Just wanted to let you know what I think about performance:
1) GTK+ tends to use a lot more stack space for signal handling, mostly
for making more function calls. You can get a good 13-20 stack frames deep
in signal handling. This is, honestly, nothing, but it makes Windows a
little faster in this case. This is partially due to the fact that GTK is
a little more flexible, and partially due to the more-flexible design of
X. To be fair, you probably aren't going to notice a difference even on a
386, unless you are passing a LOT of signals; and unless you are using
some bogus message passing scheme to transfer a file via signals or some
other insanity, it isn't going to matter.
2) Most of the programs that use MFC or GTK are NOT speed-dependent, at
least not in their signal handling, so it's moot.
3) This leaves one area, and I cover it in the article; Bitmaps verses
Pixmaps. Bitmaps are faster, but that's the tradeoff you get for being
able to separate the X client from the X server. I tend to think that
a bitmap will also be faster than a GdkImage (which is a wrapper over
an XImage), especially over a network connection. If you were to do some
serious animation in GDK using GdkImages, you'll probably find an
equivalent program written to use Win32 bitmaps will be a little faster,
but again, this is a contrived comparison, because for this, you'd
really want to use DirectDraw and/or SDL or something else.
In short, if MFC is faster, it's not by much, and it's basically not a
problem anyhow.:)
What the article doesn't seem to mention is performance issues. Is there a loss in performance in porting to GTK?
You're going from very specific libraries for a particular OS to something a little more vague. Also, the widgets and window designs don't necessarily have a one-to-one ratio.
The point is that the 1-click patent undermines exactly what the internet is founded on!
No, it doesn't. The internet was founded on hyperlinks and an exchange of ideas. Last I checked, Amazon's patent wasn't on that. It was on a fairly critical part of their marketing strategy they didn't want other companies stealing.
There will be others. Other booksellers and furniture manufacturers and car makers that will copy Amazon's ideas and, with a slight change of wording, make them their own.
Nothing says information exchange is patentable, however, so everyone gets to play.
Wow, this is really devastating to IBM... Consulting. Fortunately IBM is one of those corporate octopusses, one arm doesn't know what the other is doing.
You have some members branding everyone with a hacker mindset as evil, the other hacking Linux and putting it on watches.
I still have a lot of respect for IBM, even if some of the people like Charles Palmer are complete morons.
It's not the 52-week low as much as the percentage of plummet. 50% is a big loss. Imagine losing $.50 for every dollar you had - or, more appropriately, $500,000 for every one million. See the difference?
If the stock continues to plummet, will OS X be any competition at all. Pretty, yes, but as recently seen by the G4 cube consumers can only buy so much of "pretty" to drive a company's profits up until they want "functional".
Ok guys, we bought this company that seems to be doing ok and we want to drive it into the ground as fast as possible.
What do you think most corporations do? You buy a competitor to implement their products into your own... or to elimate them. There is no middle ground.
Obviously Sun wants to support their [paid] OS more than a [free] OS. One drives profits to the company, the other doesn't.
(but if you don't want to bother reading it, you should at least change your password).
Change my password? Um.. why?
This is a message board site, not my bank account. Not the administrative passwords on my Windows 2000/Linux box. Not the passwords for my personal writing folders (which have a different password than the box). Not the password I use for my internet account.
Basically, there is nothing worthwhile to steal here, and if someone posted something under my name so what? I would then change my password.
Star Wars: interesting myth of a story, appeals to geeks Corporations: big, evil, don't care about the people who buy their products Science-fiction scriptwriters: playful, conscientious, like to play along with geeks
George Lucas:?... Isn't he basically a corporation at this point? Why do we still go to his movies, then shoot other corporations down?
I'm not quite sure what CmdrTaco is talking about. This affects Linux users - it affects all users. The idea of a "shrunken" packet is not terribly new, but speedwise having a packet be as small as this, and still contain a variety of extra useful information about its destination and whereabouts, would be useful in pinging servers.
I've got an interesting question: is this take supposed to be for Microsoft or against it? It seems to me to be both.
On one hand you have the Microsoft extremists, who vouch that $1,000 versions of Windows would cripple Microsoft's already breaking-at-the seams-company, although it would be worthwhile; on the other hand you have Linux and open source advocates saying that noone would pay $1,000 for Windows anyway, and it isn't worth that much.
