Skype died just after being launched, as did gnomes skinning thingy, but thats probably because i have a bit of a hacky way of launching the skinning in evolution (launch the gnome theme chooser).
neat overall...
someone's just told me that there's a package that basically does this, but respects service dependancies.. going to have a look on freshmeat / sourceforge for it now..
I'm not convinced they are all missing the point you know..
There are more reasons to switch than just apps. The big one at the moment, and one of the big reaons that Firefox is getting big attention is security, and *nix wins hands down on that pretty much every time (pretty much... I'm looking at you Lindows..). Also there's the cost Windows, especially for business and government.
What about the big business and government desktop migrations that are starting by migrating people from Office to OO.o, and then moving people to Linux for the second phase?
The truth is you're not going to see migration to Linux by the consumer until it's common in business and government, and I think those two sectors are far more pragmatic about the advantages of Linux than you imply.
One likely cause of some of his graphics problems (framerate) is the use of an nVidia 5xxx card. I've played with a 5600, and it seems to be emulating dx9 in software, but saying the card is dx8. Generally it's just very slow.
I tried setting the mat_dxlevel command line arg to 80 for reasonable performance, and later to 70 for a nice high framerate. This does cancel out a lot of the pretty shaders, but to be honest I really didn't notice them all that much before turning them off, and haven't missed them since.
Rendering say an average of 15 characters per name = 150,000 characters, now how many curve points per character? Let's say *at least* 10, which is pretty unlikely = 1.5 million curve points, now render the curves....
Yes, it's a vulnerability in the Sun implementation of the Java platform, but not Java the language or the Java platform generally.
There are other Java runtimes, which are allowed to use the name Java because they pass the conformance tests (such as IBM's Java runtime), they would not be vulnerable to this exploit.
It's certainly not wrong. However in the States it is illegal under the DMCA to bypass copy protection, even on something you bought.
Personally I think this whole Windows activation style thing is appalling. EULAs are almost certainly not binding, but what are you going to do about it? HL2 is still likely to be the best selling game of the year.
Personally I'm sorely tempted to pirate the game so I don't have to put up with this Steam BS, and send Valve a cheque;)
Anything that I don't need to keep goes in tmp. For example, downloaded RPMs that I just want to install, links to movie clips that freinds send me, most downloads (I move them elsewhere afterwards if I want to keep them), experimental compiles (moving the dir somewhere else if I keep it installed and want to keep the installer for cleaning it up later).
~/storage/ contains anything I want to keep. That includes project files, music, backups and so on.
If I need to make space then ~/tmp gets a scrubbing, if I want to back up or move to a new machine then it's a simple case of copying ~/storage and any ~/.foo config stuff to the new box (or backup in case of a system re-install).
I'm not confusing weak typing with dynamic typing.
Personally I dislike both in principle but am willing to put up with them for speed of development. *AS LONG* as I'm working with people that can find the right end of a cluestick..
Weak typing for example is a real boon to code simplicity when working with the web.
Yeah yeah, I write all my tests before my code honest, and yes there's always 3 of us sat round my monitor. But back in the real world, in my experience type errors are the sort of thing most likely to slip through the test suite.
Contrary to popular wisdom I find that actually it's supposedly trivial errors that are the hardest to track down, and the most likely to end up biting you on the arse 3 months after deployment.
There's a very good reason for statically typed languages. They promote code that is more reliable. If you're expecting a particular return type from my API then you should be able to be confident that that is what you'll get, otherwise someone else's fuckup can introduce bugs into yours without you even knowing. Being able to add a to b is fine until c returns a Car. How many is 6 + Honda?
Dynamically typed languages are great for rapid development. I use PHP5 for a lot of smaller developments, because it strikes a nice balance between speed of development and safety. However if I need to develop a large reliable system I would choose Java over something like PHP or Ruby every time.
No this would be implemented in hardware in the players.
A side effect might be that Linux couldn't legally play the discs, but I don't know how that stacks up against people being able to play WMP files on mplayer with the Windows codecs...?
Well yeah I basically agree with what you're saying, but perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough.
Yes the wider your skillbase the more adaptable you're going to be, unless of course you spread yourself too thin.
My point about higher level languages wasn't that they're more maintainable by default, far from it. My point was that people using them tend to have a different set of priorities in the working lives.
To go back to schedulers for example, when you write a scheduler, I imagine one of the key aims is for it to be as fast and lightweight as possible, and to that end, you're going to write it to do one job very efficiently. The chances of your boss turning round and saying "yeah, now we want it to integrate with our new CRM system" are probably quite low...
However if you're writing business applications then there is much more emphasis on changing needs. Everything you do has to be with the assumption that at some point, probably sooner rather than later, someone is going to turn round and say "actually, you know that system you wrote? We wan't it to do something it was never designed to do. By wednesday please."
