Yes, Opera's rendering seems to be identical now. It wasn't with v7 or v8, but v9 seems to be identical across platforms.
But Opera annoyed me in other ways. Fixing Safari rendering issues would create new ones for Opera. Throughout all the changes, only Seamonkey rendered the page correctly(and identically) every single time.
I tested about 40 different changes. It was a while ago, but for an example... -Spacers aren't working properly. CSS padding property seems to "add" in Firefox, but not on OSX. (width: 128px; padding-left: 32px; results in a 160px div on Windows, with 128px usable, but on OSX it's a 128px div.) (vertical spacing of 12px is either 0px, 12px, or 24px depending on the browser) -Replaced CSS padding and divs with tables of 12px height to appease IE6. -Safari is adding an extra line inside the tables, and ignoring table height; tried setting CSS line-height to 6px to match the table height. Seems to be working. -IE6 ignoring line-height. (good) -Firefox is correctly setting the table to 12px, and the (single) empty line to 6px, on Windows and Linux. On OSX, the table is just 6px, for some reason. -Opera sets the table to 6px because there's only 1 line of text, despite the table having css property "height: 12px;". Opera worked fine with empty divs with the height specified.
etc. etc... it wasn't exactly like that, but I remember it was a pain getting it to work right. I finally just re-did everything in a standard way. (divs, exact width/height, left/top pixel offsets)
Seamonkey is the only browser with identical rendering across every platform. Firefox and Safari really failed, with small differences on each OS. Seamonkey was also the fastest at rendering, on every platform I tested. I was really surprised by that, as I expected Opera to beat it at rendering pages, and Chrome to beat it with javascript. (Chrome may be faster now - it was beta before)
I tested on 3 systems before deciding Seamonkey was best:
WinXP/Ubuntu VIA C7 Eden 1.2ghz 512MB RAM
WinXP Athlon X2 2.8ghz 2GB DDR2-800
PPC iMac (borrowed from a friend) OSX 10.4.8? PPC 2.53ghz? 2GB DDR2-667? (can't recall exactly)
Adding a hack to support IE6/7 would add a rendering anomaly in Safari. Fixing it in Safari would add one for Firefox(OSX only). Fixing that would result in Opera or Konquerer or some other webkit browser breaking.
Finally I said screw it, re-did my CSS, and used tons and tons of div elements. The result looks like the code you get from Dreamweaver, but my pages finally display identically in every browser I test...
Yes, the ARM architecture is horrible and slow - but it also integrates really easily with other kinds of chips.
How long have we had ARM SoCs with CPU, GPU, MMU, plus a dozen other chips all in a single chip? An ARM "CPU" (SoC) isn't just the CPU part. It also has dozens of other chips inside it for accelerating specific types of processing, and all with remarkably low power consumption.
ARM is less complex than x86. Both ARM and x86 are moving towards integrating more and more stuff on a single die. Which do you think will work better - the simpler architecture (though not vastly simpler) with rapidly improving speeds, or x86? ARM has more experience in this area. They'll win.
You say to compete with Intel "you have to be better", but your opinion on what makes a CPU better is flawed. Power6 stomped Intel for performance. Even today for FPU stuff it's still about 100% faster than Core i7(per ghz - and it scales up to +5ghz on air), and I don't see it dominating the market at all!
ARM will win for these reasons: -Lower cost. -Lower power consumption. -Much smaller size. (smaller devices appeal to many people) -Similar/better performance for specific tasks(like video decoding/recording). -Efficient software base. -Appealing to device manufacturers.
Yes, x86 is compatible with everything under the sun, but everything under the sun is incredibly inefficient, and designed to run on desktop dual/quad-core systems.
You're arguing about what the consumers want, but you're thinking like a techy. If you put an x86 program next to a well-coded ARM program, they'll both run just as responsively, and at the end of the day, to end users, responsiveness is what determines "speed".
x86 may "spank" arm, but consumers think Vista is "slow" because it takes 30 seconds to delete a file that took 0.5 seconds in XP, and it requires more RAM. They don't give a shit that the kernel may be 5% more efficient.:P They don't care that they have a 2.6ghz dual-core CPU rather than a 2.6ghz single-core CPU, if it feels slower than before. (because of flaws with software)
All this puts the importance on software quality rather than the hardware. But software is easy, for ARM. ARM has no super-fast desktop line that would spur the growth of inefficient crapware.