I talked to CmdrTaco one time and Rob said "basically we don't post anything Microsoft-related", unless it's totally incendiary. Positive Microsoft stories (IE 5.5 supporting better DHTML, for example) will "never get posted".
I'm more than a little perturbed by the original patents (about widgets) than the new ones. I think the new ones hold a lot more water.
Widgets are pretty fundamental cornerstones of the GUI environment. Can you really judge some to be intellectual property.
Also, what's going to happen when and if the whole thing gets ported to X? All the widgets are dynamic and can be changed. Is Adobe going to create a widget scheme that cannot be changed? And in doing so, you would be breaking their license agreement?
Re:There's more of us than there are of you
on
DivX ;-) Deux Update
·
· Score: 2
So you play around with encryption that can be trivially broken? How does that enhance people's privacy? It seems like it would just give naive users a false sense of security. I hope you don't plan on releasing your code.
Have you ever hacked out an encryption algorhythm? It can be inordinately complex. DES with 8-bits (my version that I call sDES -- simple DES) works with 4 S-boxes to manipulate the bits. Regular 64-bit DES works with something close to 32. That's 32 matrices of code that needs to be computed exactly correct -- one typo and the thing falls apart.
I have released my code (as I do with all my programs). An 8-bit code amounts to a single letter of encryption: it's essentially a substitution cipher.
The point of releasing it, however, is academic. My code is modularized so that if you wanted to release something with stronger encryption all you would have to do is hack out those matricies. As it stands right now, sDES can be broken quickly but also encrypts things extremely fast. I was able to encrypt all of/bin/local in a little under 2 seconds -- on a Pentium 100 (my laptop). It's not amazing security, but it gets the job done for simple tasks.
If this were a battle between the artists who create great movies and the pirates who would deprive them of their source of payment, I would side with the artists. But it is not about payment; it is about control. And it's not even about control by the artists; it's about control by the large movie studios.
See, but there's a flaw in your thinking. By pirating movies you hurt not only the studios but the artists themselves -- you take away money from both.
It's akin to laying down a smart bomb that kills not only the military of the enemy, but also several thousand ordinary citizens.
Unless you can find a way for artists to be compensated -- and I mean all artists in a motion picture; cast, crew, scriptwriters, stuntpeople, catering, etc -- then your idea fails.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, there.
I saw your response to my article on Slashdot:
(http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/10/01/1422 222&cid=16)
Just wanted to let you know what I think about performance:
1) GTK+ tends to use a lot more stack space for signal handling, mostly for making more function calls. You can get a good 13-20 stack frames deep in signal handling. This is, honestly, nothing, but it makes Windows a little faster in this case. This is partially due to the fact that GTK is a little more flexible, and partially due to the more-flexible design of X. To be fair, you probably aren't going to notice a difference even on a 386, unless you are passing a LOT of signals; and unless you are using some bogus message passing scheme to transfer a file via signals or some other insanity, it isn't going to matter.
2) Most of the programs that use MFC or GTK are NOT speed-dependent, at least not in their signal handling, so it's moot.
3) This leaves one area, and I cover it in the article; Bitmaps verses Pixmaps. Bitmaps are faster, but that's the tradeoff you get for being able to separate the X client from the X server. I tend to think that a bitmap will also be faster than a GdkImage (which is a wrapper over an XImage), especially over a network connection. If you were to do some serious animation in GDK using GdkImages, you'll probably find an equivalent program written to use Win32 bitmaps will be a little faster, but again, this is a contrived comparison, because for this, you'd really want to use DirectDraw and/or SDL or something else.
In short, if MFC is faster, it's not by much, and it's basically not a problem anyhow. :)
Hope that's helpful.
I'm patenting all annoying stories on Slashdot that have no consequential value. I figure I'll make a fortune.
You're going from very specific libraries for a particular OS to something a little more vague. Also, the widgets and window designs don't necessarily have a one-to-one ratio.
No, it doesn't. The internet was founded on hyperlinks and an exchange of ideas. Last I checked, Amazon's patent wasn't on that. It was on a fairly critical part of their marketing strategy they didn't want other companies stealing.
There will be others. Other booksellers and furniture manufacturers and car makers that will copy Amazon's ideas and, with a slight change of wording, make them their own.
Nothing says information exchange is patentable, however, so everyone gets to play.
You have some members branding everyone with a hacker mindset as evil, the other hacking Linux and putting it on watches.
I still have a lot of respect for IBM, even if some of the people like Charles Palmer are complete morons.