So cards on the table. Yes I get a bit defensive when people start telling me I'm a coding lightweight simply because I can't reel off the major sorting algorithms off the top of my head. Yeah, I've been over them, I think I wrote a bubblesort once for some reason when I was about 15, but you know what? In 8 years writing business applications I've never needed to write a complex sort. It's just not the sort of thing that's important.
What I *do* need to understand includes things like good OO design, so that changes to systems my code interfaces with won't require re-writes of more than a small amount of my code. Understanding where the typical bottlenecks in the types of applications I work on tend to be (the database 9 times out of 10). Again with databases, how to efficiently abstract database logic from the main application logic so that changes in schema for other systems don't require a re-write of the one I'm working on.
None of these things are rocket science, but they're my domain, and in my experience, lower level coders who move into this area often don't really understand these things and I end up inheriting a codebase that's 10% more efficient, but needs major re-architecting for relatively minor changes. That's fine, they're from a different discipline, but not necessarily a 'better' one.
Do many C programmers understand the details of kernel scheduling? No, they don't need to.
Do you think many programmers who know their sorting algorithms back to front understand the details of compiler optimisations? No, they don't need to.
Programmers working in higher level languages have a different knowledge set, not an inferior one. Like writing long-term maintainable code. Like writing non-brittle code which will be adaptable to business needs.
There are different pressures in different areas.
I worked with a C programmer who was exceptional at writing incredibly efficient, small footprint C. That was great, but he was meant to be writing business applications, and his incredibly efficient code couldn't be easily adapted when the business needs changed radically.
Wish my modpoints hadn't just run out, you've hit the nail on the head.
I would imagine many of these people retrained as computer animators, which Disney, Pixar et al still need.
Yep, a lot of them did. Animators are more than just artists, they understand how to make movement look right, and how to express emotions drama and humour through it.
Slashdot Mirror
Just tried that on FC3, worked like a charm.
Skype died just after being launched, as did gnomes skinning thingy, but thats probably because i have a bit of a hacky way of launching the skinning in evolution (launch the gnome theme chooser).
neat overall...
someone's just told me that there's a package that basically does this, but respects service dependancies.. going to have a look on freshmeat / sourceforge for it now..
I'm not convinced they are all missing the point you know..
There are more reasons to switch than just apps. The big one at the moment, and one of the big reaons that Firefox is getting big attention is security, and *nix wins hands down on that pretty much every time (pretty much... I'm looking at you Lindows..). Also there's the cost Windows, especially for business and government.
What about the big business and government desktop migrations that are starting by migrating people from Office to OO.o, and then moving people to Linux for the second phase?
The truth is you're not going to see migration to Linux by the consumer until it's common in business and government, and I think those two sectors are far more pragmatic about the advantages of Linux than you imply.
One likely cause of some of his graphics problems (framerate) is the use of an nVidia 5xxx card. I've played with a 5600, and it seems to be emulating dx9 in software, but saying the card is dx8. Generally it's just very slow.
I tried setting the mat_dxlevel command line arg to 80 for reasonable performance, and later to 70 for a nice high framerate. This does cancel out a lot of the pretty shaders, but to be honest I really didn't notice them all that much before turning them off, and haven't missed them since.
Yes and calculations take time...
Rendering say an average of 15 characters per name = 150,000 characters, now how many curve points per character? Let's say *at least* 10, which is pretty unlikely = 1.5 million curve points, now render the curves....
but that's just a calculation right?
No because the heat generated by the Prescott's core far outweighs the benefits to the research ;)
The new default winter theme for e16 is about as plain and simple as you can get without removing theming all together.
it was enough to make me give enlightenment another go, and i've been finding it to be excellent.
screenshot
That's the second one he did, which he was commisioned to do on the basis of this original one in the /. story..
Yes, it's a vulnerability in the Sun implementation of the Java platform, but not Java the language or the Java platform generally.
There are other Java runtimes, which are allowed to use the name Java because they pass the conformance tests (such as IBM's Java runtime), they would not be vulnerable to this exploit.
It's certainly not wrong. However in the States it is illegal under the DMCA to bypass copy protection, even on something you bought.
;)
Personally I think this whole Windows activation style thing is appalling. EULAs are almost certainly not binding, but what are you going to do about it? HL2 is still likely to be the best selling game of the year.
Personally I'm sorely tempted to pirate the game so I don't have to put up with this Steam BS, and send Valve a cheque
Personally I have a ~/tmp and a ~/storage
Anything that I don't need to keep goes in tmp. For example, downloaded RPMs that I just want to install, links to movie clips that freinds send me, most downloads (I move them elsewhere afterwards if I want to keep them), experimental compiles (moving the dir somewhere else if I keep it installed and want to keep the installer for cleaning it up later).
~/storage/ contains anything I want to keep. That includes project files, music, backups and so on.
If I need to make space then ~/tmp gets a scrubbing, if I want to back up or move to a new machine then it's a simple case of copying ~/storage and any ~/.foo config stuff to the new box (or backup in case of a system re-install).
You can be sure they'll make damn sure the license is incompatible with the GPL.
