't wisely spent?
Man, you're a tough crowd.
I didn't say governments are completely and unambiguously great -- just that they're not unambiguously bad. Money spent by government is not necessarily wasted, which is what the original comment implied.
This is not a subtle philosophical point.
that an IBM-funded report favoring Linux won't get treated with the same healthy scepticism that a Microsoft-funded report favoring Window.
Folks : if you treat any of these studies as anything other than another form of advertising, you're a fool.
A knee jerk libertarian is a still a jerk.
Correctimundo.
for i in *.zip; do unzip $i;done
And *that* may only work as long as there are no spaces in the filenames (depending on which shell you use). Ugh.
But the long (noticeable) delays are invariably caused by the app needing to restore itself from swap (as your compile, and Linux's natural inclination to indiscriminately cache all the files you just touched, forced it out of resident memory). Sorry, but all the graphic acceleration won't speed that up.
Read it when it appear on LWN.net. And it is a good article. And he clearly says why 3d acceleration is preferable to 2d... but what does 3D acceleration get the average desktop user. Games, I'll grant you... but when I'm coding, or word processing, or sending email, then the time it takes my crappy video card to paint windows on the screen is not a major drain on my time.
Is it for you?
i) How will it improve my productivity at work?
ii) How will it make my home computing experience better?
Along similar lines, part of the Apple Corp (Beatles record label) v. Apple Computer settlement was that the computer company stay out of the music industry to avoid trademark confusion. So when Macs started making sounds for the first time, the default sound was called "SoSuMi".
But only after "Let It Beep" was rejected.
It's called gdm. So what? You no more have to know that than you have to know what GDI.exe does in the Windows shell.