Why? I would be happy if my cellphone could run Windows NT or 98. They do not require a lot of CPU power and are much more compatible with modern Windows versions than Linux, Symbian or whatever other smartphone OS. I would be happy even with Windows 3.11. There is a lot of software even for this version.
LOLOLOL
I'm sorry, that's the only response this deserves. Tons of modern FOSS software is Win32/Linux. More will run on Linux than Win98. And that's if you ignore the backend enhancements. Linux has vastly improved hardware support, and lower memory usage. (most smartphone OS's use less memory than Win98 did - obviously a desktop distro like Ubuntu is another story)
You would rather have an exploit filled BSOD'ing OS with pitiful hardware support and lacking modern software instead of a stable and more streamlined OS with modern cross-platform software and a more intuitive skinnable UI?
Pro editing tools DO have this mostly sorted out, if you're trying for the "no tool is perfect, therefore the OSS tools are as good as the commercial tools" argument then it's failing. It's not that many combinations that are really useful, it's that the few most important ones are really, really hard to do right. The decoding libs have this straight, I never have a problem playing back MPEG2 or H.264. But there sure is a problem editing them.
Even with B frames off. H.264 is a total pain to edit in tools like AVIDemux. Best bet is converting to some other format first.
Don't forget about XviD. Virtually every device is fast enough to play back XviD, making it the pirate's choice.;)
As for "additional chunks hidden in the OS itself", where exactly is this hidden, especially now that modern IEs don't even have any filesystem-browsing capability?
The trident engine loads when Explorer loads. Replace the shell with an alternative shell, and disable DLL preloading with a tool like Autoruns. IE start time will shoot up to crazy levels. When I did it on an old Win2k-AthlonXP PC (obviously with IE6), it jumped from about 6 seconds cold start to 20 seconds.
Not much point doing it though. Lots of programs depend on Trident, like Steam.
P.S. Disabling Explorer knocked off 45MB memory usage. Disabling Trident knocked off another 25MB. Since 25MB is roughly what Firefox uses to display Google, shouldn't IE8 use 1MB? The rendering engine is already loaded into memory - unless it has to make copies or something.
While I do think Firefox is bloating, and really think they've made some questionable decisions (such as force-feeding the terrible Awesomebar), I can't think of anything wrong with this move. The extension model needs revision, and only elitist bastards would be upset that they're making it simpler and more accessible.
Some people like the awesomebar. It's the reason I use Firefox rather than other browsers, and also the reason I get annoyed with how slow other browsers are. (Often they require three or four clicks and pageloads to get to the same place, while Firefox can just jump there)
If it annoys you, use a different browser. If they turf the Awesomebar, then I think I'd stop using Firefox.
Simpler is good, but if they cut functionality that's bad. Is an equivalent to the ScreenGrab addon possible with this new extension model? (It renders the entire webpage as png)
Mark parent +1 insightful. Compare Chrome's adblocking vs Firefox's, for example. Firefox wins. And there are lots of cool, useful addons, like TabHunter, which is a cool way to navigate through lots of tabs. Or FireFTP -- an FTP client that works wherever Firefox does. Or DownThemAll, a download manager that works wherever Firefox does. And so on.
Screengrab? Render the entire webpage as a massive PNG file?;)
If they keep the same functionality with less XUL and simpler javascript, that's good. If they reduce functionality, that'll be a bummer.
I like this second layer of defense. Even under a worst-possible-situation where your password gets sniffed, account hijacked, and password changed... (which would itself take extreme dedication, because of the sub-30s window) nobody can log in again without your keyfob.
This should utterly eliminate casual account theft.
Except that OpenGL is NOT better. It may have support for vendor's random GPU features, but technical features alone do not make for a better product.
It has its pros and its cons.
Up until 2007, these were the pros:
Superior performance
Superior image quality
These still are:
Superior cross-platform support
I prefer DirectX because it has better development support, a better development environment, an integrated complete game package, and provides nearly the same speed and functionality as OpenGL.
Good reasons. Now, if you were developing a game for three consoles, Windows, OSX, Linux, and phones, then you'd probably want to go with OpenGL. Either that or face nasty dev time.
As soon as you pass 2 target platforms, OpenGL is the better solution.
This is inccorect. DirectX 10 does work on Windows XP, it is just not officially supported by Microsoft.
And this is incorrect. The Alky project went down. It was never a complete implementation. Most of the features that worked could be enabled in DX9 mode anyway - they just weren't.