Don't you feel lucky that we are to have tons of open source developers making quality software that runs on ARM devices? And piles of device manufacturers ready to push linux/FOSS software on these devices?
Too bad there's so few x86 device manufacturers pushing linux/FOSS. More support and demand would really spur growth of efficient software for netbooks and the like - but we do have Dell, I guess.:P
If the ARM laptop has "plays 1080p" slapped on the front, and the Atom laptop has "plays 720p" slapped on, which do you think the consumer will buy? What if the ARM laptop has a "16 hour battery life", and the Atom laptop has a "9 hour battery life"? What if the ARM laptop costs $50 less?
I just hope the salespeople educate them a bit on the differences.:P Linux vs Windows needs to be explained... as Dell seems to have pointed out.
They should just push ARM heavily. ARM is doing great right now. Companies like Texas Instruments are pushing the architecture heavily, and there's high demand.
Linux ARM support is blasting ahead, thanks to projects like the Beagleboard.
On top of that, a while ago Microsoft said they were developing an ARM version of Windows. Although we won't see it right away, in a couple years that'll open up even more options.
If they push ARM hardware heavily enough, software will follow. Heck, the software is already coming along, so they just have to market the hardware properly.
Most people won't know the difference between a linux MID and a windows MID. Both have "Email", "Instant Messenger", "Calendar", "Web Browser", etc., and if you need a new program you just download it... Nobody would even think of installing software off a CD, so most "Why won't this work?" scenarios won't even come up. It'll just look slightly different.
And once a couple game devs follow - or heck, a program like Google Earth - it won't be long before oodles of software is being ported, and the ARM-x86 barrier breaks down.
I've got a right-click and left-click nightmare on links. Ever since I updated to firefox 3, on windows, links don't register as the correct link the first time I mouse over them.
So I can click on a link, and it takes me to a completely different one. Or I can right-click a link and select the first option, but it takes me back a page rather than opening a new window.:/
Firefox 3 also can't open the html5 spec page for some reason. Neither can Opera, Seamonkey, etc., without spiking to 99% CPU.
In my experience, most people would rather pay a fraction of the price of a second item.
Ex: $150 + $150 = bad $150*1.25 (With a sticker: "20% donated to providing blah in 3rd world countries.") will get more buyers.
We see the same thing in the games industry. People don't want to pay $90 for a content-packed game. They want to pay $30, plus $30 for an expansion if they like it, and another $30 for another expansion.
In my opinion, it is somewhat likely that OLPC would've done better offering laptops in the developed world for slightly more, rather than double. It'd drive the cost of production down quite a bit, get more exposure(which means more donations and support), and it's cheaper for the consumer.
I wonder if he has a copyright on a single black pixel, and is trying to count everything else as a derivative work......
No, that's me. Best $40 I ever spent! I'm going to sue all your asses for infringing on my 42 byte "blank.gif", containing a single black transparent pixel.
And thanks to web.archive.org, I can track down millions of violators! I'm going to be rich!
There's a few shows that I really loved that just ended without warning. One was Firefly - another Farscape - and another Jericho.
In the case of the last two, they went back and did real endings. Jericho got 6 episodes (the last two felt rushed; I think originally they intended 8 episodes), while Farscape got a 2-part TV movie.
Firefly got nothing, but damn it, it's still my favourite space show next to Doctor Who!
I totally despise shows that drag on with no real plot direction, like Lost and Heroes. They started out brilliant, but soon after they just lost it... I much prefer shows with a clear start and end.
Late this year we should see the first ARM CPUs rolling off the lines that can compete with an Atom. Traditionally ARM has been for low power microcontrollers, cellphones, and handheld gaming devices. They never were fast enough to power a desktop PC.
But they're rapidly catching up to an Atom in performance, with a fraction of the power usage.
