It may not be as efficient, but donate to a local Occupy movement. Particularly in the northern climates, they need money for food, clothing, blankets, etc.. as these people are camping out (sometimes without camping gear because local ordinances do not allow it).
As a gift that keeps on giving, these people are doing things that will beneift YOU in the long run.
What's ironic is that if Facebooks development team spent half the amount of time they spend trying to make PHP perform well enough for them, writing code in a more conformant language.. they'd be done already.
What you have described was what happened with Visual Basic -> VB.NET. This created a gigantic outcry, and there are still tons and tons of people writing code in VB6 because they don't want to take the hit of a conversion.
Many languages have evolved quite a bit over time. C#, for instance, has added numerous new features, ranging from generics to covariance, and adding entirely new dsl subsystems such as Linq. It's not just changed syntax either, but also core functionality, such as automatic properties, initializers, null coalescence, etc..
All without breaking backwards compatibility. Granted, a lot of these features are largely syntactic sugar on functionality that was already there, but there's also a lot that's new.
The fewer people that have money, the less the money is worth. Taken to its logical extreme. If you have 100% of the money, and I have 0, your money is worthless because it can't actually buy anything.
However, if 10% of the population has 100% of the money, then yiou can only trade with the other 10% because they're the only ones that have any money to trade with you.
I'm not talking about welfare, and i'm not talking about people getting things they don't deserve. I'm talking about people who deliberately game the system to gain more profit than they deserve at the expense of everyone else, and thus widening the economic gap between the rich and the poor.
When your economy depends on people buying things, then it makes no sense to rig the system so they won't have any money.
StarOffice was first released for Linux as version 3.1, in 1997. LyX, while technically released in 1995 (late 1995) wasn't really usable or mature until 1999.
Yes, there was software for Linux, but not a lot of software most people would want. It was largely scientific, and prototype quality software.
The floppy format issue had nothing to do with pre-emptivity. For example, if you wrote a simple 32 bit program that did nothing but count upwards, then formatted a floppy, you would find that the 32 counter would continue just fine. The only thing impeded were things that needed DOS or 16 bit access (which in Windows 95 meant pretty much anything that wrote to the display).
Pre-emptivity was not lost, but the ability to execute programs that needed 16 bit access was.
Microsoft did not "rush out" Windows 95. In fact, it went through a rigorous 3 year beta program, most of which was open to the public. They delayed its release by almost a year in order to focus on stability, compatibility, and performance improvements. In fact, in many ways, the Windows 95 beta program was one of the most intense, longest, and most successful in history.
Having said all that, Windows 95 made a lot of compromises to solve the problems that NT and OS/2 were facing, which was compatibility with existing software and hardware in the face of astronomically daunting permutations of poorly crafted software and drivers.
Windows 95 was designed to be a bridge between 16 bit windows and NT, a bridge that took far too long to get everyone across it.
I'm not sure what you mean by "regular versions of windows". NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, and 4.0 were all fully 32 bit systems running pre-emptively. Windows 95 was also pre-emptive. It's true that Windows 95 contained a lot of 16 bit code, but that had nothing to do with it being
"pre-emptive". "Pre-emptive" means that a process was given a time-slice, and if it did not cede control before that time-slice timed out, it would have control forcibly removed from it. Cooperative multitasking meant that the process would keep running until it ceded control.
Windows 95 had something called a 16 bit mutex. A mutex is a kernel object that controls access to code or resources. When a 16 bit process ran, it set the mutex (a sort of traffic cop) which prevented 32 bit code from transitioning to 16 bit code until the mutex was released.
What this meant was that even though the 16 bit subsystem was pre-emptively interrupted, a 32 bit process could not be scheduled if it needed to transition to 16 bit code. And, if a misbehaving app set the mutex, but did not release it, any code that needed to transition to 16 bit code was not elegible to run, which could give the appearance of the 16 bit code running for longer than it should.
Think of it like an amusement ride, where the same kid keeps riding the ride over and over because none of the other kids are are in line. It's not that the kid isn't giving up the ride, it's that nobody else is in line.
While there is some benefit to what you suggest, there is also many negatives. First, your forcing departments that have no real IT expertise to understand the value of their purchases, in effect to become experts in IT themselves. Take to its logical extreme, they would just hire their own departmental IT staff for their needs, and you end up with a massive cluster fuck.
