Forgot to mention - Apache Tomcat powers a lot of sites. I see as many.jsp sites as I do.asp; Java is just a dang huge competitor, and anything they can do to strengthen.net helps them in the long run.
Aside from having a bad rap for "being slow" and "consuming lots of memory", Java has...
1) The most efficient garbage collectors of any garbage collected language. 2) The fastest (useful) VM of any language. 3) The most efficient JIT of any language. (Time to compile, and compiled execution speed) 4) The quickest start times for a JIT'd language. (C# is significantly slower) 5) More efficient bindings to game libraries than C#. (Only OGL, though - and I do find this one laughable) 6) The best and most commonly used VM for implementing higher level languages. (JRuby, Jython, etc are magnitudes faster than the C backends) 7) The best multicore scaling of a low-ish level not-functional language. (look up Scala)
Since Microsoft is heavily pushing.net for different languages built on-top, and they've got their whole XNA/Live thing going on, regarding Java as a direct competitor to their technologies is putting it politely. In truth, Java dominates in many locations, such as non-iPhone phones.
There's also these reasons for targeting Java:
1) Oracle now owns it. 2) Sun used to own it.
Sun (now Oracle) has a competing server OS, used in large clusters requiring 100% uptime... and mySQL/Oracle are obviously competitors to Microsoft's meagre DB offerings.
So to summarize...
Just what is Microsoft's angle? Surely they are gaining some advantage here.
They're doing the same thing they did with IE. Positioning it to be #1
Doesn't work in for all OS/GPU/Monitor combos. I tried setting a custom resolution in XP, and my videocard got quite grumpy.:P
But yes, that's perfect, in theory. I've often thought games should have that option(half-size), so people with horrible videocards can play in 1024x768 -> 512x384 glory.
Yes, the scaling in Ubuntu and Kubuntu was impressive. Windows (even Vista and Win7) miss little things, but Linux doesn't.
To the original poster: I have a 23" Samsung 2343BWX - it supports 2048x1152, 1360x768, etc.; I find 1360x768 to be blurry, but when I showed it to my parents (which are actually still on a CRT), they were impressed and said it looked totally clear. Might be worth looking into.
Note: My vision is quite good. I can see the dust on the screen, and I can read text from about 6 feet back.
My experience with Bing? It failed at locating info on an obscure book, and didn't do so well when I entered the cryptic filename of a corrupted patch for an old game. (I wanted to re-download it)
For regular searches though, it seems to hold up okay. If your query isn't complex enough you get redirected to whatever is popular - but that's by design.
I think Google's strength is nomatter what you're searching, they're good at it.
I respect that they're aiming for stability (quite different from what KDE did), but I'm not sure I like the direction their UI is going. I'll probably hop to KDE or LXDE.
HD movies on Youtube don't compare to cable, neither does a single TV show downloaded with bittorrent that is labelled "HD". I have seen some "HD web streams" and they are... if your lucky...the same quality as digital cable.
Really? My cable provider sucks. You wouldn't want to sit closer than 10 feet away or you can see distortions. And at that distance, a 350MB XviD actually has the same or better quality.
Online, "HD" is usually used to refer to 480p. But I watch TV on my "HD" 2048x1152 monitor with fancy quality enhancing GPU shaders. It makes it so much more enjoyable.
They're mostly overblown. Bad things can happen if you lose power, but that applies to any FS. Buy a UPS.
I urge Linux users to stick to ext3 for the protection of your data.
I urge linux users to stick to ext2. Windows and BSD have ext2 support(But Windows may require extra software), so if you ever want to try the little red guy out, or go back to Windows for gaming, you'll be cursing if you went ext3.:P
Unless, of course, your distro uses 128KB inodes(mostly supported) rather than 256KB. (newer distros)
That's why openSUSE now includes a desktop kernel specially tuned for desktop users.
This is getting into a much more nuanced position than I really think is accurate for the main topic, but when a company prices a tool beyond the reach of a market, I don't have as much of an issue if that market pirates the software provided that once they do ENTER the market (ie, become professional graphic artists) that they pay for a license.
That's your call. I do have a problem with it; people should be using other software if they don't want to pay.
And companies shouldn't be using piracy in that way. If they really want to encourage adoption(like Macromedia/Adobe did), then they should offer FREE versions for home users and students.