Most ARM CPUs use somewhere under a watt - but where they win out is all the peripheral chips they have built in. x86 traditionally requires another 20-60 chips on the board for various purposes, so even if your CPU uses 1 watt, your other chips use 40 watts.
The OMAP 4440 has pretty much everything built in to a single chip, which gives the whole platform power usage around 5-15% of an Atom platform. (best guess) The result, when paired with a laptop battery? Damn long battery life. A week on a single charge isn't unreasonable, if you pick your other parts carefully - LED-backlit LCD, SD card rather than HDD/SSD, etc.
I look forward to the Cortex A9's. A Cortex A8 at 600mhz can decode 720p with ease. Overclock it to 900mhz and it can almost manage 1080p. The Cortex A8 is an in-order processor, like Via's C7/Eden, or the Atom. Two out-of-order Cortex A9 cores at > 1ghz should utterly stomp dual-core atoms for most tasks, while still using about a watt.
It's as versatile as a PC, but with gaming controls slapped on and in a mobile form factor.
In short, it should double as an emu handheld, PDA, portable media player, etc.; many people are creating homebrew games for it too, but don't expect anything commercial quality early on.
It has a touchscreen and large battery, which makes it appealing to me when in the field. If flash works on it, I could even use it for VOIP wherever there's Wifi.
It also appears they're doing some very fancy processing to allow limited alternate viewing angles on scenes with actors. I imagine if they allow the angles to differ from the source by too much, it'd look distorted.
The youtube vid seems to go over a bunch of the "mini-games" you do while investigating. While the FMV certainly does WOW me, watching that brought me back to reality, that this is a game/point-n-click adventure.
It wasn't 2.5 hours for me - it was more like 14-15 hours.
It stopped working at night time, around ~9PM (this is when Gmail Notifier failed to login, and curious, I tried to login manually). It wasn't working yet at 2AM in the morning. I went to sleep, woke up, and it was still broken. It finally came back online some time after lunch.
This would be quite irritating if I were a business. As it was, I did have some important emails to send off, but waiting a day didn't kill me.
Luckily I had enough insight to toss Visual Studio 6 and J++ out the window. What a load of crap that was! Horrible IDE!
Sun has done remarkably well on the server end. If you actually look into what most sites are running on, most of the big sites, government sites, and sites with great uptime are all powered by java.
Dude, I totally owned so many people at Warcraft III. After months of win after win after win, I suddenly found my email address signed up to several thousand newsletters.
It taught me two things: 1) I rock. 2) Don't match your username to your email address.
1) The addon/plugin is tied to your computer - not your profile. It's similar to installing quicktime. It registers plugins with your browser. But for some reason it shows up as an addon rather than as a plugin - perhaps because of the featureset it requires? It looks like they split prefetching functionality from the main plugin, so that it can be disabled if desired.
2) It's easy to turn off. Just go to the java control panel and disable it. If you can't figure it out, here. (first result on google)
3) Prior to Firefox 3, nobody even knew this stuff was running. Now you do, and you actually have the option to disable it, or totally remove it. Isn't this a good thing? Why are you screaming now that you know it's there?
4) This happened something like 6 months ago.
5) This feature was not "slipped in". Sun wrote about it in April 2008. Maybe if you were going to throw a fit, you should've done it when they first announced it.
6) Technically you did choose to install the addon. It's part of Java. A checkbox when installing would be nice, but really, isn't required - especially since this is easy to disable, and the functionality is known, and has been disclosed for almost a full year.
If you want something ludicrously invasive, go look at OpenOffice. It silently steals file associations, has no way to manually register extensions, etc.; half the changes they make are so poorly documented that deploying a new version in a production environment can leave things totally FUBAR.
(not that I'm dissing them - just pointing out that this isn't a big issue to me, because Sun did just about everything right, and people are still screaming about it - typical)
Find out if any open source projects, like Wesnoth, could use a beefy server. Give it away. (They'll probably mention it, which is free advertising - though it probably won't translate into real money)
Sell most of the rest and re-purchase later if required.
Keep 2-4 of them in case your capacity requirements suddenly jump x%, or a server goes down.
