I challenge you to name any significant end-user visible difference between up-to-date versions of X11 and up-to-date versions of the Windows and Macintosh graphics subsystems.
Both Windows and Macintosh provide working mouse-cursor feedback for starting of new applications. This is, I have been led to believe, impossible with X11, due to the nature of application startup with it.
KDE attempts to emulate it, but fails in the case where applications terminate quickly without connecting back to the X server.
Windows (I'm not sure about Macs) automatically determines whether an application is a GUI one or a text one, and opens a terminal window for those that need them. Given the nature of X11 (a networking protocol that any application can use without being in a specific executable format) it is impossible to determine in advance of running an application whether it will use it.
Windows allows one application to modify the behaviour of another application's windows (by subclassing in a hook function). This is impossible under X11. (Again, I don't have a clue about Macs)
"X doesn't have a 'standard' widget toolkit," but no geek operating system will *ever* have a standard toolkit since emacs has one, firefox has one, KDE has one, GNOME has one, etc, and when those apps get ported over for the geeks moving to a system without X, the new system will have no standard toolkit.
You seemed to have missed a point: the reason these systems all have their own widget implementations is _because_ X doesn't provide one.
On porting them to a new window interface it would probably be easier (and certainly better) to use any native widgets provided by that interface than to port their existing widgets to it as well.
I'm pretty sure that firefox running on win32, BTW, uses native widgets. They're hard to emulate accurately enough for me to have not noticed a difference.
Can somebody tell me something that this system is better at than, say, Linux + KDE or Gnome? What does it do better than ReactOS? What does it do better than Linux + Y (or any other X11 replacement system) does?
there is no evidence of this nonsense called global warming.
Other than a general increasing trend in recorded temperatures over recent years. Sure, it isn't conclusive evidence (we don't know that this wouldn't be happening naturally without our intervention), but it is evidence.
Despite popular confusion, global warming and ozone depletion are two entirely independent phenomena with little or no relation to each other, except that both are probably caused by pollution of differing kinds.
An abstract of the article concludes cheerfully enough that 'greenhouse gas-induced warming may lead to a gradually increasing risk in the occurrence of highly destructive category-5 storms
That's not a conclusion. That's a hypothesis. When they conclude 'greenhouse gas-induced warming probably lead to a gradually increasing risk in the occurrence of highly destructive category-5 storms' or something equally as strong, let me know.
I mean, anyone with the slightest knowledge of the subject could have you told that this _may_ happen. What's needed is someone to get a good idea of how likely it is to be true.
I think the hologram on british pounds and the euros might give the game away. You can't scan a hologram.
Regardless of how hard it is to copy a hologram, I'm looking at the 20 pound note I happen to have in my pocket, and the hologram is of such appallingly low quality that you could just emboss a bit of tinfoil on there and nobody would ever notice the difference.
Security holograms have to actually be visible to be useful.
My understanding is that this method has now been superceded by a more secure one that has not been cracked.
Some copiers still use the five circle pattern, and it is still included in currency (it exists in UK currency also -- for instance in the twenty pound note in my pocket its in the green circles in the section of 'music' on the front) in order to stop it from being copied by these copiers, but the method used by photoshop and some printer drivers is substantially more complicated and, AFAIK, has not been entirely 'cracked' yet.
How many Pentiums do you know can run for 16 hours on a AA battery? Stupid donkey, you probably think there is a small PC motherboard inside your MP3 player?
No, but I strongly suspect ther is something like one of these in there, which ought to be more than capable of performing the decoding required.
> Do you have a reference to a specification of the changes involved?
It's all in the revised JVM specification.
Which I can't find on Sun's site. The link to virtual machine specification (http://java.sun.com/docs/books/vmspec/2nd-edition/html/VMSpecTOC.doc.html) seems to only describe stuff that dates back to the 1.2 days.
Do you have a URL for the up-to-date version? It seems the changes here were much more serious than I had believed, and I might need to update some of my software to cope with them.:(
I have no fewer hardware problems with Windows than I do with Linux.
Well, you've been lucky. I've frequently had to go a long way out of my way, spend hours in research, and order more expensive equipment in order to get hardware that will work with Linux. My main problems were with ISDN hardware a few years back and wireless networking adapters right now. In both of these cases, everything I have available from my usual local suppliers was/is based on unsupported chipsets, meaning I had to purchase via mail order.
I can't use KDE on Windows.
Yes you can. It works fine under the cygwin environment.
I can't use k3b on windows, I have to spend $100 on Nero.
There is plenty of free CD burning software available for Windows. I, personally, use the command line tools mkisofs and cdrdao, although I know that there are GUI front ends available for them.
And if you're going to switch all of the main applications of some nebulous naive user, then what's the difference of going a little further and switching to Linux as well?
The point is that they don't have to switch everything, all at once. They can learn to use one OSS application at a time, and then move on to the next when they're happy with it. Then, once most of the apps they're using are open source (and presumably equivalent to Linux versions), they can switch to Linux painlessly.
Currently it would be very difficult to develop for the.NET platform using any reasonably priced packages. Reasonably priced compared to the amount of money you would like to make, that is.