Seriously? Why did I get modded troll? Every time I mention Linux I get modded troll.
It's well known that you need to keep your drivers up to date to work with new kernel versions. And when those new drivers don't like your videocard anymore, you get screwed over.
I wouldn't have mentioned it if it wasn't common, but it is. It happens all the time.
To be frank, it's about as common as nVidia drivers messing up during an update on Windows - but that at least kicks you to an 800x600x8 desktop, or only BSODs when entering a game. When your linux drivers are too new for your card, you have to go back to an older kernel with older drivers that actually work.
P.S. This issue is so common that when I posted about it on the Ubuntu forums, a half-dozen people replied that they were having the same issue within that hour. Some of the people had just joined (1 post), and we all had different cards with the same affliction.
Please don't use the troll mod to dismess real aggravating issues.
Obviously you have never tried running Linux on a system with a ATI graphics card.
Obviously you have never tried running Linux on a system with a nVidia graphics card.
It's seriously a PITA to get new drivers working on a new kernel with an old card. Anything pre-GeForce 8 may have annoying issues. Not a problem for desktop linux with a new videocard - but if you were setting up a Myth box on that old Athlon XP w/ 6600GT, you may be in for a headache.
Avoid distros like Ubuntu with automatic kernel updates. One update and suddenly your graphics drivers won't work and X won't start. Then it's back down to the CLI to figure out why the fully supported drivers with full 6600GT support don't work with your 6600GT.
Several years ago - might've even been last decade - I wrote a flash movie that checks the version number of the flash player and informs you if you need an update. And guess what? It still works fine.
That was Flash 4, I believe. Somehow due to my great forethought it was able to cope with Flash 10 without spazzing out.
Whenever I do dates, and am not using long (for miliseconds), I usually put the year in as int. I guess that means I should be set until 2 billion years or so?
Well, to be fair to the morons that coded this stuff - I'm coding in scripting languages on desktops with near limitless processing power. These devices that are messing up are probably 8-bit MCUs, where quite possibly 100% of the code is ASM. I suppose it's a bit harder to debug or think ahead because of that.
90% likeliness would be that you would be ignored.
I actually live close to Seattle, so it's probably closer to 100%. Or maybe some people would agree with me.
But this...
You need a lot of emotion to start a riot, and it simply doesn't exist in the US at this point in time. The last time the necessary amount of emotional energy existed in the US was after Katrina, but luckily nobody lit the match to start riots.
Is true. Who can say how much emotional energy and turmoil is churning in India right now? I certainly can't.
I think my point stands - for a comparison to be valid it has to be similar situations to individual people.
Sounds like more of a culture problem than a Google problem there. I mean, is the west the only place where people can say "offensive" things without riots? And even then Islamic idiots try to kill them (look at the Danish cartoonist issue) when free speech is protected by law.
What are you talking about?
If I go into a large crowd somewhere in the US and start shouting that you guys deserved 9/11 for your arrogance, not only am I likely to start a riot - I'm also likely to get beaten to death or shot.
Methinks your perception is a bit off. If you're going to go insinuating that other cultures or countries are inferior, you should at least examine similar situations. And surprise surprise - everyone behaves similarly when the situations have the same meaning to individual people.
I don't clutter my code with comments. If there's a comment, it's a really important gotcha, or something that doesn't make sense but has to be left for legacy reasons.
And I write a detailed description at the top of every file. Not just what a class does, but also why. Why some of the methods do what they do, and other places they might get used that might need to be changed.
Nothing annoys me more than...
/* Method name: Foo Returns: int Bar */ public int Foo() { return Bar; }
When a comment could be run through a preprocessor to turn it into the actual code, the comment is saying too much, and should be removed, simplified, or changed.
ARM chips aren't slow. Software just isn't optimized much for them.
Your average ARM chip is as fast as an Atom, clock for clock. You can get them up to about 800mhz, so an ARM chip should perform like an 800mhz Atom.
Keeping that in mind... select lighter desktop software, and chips with mature GPU drivers.
Remember the 9.04 GMA950 debacle? 8fps in gnome... sounds just about right.;)
P.S. Windows 7 is not more resource friendly than Linux. Even if you select a heavy distro like Ubuntu, that wouldn't be true. Have you even bothered to check memory usage, or compared responsiveness on systems that have GPU drivers for both OS's?