Well, the problem with coming into existence first is, we might not be around to see when rocks can communicate.:P
Non-carbon life may be possible here, and it may happen, but it's unlikely to happen during our lifetimes. What do you think the odds are that a bunch of minerals form together to create "life"? Pretty low, I bet.
And since carbon based life is flourishing, the odds of some other form of life having enough time to form its own DNA and begin adapting seems... low.
We don't even know the ideal temperature or environment for such a thing to occur, so who can say conclusively that it can happen on Earth?
Maybe the Earth is just the perfect world for Carbonites, and we'll have to go elsewhere to find other types of life?
This reminds me of something I read a while back. Some scientists observed various metal molecules joining together into a helix structure.
They didn't do much beyond that, though... but it makes me wonder if carbon based life coming around on earth was just a fluke? It could've possibly gone another way, if we hadn't gotten there first?
Yes, they've had quite good video acceleration for a while. They've had MPEG2 acceleration for years.
It's too bad that without drivers, acceleration does you no good.:P I mean sure it'd be nice to have MythTV accelerated... but it'd be nicer to have it run.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Opera's rendering seems to be identical now. It wasn't with v7 or v8, but v9 seems to be identical across platforms.
But Opera annoyed me in other ways. Fixing Safari rendering issues would create new ones for Opera. Throughout all the changes, only Seamonkey rendered the page correctly(and identically) every single time.
I tested about 40 different changes. It was a while ago, but for an example...
-Spacers aren't working properly. CSS padding property seems to "add" in Firefox, but not on OSX. (width: 128px; padding-left: 32px; results in a 160px div on Windows, with 128px usable, but on OSX it's a 128px div.) (vertical spacing of 12px is either 0px, 12px, or 24px depending on the browser)
-Replaced CSS padding and divs with tables of 12px height to appease IE6.
-Safari is adding an extra line inside the tables, and ignoring table height; tried setting CSS line-height to 6px to match the table height. Seems to be working.
-IE6 ignoring line-height. (good)
-Firefox is correctly setting the table to 12px, and the (single) empty line to 6px, on Windows and Linux. On OSX, the table is just 6px, for some reason.
-Opera sets the table to 6px because there's only 1 line of text, despite the table having css property "height: 12px;". Opera worked fine with empty divs with the height specified.
etc. etc... it wasn't exactly like that, but I remember it was a pain getting it to work right. I finally just re-did everything in a standard way. (divs, exact width/height, left/top pixel offsets)
This post is tl;dr Summary: Seamonkey R0xx!
Indeed, how could they miss Seamonkey? In my experience, Seamonkey is the best browser on every platform.
When I first started building multi-OS compatible webpages, I decided I wanted them to be compatible with everything. That means...
Windows:
-Firefox
-Seamonkey
-Opera
-Safari
-IE6
-IE7/8
-GoogleChrome
Linux:
-Konquerer
-Firefox
-Seamonkey
OSX:
-Safari
-Firefox
-Camino
-Seamonkey
Seamonkey is the only browser with identical rendering across every platform. Firefox and Safari really failed, with small differences on each OS. Seamonkey was also the fastest at rendering, on every platform I tested. I was really surprised by that, as I expected Opera to beat it at rendering pages, and Chrome to beat it with javascript. (Chrome may be faster now - it was beta before)
I tested on 3 systems before deciding Seamonkey was best:
WinXP/Ubuntu
VIA C7 Eden 1.2ghz
512MB RAM
WinXP
Athlon X2 2.8ghz
2GB DDR2-800
PPC iMac (borrowed from a friend)
OSX 10.4.8?
PPC 2.53ghz?
2GB DDR2-667?
(can't recall exactly)
Adding a hack to support IE6/7 would add a rendering anomaly in Safari. Fixing it in Safari would add one for Firefox(OSX only). Fixing that would result in Opera or Konquerer or some other webkit browser breaking.
Finally I said screw it, re-did my CSS, and used tons and tons of div elements. The result looks like the code you get from Dreamweaver, but my pages finally display identically in every browser I test...
Yes, the ARM architecture is horrible and slow - but it also integrates really easily with other kinds of chips.
