The other main virtue, compared to Red Hat or Debian or Slackware of the time, was that it was easier to keep an up-to-date server running without having to do a fresh OS install every year or two.
Er, have you ever used Debian? The above is true of redhat, but it most certainly has never been true of Debian -- the Debian project puts vast effort into making sure upgrades always work (including code to cleanup problem situations), and it's essentially never necessary to reinstall a Debian system unless you do something really stupid (outside the packaging system).
Meanwhile the Ubuntu project has worked very hard to become the most-safely-upgradeable Linux
... mainly because they get the vast bulk of their system from Debian. The magic is Debian, not Ubuntu.
or they'd totally tank because enough people would be scared of a woman or a black man in such a high position of authority.
Maybe after eight years of Bush -- who's sort of the ultimate white guy / frat-boy -- destroying everything he touches, they'll be more willing to go for something a bit different this time...
the way to reduce road deaths is less cars, not more.
Yup. It seems that the "improve safety" line is just a cynical PR move by this company, which wants to sell more cars (and doesn't care about the resulting mess).
Er, well I certainly wasn't arguing that Apple was the be-all and end-all of laptops, merely that they seem pretty competitive on price these days.
Personally I don't like Apple laptops because of the touchpad (I like eraserheads), only one "mouse" button, and lately the bizarro keyboards they've started using on laptops. But still, if I was OK with the hardware, price wouldn't be a barrier to buying one.
The bad news is that they are wasting their time using the Matlab syntax, while there is a much better alternative for doing exactly the same thing. Python is universal
Er, sure matlab syntax sucks, but has any syntax inspired more flamewars than python's?
The margins they make on their "overpriced hardware" are the envy of the industry, and OS X is the main incentive people have for paying the hardware premium.
Is there really all that much of a premium for Apple hardware these days?
I don't own a Mac, but I was in the computer store yesterday where they had Mac laptops and desktops along with lots of other brands, and least the Mac laptops were cheaper than other "top" brands with the same processor/speed/memory (they all seem to have a Core 2 Duo at 2 GHz or so, and 1GB of RAM).
The same is true of ipods -- they often seem to be cheaper than their competition (and the competition is almost always palpably more flimsy and tacky).
"say() is a new built-in... similar to print(), but that implicitly appends a newline..." *sigh* Nice to see they're still adding to the elegance of the language:(
Not to mention the new "lol()" built-in, which is like say(), but also removes random letters from the string, and appends 17 exclamation points.
GoogleSheet truncated the number to two digits for display (somewhat okay, though I would have preferred if it kept the original formatting) but then based all further computations on the truncated number! (Definitely, not okay.)
I love gmail and even google docs (it's not great for complex stuff, but it sure is handy), but... the above brings to mind one my big complaints: They seem to intentionally make it hard to report bugs with their stuff.
You can make your way through the help pages and use the "Suggest a Feature" request, though there seems to be essentially no feedback or visible tracking, or you can post on the assocated google group, though there seems little official presence and a depressingly clueless community of regular posters. Other than those rather unsatifying alternatives, there doesn't seem to be any obvious way to send a bug report.
With eSATA for external storage, USB3 (late 2008) for all sorts of high-bandwidth (4.8Gbps) devices and GbE for mainstream networking, FW3200 will become irrelevant soon enough: USB3 is supposed to be 4.8Gbps double-simplex fiber, blowing away FW3200 on raw speed and finally getting rid of USB1/2's half-duplex overhead.
So is USB3 also supposed to get rid of USB1/2's insane CPU overhead at high speeds?
USB2 seems like it's something that can maybe-kinda go fast in certain circumstances, but you certainly wouldn't want to use it for any routine tasks; it's more something to use as an emergency backup method, or for tasks you do very rarely.
[BTW, this is an honest question. Like many people, I love the idea of an "works for everything, does it all well" desktop connection standard. It would be great if USB3 could actually pull it off (within reason) and substantially address the problems of previous USB versions, but in my cynicism I'm afraid that it will merely claim to do it -- helping to kill off alternatives -- but fail to actually deliver (or rather "deliver" with tons of caveats).]
The computer has Intel integrated graphics, you don't get much lower than that.
You can always do worse...:-)
Modern Intel integrated graphics chips aren't what you want for playing FPS-of-the-moment, but they're pretty fast and capable for running compiz and the like. If you want to feel pain, try compiz with an old "bitblt only" card (which generally are just fine for X with traditional window managers)...
Re:All of this talk of scripting vi made me think
on
Hacking VIM
·
· Score: 1
vim is clearly the emacs of vi clones.
Certainly in some aspects.
A while ago I did a bunch of timings of the startup time of Emacs and vim in various contexts (tty, X, with init file, without etc), and to my surprise, vim was usually slower to startup than Emacs... If you had a huge emacs init-file (not so uncommon given Emacs' users love of customization), Emacs became slower, but still the difference was pretty minor in most cases. Of course on modern systems, both essentially start instantaneously.