I'm not confusing weak typing with dynamic typing.
Personally I dislike both in principle but am willing to put up with them for speed of development. *AS LONG* as I'm working with people that can find the right end of a cluestick..
Weak typing for example is a real boon to code simplicity when working with the web.
Yeah yeah, I write all my tests before my code honest, and yes there's always 3 of us sat round my monitor. But back in the real world, in my experience type errors are the sort of thing most likely to slip through the test suite.
Contrary to popular wisdom I find that actually it's supposedly trivial errors that are the hardest to track down, and the most likely to end up biting you on the arse 3 months after deployment.
OK I just re-read his post again and now feel suitably silly.
I didn't notice the last bit about clicking refresh honestly!
Well at least I didn't have mod points that day eh?
*hides*
Oh please get over yourself.
There's a very good reason for statically typed languages. They promote code that is more reliable. If you're expecting a particular return type from my API then you should be able to be confident that that is what you'll get, otherwise someone else's fuckup can introduce bugs into yours without you even knowing. Being able to add a to b is fine until c returns a Car. How many is 6 + Honda?
Dynamically typed languages are great for rapid development. I use PHP5 for a lot of smaller developments, because it strikes a nice balance between speed of development and safety. However if I need to develop a large reliable system I would choose Java over something like PHP or Ruby every time.
I'm sure Apple are perfectly happy with that arrangement. iTunes doesn't really make a profit (if any it's negligable), it's there to sell iPods.
I'm not the OP, but product activation was one of the 'features' of XP that persuaded me to finally move to linux as my main desktop.
-1 : Joke whooshes over head ;)
No this would be implemented in hardware in the players.
A side effect might be that Linux couldn't legally play the discs, but I don't know how that stacks up against people being able to play WMP files on mplayer with the Windows codecs...?
http://www.ezydvd.com.au/item.zml/229861
*high fives*
;)
Thanks for articulating what I couldn't after this wine...
Well that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it
Well yeah I basically agree with what you're saying, but perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough.
:)
Yes the wider your skillbase the more adaptable you're going to be, unless of course you spread yourself too thin.
My point about higher level languages wasn't that they're more maintainable by default, far from it. My point was that people using them tend to have a different set of priorities in the working lives.
To go back to schedulers for example, when you write a scheduler, I imagine one of the key aims is for it to be as fast and lightweight as possible, and to that end, you're going to write it to do one job very efficiently. The chances of your boss turning round and saying "yeah, now we want it to integrate with our new CRM system" are probably quite low...
However if you're writing business applications then there is much more emphasis on changing needs. Everything you do has to be with the assumption that at some point, probably sooner rather than later, someone is going to turn round and say "actually, you know that system you wrote? We wan't it to do something it was never designed to do. By wednesday please."
So cards on the table. Yes I get a bit defensive when people start telling me I'm a coding lightweight simply because I can't reel off the major sorting algorithms off the top of my head. Yeah, I've been over them, I think I wrote a bubblesort once for some reason when I was about 15, but you know what? In 8 years writing business applications I've never needed to write a complex sort. It's just not the sort of thing that's important.
What I *do* need to understand includes things like good OO design, so that changes to systems my code interfaces with won't require re-writes of more than a small amount of my code. Understanding where the typical bottlenecks in the types of applications I work on tend to be (the database 9 times out of 10). Again with databases, how to efficiently abstract database logic from the main application logic so that changes in schema for other systems don't require a re-write of the one I'm working on.
None of these things are rocket science, but they're my domain, and in my experience, lower level coders who move into this area often don't really understand these things and I end up inheriting a codebase that's 10% more efficient, but needs major re-architecting for relatively minor changes. That's fine, they're from a different discipline, but not necessarily a 'better' one.
Oh dear that turned into a rant didn't it?
Hell yeah ;p
I was quite a fan of Forts though. But my favourite was probably Bam4, great scouting map. Not a popular choice it seems though.
*sigh*
Do many C programmers understand the details of kernel scheduling? No, they don't need to.
Do you think many programmers who know their sorting algorithms back to front understand the details of compiler optimisations? No, they don't need to.
Programmers working in higher level languages have a different knowledge set, not an inferior one. Like writing long-term maintainable code. Like writing non-brittle code which will be adaptable to business needs.
There are different pressures in different areas.
I worked with a C programmer who was exceptional at writing incredibly efficient, small footprint C. That was great, but he was meant to be writing business applications, and his incredibly efficient code couldn't be easily adapted when the business needs changed radically.
Wish my modpoints hadn't just run out, you've hit the nail on the head.
I would imagine many of these people retrained as computer animators, which Disney, Pixar et al still need.
Yep, a lot of them did. Animators are more than just artists, they understand how to make movement look right, and how to express emotions drama and humour through it.
Isn't there a cut down VS.NET version available for free? Or is it just the compiler and some tools?
Also, there's a link on there to tools for converting MAX/GMAX files to D3 format.