How long have we had ARM SoCs with CPU, GPU, MMU, plus a dozen other chips all in a single chip? An ARM "CPU" (SoC) isn't just the CPU part. It also has dozens of other chips inside it for accelerating specific types of processing, and all with remarkably low power consumption.
ARM is less complex than x86. Both ARM and x86 are moving towards integrating more and more stuff on a single die. Which do you think will work better - the simpler architecture (though not vastly simpler) with rapidly improving speeds, or x86? ARM has more experience in this area. They'll win.
You say to compete with Intel "you have to be better", but your opinion on what makes a CPU better is flawed. Power6 stomped Intel for performance. Even today for FPU stuff it's still about 100% faster than Core i7(per ghz - and it scales up to +5ghz on air), and I don't see it dominating the market at all!
ARM will win for these reasons:
-Lower cost.
-Lower power consumption.
-Much smaller size. (smaller devices appeal to many people)
-Similar/better performance for specific tasks(like video decoding/recording).
-Efficient software base.
-Appealing to device manufacturers.
Yes, x86 is compatible with everything under the sun, but everything under the sun is incredibly inefficient, and designed to run on desktop dual/quad-core systems.
You're arguing about what the consumers want, but you're thinking like a techy. If you put an x86 program next to a well-coded ARM program, they'll both run just as responsively, and at the end of the day, to end users, responsiveness is what determines "speed".
x86 may "spank" arm, but consumers think Vista is "slow" because it takes 30 seconds to delete a file that took 0.5 seconds in XP, and it requires more RAM. They don't give a shit that the kernel may be 5% more efficient. :P They don't care that they have a 2.6ghz dual-core CPU rather than a 2.6ghz single-core CPU, if it feels slower than before. (because of flaws with software)
All this puts the importance on software quality rather than the hardware. But software is easy, for ARM. ARM has no super-fast desktop line that would spur the growth of inefficient crapware.
Don't you feel lucky that we are to have tons of open source developers making quality software that runs on ARM devices? And piles of device manufacturers ready to push linux/FOSS software on these devices?
Too bad there's so few x86 device manufacturers pushing linux/FOSS. More support and demand would really spur growth of efficient software for netbooks and the like - but we do have Dell, I guess. :P
Don't market mhz, then. Market capabilities.
If the ARM laptop has "plays 1080p" slapped on the front, and the Atom laptop has "plays 720p" slapped on, which do you think the consumer will buy? What if the ARM laptop has a "16 hour battery life", and the Atom laptop has a "9 hour battery life"? What if the ARM laptop costs $50 less?
I just hope the salespeople educate them a bit on the differences. :P Linux vs Windows needs to be explained... as Dell seems to have pointed out.
They should just push ARM heavily. ARM is doing great right now. Companies like Texas Instruments are pushing the architecture heavily, and there's high demand.
Linux ARM support is blasting ahead, thanks to projects like the Beagleboard.
On top of that, a while ago Microsoft said they were developing an ARM version of Windows. Although we won't see it right away, in a couple years that'll open up even more options.
If they push ARM hardware heavily enough, software will follow. Heck, the software is already coming along, so they just have to market the hardware properly.
Most people won't know the difference between a linux MID and a windows MID. Both have "Email", "Instant Messenger", "Calendar", "Web Browser", etc., and if you need a new program you just download it... Nobody would even think of installing software off a CD, so most "Why won't this work?" scenarios won't even come up. It'll just look slightly different.
And once a couple game devs follow - or heck, a program like Google Earth - it won't be long before oodles of software is being ported, and the ARM-x86 barrier breaks down.
I've got a right-click and left-click nightmare on links. Ever since I updated to firefox 3, on windows, links don't register as the correct link the first time I mouse over them.
So I can click on a link, and it takes me to a completely different one. Or I can right-click a link and select the first option, but it takes me back a page rather than opening a new window. :/
Firefox 3 also can't open the html5 spec page for some reason. Neither can Opera, Seamonkey, etc., without spiking to 99% CPU.
Firefox 2 opened it fine.
In my experience, most people would rather pay a fraction of the price of a second item.
