Yes, journalling is mandatory for any file system that holds your day-to-day work. But thumb drives are for transport, not working files. You're asking for trouble if you forget that.
The state of Mozilla Foundation docs is pretty appalling. But in fact the page you link is not just about extensions — it covers plugins and themes as well. Both are listed in the "Categories" box on the left.
The site actually seems to be pretty consistent about its use of these terms. The issue is confused by the absence of clear definitions, by the sloppy organization of the web site, and the fact that extensions account for 90% of all addons.
Anyway, you misunderstand. In Firefox lingo, a "plugin" is a binary that displays a certain type of content, like Flash or PDF documents. You seem to be thinking of "add-ons" which add to or change the functionality of the browser itself and are written in Javascript and XUL.
Oops, you're right, I was muddling the two terms — my aging brain has trouble remembering which is which. I mean, is there any logical reason you should "plug in" a mime-type handler, but "add on" any other kind of extender?
But wait a minute a minute. (Fiddles with menus.) Yep, it turns out your terms are wrong too. If you do Tools/Add-ons, you get a dialog for managing Plugins, Extensions (which is what you meant by "add-ons") and themes. So "add-on" is the generic term.
Also I don't see how you can say that add-ons, I mean extensions, rarely cause crashes. Many's the time I've found my browser useless after an a bunch of updates got downloaded, with the only fix to go into safe mode and disable my extensions one at a time until I found the one that was screwing me over. And of course if you disable compatibility checking (not recommended, but sometimes it's tempting when your favorite extension becomes abandonware) there's a good chance you'll see crashes.
And in any case, a badly-written extension can certainly hang your browser — which is just as bad as a crash.
One other nitpick: extensions that use native code are rare, but not totally unknown. CoolIris is an example.
Do you recall that we were talking about servers? These aren't even systems. They're boards, used for building embedded applications.
Now you're going to accuse me of weaselling. I did say "servers". Servers generally come with a chassis, a power supply, and (drum roll please) embedded adapters. Show me any x86 server — hell, any x86 system that works off-the-shelf without having to be built into something — and I'll admit I was wrong.
I'm actually familiar with that puppy. It's the HP competitor for one of the Sun servers I used to work with. And guess what? It's got an embedded video adapter. As you'd know if you read your own fucking link.
I'll say it one more time, then I'm going to give up. I never said that server systems don't support headless operation. Of course they do. I only said that video support was standard in x86 servers.
Now stop being a retard and google your own fucking links.
Dude, I never get into a Slashdot flamefest without Googling for a few links to help make my case. It's just that I usually don't bother to Google for links that support something I know not to be true.
Pretend that you're a grownup for a few seconds, and admit that you had your facts wrong. Which happens to all of us. So suck it up and admit it. It might be hard on the ego, but it's a lot less work than the rhetorical hoops you have to jump through to avoid admitting a mistakes.
Dude, routers are fundamentally different from servers,. They have hardware support for their routing function. That's why Cisco dominates that market. They were the first to realize that you can't just stick routing software on a regular system and have a cost-effective router.
Incidentally, the Sun servers I was talking about also allow you to access the BIOS over a serial connection. I wasn't saying that they couldn't be operated without a KVM. (Obviously, that's a non-start6er if you have thousands of servers in a data center.) I was shooting down the assumption that KVM support is not a normal feature of servers.
The NRA called. They say you're not allowed to be a pro-gun fanatic unless you actually know something about guns.
Politicians want to ban them because they look intimidating next to, say, a standard bolt-action Ruger 30.06.
No, they want to ban them because they can easily be retrofitted to full auto. Hard to do with a bolt-action rifle.
This whole business of people regurgitating bullshit they heard on talk radio is really out of hand. It was bad enough when people just used bad logic to support their prejudices. Now they're just reciting factoids that don't stand up under even momentary scrutiny.
But maybe that's a good thing. Now that attack politics has gone totally brain dead, people will realize how pointless it is, and we'll go back to having actual arguments.
Sigh. Dude, read what I said in context. I wasn't saying that x86 servers don't support headless operation. I was shooting down Soulskill's assumption that such servers are not designed to support KVM operation.
Incidentally, Sun servers have out-of-band management features too. And they're a lot more sophisticated than Dell's.
Which brings us to the fundamental mistake in the question:
This question is for plain old desktop/laptop systems, not network servers designed to run headless.
There's actually no such thing as a "server designed to run headless", at least not in the x86 world. All the widely used server designs evolved out of desktop PCs.
