My thoughts exactly. I cringe to think to what it would be like to maintain an entire Unix application that did everything in X11. Even with a development environment that was built to support X11, I think it would still be a nightmare. X11 is good for little apps like calculators and graphical terminals, but is not the best way to do the entire application.
Or, on the other hand, maybe we could make widget libraries that do all the heavy lifting of X11 for us? Then we could program to the widget libraries rather than the uber-complex X11 drawing library! Genius!
The same is true of AJAX. Right now, everyone is programming at the lowest level. What AJAX needs is a higher level set of widgets that can accelerate development. Mozilla took the XUL path, but that won't work for cross-browser applications. We need a general-purpose widget library written using the standard HTML DOM. Then AJAX will become a quick and easy option.
Unfortunately, Atlas isn't it. This is just a collection of custom tags to simplify and standardize ASP programming.
For those who don't know, Atlas is Microsoft's AJAX API for ASP.NET 2, which they claim will greatly reduce the effort in developing AJAX style applications on their platform.
Really? I thought it was a rocket.* </sarcasm>
Sorry, but I'm decidedly unimpressed. I was sitting here thinking that Microsoft might be in a position to nail the AJAX market with ASP.NET. If so, then there would need to be an immediate cross-platform response. As much as I'd like to be releaved that Microsoft hasn't taken the lead, I'm finding myself shocked at how absolutely terrible this library is. There's not a shred of AJAX to be found.
In a nutshell, this library is a collection of ASP custom tags (similar to the ones that have existed in JSP for half a decade or so) that produce common controls like buttons, advertisements, tables with data, and a few other bits and pieces. There is no XMLHttpRequest communication that I can find, and precious little DHTML. Unless I'm missing something, this library is a wash.
Is Microsoft really having that much trouble understanding a concept that they invented? Because this library certainly suggests this is the case.
* Sorry for the sarcasm, it's not directed at the poster. Just my own annoyance at Microsoft polluting the technology sphere with such nonsense.
What ever happened to the hype about dedicated physics chips?
1. "Game" Physics tend to be more fun than real-world physics. (Who really wants to compute orbits for their starfighter? We want to bank on afterburners!)
2. Game programmers haven't yet managed to create complex enough engines to demand physics engines. See point 1.
3. Game production is hideously expensive these days, and game programmers are already stretched to the limit. If you try to get realistic physics like rigid body dynamics into the game as well, the game will never get shipped. It's far easier to show animations for special effects like a train moving rather than properly compute the force vectors applied to the entire machine during the compression/expansion cycles.
Besides, the story tech is just for fancier particle physics like a wall of bricks collapsing. Very cool to look at, but not useful in a general sense.
Or did you just come and bitch on/. about things not working exactly as they do in Windows?
Dude. Seriously. Not helping.
Installation problems always have and always will be key areas that users complain about. Users think of Macs and Windows machines as "easy" in that respect, because the OS ships with the machine. They've completely forgotten how they used to have that kid next door come over to install Windows for them in exchange for a few bucks or some homemade cookies.
A more complete analysis would show that Linux needs the crucial "early adopters" in the home market who are willing to put up with its faults to have the latest and greatest. Those early adopters would then drive sales of OEM Linux machines.
Unfortunately, Linux has already experienced quite a few cycles of early adopters. Every time it fails on the follow through. Whether it be support for the distro ending (e.g. JDS), a breakneck upgrade cycle (e.g. Mandrake/Mandriva), or just plain user unfriendliness (e.g. user can't upgrade to latest package X from the repository because they need to upgrade to the latest OS version), users end up becoming frustrated with Linux and leave. The vendors take notice of this and drop support for their commercial Linux software. Thus Linux loses popular support until the next cycle.
I've talked about this many times before. Linux distro providers need to decide if they're really trying to target the home desktop or not. If they are, they need to stop targetting the workstation market and make something that really blows the home market away. Linspire is pretty much the only distro that is taking this step. It's too bad that they've got their technology wired all wrong. Perhaps Ubuntu can do it, but it will need to nail both the OEM Linux market, as well as user's needs going forward. Given that much of their success and failure is still dependent on areas farther back in the pipeline (e.g. GNOME), only time will tell if Ubuntu becomes a serious contender in the home.
Interesting site. Unfortunately, it's only a "FIRST POST!" tracker. It doesn't really compare the quality of the two sites. Digg has its ups in that just about everything that you might find cool flies through there. On the other hand, that also means that the noise ratio is pretty darn high. On top of that, Slashdot has a much better comment system. (Though Digg is really trying with their latest Slashdot-ripped-off-threaded-comment-system.)