Huh? Everything you need to develop.NET software is free. I can't think of a much more reasonable price.
(I'm using the MS.NET SDK, although I could be using Mono on Linux if I preferred, along with the sharpdevelop IDE, which I think may be Windows specific.)
because of hardware limitations the device still does not support MP3 playback
What kind of hardware are they running it on that isn't capable of decoding a 128kbit MP3 in real time (which is all most people want out of an MP3 player)? An 8MHz 8086?
I mean, seriously, I used to play MP3s on my old Pentium 100MHz, while doing other work with them... their hardware would have to be very limited to not be able to keep up with that.
OK -- only one of those is a change to the bytecode format, the rest are attribute changes which, due to the clever design of the class file format, a complying implementation of the previous version should be able to get along with just fine.
I'll admit I wasn't aware of the change to 'ldc'. Do you have a reference to a specification of the changes involved?
Personally, when a company lies in their marketing material (e.g. by selling a limited product without mentioning that limitations), I don't feel sueing them is "frivilous". I would describe it instead as "fighting for a fair deal for the consumer".
Also, no lawyers were involved, so they can't have benefited.
I submitted a story to/. a while back, about someone who'd written a novel that involved an unusual game show. Then (before the novel was published, IIRC) some TV station decided to produce a show based on the same concept.
The novelist, it turns out, had patented the idea of this TV program and threatened to sue them.
That's the way they punctuate it. I prefer 1-800-RULE-GIT.
It's not just the key, though. They only supply a "restore CD" which will wipe your hard disk and reinstall the OS with drivers, etc, customised for the machine they originally sold you.
This practice ought to be declared anti-competitive and made illegal, IMO. It prevents people from being able to effectively set up dual-boot systems.
I paid for my copy of Windows XP and I expect to get my use out of it whether it follows MSFT's rules or not. I would assume the same rings true elsewhere. Who the hell wants to pay 20%+ of their PC cost for Windows if they can't even use it?
Back in 2001, my company purchased a laptop from a well known UK retail chain. That chain had been advertising that the laptop "includes Windows XP Home" (with no notes about any further restrictions on use).
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I challenge you to name any significant end-user visible difference between up-to-date versions of X11 and up-to-date versions of the Windows and Macintosh graphics subsystems.
Both Windows and Macintosh provide working mouse-cursor feedback for starting of new applications. This is, I have been led to believe, impossible with X11, due to the nature of application startup with it.
KDE attempts to emulate it, but fails in the case where applications terminate quickly without connecting back to the X server.
Windows (I'm not sure about Macs) automatically determines whether an application is a GUI one or a text one, and opens a terminal window for those that need them. Given the nature of X11 (a networking protocol that any application can use without being in a specific executable format) it is impossible to determine in advance of running an application whether it will use it.
Windows allows one application to modify the behaviour of another application's windows (by subclassing in a hook function). This is impossible under X11. (Again, I don't have a clue about Macs)
X (on UNIX) is what Apple looked at when they came out with the Mac.
So why doesn't OSX use it?
"X doesn't have a 'standard' widget toolkit," but no geek operating system will *ever* have a standard toolkit since emacs has one, firefox has one, KDE has one, GNOME has one, etc, and when those apps get ported over for the geeks moving to a system without X, the new system will have no standard toolkit.
You seemed to have missed a point: the reason these systems all have their own widget implementations is _because_ X doesn't provide one.
On porting them to a new window interface it would probably be easier (and certainly better) to use any native widgets provided by that interface than to port their existing widgets to it as well.
I'm pretty sure that firefox running on win32, BTW, uses native widgets. They're hard to emulate accurately enough for me to have not noticed a difference.
I believe the low latency patches made it into the core kernel for 2.6
Can somebody tell me something that this system is better at than, say, Linux + KDE or Gnome? What does it do better than ReactOS? What does it do better than Linux + Y (or any other X11 replacement system) does?
Ozone is actually a very effective greenhouse gas, more effective than CO2.
OK, but that's my point improved... they aren't the same thing -- ozone depletion actually reduces global warming, if that's true.
Sorry, I wouldn't want to live in Florida even if I did expect conditions to continue pretty much as they are now.
there is no evidence of this nonsense called global warming.
Other than a general increasing trend in recorded temperatures over recent years. Sure, it isn't conclusive evidence (we don't know that this wouldn't be happening naturally without our intervention), but it is evidence.
Despite popular confusion, global warming and ozone depletion are two entirely independent phenomena with little or no relation to each other, except that both are probably caused by pollution of differing kinds.
An abstract of the article concludes cheerfully enough that 'greenhouse gas-induced warming may lead to a gradually increasing risk in the occurrence of highly destructive category-5 storms
That's not a conclusion. That's a hypothesis. When they conclude 'greenhouse gas-induced warming probably lead to a gradually increasing risk in the occurrence of highly destructive category-5 storms' or something equally as strong, let me know.
I mean, anyone with the slightest knowledge of the subject could have you told that this _may_ happen. What's needed is someone to get a good idea of how likely it is to be true.
I think the hologram on british pounds and the euros might give the game away. You can't scan a hologram.
