Yep, it's just a quirk of the system and it will run its course. I'm an Australian and I find the whole thing mildly amusing and nothing more. Apparently it's cheaper to buy these refused games from Thailand or the US and have them shipped here anyway, rather than pay local retail prices. I suppose it encourages a bit more piracy too. It's just one of those meh issues that's hard for anyone to bother with.
Not enough RAM to be truly comfortable, but otherwise fine.
Windows 7 is really no better than Vista though -- I'm running both and they perform exactly the same. The only reason 7 exists is just to hook people like you, the "I skipped Vista" crowd.:-)
1. I was sick of the rolling upgrade of running testing/sid, and Debian's stable releases were too far apart.
2. I got a new PC which needed the latest kernel for support. The Debian kernel packages in experimental were a version behind, but Ubuntu's were up to date. Also, there's always fresh kernels at http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/.
Basically Ubuntu is Debian stable with more frequent releases. If you don't need that, nope, there's no reason to switch.
Upgrade to an SSD, and it hardly matters what crusty old filesystem you're using. You're still going to have far greater speed and no mechanical failures. As far as I can see, the only vaguely useful ZFS feature is snapshots... it doesn't even do encryption. I don't think this is a major loss.
If you notice that your lights dim a little bit when your fridge compressor or AirCon comes on, that is a recipe for a computer failure.
Why? Doesn't the computer's PSU have enough juice in it to survive a quick dip in voltage? Besides, almost all PSUs are rated ~90-260V, so I always assumed if it dips from 230V, it won't matter.
Occasionally my lights dim but I don't seem to have had problems. I'm still waiting for my decade-old P3 to die so it can be replaced by an Atom board, but the darn thing keeps on running.
This is the worst possible advice. It's a presentation, not a seminar. There's nothing more annoying than some blowhard trying desparately to get the audience involved. Present what needs to be presented and be receptive to questions if, when, and as they come. But don't block by trying to dig for responses.
If it's open source and *doesn't* have a GUI, it's probably fantastic. My email, programming, backups, version control etc. is all open source and I wouldn't have it any other way.
But as soon as you add a GUI and plug in a monitor, the quality drops away and things start to get iffy. What happened with KDE4, for example, was unacceptable. You can't just dump everything and expect users to accomodate that.
And stability. A lot of open source apps are fantastic but they have rough edges - little bugs and issues. The way media managers like Rhythmbox and Amarok handle an iPod, for example: sometimes I get weird errors about mounting the iPod, or it doesn't behave properly when there's no free space left, and other little issues. They may not be show stoppers, but they're enough to give you a bad impression. The quality just isn't quite there.
And you know what the worst part is? This isn't getting any better. Open source GUIs are about the same quality now as they were a decade ago. Sure they're more capable, but all the rough edges are still there and don't seem to be going away. I've been using desktop Linux since Redhat 5.2 and I can honestly say the standards and general incompleteness, relative to the competition, are about the same today as they were back then.
I still use Linux on my desktop but I'm tempted to buy a Mac next time and use it as a front-end, while keeping all the 'real' stuff on a Linux box. But I don't want to manage two computers if I can help it. Ho hum.
These chips have some kind of AES acceleration, called AES-NI.
Are there any benchmarks of this? I use dm-crypt on Linux w/ AES-128 and the throughput is pretty low, about 60MB/sec tops, not as fast as the disk itself.
This isn't such an annoying issue anymore. Most BIOSes these days have a built-in flasher, and can read the BIOS from any local FAT filesystem, including a USB drive. If not, you can format a USB flash drive so that it appears as a floppy and boots DOS normally. You definately don't need a real floppy or CDROM drive anymore (praise Vishnu).
You login, which you don't actually have to do anymore because it was too complicated, and you're presented with a fullscreen dialog box that says:
"You are too fucking stupid to use this computer. You don't understand files and folders and things. Click OK to shutdown your computer. Your computer will shutdown in 28 seconds anyway, because you're probably too stupid to work the mouse. That's the thing underneath your hand. What? That's the thing attached to your arm. Ah, fuck it. 20 seconds."
That's pretty much the entire GNOME 3.0 experience. The dialog box has been in development for the last 18 months, but obviously there's still a lot of usability testing left to do, mostly by Redhat and Canonical "engineers". The OK button logic was originally written in C but they've redone that in C# running on Mono, and Miguel de Icaza is already calling the work "superb".
Meanwhile, the KDE people have been busy readying the next batch of widgets that you will never add to your exciting K desktop experience.
Future plans for GNOME involve reducing the 3.0 dialog box down to a single pixel, then translating the status of that pixel into the power LED on your computer. This will remove the need for a display, further simplying the desktop experience and reducing enterprise costs. KDE plans to turn its entire desktop into a widget of itself, allowing you to remove it entirely with a single right-click.
Yes, my friends: the future of the Linux desktop is no more fucking Linux desktop. What a relief.
Perhaps not, but your fuming and rhetorical method of delivery certainly does.
No, that doesn't make him a troll at all. "a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community" -- wikipedia. Not liking someone's tone or method of delivery doesn't make them a troll.
