I know this has been said over and over, but I'll say it again. The reason why linux is not ready for everybody's desktop is its lack of End User apps. There.
There was another./ story a while ago about gnucash, a quicken-like program for linux. Many of the comments touted this as the kind of thing (thing=end user apps) that linux needs more of before it can become a desktop OS. After using it for a while I got to wondering if this is really what we want. The program is great, and useful, and the interfaces are mostly intuitive for somebody like me. So then it put it to the ultimate test, my mother. It failed, miserably. But then again, she couldn't use quicken at first sight either. Also, most people probably aren't going to want to learn a new OS, but once they see the light and thing about switching, they are definetly going to be discourage by the lack of applications that they know how to use.
This brings me to my next point. While it is a good thing in terms of getting more users to have apps that people already recognize not only by brand name but by the interface, is it all that good in terms of open souce? Lets say, for example, that whoever makes quicken decides to port it to linux. I don't know this for sure, but I'm willing to bet that they won't make it open source, but will instead to something a la Adobe, and release "Limited Trial Versions". What is more important for Linux, a higher installed (desktop) user base, or 100% open source?
I have more to say, but I'm tired so I'll stop now. Please let me know what your opinions on this are.
By cancelling services is Motorlla really renouncing its ownership of the sattelites? I would imagine they would keep track of them and look for their own uses for them, or perhaps sell them to cell phone companies?
I fail to see the logic behind abandoning billions of dollars worth of sattelites.
I hope that maybe this spin-off will help the distro (ie make it better). I feel that in recent years it has lost some of its market share, some of it unjustly but much of it because things didn't get updated. Now, after Red Hat's screw up (6.1), maybe they'll get a chance to regain the popularity they once had.
-- If god had wanted man to be vegetarians, he wouldn't have made animals out of meat.
I recall a/. story a while ago dealing with Northwest Airlines searching employees computers. If employers are giving their employees computers, does this give them any more of a right to look for stuff on these computers? Are they really giving them the computers, or are they just letting them "borrow" the computers?
When I first saw this story some years ago, I thought that patenting DNA was one of the dumbest ideas I had ever heard. It would be easy to see how it could harm patients, because either biotech companies would charge massive fees for the use of "their" DNA sequences. That or, by patenting a small sequence of DNA for use studying one gene/disease, you risk also patenting genes causing other diseases, but prevent researchers from investigating that possibility.
On the upside, it makes more sense for major corporations to invest in the process if you allow patents to be issued.
However, on the downside again, by awarding patents you discourage the use of new, innovative techniques to map out DNA sequences. By this I mean that people who can dump massive amounts of resources into sequencing DNA using existing technologies may get results faster than researchers who look for new, faster, or more reliable ways to do the same thing. In the long run, having newer, faster and more reliable ways would be better, in case we ever want to sequence the DNA of other things.
What ever happened to pixel volume rendering? I remember there was a game that came out a few years ago, Voxel or something, that used it. On my PIII 500/Voodoo 3 3k it didn't run to fast, but I have since seen it run on faster systems and it's pretty sweet.
Looking forward, when can we expect to see mainstream games that use geometry acceleration?
IMHO, sendmail is not the best mail server in the world. Sure, its the most powerful and the most scalable, and it is probably the best solution for servers with 10,000+ users, but it's a bear to configure. Sometimes I stay up late at night wondering weather or not the sendmail people intentionally made it difficult to configure for their own job security.
MHO also says that if you are looking at setting up a mail server, you should check out Postfix by Wietse Venema, or qmail first. I have been using postfix instead of sendmail for quite some time now, and have not had a single problem. Of course, I only have 600-1000 users, so my system is certainly not a true test of its capabilities.
I think blizzard is a really cool company. I have loved every one of their games, Warcraft I was a letdown but that's because I bought it along with WCII, and side by side WCI really blows.
This is a really cool thing that SourceFourge/VA has going on, and while it's really cool for open source projects on Linux and *BSD, it leaves out projects on other unices, as well as mainstream platforms such as Winders and MacOS.
I understand that the primary target of open source projects these days is open source OS's, but once we get over the 'cool' factor of open source, then maybe we can start developing for mainstream stuff so that the average joe with his win98 machine can take advantage of it.