Another potential issue is that IT now has to be "profitable", which means that IT has to build "profit" into its service model, and once they start padding their prices to make profit they start wanting to maximize that profit by either overcharging or under-providing.
Yet another issue is that IT will have no incentive to do anything that will harm the IT departments profitiability, even if it would overall benefit the company.
IT needs to be a "utility", like power and electric, with no profit and an outlook that it is there to serve and benefit the entire company.
Your argument ignores the fact that oil companies receive billions in subsidies and tax breaks, thus artificially barring alternative energies from being profitable on their own.
I'd be happy if they just cut the subsidies for oil, which would in turn make companies seek out alternatives. But if they're going to keep the oil subsidies, then they need to subsidize the alternatives as well.
Income disparity is a symptom. The real problem is that when you concentrate the wealth in a small percentage of the population with more than enough wealth than they could ever spend.. that money just sits there, rather than flowing through the economy. As the money is stockpiled, spending slows, and thus we see a recession.
Put the money in the hands of people that need it, and they will spend it.. on food, clothing, things they need to survive, and maybe a few luxuries.
An economy cannot survive if money does not flow.
What's stupid about this is that the wealthy should understand this. They should understand that their money gains value when the economy is strong. They should understand that stockpiling their money makes it worth LESS.
Actually, IE has almost always been tied to a major OS release. Remember, there was no new OS released between IE6 and IE7, and IE7 was tied to Vista (it was released shortly before Vista, but it's development was part of the Vista release). IE8 was tied to Windows 7. IE9 was not tied to a release, but IE10 will be tied to Windows 8.
Historically, IE6 was tied to XP, IE5 was tied to Windows 2000, IE 4 was tied to NT4/Windows 98, IE3 was tied to Windows 95 OSR2, etc..
It's true that after the death of Netscape, there was little reason for Microsoft to compete on the browser level, but Netscape died back in 1998 and there were two major IE releases after that. It took several years for Mozilla to ramp up, but even when it did, Microsoft did not respond.
Chrome was released well after IE7, so don't count Chrome as part of the picture. Although, Chrome may have been a big reason that Microsoft started moving towards standards compliance.
Umm.. yeah, well, sure.. The problem with the economy can be traced back to... the start of the economy. Wow, that's brilliant. That's like saying the problem with hunger can be traced back to when animals started ingesting food.
First, that 40% will likely pay for itself. Partially in the amount of load taken off the power grid, and partially in how much carbon footprint it will save. But, even ignoring that, this ignores the other benefits that come from developing new technologies. You need to fund the primitive technology in order for it to improve to the point where it becomes ubiquitious. Do you really think we'd have computers in our cell phones more powerful than desktops of 10 years ago if people didn't buy the inefficient computers way back when?
Technology has to progress, and that means people have to buy it, otherwise there are no funds for the next generation of product.
Certainly it's foolish to think any one sector will be the only reason the economy improves. And nobody would seriously mean that.
But it's also foolish to pretend that when someone makes a statement like "green energy will save the ecomony" that they mean that only green energy will do it. You're just being obtuse.
Green energy is not, and cannot be something that will show benefits immediately. But in 5-10 years time, will likely be a thriving industry. But only, if we invest in it as a nation (not just government, but private investing as well).
The government gives billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks to fossil fuel companies, why shouldn't they invest just as much in alteratives? Hell, how about half as much, or a quarter as much?
Harley's are designed to be "touring" bikes. The "potato-potato" noise is part of their trademark, and deliberately designed into it.
The exact same engine you see in a harley is used in performance bikes made by Buell, and they are pretty big in the racing circuit. They're just tuned differently.
Because it's too hard to read those tiny screens, especially when you're sufing or trying to read a book. Even navigation works better with larger screens.
Most of the "smart phone" features require more screen space to be effective.
Slashdot Mirror
Good advice.
It may not be as efficient, but donate to a local Occupy movement. Particularly in the northern climates, they need money for food, clothing, blankets, etc.. as these people are camping out (sometimes without camping gear because local ordinances do not allow it).
As a gift that keeps on giving, these people are doing things that will beneift YOU in the long run.
What's ironic is that if Facebooks development team spent half the amount of time they spend trying to make PHP perform well enough for them, writing code in a more conformant language.. they'd be done already.