Your average linux distro is heavier than XP - something Linux fanboys love to deny - but claiming it's heavier than Win7 is just fallacy.
And there's that Cherrypal $99 USD netbook, so clearly prices can come down further. And with rock-bottom prices like that, who wouldn't buy if they could find a use for it?
but back when hard disk manufactures realised they could make their hard disks look bigger than they really were
All the evidence I've found (including on other sites) says it was always measured in metric. At some point IBM switched to 512b block sizes just because. They could've just as easily went with 500b block sizes, except they didn't, and 512b stuck.
How that translates into some nefarious marketing fiasco is beyond me.
*all* OSes were using power-of-two prefixes.
Could you please prove that?
Because I remember hearing that *one* OS did it properly, and it was one of the early ones. Now if only I could find the link.
With a 512-byte sector, if I have a bunch of very small (but not zero-size) files and the disk has 128 kilobytes left, I expect to be able to store no more than 256 of my little files in that space. But if some cretinous loser programs the shell to tell me that I have 131 metric "kilobytes", I won't know how much space I really have.
If it's NTFS I wouldn't bet on more than 64 files.
But there's also filesystem overhead, so it'd be lower. And modern filesystems can't function without some space left...
Slashdot Mirror
Why wouldn't X start?
Yeah, that's the problem. Why? And on the forums most of the replies are about as helpful as yours.
<irony>Oh well, time for an OS reinstall.</irony>
Why? I would be happy if my cellphone could run Windows NT or 98. They do not require a lot of CPU power and are much more compatible with modern Windows versions than Linux, Symbian or whatever other smartphone OS.
I would be happy even with Windows 3.11. There is a lot of software even for this version.
LOLOLOL
I'm sorry, that's the only response this deserves. Tons of modern FOSS software is Win32/Linux. More will run on Linux than Win98. And that's if you ignore the backend enhancements. Linux has vastly improved hardware support, and lower memory usage. (most smartphone OS's use less memory than Win98 did - obviously a desktop distro like Ubuntu is another story)
You would rather have an exploit filled BSOD'ing OS with pitiful hardware support and lacking modern software instead of a stable and more streamlined OS with modern cross-platform software and a more intuitive skinnable UI?
I repeat:
LOLOLOL
Pro editing tools DO have this mostly sorted out, if you're trying for the "no tool is perfect, therefore the OSS tools are as good as the commercial tools" argument then it's failing. It's not that many combinations that are really useful, it's that the few most important ones are really, really hard to do right. The decoding libs have this straight, I never have a problem playing back MPEG2 or H.264. But there sure is a problem editing them.
Even with B frames off. H.264 is a total pain to edit in tools like AVIDemux. Best bet is converting to some other format first.
Don't forget about XviD. Virtually every device is fast enough to play back XviD, making it the pirate's choice. ;)
As for "additional chunks hidden in the OS itself", where exactly is this hidden, especially now that modern IEs don't even have any filesystem-browsing capability?
The trident engine loads when Explorer loads. Replace the shell with an alternative shell, and disable DLL preloading with a tool like Autoruns. IE start time will shoot up to crazy levels. When I did it on an old Win2k-AthlonXP PC (obviously with IE6), it jumped from about 6 seconds cold start to 20 seconds.
Not much point doing it though. Lots of programs depend on Trident, like Steam.
P.S. Disabling Explorer knocked off 45MB memory usage. Disabling Trident knocked off another 25MB. Since 25MB is roughly what Firefox uses to display Google, shouldn't IE8 use 1MB? The rendering engine is already loaded into memory - unless it has to make copies or something.
While I do think Firefox is bloating, and really think they've made some questionable decisions (such as force-feeding the terrible Awesomebar), I can't think of anything wrong with this move. The extension model needs revision, and only elitist bastards would be upset that they're making it simpler and more accessible.
Some people like the awesomebar. It's the reason I use Firefox rather than other browsers, and also the reason I get annoyed with how slow other browsers are. (Often they require three or four clicks and pageloads to get to the same place, while Firefox can just jump there)
If it annoys you, use a different browser. If they turf the Awesomebar, then I think I'd stop using Firefox.
Simpler is good, but if they cut functionality that's bad. Is an equivalent to the ScreenGrab addon possible with this new extension model? (It renders the entire webpage as png)
Mark parent +1 insightful. Compare Chrome's adblocking vs Firefox's, for example. Firefox wins. And there are lots of cool, useful addons, like TabHunter, which is a cool way to navigate through lots of tabs. Or FireFTP -- an FTP client that works wherever Firefox does. Or DownThemAll, a download manager that works wherever Firefox does. And so on.