Now I also realize that it is difficult to provide remote access to windows and macs. Perhaps a better solution to that would be a network of developers who each would be willing to compile other people's source on their machines, and send back bugs, screenshots etc.
I guess I don't know for sure if this is cyber squatting or not, but it sure sounds like it. This, plus the etoy case, and then M$ and all those other disputes just really hack me off.
There was a story on/. a few weeks ago about the nice people at the.cx TLD giving free domains to open source projects. Maybe the OpenSSH developers, as well as the developers of other open source projects should take them up on it.
If open source does not take advantage of the.cx TLD, or if they withdraw their offer, I really would like to see an open source TLD, specifically for open source projects and such. Perhaps.os?
In order to keep the SRAM cache within its operating specs, AMD was forced to chop the cache multiplier to 1/3, or 333Mhz. This is down 7Mhz from the 850's, but oh well.
I wonder how much of an impact this will have on performance, compared to Intel's Kamati offerings with a 1/2 speed cache? Also, does anybody know what the multiplier is on Intel's newest P3's? I can't remember their stupid name.
You can see on this page some benchmarks, showing that the AMD 1Ghz just barely outperfom the Kyrotech 1Ghz chips. When you look at the cache, the kyrotech is an 800 upped to 1G, therefore the cache, which was at 320 is at 400 in the kyrotech, vs 333 in the AMD chip. What else was changed in the AMD chip to make it outperform an older version of itself with faster cache?
This may not apply in all situations, but I think in the past, the better programmers have not usually had the better education. Many of the best programmers in the past were either dropouts or didn't go to college at all (Gates/Allen, Wozniak). It happens more often than not where a software company brings in people with PhD's or whatever to design something really new and cool, and it ends up sucking because its either too slow (because the programmer does not know any of the speed hacks that somebody who's been programing since they were 13 might know), or the UI sucks (you can't create a good UI if you haven't used computers for long enough to know what a good UI is). This applies to all areas of programming, but there is one game that illustrates my point, unfortunately I cannot remember its name. Anyway, it used a pixel-volume engine, and was really cool and looked amazing, but unfortunately even my 500Mhz PIII and Voodoo 3 3k (both brand new when the game came out) could not get over 23 fps. I'm willing to bet that somebody focused on speed from the onset, and not doing a cool new engine could have accomplished the same thing, and had it run faster. But college learned people often are more interested in research, therefore they wind up with the 'new and cool' factor above the speed factor in their products.
I used to do work with autonomous robotics, using a motorola 68HC11. One day, I needed a pulse at a certain frequency, higher than that of my 8Mhz processor, and I didn't want to use an external capacitor. So, I overclocked it to 50Mhz, slapped on a heat sink and it promptly crashed after 30 seconds, never to get up again. There is a moral to this story, I just can't remember what it is.
Is there any difference between the new 1Ghz chip about to be released and the 800's overclocked to 1Ghz that are already avaliable at places like Kryotech? Are the new retail chips actually designed better (ie smaller die, better cooling, new layout...), or are they essentially just overclocked versions of earlier chips?
Slashdot Mirror
There was another ./ story a while ago about gnucash, a quicken-like program for linux. Many of the comments touted this as the kind of thing (thing=end user apps) that linux needs more of before it can become a desktop OS. After using it for a while I got to wondering if this is really what we want. The program is great, and useful, and the interfaces are mostly intuitive for somebody like me. So then it put it to the ultimate test, my mother. It failed, miserably. But then again, she couldn't use quicken at first sight either. Also, most people probably aren't going to want to learn a new OS, but once they see the light and thing about switching, they are definetly going to be discourage by the lack of applications that they know how to use.
This brings me to my next point. While it is a good thing in terms of getting more users to have apps that people already recognize not only by brand name but by the interface, is it all that good in terms of open souce? Lets say, for example, that whoever makes quicken decides to port it to linux. I don't know this for sure, but I'm willing to bet that they won't make it open source, but will instead to something a la Adobe, and release "Limited Trial Versions". What is more important for Linux, a higher installed (desktop) user base, or 100% open source?
I have more to say, but I'm tired so I'll stop now. Please let me know what your opinions on this are.