I'm quite happy to follow the rules and not use their products - I just wish that didn't put non-pirates at a disadvantage. And I'm most angry at the companies that drive piracy(Adobe, Macromedia, Microsoft), then complain about it afterwards.
I totally agree. Some people feel they're entitled to everything for free. It's not just games, though - software like Photoshop, Premier or Maya get pirated a lot.
What's really sad is, most successful people never paid for their copies until they actually needed them for a legit business. College students will pirate that stuff to learn the software and be able to put it on a resume, ultimately making money off it - but according to most of them, it's totally moral only paying for software once the first(or tenth) paycheck comes in.
I admit I'm a pirate scumbag, but I don't pirate software or games. I do try games, which classifies me as a pirate scumbag, but I don't have a single piece of unlicensed software on any of my computers. Try it(regardless of whether it's shareware), make a decision, then buy it or turf it.
Most pirates are just in denial - They're getting training with software that should cost them thousands, putting them ahead of non-pirates. I don't know how you can get rid of that incorrect feeling of entitlement. I know it bleeds through to everything they consider purchasing.
I myself have tried to keep my sense of entitlement in check. For example, I paid $37 for FRAPS, and thought it was a good deal. I paid $10 for Mass Effect (DRM laden, eeeeww!), and that was the most I was willing to pay. I paid $20 for Torchlight, and $30 for King's Bounty, and both were good deals. I'm not entitled to stuff for free, even if I demand the right to try software that lacks a refund policy.
There has been modded xbox360 bans before too, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to people when they do get banned. And at least it keeps the cheaters off games.
Yeah, roughly the same thing happened to my Uncle, twice, so it must be a common occurance.
The Apple store is about 2 hours away for him. His old PPC iMac bit the dust just outside the warranty period. It had been repaired once in the past, free of charge. (dead HDD) Apparently this time the HDD decided to go a bit crazy with write commands, so any file written to after the problem began was corrupted. (Mostly system files, thank goodness)
He upgraded to a low end x86 iMac, but with lots of RAM and HDD space. Unfortunately, the HDD went flakey about 6 months later. When he went in to get it repaired, they just gave him a new one with all his stuff copied over.
However, they messed up - this new one had half the RAM of his old one, and a smaller HDD. Ooops! So he drove back and talked to them. They were very apologetic, and offered him $350 off the price of an upgrade to any other iMac. Since they had to copy everything over again, it kind of made sense. They also discounted the price he paid for his original iMac, so he got a $1700 machine for about $250, one year ago. The specs are strikingly close to this.
It's not the best deal in the world, but it sure beats the experience at most places pawning computers on people.
If you patch, you're safe. Too bad so many XP users don't opt-in to patching, a lot of them will be infected, but it's a good thing MS started auto-patching by default with Vista, also since Vista has a lot of anti-exploit code (DEP, ASLR, Protected Mode Sandboxing, etc.) it probably won't see very many infections, although I thought I saw on another site that Vista wasn't affected.
Many people turned it off because of the automatic reboot.
I can't count the number of times I'll be playing a game with someone, and then *poof*, they're gone.
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Forgot to mention - Apache Tomcat powers a lot of sites. I see as many .jsp sites as I do .asp; Java is just a dang huge competitor, and anything they can do to strengthen .net helps them in the long run.
It hurts Java, .net's biggest competitor.
Aside from having a bad rap for "being slow" and "consuming lots of memory", Java has...
1) The most efficient garbage collectors of any garbage collected language.
2) The fastest (useful) VM of any language.
3) The most efficient JIT of any language. (Time to compile, and compiled execution speed)
4) The quickest start times for a JIT'd language. (C# is significantly slower)
5) More efficient bindings to game libraries than C#. (Only OGL, though - and I do find this one laughable)
6) The best and most commonly used VM for implementing higher level languages. (JRuby, Jython, etc are magnitudes faster than the C backends)
7) The best multicore scaling of a low-ish level not-functional language. (look up Scala)
Since Microsoft is heavily pushing .net for different languages built on-top, and they've got their whole XNA/Live thing going on, regarding Java as a direct competitor to their technologies is putting it politely. In truth, Java dominates in many locations, such as non-iPhone phones.