Regardless of how hard it is to copy a hologram, I'm looking at the 20 pound note I happen to have in my pocket, and the hologram is of such appallingly low quality that you could just emboss a bit of tinfoil on there and nobody would ever notice the difference.
Security holograms have to actually be visible to be useful.
My understanding is that this method has now been superceded by a more secure one that has not been cracked.
Some copiers still use the five circle pattern, and it is still included in currency (it exists in UK currency also -- for instance in the twenty pound note in my pocket its in the green circles in the section of 'music' on the front) in order to stop it from being copied by these copiers, but the method used by photoshop and some printer drivers is substantially more complicated and, AFAIK, has not been entirely 'cracked' yet.
How many Pentiums do you know can run for 16 hours on a AA battery? Stupid donkey, you probably think there is a small PC motherboard inside your MP3 player?
No, but I strongly suspect ther is something like one of these in there, which ought to be more than capable of performing the decoding required.
> Do you have a reference to a specification of the changes involved?
n /html/VMSpecTOC.doc.html)
:(
It's all in the revised JVM specification.
Which I can't find on Sun's site. The link to virtual machine specification (http://java.sun.com/docs/books/vmspec/2nd-editio
seems to only describe stuff that dates back to the 1.2 days.
Do you have a URL for the up-to-date version? It seems the changes here were much more serious than I had believed, and I might need to update some of my software to cope with them.
I have no fewer hardware problems with Windows than I do with Linux.
Well, you've been lucky. I've frequently had to go a long way out of my way, spend hours in research, and order more expensive equipment in order to get hardware that will work with Linux. My main problems were with ISDN hardware a few years back and wireless networking adapters right now. In both of these cases, everything I have available from my usual local suppliers was/is based on unsupported chipsets, meaning I had to purchase via mail order.
I can't use KDE on Windows.
Yes you can. It works fine under the cygwin environment.
I can't use k3b on windows, I have to spend $100 on Nero.
There is plenty of free CD burning software available for Windows. I, personally, use the command line tools mkisofs and cdrdao, although I know that there are GUI front ends available for them.
And if you're going to switch all of the main applications of some nebulous naive user, then what's the difference of going a little further and switching to Linux as well?
The point is that they don't have to switch everything, all at once. They can learn to use one OSS application at a time, and then move on to the next when they're happy with it. Then, once most of the apps they're using are open source (and presumably equivalent to Linux versions), they can switch to Linux painlessly.
Currently it would be very difficult to develop for the .NET platform using any reasonably priced packages. Reasonably priced compared to the amount of money you would like to make, that is.
.NET software is free. I can't think of a much more reasonable price.
.NET SDK, although I could be using Mono on Linux if I preferred, along with the sharpdevelop IDE, which I think may be Windows specific.)
Huh? Everything you need to develop
(I'm using the MS
because of hardware limitations the device still does not support MP3 playback
What kind of hardware are they running it on that isn't capable of decoding a 128kbit MP3 in real time (which is all most people want out of an MP3 player)? An 8MHz 8086?
I mean, seriously, I used to play MP3s on my old Pentium 100MHz, while doing other work with them... their hardware would have to be very limited to not be able to keep up with that.
OK -- only one of those is a change to the bytecode format, the rest are attribute changes which, due to the clever design of the class file format, a complying implementation of the previous version should be able to get along with just fine.
I'll admit I wasn't aware of the change to 'ldc'. Do you have a reference to a specification of the changes involved?
Personally, when a company lies in their marketing material (e.g. by selling a limited product without mentioning that limitations), I don't feel sueing them is "frivilous". I would describe it instead as "fighting for a fair deal for the consumer".
Also, no lawyers were involved, so they can't have benefited.
You've obviously never worked with a Java programmer who declares every method "public throws Exception".
If it is possible to do it wrong, they will.
I submitted a story to /. a while back, about someone who'd written a novel that involved an unusual game show. Then (before the novel was published, IIRC) some TV station decided to produce a show based on the same concept.
The novelist, it turns out, had patented the idea of this TV program and threatened to sue them.
1-800-RU-LEGIT, I think
That's the way they punctuate it. I prefer 1-800-RULE-GIT.
It's not just the key, though. They only supply a "restore CD" which will wipe your hard disk and reinstall the OS with drivers, etc, customised for the machine they originally sold you.
This practice ought to be declared anti-competitive and made illegal, IMO. It prevents people from being able to effectively set up dual-boot systems.
I paid for my copy of Windows XP and I expect to get my use out of it whether it follows MSFT's rules or not. I would assume the same rings true elsewhere. Who the hell wants to pay 20%+ of their PC cost for Windows if they can't even use it?
Back in 2001, my company purchased a laptop from a well known UK retail chain. That chain had been advertising that the laptop "includes Windows XP Home" (with no notes about any further restrictions on use).
We threatened to sue them. They settled.
Is moderating my post about the misapplication of "redundant" as "redundant" supposed to be some kind of irony. It is _clearly_ offtopic.
(Goodbye, karma.)
Best way to crash a server, give the programmer unmanaged exceptions.
No, best way to crash a server is to hire an incompetent programmer.
That said, I do prefer the Java way of handling exceptions.