I found this interesting given the significant influence startup time has historically had on usage -- e.g. Emacs users usually start one instance of Emacs and use it all day, whereas vi users have historically started the editor for each file they edit (startup time isn't the only reason for these differences of course, but it's one).
Cell phones are better than paying the exorbitant NTT license fee for the privilege of paying for a landline,
That seems to be gone nowdays, BTW. [I recently got a new landline from NTT and they charged no fees other than some random small "installation" type things.]
I live in Japan and don't have a cellphone -- I don't make all that many calls, and to be honest, find the whole Japanese cellphone culture kind of disgusting.
It's definitely handy to have one in certain situations (especially for meeting people), but whatever, I seem to manage OK without.
You would absolutely not accept this level of animation on an Xbox or PS3 title, not because they're so much more powerful, but because your expectations are much higher.
The thing is, developers (especially 3rd-party developers) will find ways to turn out crap no matter what the "expectations". This applies even to graphics -- the PS3 is powerful, but certainly not powerful enough to deliver jaw-dropping results without a lot of work from the developers.
From what I've seen of the demo games on the PS3, this is already the case: many have high-res graphics, but awkward loose controls, horrid character animation and physics, crap framerates (like 5FPS), stupidly long and frequent loading periods, and boring gameplay.
I work for a major japanese electronics company (in software development); they've slowly been getting more and more enthusiastic about linux etc, but it's a very slow process. The main driving factor I see behind reluctance to use linux and other free software is not "respect", but rather fear and risk-aversion -- they're used to the old way, and it kinda works most of the time, so they don't want to change. I think this is true in big companies anywhere in the world, but it's especially true in Japan where people tend to be very risk-averse.
One of the ways that it seems to be changing is that more and more of the small companies that are contracted to do various development tasks are specializing in linux development. Smaller companies are much faster moving, and this way it "feels" sort of the same to the big company.
[These are just my personal observations, of course...]
No, actually it would be a rather childish response. The many failings of the U.S. Government (especially in its current incarnation) do not excuse Yahoo's actions.
If Yahoo wants to criticize some of the idiotic things the U.S. gov has been doing lately, they may of course do so (hey I wish they would!), but it has no bearing on this case.
I've never bought a PS2, who knows, maybe I will this time.
It would be kind of nice to have a long-lived "low tech but very well supported" game system around, but it's sort of a shame it had to be the PS2... graphics aren't the most important thing, but the PS2's graphics were always just a little too ugly (given what developers were trying to wring out it), and the controller just a little too painful. Either the orig xbox or the gamecube would have been a far more pleasant system to see live on until old age.
Slashdot Mirror
Er, have you ever used Debian? The above is true of redhat, but it most certainly has never been true of Debian -- the Debian project puts vast effort into making sure upgrades always work (including code to cleanup problem situations), and it's essentially never necessary to reinstall a Debian system unless you do something really stupid (outside the packaging system).
Wait, there's a place without a Starbucks?!
Maybe after eight years of Bush -- who's sort of the ultimate white guy / frat-boy -- destroying everything he touches, they'll be more willing to go for something a bit different this time...
I guess that's the Perl version. Here's the python version:
Hope that turns out, whitespace has a tendency to get munged...
No eraser-head pointer controller, instead a bog-standard crappy touchpad. Idiots.
Yup. It seems that the "improve safety" line is just a cynical PR move by this company, which wants to sell more cars (and doesn't care about the resulting mess).
Er, well I certainly wasn't arguing that Apple was the be-all and end-all of laptops, merely that they seem pretty competitive on price these days. Personally I don't like Apple laptops because of the touchpad (I like eraserheads), only one "mouse" button, and lately the bizarro keyboards they've started using on laptops. But still, if I was OK with the hardware, price wouldn't be a barrier to buying one.
Er, sure matlab syntax sucks, but has any syntax inspired more flamewars than python's?
Is there really all that much of a premium for Apple hardware these days?
I don't own a Mac, but I was in the computer store yesterday where they had Mac laptops and desktops along with lots of other brands, and least the Mac laptops were cheaper than other "top" brands with the same processor/speed/memory (they all seem to have a Core 2 Duo at 2 GHz or so, and 1GB of RAM).
The same is true of ipods -- they often seem to be cheaper than their competition (and the competition is almost always palpably more flimsy and tacky).
Not to mention the new "lol()" built-in, which is like say(), but also removes random letters from the string, and appends 17 exclamation points.
Sometimes I wonder about Larry Wall.
GoogleSheet truncated the number to two digits for display (somewhat okay, though I would have preferred if it kept the original formatting) but then based all further computations on the truncated number! (Definitely, not okay.)
... the above brings to mind one my big complaints: They seem to intentionally make it hard to report bugs with their stuff.