Until recently, my job was documenting Sun x64 servers. Every single system I worked with at Sun had an embedded video adapter. A system might go through its entire working life without a monitor being plugged into that adapter, but it was always there. And these were all "green" systems, designed to minimize energy consumption. Indeed, we sometimes lost a few sales because our PCI slots didn't provide enough power to handle high-end video adapters. Yes, people do buy servers and then use them as workstations!
I didn't work with SPARC systems at all, but I know the low- and medium-end Sun systems all come with embedded video adapters as well. It just doesn't add anything to the manufacturing or operating cost of the system, and although it's rarely needed, working around it's absence can be a real pain.
I think maybe the high-end SPARC servers lack any kind of video port. But not to save power! I imagine these are the last remnants of the days when Sun relied on proprietary tech a lot more than they do now. I do know that these are the only Sun products that are still manufactured in Sun factories, instead of being outsourced.
"Brilliant Programmers"
on
Coders At Work
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have mixed feelings towards the people cited as "all-time great programmers and computer scientists", at least the ones I know anything about.
Ken Thompson. The one, absolute no-brainer for inclusion, because he's the most influential programmer ever, without exception. His minimalistic approach to OS design and API specification has had a profound effect on how people think software platforms. I started to study programming before Unix became widely used, and the sheer baroqueness of pre-Unix OS's is far beyond what younger programmers can imagine. Even if you've never read anything this guy has written, you've been influenced by his ideas. We all owe him big time.
Donald Knuth. His contributions are pretty major. But the paradigms he uses to talk about programming are thoroughly obsolete. And I do not understand his obsession with finishing an unfinishable book.
Josh Bloch. I've had the pleasure of actually working with him. Brilliant dude, and certainly someone all programmers should listen to. (And he doesn't get enough credit for his contributions to the design of Java.) But calling him a programmer is a bit like calling Frank Lloyd Wright a "builder".
Jamie Zawinski. I don't know that much about the guy, but what I do know makes me unwilling to accept his opinion on anything. I'm informed mainly by the config files for early versions of Netscape Navigator. JWZ's comments in these files were the only documentation I could find for making the browser work with PC keyboards under Linux. These were short of useful information and long on rants about the supposed shortcomings of various hardware vendors. These would have been stupid and unprofessional, even if they hadn't been arrogant and poorly informed. (No Jamie, Alt and Meta are not the same thing.) And isn't his main claim to fame his contribution to the Netscape code base? Most of which was simply abandoned as unmaintainable when NS's projects got taken over by Mozilla and Sun.
It's no secret that what Oracle wanted was the software part.
Not a secret because it's pure pundit bullshit. I've shot down the sloppy thinking behind this assumption before--more than once. Since nobody seems to hear me, I'll just wait a few weeks for the facial egg to set.
Nothing except the fact that Palm is broke, and has to skimp on this kind of thing. It's the same reason PalmOS PDAs no longer come with Java runtimes. (Painful — Access Web Browser is a joke, and Opera Mini is the only practical alternative.) Good runtimes exist, but Palm can't afford the license fees for them.
None of which is Apple's fault, of course. Still, Apple does carry the water for a lot of stuff whose makers don't find it worth their while to provide a Mac version. For example, the Mac Java runtime is maintained by Apple, not Sun. So when they leave out the software that supports something like this, they know they're abandoning all its users.
Not that I would care, even if I were a Mac person. I bought a Centro about a year ago, and was appalled at its poor build quality. I mean, how hard is it to make a stiff stylus? (No Viagra jokes please.) I've already mentioned the Java and browser issues, on top of which the phone/PDA integration is extremely poor. After a while, the MicroSD slot stopped working, and then finally the headset jack malfunctioned, leaving the thing in permanent handsfree mode.
This was the last straw. My first Palm was a V. I loved the thing, but it was the last one I owned that was really usable — and even it had a stupid issue with the up button sticking too far out. (There was a widely used hack to prevent the button from turning the PDA on.) Every version since then has added mistakes and issues, and my faith in Palm got smaller and smaller, expecially when the crappy Handspring designs took over their product line. After the Centro died, I swore I'd never buy another Palm product. I'm sure it's a common oath.
Is there such a reason? Beyond simple inertia. Slackware was maybe the first Linux distro to be widely adopted. I imagine that most of its users keep using it simply because it's not worth their trouble to switch to a more modern distro.
It's a side project that wasn't meant to be a big deal, but now has lockin and is the main claim to fame of its inventor. Sort of like MS-DOS. (Ducks.)
Excuse me, but how long were you held captive by aliens? I ask because you obviously haven't read any newspapers or checked your 401K in at least a year. If you had, you wouldn't be regurgitating Econ 101 truisms about Rational Man.