There should always be sound mixing, with no ifs, buts, exceptions, or configuration required. It should be there by default for anything that tries to play sound
There is. ALSA's dmix has been enabled by default for a long time, years. Have you even tried Linux? I can't remember the last time I had to 'configure' sound on Linux. Insert sound card, mixer shows up, play sounds. From the ALSA wiki: "NOTE: For ALSA 1.0.9rc2 and higher you don't need to setup dmix. Dmix is enabled as default for soundcards which don't support hw mixing."
The result of this nonsense is that crap like pulseaudio continues to exist
No. Sadly, pulseaudio exists simply to copy Vista. Vista introduced per-application mixers and apparently this is a Cool New Feature that everybody supposedly wants, even if it's a shitty implementation that slows down what was a perfectly working sound system.
Is there any document out there which explains why/dev/dsp doesn't get mixing with ALSA?
mplayer is by far the fastest and best player. Instant seeking and low CPU draw even on my old P3 866. This is on Linux though, it seems Windows users have to f**k about with codec packs or VLC.
Huh, no shit? I thought you were joking. Seriously.
He's already being courted by advertizers like this, and is apparantly willing to work with them - he can't be trusted.
That's taking it a bit far. The guy doesn't even accept donations for his work, so I don't think we need to worry about his motivation. He knows he's treading a very fine line between keeping his users and pushing them to a fork; the recent NoScript issue shows what happens to authors who stretch it too far.
My take is that he just wants the attention. When the NoScript issue arose, Palant suddenly found himself with a soapbox to stand on. Maybe he's milking the attention a little, wants to raise his profile - no big deal. Maybe he wants to become a fully fledged Mozilla developer, rather than an extension author on the 'outside'? Maybe he'd like to see ABP's functionality included in Firefox by default? That would mean reducing its power somewhat.
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Yep, it's just a quirk of the system and it will run its course. I'm an Australian and I find the whole thing mildly amusing and nothing more. Apparently it's cheaper to buy these refused games from Thailand or the US and have them shipped here anyway, rather than pay local retail prices. I suppose it encourages a bit more piracy too. It's just one of those meh issues that's hard for anyone to bother with.
Not enough RAM to be truly comfortable, but otherwise fine.
Windows 7 is really no better than Vista though -- I'm running both and they perform exactly the same. The only reason 7 exists is just to hook people like you, the "I skipped Vista" crowd. :-)
Disclaimer: I'm an ex-FreeBSD-committer, so I have a dog in the hunt.
Just curious: why are you no longer a committer?
I switched from Debian to Ubuntu because:
1. I was sick of the rolling upgrade of running testing/sid, and Debian's stable releases were too far apart.
2. I got a new PC which needed the latest kernel for support. The Debian kernel packages in experimental were a version behind, but Ubuntu's were up to date. Also, there's always fresh kernels at http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/.
Basically Ubuntu is Debian stable with more frequent releases. If you don't need that, nope, there's no reason to switch.
Upgrade to an SSD, and it hardly matters what crusty old filesystem you're using. You're still going to have far greater speed and no mechanical failures. As far as I can see, the only vaguely useful ZFS feature is snapshots... it doesn't even do encryption. I don't think this is a major loss.
If you notice that your lights dim a little bit when your fridge compressor or AirCon comes on, that is a recipe for a computer failure.
Why? Doesn't the computer's PSU have enough juice in it to survive a quick dip in voltage? Besides, almost all PSUs are rated ~90-260V, so I always assumed if it dips from 230V, it won't matter.
Occasionally my lights dim but I don't seem to have had problems. I'm still waiting for my decade-old P3 to die so it can be replaced by an Atom board, but the darn thing keeps on running.
With FreeBSD 8, you now get per-channel volume controls
Cool. How and where is this exposed? Does it show up in the KDE mixer? Or perhaps an equivalent of alsamixer?
(Questions like this keep me on Linux because I dread having to re-familiarise myself with everything, even if it's only slightly different on BSD.)
This is the worst possible advice. It's a presentation, not a seminar. There's nothing more annoying than some blowhard trying desparately to get the audience involved. Present what needs to be presented and be receptive to questions if, when, and as they come. But don't block by trying to dig for responses.
If it's open source and *doesn't* have a GUI, it's probably fantastic. My email, programming, backups, version control etc. is all open source and I wouldn't have it any other way.
But as soon as you add a GUI and plug in a monitor, the quality drops away and things start to get iffy. What happened with KDE4, for example, was unacceptable. You can't just dump everything and expect users to accomodate that.
And stability. A lot of open source apps are fantastic but they have rough edges - little bugs and issues. The way media managers like Rhythmbox and Amarok handle an iPod, for example: sometimes I get weird errors about mounting the iPod, or it doesn't behave properly when there's no free space left, and other little issues. They may not be show stoppers, but they're enough to give you a bad impression. The quality just isn't quite there.
And you know what the worst part is? This isn't getting any better. Open source GUIs are about the same quality now as they were a decade ago. Sure they're more capable, but all the rough edges are still there and don't seem to be going away. I've been using desktop Linux since Redhat 5.2 and I can honestly say the standards and general incompleteness, relative to the competition, are about the same today as they were back then.