Ex: $150 + $150 = bad
$150*1.25 (With a sticker: "20% donated to providing blah in 3rd world countries.") will get more buyers.
We see the same thing in the games industry. People don't want to pay $90 for a content-packed game. They want to pay $30, plus $30 for an expansion if they like it, and another $30 for another expansion.
In my opinion, it is somewhat likely that OLPC would've done better offering laptops in the developed world for slightly more, rather than double. It'd drive the cost of production down quite a bit, get more exposure(which means more donations and support), and it's cheaper for the consumer.
I wonder if he has a copyright on a single black pixel, and is trying to count everything else as a derivative work......
No, that's me. Best $40 I ever spent! I'm going to sue all your asses for infringing on my 42 byte "blank.gif", containing a single black transparent pixel.
And thanks to web.archive.org, I can track down millions of violators! I'm going to be rich!
There's a few shows that I really loved that just ended without warning. One was Firefly - another Farscape - and another Jericho.
In the case of the last two, they went back and did real endings. Jericho got 6 episodes (the last two felt rushed; I think originally they intended 8 episodes), while Farscape got a 2-part TV movie.
Firefly got nothing, but damn it, it's still my favourite space show next to Doctor Who!
I totally despise shows that drag on with no real plot direction, like Lost and Heroes. They started out brilliant, but soon after they just lost it... I much prefer shows with a clear start and end.
This is a move to fight ARM CPUs.
Late this year we should see the first ARM CPUs rolling off the lines that can compete with an Atom. Traditionally ARM has been for low power microcontrollers, cellphones, and handheld gaming devices. They never were fast enough to power a desktop PC.
But they're rapidly catching up to an Atom in performance, with a fraction of the power usage.
Check this out:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/TI-039-s-Mobile-Phone-Platform-Enables-1080p-Video-Recording-104692.shtml
Most ARM CPUs use somewhere under a watt - but where they win out is all the peripheral chips they have built in. x86 traditionally requires another 20-60 chips on the board for various purposes, so even if your CPU uses 1 watt, your other chips use 40 watts.
The OMAP 4440 has pretty much everything built in to a single chip, which gives the whole platform power usage around 5-15% of an Atom platform. (best guess) The result, when paired with a laptop battery? Damn long battery life. A week on a single charge isn't unreasonable, if you pick your other parts carefully - LED-backlit LCD, SD card rather than HDD/SSD, etc.
I look forward to the Cortex A9's. A Cortex A8 at 600mhz can decode 720p with ease. Overclock it to 900mhz and it can almost manage 1080p. The Cortex A8 is an in-order processor, like Via's C7/Eden, or the Atom. Two out-of-order Cortex A9 cores at > 1ghz should utterly stomp dual-core atoms for most tasks, while still using about a watt.
It's as versatile as a PC, but with gaming controls slapped on and in a mobile form factor.
In short, it should double as an emu handheld, PDA, portable media player, etc.; many people are creating homebrew games for it too, but don't expect anything commercial quality early on.
It has a touchscreen and large battery, which makes it appealing to me when in the field. If flash works on it, I could even use it for VOIP wherever there's Wifi.
http://icall.com/free-phone-calls/
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/178177.html
Looks like they've done an okay job on the smooth transitions part.
If only they had scheduled release for a date other than April 1st!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF4zYu1nOMw
It also appears they're doing some very fancy processing to allow limited alternate viewing angles on scenes with actors. I imagine if they allow the angles to differ from the source by too much, it'd look distorted.
The youtube vid seems to go over a bunch of the "mini-games" you do while investigating. While the FMV certainly does WOW me, watching that brought me back to reality, that this is a game/point-n-click adventure.
I'd give you +1 for proper use of "hackers"!
It wasn't 2.5 hours for me - it was more like 14-15 hours.
It stopped working at night time, around ~9PM (this is when Gmail Notifier failed to login, and curious, I tried to login manually). It wasn't working yet at 2AM in the morning. I went to sleep, woke up, and it was still broken. It finally came back online some time after lunch.
This would be quite irritating if I were a business. As it was, I did have some important emails to send off, but waiting a day didn't kill me.
You're absolutely correct.