For that matter, you've obviously never worked for a big corporation, ever. If you had you'd be all too aware of their capacity for irrational behavior.
Economic forces are compelling, but they're not the only factors determining the decisions a CEO makes. Just as important is the psychology of the people in charge. And for the last couple of decades, that psychology has dominated by an irrational obsession with costs. If they can show that they're spending less money this year than last year, they don't care if they're spending it effectively. So when they decide whether or not to ship a job overseas (and yes, it does sometimes make sense to do it) they just look at the difference in costs and stop right there.
A couple years ago, I was working on a Technical Publications team at a company that had outsourced in a big way. It was a disaster. That's not a reflection on the skills of the Russian and Indian writers I worked with (there are actually advantages to having some tech writers whose first language isn't English, provided they're smart) but on the sheer difficulty of communication. Aside from having people working out of St. Petersburg and Bangalore (which made scheduling fun) we had people working from three different time zones in the U.S. The rationale was not just about saving money on office space, it was allowing people to live in places where it was cheaper to live, so they could work for less.
The real kicker, was the manager, who worked out of her home in rural Wisconsin, two time zones away! She was a competent manager, but fatally handicapped by her lack or daily contact with any of the people who worked for her, or with any of the engineering managers she had to coordinate with.
I'm not condemning outsourcing as such. This same company outsources most of its manufacturing, and that works much butter. (Well, most of the time. Sometimes they pick a outsourcer solely on the basis of its bid, with wacky results.) But it's not the simplistic panacea so many corporate suits think it is.
Then you're talking almost the direct opposite of an iphone app. You want a data stream, a very fat pipe to receive it on (we're talking billions of records!) and some serious hardware to crunch the numbers.
Not cheap. Maybe you can get a government grant...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, journalling is mandatory for any file system that holds your day-to-day work. But thumb drives are for transport, not working files. You're asking for trouble if you forget that.
And there are journalling file systems for Linux.
The state of Mozilla Foundation docs is pretty appalling. But in fact the page you link is not just about extensions — it covers plugins and themes as well. Both are listed in the "Categories" box on the left.
The site actually seems to be pretty consistent about its use of these terms. The issue is confused by the absence of clear definitions, by the sloppy organization of the web site, and the fact that extensions account for 90% of all addons.
Man, are you just looking to argue with me?
Yes.
Anyway, you misunderstand. In Firefox lingo, a "plugin" is a binary that displays a certain type of content, like Flash or PDF documents. You seem to be thinking of "add-ons" which add to or change the functionality of the browser itself and are written in Javascript and XUL.
Oops, you're right, I was muddling the two terms — my aging brain has trouble remembering which is which. I mean, is there any logical reason you should "plug in" a mime-type handler, but "add on" any other kind of extender?
But wait a minute a minute. (Fiddles with menus.) Yep, it turns out your terms are wrong too. If you do Tools/Add-ons, you get a dialog for managing Plugins, Extensions (which is what you meant by "add-ons") and themes. So "add-on" is the generic term.
Also I don't see how you can say that add-ons, I mean extensions, rarely cause crashes. Many's the time I've found my browser useless after an a bunch of updates got downloaded, with the only fix to go into safe mode and disable my extensions one at a time until I found the one that was screwing me over. And of course if you disable compatibility checking (not recommended, but sometimes it's tempting when your favorite extension becomes abandonware) there's a good chance you'll see crashes.
And in any case, a badly-written extension can certainly hang your browser — which is just as bad as a crash.
One other nitpick: extensions that use native code are rare, but not totally unknown. CoolIris is an example.
Wrong.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124138858052581321.html
So take away plugin support (the only reason I still use Firefox) and what advantages does it have over Chrome?
http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm
http://www.soekris.com/
Do you recall that we were talking about servers? These aren't even systems. They're boards, used for building embedded applications.
Now you're going to accuse me of weaselling. I did say "servers". Servers generally come with a chassis, a power supply, and (drum roll please) embedded adapters. Show me any x86 server — hell, any x86 system that works off-the-shelf without having to be built into something — and I'll admit I was wrong.
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-3328412-241644-241475-1121516.html
I'm actually familiar with that puppy. It's the HP competitor for one of the Sun servers I used to work with. And guess what? It's got an embedded video adapter. As you'd know if you read your own fucking link.
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/using-intel-amt-serial-over-lan-to-the-fullest/
I'll say it one more time, then I'm going to give up. I never said that server systems don't support headless operation. Of course they do. I only said that video support was standard in x86 servers.