I love gmail and even google docs (it's not great for complex stuff, but it sure is handy), but
You can make your way through the help pages and use the "Suggest a Feature" request, though there seems to be essentially no feedback or visible tracking, or you can post on the assocated google group, though there seems little official presence and a depressingly clueless community of regular posters. Other than those rather unsatifying alternatives, there doesn't seem to be any obvious way to send a bug report.
it's as likely as me becoming Miss America. For one thing, I'm in my 50's, and for another, I think they'd freak at the beard...
Emphasize the talent angle, I suppose.
With eSATA for external storage, USB3 (late 2008) for all sorts of high-bandwidth (4.8Gbps) devices and GbE for mainstream networking, FW3200 will become irrelevant soon enough: USB3 is supposed to be 4.8Gbps double-simplex fiber, blowing away FW3200 on raw speed and finally getting rid of USB1/2's half-duplex overhead.
So is USB3 also supposed to get rid of USB1/2's insane CPU overhead at high speeds?
USB2 seems like it's something that can maybe-kinda go fast in certain circumstances, but you certainly wouldn't want to use it for any routine tasks; it's more something to use as an emergency backup method, or for tasks you do very rarely.
[BTW, this is an honest question. Like many people, I love the idea of an "works for everything, does it all well" desktop connection standard. It would be great if USB3 could actually pull it off (within reason) and substantially address the problems of previous USB versions, but in my cynicism I'm afraid that it will merely claim to do it -- helping to kill off alternatives -- but fail to actually deliver (or rather "deliver" with tons of caveats).]
The computer has Intel integrated graphics, you don't get much lower than that.
:-)
You can always do worse...
Modern Intel integrated graphics chips aren't what you want for playing FPS-of-the-moment, but they're pretty fast and capable for running compiz and the like. If you want to feel pain, try compiz with an old "bitblt only" card (which generally are just fine for X with traditional window managers)...
vim is clearly the emacs of vi clones.
Certainly in some aspects.
A while ago I did a bunch of timings of the startup time of Emacs and vim in various contexts (tty, X, with init file, without etc), and to my surprise, vim was usually slower to startup than Emacs... If you had a huge emacs init-file (not so uncommon given Emacs' users love of customization), Emacs became slower, but still the difference was pretty minor in most cases. Of course on modern systems, both essentially start instantaneously.
I found this interesting given the significant influence startup time has historically had on usage -- e.g. Emacs users usually start one instance of Emacs and use it all day, whereas vi users have historically started the editor for each file they edit (startup time isn't the only reason for these differences of course, but it's one).
Cell phones are better than paying the exorbitant NTT license fee for the privilege of paying for a landline,
That seems to be gone nowdays, BTW. [I recently got a new landline from NTT and they charged no fees other than some random small "installation" type things.]
I live in Japan and don't have a cellphone -- I don't make all that many calls, and to be honest, find the whole Japanese cellphone culture kind of disgusting.
It's definitely handy to have one in certain situations (especially for meeting people), but whatever, I seem to manage OK without.
You would absolutely not accept this level of animation on an Xbox or PS3 title, not because they're so much more powerful, but because your expectations are much higher.
The thing is, developers (especially 3rd-party developers) will find ways to turn out crap no matter what the "expectations". This applies even to graphics -- the PS3 is powerful, but certainly not powerful enough to deliver jaw-dropping results without a lot of work from the developers.
From what I've seen of the demo games on the PS3, this is already the case: many have high-res graphics, but awkward loose controls, horrid character animation and physics, crap framerates (like 5FPS), stupidly long and frequent loading periods, and boring gameplay.
I guess loud jokes might be a bit more apropos.
I really don't know why MSFT's shareholders haven't lynched Ballmer by now.
Have you seen that guy? He'd just break the rope.
I work for a major japanese electronics company (in software development); they've slowly been getting more and more enthusiastic about linux etc, but it's a very slow process. The main driving factor I see behind reluctance to use linux and other free software is not "respect", but rather fear and risk-aversion -- they're used to the old way, and it kinda works most of the time, so they don't want to change. I think this is true in big companies anywhere in the world, but it's especially true in Japan where people tend to be very risk-averse.
One of the ways that it seems to be changing is that more and more of the small companies that are contracted to do various development tasks are specializing in linux development. Smaller companies are much faster moving, and this way it "feels" sort of the same to the big company.
[These are just my personal observations, of course...]
Why was your post modded informative, and not funny?
Because modding it informative is funny.
No, actually it would be a rather childish response. The many failings of the U.S. Government (especially in its current incarnation) do not excuse Yahoo's actions.
If Yahoo wants to criticize some of the idiotic things the U.S. gov has been doing lately, they may of course do so (hey I wish they would!), but it has no bearing on this case.
I've never bought a PS2, who knows, maybe I will this time.
... graphics aren't the most important thing, but the PS2's graphics were always just a little too ugly (given what developers were trying to wring out it), and the controller just a little too painful. Either the orig xbox or the gamecube would have been a far more pleasant system to see live on until old age.
It would be kind of nice to have a long-lived "low tech but very well supported" game system around, but it's sort of a shame it had to be the PS2