There's also these reasons for targeting Java:
1) Oracle now owns it.
2) Sun used to own it.
Sun (now Oracle) has a competing server OS, used in large clusters requiring 100% uptime... and mySQL/Oracle are obviously competitors to Microsoft's meagre DB offerings.
So to summarize...
Just what is Microsoft's angle? Surely they are gaining some advantage here.
They're doing the same thing they did with IE. Positioning it to be #1
Doesn't work in for all OS/GPU/Monitor combos. I tried setting a custom resolution in XP, and my videocard got quite grumpy. :P
But yes, that's perfect, in theory. I've often thought games should have that option(half-size), so people with horrible videocards can play in 1024x768 -> 512x384 glory.
I suggested a Samsung 2343BWX. They can be had for around $200. It's 23 inches, and supports 2048x1152 or 1360x768.
Doesn't divide evenly, and I think it's blurry, but older people that I showed it to think it's clear.
MacOS/X has that feature, FWIW.
Linux does too.
Well, minus the mouse-wheel bit. Actually, in Ubuntu you have to edit a text file manually - but everything scales, true to the word.
I have a Samsung 2343BWX. That's 23", 2048x1152. Almost fits the bill.
And it'd be good for the original poster too, because it can be set to 1360x768.
What's your opinion on all those 800x480 2.8" LCDs popping up on mobile devices? :P
Yes, the scaling in Ubuntu and Kubuntu was impressive. Windows (even Vista and Win7) miss little things, but Linux doesn't.
To the original poster: I have a 23" Samsung 2343BWX - it supports 2048x1152, 1360x768, etc.; I find 1360x768 to be blurry, but when I showed it to my parents (which are actually still on a CRT), they were impressed and said it looked totally clear. Might be worth looking into.
Note: My vision is quite good. I can see the dust on the screen, and I can read text from about 6 feet back.
Bing is actually fine.
If Bing is fine, then Google is awesome.
My experience with Bing? It failed at locating info on an obscure book, and didn't do so well when I entered the cryptic filename of a corrupted patch for an old game. (I wanted to re-download it)
For regular searches though, it seems to hold up okay. If your query isn't complex enough you get redirected to whatever is popular - but that's by design.
I think Google's strength is nomatter what you're searching, they're good at it.
I respect that they're aiming for stability (quite different from what KDE did), but I'm not sure I like the direction their UI is going. I'll probably hop to KDE or LXDE.
After finding it though, what do you do?
I usually run that stuff through EULAlyzer. It doesn't catch everything, but it does spot a lot of dangerous words.
And it even formats the info with 1-10 bar graphs, so if you get a lot of 7's (like eBay's TOS), then you know it's bad.
HD movies on Youtube don't compare to cable, neither does a single TV show downloaded with bittorrent that is labelled "HD". I have seen some "HD web streams" and they are ... if your lucky ...the same quality as digital cable.
Really? My cable provider sucks. You wouldn't want to sit closer than 10 feet away or you can see distortions. And at that distance, a 350MB XviD actually has the same or better quality.
Online, "HD" is usually used to refer to 480p. But I watch TV on my "HD" 2048x1152 monitor with fancy quality enhancing GPU shaders. It makes it so much more enjoyable.
Nitpick: It's 42 minutes of content, 18 minutes of commercials. Close to a third of what you're watching is commercials.
Encourage Legal FOSS instead.
WinZip/WinRAR? 7-Zip, please!
Pirated Office 2000/2003? OpenOffice.
Hmm... looks like you'll need 11 bits to count them all, so please do it in another room.
How else would I watch 90210 streaming videos over my phoneline?
Codecs have gotten so impressive now that 256x160 30fps can be streamed over 56k.
I've heard bad things about Ext4 corrupting data.
They're mostly overblown. Bad things can happen if you lose power, but that applies to any FS. Buy a UPS.
I urge Linux users to stick to ext3 for the protection of your data.
I urge linux users to stick to ext2. Windows and BSD have ext2 support(But Windows may require extra software), so if you ever want to try the little red guy out, or go back to Windows for gaming, you'll be cursing if you went ext3. :P
Unless, of course, your distro uses 128KB inodes(mostly supported) rather than 256KB. (newer distros)
That's why openSUSE now includes a desktop kernel specially tuned for desktop users.