Um, yeah...
It's not the 52-week low as much as the percentage of plummet. 50% is a big loss. Imagine losing $.50 for every dollar you had - or, more appropriately, $500,000 for every one million. See the difference?
If the stock continues to plummet, will OS X be any competition at all. Pretty, yes, but as recently seen by the G4 cube consumers can only buy so much of "pretty" to drive a company's profits up until they want "functional".
What do you think most corporations do? You buy a competitor to implement their products into your own... or to elimate them. There is no middle ground.
Obviously Sun wants to support their [paid] OS more than a [free] OS. One drives profits to the company, the other doesn't.
Change my password? Um.. why?
This is a message board site, not my bank account.
Not the administrative passwords on my Windows 2000/Linux box.
Not the passwords for my personal writing folders (which have a different password than the box).
Not the password I use for my internet account.
Basically, there is nothing worthwhile to steal here, and if someone posted something under my name so what? I would then change my password.
But I don't need to now.
Anyone think briefly that someone at the Slashdot "compound" did this to drive up traffic? Just a whim...
What exactly did they post? I failed to see it and I was on a lot yesterday. Was it that initial post about being hacked?
Corporations: big, evil, don't care about the people who buy their products
Science-fiction scriptwriters: playful, conscientious, like to play along with geeks
George Lucas:? ... Isn't he basically a corporation at this point? Why do we still go to his movies, then shoot other corporations down?
I'm not quite sure what CmdrTaco is talking about. This affects Linux users - it affects all users. The idea of a "shrunken" packet is not terribly new, but speedwise having a packet be as small as this, and still contain a variety of extra useful information about its destination and whereabouts, would be useful in pinging servers.
If they were able to hack, say, Mastercard I'd be impressed (and very scared).
Just a thought.
Out of curiousity, does this support the standard wireless protocols? Would it work with an Airport base station?
On one hand you have the Microsoft extremists, who vouch that $1,000 versions of Windows would cripple Microsoft's already breaking-at-the seams-company, although it would be worthwhile; on the other hand you have Linux and open source advocates saying that noone would pay $1,000 for Windows anyway, and it isn't worth that much.
It seems like a judge ruling for both sides.
I talked to CmdrTaco one time and Rob said "basically we don't post anything Microsoft-related", unless it's totally incendiary. Positive Microsoft stories (IE 5.5 supporting better DHTML, for example) will "never get posted".
I originally thought that said "banned boobs". Now THAT would be naughty. :)
Hear hear. If we Americans could build things to last longer than their intended use, we'd have internet startups that would last more than 3 years. :)
Widgets are pretty fundamental cornerstones of the GUI environment. Can you really judge some to be intellectual property.
Also, what's going to happen when and if the whole thing gets ported to X? All the widgets are dynamic and can be changed. Is Adobe going to create a widget scheme that cannot be changed? And in doing so, you would be breaking their license agreement?
Have you ever hacked out an encryption algorhythm? It can be inordinately complex. DES with 8-bits (my version that I call sDES -- simple DES) works with 4 S-boxes to manipulate the bits. Regular 64-bit DES works with something close to 32. That's 32 matrices of code that needs to be computed exactly correct -- one typo and the thing falls apart.
I have released my code (as I do with all my programs). An 8-bit code amounts to a single letter of encryption: it's essentially a substitution cipher.
The point of releasing it, however, is academic. My code is modularized so that if you wanted to release something with stronger encryption all you would have to do is hack out those matricies. As it stands right now, sDES can be broken quickly but also encrypts things extremely fast. I was able to encrypt all of /bin/local in a little under 2 seconds -- on a Pentium 100 (my laptop). It's not amazing security, but it gets the job done for simple tasks.
If this were a battle between the artists who create great movies and the pirates who would deprive them of their source of payment, I would side with the artists. But it is not about payment; it is about control. And it's not even about control by the artists; it's about control by the large movie studios.
See, but there's a flaw in your thinking. By pirating movies you hurt not only the studios but the artists themselves -- you take away money from both.
It's akin to laying down a smart bomb that kills not only the military of the enemy, but also several thousand ordinary citizens.
Unless you can find a way for artists to be compensated -- and I mean all artists in a motion picture; cast, crew, scriptwriters, stuntpeople, catering, etc -- then your idea fails.
If the instruction code were compatible with the x86 set, how fast do you guys think this would run Windows 2000? 2 second boot time?
Good point. I'd agree with that statement.