Screengrab? Render the entire webpage as a massive PNG file? ;)
If they keep the same functionality with less XUL and simpler javascript, that's good. If they reduce functionality, that'll be a bummer.
I like this second layer of defense. Even under a worst-possible-situation where your password gets sniffed, account hijacked, and password changed... (which would itself take extreme dedication, because of the sub-30s window) nobody can log in again without your keyfob.
This should utterly eliminate casual account theft.
Except that OpenGL is NOT better. It may have support for vendor's random GPU features, but technical features alone do not make for a better product.
It has its pros and its cons.
Up until 2007, these were the pros:
These still are:
I prefer DirectX because it has better development support, a better development environment, an integrated complete game package, and provides nearly the same speed and functionality as OpenGL.
Good reasons. Now, if you were developing a game for three consoles, Windows, OSX, Linux, and phones, then you'd probably want to go with OpenGL. Either that or face nasty dev time.
As soon as you pass 2 target platforms, OpenGL is the better solution.
This is inccorect. DirectX 10 does work on Windows XP, it is just not officially supported by Microsoft.
And this is incorrect. The Alky project went down. It was never a complete implementation. Most of the features that worked could be enabled in DX9 mode anyway - they just weren't.
In fact, Google doesn't run a single division with decent customer service.
Go figure.
Yeah, but do any of their competitors?
Google Checkout has pretty universally bad service too.
And the alternative is... Paypal? :P
Second, it's cheaper than your VOIP provider unless your VOIP provider can beat $1.70 mo.
Mine does, so this doesn't seem like a very good deal - especially if the drivers and support blow.
Wrong, dkms takes care of automatically (re)compiling the nvidia module if needed. This happens on boot, before X starts. All good.
Correct.
And then X doesn't start, and you're left wondering what the hell went wrong.
Off to the forums, where other people are complaining...!
Seriously? Why did I get modded troll? Every time I mention Linux I get modded troll.
It's well known that you need to keep your drivers up to date to work with new kernel versions. And when those new drivers don't like your videocard anymore, you get screwed over.
I wouldn't have mentioned it if it wasn't common, but it is. It happens all the time.
To be frank, it's about as common as nVidia drivers messing up during an update on Windows - but that at least kicks you to an 800x600x8 desktop, or only BSODs when entering a game. When your linux drivers are too new for your card, you have to go back to an older kernel with older drivers that actually work.
P.S. This issue is so common that when I posted about it on the Ubuntu forums, a half-dozen people replied that they were having the same issue within that hour. Some of the people had just joined (1 post), and we all had different cards with the same affliction.
Please don't use the troll mod to dismess real aggravating issues.
Obviously you have never tried running Linux on a system with a ATI graphics card.
Obviously you have never tried running Linux on a system with a nVidia graphics card.
It's seriously a PITA to get new drivers working on a new kernel with an old card. Anything pre-GeForce 8 may have annoying issues. Not a problem for desktop linux with a new videocard - but if you were setting up a Myth box on that old Athlon XP w/ 6600GT, you may be in for a headache.
Avoid distros like Ubuntu with automatic kernel updates. One update and suddenly your graphics drivers won't work and X won't start. Then it's back down to the CLI to figure out why the fully supported drivers with full 6600GT support don't work with your 6600GT.
P.S. I've been jaded by automatic updates.
Several years ago - might've even been last decade - I wrote a flash movie that checks the version number of the flash player and informs you if you need an update. And guess what? It still works fine.
That was Flash 4, I believe. Somehow due to my great forethought it was able to cope with Flash 10 without spazzing out.
Whenever I do dates, and am not using long (for miliseconds), I usually put the year in as int. I guess that means I should be set until 2 billion years or so?
Well, to be fair to the morons that coded this stuff - I'm coding in scripting languages on desktops with near limitless processing power. These devices that are messing up are probably 8-bit MCUs, where quite possibly 100% of the code is ASM. I suppose it's a bit harder to debug or think ahead because of that.
*sigh*
Cross-Platform on Win, Mac, GNU/Linux: Firefox, Chrome (maybe just beta?), Opera
Firefox is everywhere man.
It's been ported to ARM phones, OS/2, ReactOS, etc.