Ubuntu could take a tip from these guys!
How about Gool?
Google Object Oriented Language?
Meh.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
That's a lie. In fact, I can prove that your last post was full of proven facts!
there's nothing stopping Google from turning around and doing the exact same thing.
But really, why would they? Google's results often contain links to exactly the same places. And arguably more useful places, too.
Google Dodecahedron and you get #1 wikipedia.com - #2 wolfram.com
I tried using Wolfram Alpha, but every time I do it tells me "Wolfram Alpha wasn't sure what to do with your input."
It must actually read the user's mind. God can do this
Google is God?
Of course!... the motto finally makes sense!
This is getting into a much more nuanced position than I really think is accurate for the main topic, but when a company prices a tool beyond the reach of a market, I don't have as much of an issue if that market pirates the software provided that once they do ENTER the market (ie, become professional graphic artists) that they pay for a license.
That's your call. I do have a problem with it; people should be using other software if they don't want to pay.
And companies shouldn't be using piracy in that way. If they really want to encourage adoption(like Macromedia/Adobe did), then they should offer FREE versions for home users and students.
I'm quite happy to follow the rules and not use their products - I just wish that didn't put non-pirates at a disadvantage. And I'm most angry at the companies that drive piracy(Adobe, Macromedia, Microsoft), then complain about it afterwards.
I totally agree. Some people feel they're entitled to everything for free. It's not just games, though - software like Photoshop, Premier or Maya get pirated a lot.
What's really sad is, most successful people never paid for their copies until they actually needed them for a legit business. College students will pirate that stuff to learn the software and be able to put it on a resume, ultimately making money off it - but according to most of them, it's totally moral only paying for software once the first(or tenth) paycheck comes in.
I admit I'm a pirate scumbag, but I don't pirate software or games. I do try games, which classifies me as a pirate scumbag, but I don't have a single piece of unlicensed software on any of my computers. Try it(regardless of whether it's shareware), make a decision, then buy it or turf it.
Most pirates are just in denial - They're getting training with software that should cost them thousands, putting them ahead of non-pirates. I don't know how you can get rid of that incorrect feeling of entitlement. I know it bleeds through to everything they consider purchasing.
I myself have tried to keep my sense of entitlement in check. For example, I paid $37 for FRAPS, and thought it was a good deal. I paid $10 for Mass Effect (DRM laden, eeeeww!), and that was the most I was willing to pay. I paid $20 for Torchlight, and $30 for King's Bounty, and both were good deals. I'm not entitled to stuff for free, even if I demand the right to try software that lacks a refund policy.
There has been modded xbox360 bans before too, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to people when they do get banned. And at least it keeps the cheaters off games.
LOL!!
Yeah, roughly the same thing happened to my Uncle, twice, so it must be a common occurance.
The Apple store is about 2 hours away for him. His old PPC iMac bit the dust just outside the warranty period. It had been repaired once in the past, free of charge. (dead HDD) Apparently this time the HDD decided to go a bit crazy with write commands, so any file written to after the problem began was corrupted. (Mostly system files, thank goodness)
He upgraded to a low end x86 iMac, but with lots of RAM and HDD space. Unfortunately, the HDD went flakey about 6 months later. When he went in to get it repaired, they just gave him a new one with all his stuff copied over.
However, they messed up - this new one had half the RAM of his old one, and a smaller HDD. Ooops! So he drove back and talked to them. They were very apologetic, and offered him $350 off the price of an upgrade to any other iMac. Since they had to copy everything over again, it kind of made sense. They also discounted the price he paid for his original iMac, so he got a $1700 machine for about $250, one year ago. The specs are strikingly close to this.
It's not the best deal in the world, but it sure beats the experience at most places pawning computers on people.
If you patch, you're safe. Too bad so many XP users don't opt-in to patching, a lot of them will be infected, but it's a good thing MS started auto-patching by default with Vista, also since Vista has a lot of anti-exploit code (DEP, ASLR, Protected Mode Sandboxing, etc.) it probably won't see very many infections, although I thought I saw on another site that Vista wasn't affected.
Many people turned it off because of the automatic reboot.
I can't count the number of times I'll be playing a game with someone, and then *poof*, they're gone.