No, Java (and other managed languages) are predicated on the assumption that Programmers have better things to do than manage memory.
And, for a large percentage of people, that assumption is true.
What you have described was what happened with Visual Basic -> VB.NET. This created a gigantic outcry, and there are still tons and tons of people writing code in VB6 because they don't want to take the hit of a conversion.
Java?
Many languages have evolved quite a bit over time. C#, for instance, has added numerous new features, ranging from generics to covariance, and adding entirely new dsl subsystems such as Linq. It's not just changed syntax either, but also core functionality, such as automatic properties, initializers, null coalescence, etc..
All without breaking backwards compatibility. Granted, a lot of these features are largely syntactic sugar on functionality that was already there, but there's also a lot that's new.
The fewer people that have money, the less the money is worth. Taken to its logical extreme. If you have 100% of the money, and I have 0, your money is worthless because it can't actually buy anything.
However, if 10% of the population has 100% of the money, then yiou can only trade with the other 10% because they're the only ones that have any money to trade with you.
I'm not talking about welfare, and i'm not talking about people getting things they don't deserve. I'm talking about people who deliberately game the system to gain more profit than they deserve at the expense of everyone else, and thus widening the economic gap between the rich and the poor.
When your economy depends on people buying things, then it makes no sense to rig the system so they won't have any money.
Linux didn't have dependency resolution software back then. You had to manually handle dependencies in most cases, and they could be significant.
StarOffice was first released for Linux as version 3.1, in 1997. LyX, while technically released in 1995 (late 1995) wasn't really usable or mature until 1999.
Yes, there was software for Linux, but not a lot of software most people would want. It was largely scientific, and prototype quality software.
The floppy format issue had nothing to do with pre-emptivity. For example, if you wrote a simple 32 bit program that did nothing but count upwards, then formatted a floppy, you would find that the 32 counter would continue just fine. The only thing impeded were things that needed DOS or 16 bit access (which in Windows 95 meant pretty much anything that wrote to the display).
Pre-emptivity was not lost, but the ability to execute programs that needed 16 bit access was.
Microsoft did not "rush out" Windows 95. In fact, it went through a rigorous 3 year beta program, most of which was open to the public. They delayed its release by almost a year in order to focus on stability, compatibility, and performance improvements. In fact, in many ways, the Windows 95 beta program was one of the most intense, longest, and most successful in history.
Having said all that, Windows 95 made a lot of compromises to solve the problems that NT and OS/2 were facing, which was compatibility with existing software and hardware in the face of astronomically daunting permutations of poorly crafted software and drivers.
Windows 95 was designed to be a bridge between 16 bit windows and NT, a bridge that took far too long to get everyone across it.
Uhh.. ctrl-alt-backspace killed X, and restarted it. That's like saying that ctrl-alt-del cured windows.
I'm not sure what you mean by "regular versions of windows". NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, and 4.0 were all fully 32 bit systems running pre-emptively. Windows 95 was also pre-emptive. It's true that Windows 95 contained a lot of 16 bit code, but that had nothing to do with it being
"pre-emptive". "Pre-emptive" means that a process was given a time-slice, and if it did not cede control before that time-slice timed out, it would have control forcibly removed from it. Cooperative multitasking meant that the process would keep running until it ceded control.
Windows 95 had something called a 16 bit mutex. A mutex is a kernel object that controls access to code or resources. When a 16 bit process ran, it set the mutex (a sort of traffic cop) which prevented 32 bit code from transitioning to 16 bit code until the mutex was released.
What this meant was that even though the 16 bit subsystem was pre-emptively interrupted, a 32 bit process could not be scheduled if it needed to transition to 16 bit code. And, if a misbehaving app set the mutex, but did not release it, any code that needed to transition to 16 bit code was not elegible to run, which could give the appearance of the 16 bit code running for longer than it should.
Think of it like an amusement ride, where the same kid keeps riding the ride over and over because none of the other kids are are in line. It's not that the kid isn't giving up the ride, it's that nobody else is in line.
While there is some benefit to what you suggest, there is also many negatives. First, your forcing departments that have no real IT expertise to understand the value of their purchases, in effect to become experts in IT themselves. Take to its logical extreme, they would just hire their own departmental IT staff for their needs, and you end up with a massive cluster fuck.