Luckily I had enough insight to toss Visual Studio 6 and J++ out the window. What a load of crap that was! Horrible IDE!
Sun has done remarkably well on the server end. If you actually look into what most sites are running on, most of the big sites, government sites, and sites with great uptime are all powered by java.
I partly agree with you - except that Flash has the best media playback available. It isn't all bad, but it is misused most of the time.
Some sites make really good use of Flash:
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.hulu.com/
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/
Dude, I totally owned so many people at Warcraft III. After months of win after win after win, I suddenly found my email address signed up to several thousand newsletters.
It taught me two things:
1) I rock.
2) Don't match your username to your email address.
I don't see why people are upset about this.
1) The addon/plugin is tied to your computer - not your profile. It's similar to installing quicktime. It registers plugins with your browser. But for some reason it shows up as an addon rather than as a plugin - perhaps because of the featureset it requires? It looks like they split prefetching functionality from the main plugin, so that it can be disabled if desired.
2) It's easy to turn off. Just go to the java control panel and disable it. If you can't figure it out, here. (first result on google)
3) Prior to Firefox 3, nobody even knew this stuff was running. Now you do, and you actually have the option to disable it, or totally remove it. Isn't this a good thing? Why are you screaming now that you know it's there?
4) This happened something like 6 months ago.
5) This feature was not "slipped in". Sun wrote about it in April 2008. Maybe if you were going to throw a fit, you should've done it when they first announced it.
6) Technically you did choose to install the addon. It's part of Java. A checkbox when installing would be nice, but really, isn't required - especially since this is easy to disable, and the functionality is known, and has been disclosed for almost a full year.
If you want something ludicrously invasive, go look at OpenOffice. It silently steals file associations, has no way to manually register extensions, etc.; half the changes they make are so poorly documented that deploying a new version in a production environment can leave things totally FUBAR.
(not that I'm dissing them - just pointing out that this isn't a big issue to me, because Sun did just about everything right, and people are still screaming about it - typical)
I thought they were researching low-gravity manufacturing. The original idea was to construct everything with robots, on the moon?
But maybe that was a different company... I can't remember.
Set up a Left4Dead server on one.
Find out if any open source projects, like Wesnoth, could use a beefy server. Give it away. (They'll probably mention it, which is free advertising - though it probably won't translate into real money)
Sell most of the rest and re-purchase later if required.
Keep 2-4 of them in case your capacity requirements suddenly jump x%, or a server goes down.
If you guys like this sort of thing, check out the hackaday blog.
It gets a lot of stories that slashdot eventually picks up - usually sooner.
But I find it deals with cool hardware/software a lot more than slashdot does, and less with industry news.
Well, the problem with coming into existence first is, we might not be around to see when rocks can communicate. :P
Non-carbon life may be possible here, and it may happen, but it's unlikely to happen during our lifetimes. What do you think the odds are that a bunch of minerals form together to create "life"? Pretty low, I bet.
And since carbon based life is flourishing, the odds of some other form of life having enough time to form its own DNA and begin adapting seems... low.
We don't even know the ideal temperature or environment for such a thing to occur, so who can say conclusively that it can happen on Earth?
Maybe the Earth is just the perfect world for Carbonites, and we'll have to go elsewhere to find other types of life?
We can't communicate with rocks.
This reminds me of something I read a while back. Some scientists observed various metal molecules joining together into a helix structure.
They didn't do much beyond that, though... but it makes me wonder if carbon based life coming around on earth was just a fluke? It could've possibly gone another way, if we hadn't gotten there first?
Didn't the Power6 have insane FPU performance? Double that of its contenders?
I think it still beats every CPU out there. (FPU only)
I remember seeing benchmarks where a 4 core Power6 beat 8 Xeon cores and 8 opteron cores, by a safe margin.
But those things are so huge... at the time of release, they were bigger than all GPUs. :P Lots and lots of transistors, and lots of ghz.
Yes, they've had quite good video acceleration for a while. They've had MPEG2 acceleration for years.
It's too bad that without drivers, acceleration does you no good. :P I mean sure it'd be nice to have MythTV accelerated... but it'd be nicer to have it run. ;)