Now stop being a retard and google your own fucking links.
Dude, I never get into a Slashdot flamefest without Googling for a few links to help make my case. It's just that I usually don't bother to Google for links that support something I know not to be true.
Pretend that you're a grownup for a few seconds, and admit that you had your facts wrong. Which happens to all of us. So suck it up and admit it. It might be hard on the ego, but it's a lot less work than the rhetorical hoops you have to jump through to avoid admitting a mistakes.
Link?
Dude, routers are fundamentally different from servers,. They have hardware support for their routing function. That's why Cisco dominates that market. They were the first to realize that you can't just stick routing software on a regular system and have a cost-effective router.
Incidentally, the Sun servers I was talking about also allow you to access the BIOS over a serial connection. I wasn't saying that they couldn't be operated without a KVM. (Obviously, that's a non-start6er if you have thousands of servers in a data center.) I was shooting down the assumption that KVM support is not a normal feature of servers.
The NRA called. They say you're not allowed to be a pro-gun fanatic unless you actually know something about guns.
Politicians want to ban them because they look intimidating next to, say, a standard bolt-action Ruger 30.06.
No, they want to ban them because they can easily be retrofitted to full auto. Hard to do with a bolt-action rifle.
This whole business of people regurgitating bullshit they heard on talk radio is really out of hand. It was bad enough when people just used bad logic to support their prejudices. Now they're just reciting factoids that don't stand up under even momentary scrutiny.
But maybe that's a good thing. Now that attack politics has gone totally brain dead, people will realize how pointless it is, and we'll go back to having actual arguments.
Sigh. Dude, read what I said in context. I wasn't saying that x86 servers don't support headless operation. I was shooting down Soulskill's assumption that such servers are not designed to support KVM operation.
Incidentally, Sun servers have out-of-band management features too. And they're a lot more sophisticated than Dell's.
So what? They still have video cards, right?
Which brings us to the fundamental mistake in the question:
This question is for plain old desktop/laptop systems, not network servers designed to run headless.
There's actually no such thing as a "server designed to run headless", at least not in the x86 world. All the widely used server designs evolved out of desktop PCs.
Until recently, my job was documenting Sun x64 servers. Every single system I worked with at Sun had an embedded video adapter. A system might go through its entire working life without a monitor being plugged into that adapter, but it was always there. And these were all "green" systems, designed to minimize energy consumption. Indeed, we sometimes lost a few sales because our PCI slots didn't provide enough power to handle high-end video adapters. Yes, people do buy servers and then use them as workstations!
I didn't work with SPARC systems at all, but I know the low- and medium-end Sun systems all come with embedded video adapters as well. It just doesn't add anything to the manufacturing or operating cost of the system, and although it's rarely needed, working around it's absence can be a real pain.
I think maybe the high-end SPARC servers lack any kind of video port. But not to save power! I imagine these are the last remnants of the days when Sun relied on proprietary tech a lot more than they do now. I do know that these are the only Sun products that are still manufactured in Sun factories, instead of being outsourced.
So much for "no collateral damage."
I have mixed feelings towards the people cited as "all-time great programmers and computer scientists", at least the ones I know anything about.
Ken Thompson. The one, absolute no-brainer for inclusion, because he's the most influential programmer ever, without exception. His minimalistic approach to OS design and API specification has had a profound effect on how people think software platforms. I started to study programming before Unix became widely used, and the sheer baroqueness of pre-Unix OS's is far beyond what younger programmers can imagine. Even if you've never read anything this guy has written, you've been influenced by his ideas. We all owe him big time.
Donald Knuth. His contributions are pretty major. But the paradigms he uses to talk about programming are thoroughly obsolete. And I do not understand his obsession with finishing an unfinishable book.
Josh Bloch. I've had the pleasure of actually working with him. Brilliant dude, and certainly someone all programmers should listen to. (And he doesn't get enough credit for his contributions to the design of Java.) But calling him a programmer is a bit like calling Frank Lloyd Wright a "builder".
Jamie Zawinski. I don't know that much about the guy, but what I do know makes me unwilling to accept his opinion on anything. I'm informed mainly by the config files for early versions of Netscape Navigator. JWZ's comments in these files were the only documentation I could find for making the browser work with PC keyboards under Linux. These were short of useful information and long on rants about the supposed shortcomings of various hardware vendors. These would have been stupid and unprofessional, even if they hadn't been arrogant and poorly informed. (No Jamie, Alt and Meta are not the same thing.) And isn't his main claim to fame his contribution to the Netscape code base? Most of which was simply abandoned as unmaintainable when NS's projects got taken over by Mozilla and Sun.