Another potential issue is that IT now has to be "profitable", which means that IT has to build "profit" into its service model, and once they start padding their prices to make profit they start wanting to maximize that profit by either overcharging or under-providing.
Yet another issue is that IT will have no incentive to do anything that will harm the IT departments profitiability, even if it would overall benefit the company.
IT needs to be a "utility", like power and electric, with no profit and an outlook that it is there to serve and benefit the entire company.
Your argument ignores the fact that oil companies receive billions in subsidies and tax breaks, thus artificially barring alternative energies from being profitable on their own.
I'd be happy if they just cut the subsidies for oil, which would in turn make companies seek out alternatives. But if they're going to keep the oil subsidies, then they need to subsidize the alternatives as well.
Income disparity is a symptom. The real problem is that when you concentrate the wealth in a small percentage of the population with more than enough wealth than they could ever spend.. that money just sits there, rather than flowing through the economy. As the money is stockpiled, spending slows, and thus we see a recession.
Put the money in the hands of people that need it, and they will spend it.. on food, clothing, things they need to survive, and maybe a few luxuries.
An economy cannot survive if money does not flow.
What's stupid about this is that the wealthy should understand this. They should understand that their money gains value when the economy is strong. They should understand that stockpiling their money makes it worth LESS.
Windows 7 can do one thing XP can't do, and that's run the browser in low-rights "protected mode". Even Chrome and Adobe are starting to use it.
Windows 7 has the same requirements as Windows Vista. So that's 5 year old machines (assuming you didn't buy underspeced machines back then).
Even XP machines from 2005 should run Windows 7 with nothing more than a RAM upgrade (which should be around $30 per machine).
Actually, IE has almost always been tied to a major OS release. Remember, there was no new OS released between IE6 and IE7, and IE7 was tied to Vista (it was released shortly before Vista, but it's development was part of the Vista release). IE8 was tied to Windows 7. IE9 was not tied to a release, but IE10 will be tied to Windows 8.
Historically, IE6 was tied to XP, IE5 was tied to Windows 2000, IE 4 was tied to NT4/Windows 98, IE3 was tied to Windows 95 OSR2, etc..
It's true that after the death of Netscape, there was little reason for Microsoft to compete on the browser level, but Netscape died back in 1998 and there were two major IE releases after that. It took several years for Mozilla to ramp up, but even when it did, Microsoft did not respond.
Chrome was released well after IE7, so don't count Chrome as part of the picture. Although, Chrome may have been a big reason that Microsoft started moving towards standards compliance.
Umm.. yeah, well, sure.. The problem with the economy can be traced back to... the start of the economy. Wow, that's brilliant. That's like saying the problem with hunger can be traced back to when animals started ingesting food.
First, that 40% will likely pay for itself. Partially in the amount of load taken off the power grid, and partially in how much carbon footprint it will save. But, even ignoring that, this ignores the other benefits that come from developing new technologies. You need to fund the primitive technology in order for it to improve to the point where it becomes ubiquitious. Do you really think we'd have computers in our cell phones more powerful than desktops of 10 years ago if people didn't buy the inefficient computers way back when?
Technology has to progress, and that means people have to buy it, otherwise there are no funds for the next generation of product.
Certainly it's foolish to think any one sector will be the only reason the economy improves. And nobody would seriously mean that.
But it's also foolish to pretend that when someone makes a statement like "green energy will save the ecomony" that they mean that only green energy will do it. You're just being obtuse.
Green energy is not, and cannot be something that will show benefits immediately. But in 5-10 years time, will likely be a thriving industry. But only, if we invest in it as a nation (not just government, but private investing as well).
The government gives billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks to fossil fuel companies, why shouldn't they invest just as much in alteratives? Hell, how about half as much, or a quarter as much?
Harley's are designed to be "touring" bikes. The "potato-potato" noise is part of their trademark, and deliberately designed into it.
The exact same engine you see in a harley is used in performance bikes made by Buell, and they are pretty big in the racing circuit. They're just tuned differently.
To be fair, Apple did almost fail several times, since 1976, and probalby would have if Jobs had not come back.
Because it's too hard to read those tiny screens, especially when you're sufing or trying to read a book. Even navigation works better with larger screens.
Most of the "smart phone" features require more screen space to be effective.