Opera is also all over the place, but Chromium is just on the big three.
90% likeliness would be that you would be ignored.
I actually live close to Seattle, so it's probably closer to 100%. Or maybe some people would agree with me.
But this...
You need a lot of emotion to start a riot, and it simply doesn't exist in the US at this point in time. The last time the necessary amount of emotional energy existed in the US was after Katrina, but luckily nobody lit the match to start riots.
Is true. Who can say how much emotional energy and turmoil is churning in India right now? I certainly can't.
I think my point stands - for a comparison to be valid it has to be similar situations to individual people.
You need a new voting system.
Unfortunately those are hard to get in without a large percentage of the current vote.
Up here in BC (Canada) we've been trying for quite a few years. We've got about 60% support, but that's not enough to bring it in.
It's strange to watch, in modern times, an empire committing suicide through paranoia.
It's okay. The country may fall, but the corporations will survive!
Sounds like more of a culture problem than a Google problem there. I mean, is the west the only place where people can say "offensive" things without riots? And even then Islamic idiots try to kill them (look at the Danish cartoonist issue) when free speech is protected by law.
What are you talking about?
If I go into a large crowd somewhere in the US and start shouting that you guys deserved 9/11 for your arrogance, not only am I likely to start a riot - I'm also likely to get beaten to death or shot.
Methinks your perception is a bit off. If you're going to go insinuating that other cultures or countries are inferior, you should at least examine similar situations. And surprise surprise - everyone behaves similarly when the situations have the same meaning to individual people.
Countdown to troll mod... 5...4...3...2...1
I don't clutter my code with comments. If there's a comment, it's a really important gotcha, or something that doesn't make sense but has to be left for legacy reasons.
And I write a detailed description at the top of every file. Not just what a class does, but also why. Why some of the methods do what they do, and other places they might get used that might need to be changed.
Nothing annoys me more than...
/* Method name: Foo
Returns: int Bar
*/
public int Foo()
{
return Bar;
}
When a comment could be run through a preprocessor to turn it into the actual code, the comment is saying too much, and should be removed, simplified, or changed.
ARM chips aren't slow. Software just isn't optimized much for them.
Your average ARM chip is as fast as an Atom, clock for clock. You can get them up to about 800mhz, so an ARM chip should perform like an 800mhz Atom.
Keeping that in mind... select lighter desktop software, and chips with mature GPU drivers.
Remember the 9.04 GMA950 debacle? 8fps in gnome... sounds just about right. ;)
P.S. Windows 7 is not more resource friendly than Linux. Even if you select a heavy distro like Ubuntu, that wouldn't be true. Have you even bothered to check memory usage, or compared responsiveness on systems that have GPU drivers for both OS's?
Your average linux distro is heavier than XP - something Linux fanboys love to deny - but claiming it's heavier than Win7 is just fallacy.
I saw a EEE 1005HA for for $249.99 on NCIX.
And there's that Cherrypal $99 USD netbook, so clearly prices can come down further. And with rock-bottom prices like that, who wouldn't buy if they could find a use for it?
But then why give the actual filesize at all? Why not just the space taken on the disk?
What's currently shown is the actual filesize in KiB - but labelled KB. Not the actual disk space taken up. :/
I would fully support what you're suggesting, but this half-half with incorrect labelling makes no sense.
It appears I'm a troll and you're insightful, because more slashdotters agree with you.
Of course, you're incorrect.
I hate quoting wikipedia, but...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Files
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Hard_disk_drives
I can't find any evidence of this:
but back when hard disk manufactures realised they could make their hard disks look bigger than they really were
All the evidence I've found (including on other sites) says it was always measured in metric. At some point IBM switched to 512b block sizes just because. They could've just as easily went with 500b block sizes, except they didn't, and 512b stuck.
How that translates into some nefarious marketing fiasco is beyond me.
*all* OSes were using power-of-two prefixes.
Could you please prove that?
Because I remember hearing that *one* OS did it properly, and it was one of the early ones. Now if only I could find the link.
With a 512-byte sector, if I have a bunch of very small (but not zero-size) files and the disk has 128 kilobytes left, I expect to be able to store no more than 256 of my little files in that space. But if some cretinous loser programs the shell to tell me that I have 131 metric "kilobytes", I won't know how much space I really have.
If it's NTFS I wouldn't bet on more than 64 files.
But there's also filesystem overhead, so it'd be lower. And modern filesystems can't function without some space left...