I fail to see the logic behind abandoning billions of dollars worth of sattelites.
How strong is the encryption? Does your citizenship have to be verified like it did when netscape first did 128-bit crypto?
--
If god had wanted man to be vegetarians, he wouldn't have made animals out of meat.
Or maybe I'm talking out my ass again...
On the upside, it makes more sense for major corporations to invest in the process if you allow patents to be issued.
However, on the downside again, by awarding patents you discourage the use of new, innovative techniques to map out DNA sequences. By this I mean that people who can dump massive amounts of resources into sequencing DNA using existing technologies may get results faster than researchers who look for new, faster, or more reliable ways to do the same thing. In the long run, having newer, faster and more reliable ways would be better, in case we ever want to sequence the DNA of other things.
A good link to check out is HUGO's (HUman Genome Organization) statement on patenting DNA sequences.
I am very curious to know what other people's opinions on this are.
Looking forward, when can we expect to see mainstream games that use geometry acceleration?
thanx
MHO also says that if you are looking at setting up a mail server, you should check out Postfix by Wietse Venema, or qmail first. I have been using postfix instead of sendmail for quite some time now, and have not had a single problem. Of course, I only have 600-1000 users, so my system is certainly not a true test of its capabilities.
Anybody know where you can buy this online?
I understand that the primary target of open source projects these days is open source OS's, but once we get over the 'cool' factor of open source, then maybe we can start developing for mainstream stuff so that the average joe with his win98 machine can take advantage of it.
Now I also realize that it is difficult to provide remote access to windows and macs. Perhaps a better solution to that would be a network of developers who each would be willing to compile other people's source on their machines, and send back bugs, screenshots etc.
OpenSource Land?
There was a story on /. a few weeks ago about the nice people at the .cx TLD giving free domains to open source projects. Maybe the OpenSSH developers, as well as the developers of other open source projects should take them up on it.
If open source does not take advantage of the .cx TLD, or if they withdraw their offer, I really would like to see an open source TLD, specifically for open source projects and such. Perhaps .os?
I wonder how much of an impact this will have on performance, compared to Intel's Kamati offerings with a 1/2 speed cache? Also, does anybody know what the multiplier is on Intel's newest P3's? I can't remember their stupid name.
You can see on this page some benchmarks, showing that the AMD 1Ghz just barely outperfom the Kyrotech 1Ghz chips. When you look at the cache, the kyrotech is an 800 upped to 1G, therefore the cache, which was at 320 is at 400 in the kyrotech, vs 333 in the AMD chip. What else was changed in the AMD chip to make it outperform an older version of itself with faster cache?
thanx
This may not apply in all situations, but I think in the past, the better programmers have not usually had the better education. Many of the best programmers in the past were either dropouts or didn't go to college at all (Gates/Allen, Wozniak). It happens more often than not where a software company brings in people with PhD's or whatever to design something really new and cool, and it ends up sucking because its either too slow (because the programmer does not know any of the speed hacks that somebody who's been programing since they were 13 might know), or the UI sucks (you can't create a good UI if you haven't used computers for long enough to know what a good UI is). This applies to all areas of programming, but there is one game that illustrates my point, unfortunately I cannot remember its name. Anyway, it used a pixel-volume engine, and was really cool and looked amazing, but unfortunately even my 500Mhz PIII and Voodoo 3 3k (both brand new when the game came out) could not get over 23 fps. I'm willing to bet that somebody focused on speed from the onset, and not doing a cool new engine could have accomplished the same thing, and had it run faster. But college learned people often are more interested in research, therefore they wind up with the 'new and cool' factor above the speed factor in their products.
I used to do work with autonomous robotics, using a motorola 68HC11. One day, I needed a pulse at a certain frequency, higher than that of my 8Mhz processor, and I didn't want to use an external capacitor. So, I overclocked it to 50Mhz, slapped on a heat sink and it promptly crashed after 30 seconds, never to get up again. There is a moral to this story, I just can't remember what it is.
Is there any difference between the new 1Ghz chip about to be released and the 800's overclocked to 1Ghz that are already avaliable at places like Kryotech? Are the new retail chips actually designed better (ie smaller die, better cooling, new layout...), or are they essentially just overclocked versions of earlier chips?