U.K. imprisonment of gay people is a lot closer to living memory than the Roman empire.
It's no secret that what Oracle wanted was the software part.
Not a secret because it's pure pundit bullshit. I've shot down the sloppy thinking behind this assumption before--more than once. Since nobody seems to hear me, I'll just wait a few weeks for the facial egg to set.
Nothing except the fact that Palm is broke, and has to skimp on this kind of thing. It's the same reason PalmOS PDAs no longer come with Java runtimes. (Painful — Access Web Browser is a joke, and Opera Mini is the only practical alternative.) Good runtimes exist, but Palm can't afford the license fees for them.
None of which is Apple's fault, of course. Still, Apple does carry the water for a lot of stuff whose makers don't find it worth their while to provide a Mac version. For example, the Mac Java runtime is maintained by Apple, not Sun. So when they leave out the software that supports something like this, they know they're abandoning all its users.
Not that I would care, even if I were a Mac person. I bought a Centro about a year ago, and was appalled at its poor build quality. I mean, how hard is it to make a stiff stylus? (No Viagra jokes please.) I've already mentioned the Java and browser issues, on top of which the phone/PDA integration is extremely poor. After a while, the MicroSD slot stopped working, and then finally the headset jack malfunctioned, leaving the thing in permanent handsfree mode.
This was the last straw. My first Palm was a V. I loved the thing, but it was the last one I owned that was really usable — and even it had a stupid issue with the up button sticking too far out. (There was a widely used hack to prevent the button from turning the PDA on.) Every version since then has added mistakes and issues, and my faith in Palm got smaller and smaller, expecially when the crappy Handspring designs took over their product line. After the Centro died, I swore I'd never buy another Palm product. I'm sure it's a common oath.
Is there such a reason? Beyond simple inertia. Slackware was maybe the first Linux distro to be widely adopted. I imagine that most of its users keep using it simply because it's not worth their trouble to switch to a more modern distro.
It's a side project that wasn't meant to be a big deal, but now has lockin and is the main claim to fame of its inventor. Sort of like MS-DOS. (Ducks.)
Excuse me, but how long were you held captive by aliens? I ask because you obviously haven't read any newspapers or checked your 401K in at least a year. If you had, you wouldn't be regurgitating Econ 101 truisms about Rational Man.
For that matter, you've obviously never worked for a big corporation, ever. If you had you'd be all too aware of their capacity for irrational behavior.
Economic forces are compelling, but they're not the only factors determining the decisions a CEO makes. Just as important is the psychology of the people in charge. And for the last couple of decades, that psychology has dominated by an irrational obsession with costs. If they can show that they're spending less money this year than last year, they don't care if they're spending it effectively. So when they decide whether or not to ship a job overseas (and yes, it does sometimes make sense to do it) they just look at the difference in costs and stop right there.
A couple years ago, I was working on a Technical Publications team at a company that had outsourced in a big way. It was a disaster. That's not a reflection on the skills of the Russian and Indian writers I worked with (there are actually advantages to having some tech writers whose first language isn't English, provided they're smart) but on the sheer difficulty of communication. Aside from having people working out of St. Petersburg and Bangalore (which made scheduling fun) we had people working from three different time zones in the U.S. The rationale was not just about saving money on office space, it was allowing people to live in places where it was cheaper to live, so they could work for less.
The real kicker, was the manager, who worked out of her home in rural Wisconsin, two time zones away! She was a competent manager, but fatally handicapped by her lack or daily contact with any of the people who worked for her, or with any of the engineering managers she had to coordinate with.
I'm not condemning outsourcing as such. This same company outsources most of its manufacturing, and that works much butter. (Well, most of the time. Sometimes they pick a outsourcer solely on the basis of its bid, with wacky results.) But it's not the simplistic panacea so many corporate suits think it is.
Yes they have. And it's always been ironic, because as soon as they're here even one generation, they're all America for the Americans.
Just becase I use one Slashdot cliche, there's no need for you to use another one.
Too many replies [tinyurl.com] beneath your current threshold.
That prank was never funny. And after all these years it's really, really worn out.
The CEO of this company was born in India!
I think it says something very nasty about U.S. corporate culture that it takes an immigrant the see value in hiring Americans.
read the fucking article
Then you're talking almost the direct opposite of an iphone app. You want a data stream, a very fat pipe to receive it on (we're talking billions of records!) and some serious hardware to crunch the numbers.
Not cheap. Maybe you can get a government grant...