I still use Linux on my desktop but I'm tempted to buy a Mac next time and use it as a front-end, while keeping all the 'real' stuff on a Linux box. But I don't want to manage two computers if I can help it. Ho hum.
Just be thankful they didn't come up with something completely rotten, like, I dunno, "Phenom".
These chips have some kind of AES acceleration, called AES-NI.
Are there any benchmarks of this? I use dm-crypt on Linux w/ AES-128 and the throughput is pretty low, about 60MB/sec tops, not as fast as the disk itself.
I personally think it's a bad business move.
And what do you impersonally think?
This isn't such an annoying issue anymore. Most BIOSes these days have a built-in flasher, and can read the BIOS from any local FAT filesystem, including a USB drive. If not, you can format a USB flash drive so that it appears as a floppy and boots DOS normally. You definately don't need a real floppy or CDROM drive anymore (praise Vishnu).
Shame about the God talk. Wonder what they'll think of that in a thousand years.
You login, which you don't actually have to do anymore because it was too complicated, and you're presented with a fullscreen dialog box that says:
"You are too fucking stupid to use this computer. You don't understand files and folders and things. Click OK to shutdown your computer. Your computer will shutdown in 28 seconds anyway, because you're probably too stupid to work the mouse. That's the thing underneath your hand. What? That's the thing attached to your arm. Ah, fuck it. 20 seconds."
That's pretty much the entire GNOME 3.0 experience. The dialog box has been in development for the last 18 months, but obviously there's still a lot of usability testing left to do, mostly by Redhat and Canonical "engineers". The OK button logic was originally written in C but they've redone that in C# running on Mono, and Miguel de Icaza is already calling the work "superb".
Meanwhile, the KDE people have been busy readying the next batch of widgets that you will never add to your exciting K desktop experience.
Future plans for GNOME involve reducing the 3.0 dialog box down to a single pixel, then translating the status of that pixel into the power LED on your computer. This will remove the need for a display, further simplying the desktop experience and reducing enterprise costs. KDE plans to turn its entire desktop into a widget of itself, allowing you to remove it entirely with a single right-click.
Yes, my friends: the future of the Linux desktop is no more fucking Linux desktop. What a relief.
Perhaps not, but your fuming and rhetorical method of delivery certainly does.
No, that doesn't make him a troll at all. "a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community" -- wikipedia. Not liking someone's tone or method of delivery doesn't make them a troll.
There should always be sound mixing, with no ifs, buts, exceptions, or configuration required. It should be there by default for anything that tries to play sound
There is. ALSA's dmix has been enabled by default for a long time, years. Have you even tried Linux? I can't remember the last time I had to 'configure' sound on Linux. Insert sound card, mixer shows up, play sounds. From the ALSA wiki: "NOTE: For ALSA 1.0.9rc2 and higher you don't need to setup dmix. Dmix is enabled as default for soundcards which don't support hw mixing."
The result of this nonsense is that crap like pulseaudio continues to exist
No. Sadly, pulseaudio exists simply to copy Vista. Vista introduced per-application mixers and apparently this is a Cool New Feature that everybody supposedly wants, even if it's a shitty implementation that slows down what was a perfectly working sound system.
Is there any document out there which explains why /dev/dsp doesn't get mixing with ALSA?
If you bothered to try, you'd find that it does.
This is why you use mplayer.
mplayer is by far the fastest and best player. Instant seeking and low CPU draw even on my old P3 866. This is on Linux though, it seems Windows users have to f**k about with codec packs or VLC.
I'm a recent (a few years back) convert
lol. I hope she's worth it.
"Chi so ha, bing do wa!"
Translation: I use Google.
Take Amarok, for example. That situation practically begs for a fork
What's the situation with Amarok?
Also happens on trans-ocean flights relatively often
Relative to the planets aligning, yes.
The fungus took my baby!
Are you actually old enough to remember that story, or are you just regurgitating what you've heard somewhere?
It always amazes me how popular that reference is. Most recently I heard it in the movie "Tropic Thunder".
People who have actually sat down and compared both libraries, and went with GTK.
I'd love to hear the reasons.
You'd be nuts to use GTK for any new project. I fear it'll be propped up for quite a while to come, though, mainly by Redhat.
Seriously.
Huh, no shit? I thought you were joking. Seriously.
He's already being courted by advertizers like this, and is apparantly willing to work with them - he can't be trusted.
That's taking it a bit far. The guy doesn't even accept donations for his work, so I don't think we need to worry about his motivation. He knows he's treading a very fine line between keeping his users and pushing them to a fork; the recent NoScript issue shows what happens to authors who stretch it too far.
My take is that he just wants the attention. When the NoScript issue arose, Palant suddenly found himself with a soapbox to stand on. Maybe he's milking the attention a little, wants to raise his profile - no big deal. Maybe he wants to become a fully fledged Mozilla developer, rather than an extension author on the 'outside'? Maybe he'd like to see ABP's functionality included in Firefox by default? That would mean reducing its power somewhat.
I dunno, but this isn't a big deal right now.