Slashdot's focus and superior discussion forums really put it ahead of Digg for most professional users. As a result, the far more attractive (and generally better constructed) Digg ends up attracted far more students, highschoolers, and budding programmers than it may intend.
Final Analysis? Go whereever you feel more comfortable. The Internet is big enough for both.
The article advertises itself as "brutal honesty that leaves out the free software philosophy." With a headline like that, I was hoping to get a real analysis of what's going right and what's going wrong for all three. Instead, the author ends up dodging the key positives and negatives of each system in favor of more nebulous concepts like available software. His conclusion is that Linux is losing because it doesn't have eductional titles or tax software. Excuse me?
A more thorough analysis would have focused on why these packages are lacking. What is so special about Windows and Mac that they have these markets clinched? Does his analysis show that Linux needs this software, or is it actually competing in a different market? These are the types of questions that are actually important.
Finally, some of his analysis was just confusing. According to the author, Apple is nicer than Windows because they make nice hardware. Wait. Aren't we comparing software? If hardware is a key issue, why isn't that brought up in all three analyses? And why does he believe that the higher price of Apple's hardware makes it only appealing to Enterprise users when it's quite obviously home users who use it?
All in all, I give him an A+ for effort, but a D- for content. He's really trying, but he doesn't have any real goal in mind during his comparisons. As a result, his analysis comes out confused and unfocused.
I fear you're confused. "Baud" is the number of changes per second in a modulated signal, not the bits per second. Since we're discussing data changes per second on a serial line, the term "baud" is correct.
I'd invite you to look up the origins of serial communications for a better understanding of what "baud" really is. Note that RS-232 was a direct descendent of Baudot's serial communications work.
Re:Probably the worst beginner's distribution
on
Fedora Core 5 Available
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
FWIW, Red Hat has always liked to be on the Bleeding Edge of Linux, but in their own way. (e.g. If GNOME 2.x isn't ready to ship, make quick patches around the problems and ship it.) This tended to get them into a lot of trouble, because their OS would have all kinds of idiosynchrasies and inconsistencies that other distributions didn't exhibit.
RedHat decided to address the matter with the Fedora branch. Fedora is a perpetual beta of RedHat's enterprise product. By releasing this beta, RedHat is able to get real-world testing of their latest tech before they foist it upon paying customers.
As a result, Fedora tends to look very nice and has a lot of nice features that are hard to find elsewhere. (e.g. Its beautiful BlueCurve theme.) Unfortunately, it also means that you're testing beta software. Unless you are completely comfortable with that, you shouldn't use Fedora.
So you're right. Your professor was being a little kooky on this one. He was probably blinded by the "latest and greatest" mentality that tends to permeate the software industry.
Fedora is a hat. You see the "Red Hat" logo? The type of hat the guy is wearing in the logo is called a Fedora. Given that the hat is named after a Frech play, I don't think that anyone is really worried about what it means in Portugese.
FWIW, the new Fedora version does look nice. Each version of GTK & Fedora really help smooth out the looks. However, am I the only one who thinks that the latest bluecurve is starting to look a lot like the alloy look and feel?
It's too bad that RedHat got out of the Desktop business at just the point where they started to become a strong competitor. Fedora has really been feeling a lot more solid than their jury-rigging of the past. Add in features like Multimedia playback for a RedHat branded Desktop, and you'd end up with a pretty decent home machine.
But just what in the hell is a 'High Resolution Timer'?
A "timer" is a software or hardware device that keeps track of how many time increments have passed. The "resolution" of the timer is how small the increments are. Thus a timer that tracks the number of milliseconds (1000 increments per second) wouldn't be of a particularly high resolution, a timer that tracks nanosecond increments (1,000,000 increments per second) would be.
The purpose of high resolution timers is to provide better performance through more accurate digital timing. Take a serial port as an example. At 9600 baud, the timer it uses will "tick" about 9,600 times per second. The computers on each side align with these ticks to know that there's new data on the line. Assuming that the electronics can handle it in a stable fashion, the speed of that connection can be increased by changing the timer used for the port. On many serial ports, this speed can be over 100,000 baud, or 100,000 ticks per second.
Modern USB ports can easily require timing in the nanosecond range to produce a high speed signal. Thus the need for high resolution timers capable of producing the necessary signal. Many other uses (such as video signal synchronization) exist.
Keep in mind that Sony is a Linux supporter. In the past, they've released Playstation dev kits that are based on the Linux Operating System. (requisite Wikipedia link) I don't see any reason why they'd stop the program, especially if the professional devs were also finding the technology useful.
Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heaven[s] and the earth."
Also translatable to "When God began to create the heavens and the Earth." My reference is the footnote in the New Revised Standard Edition.
The second verse more clearly explains that the Bible is talking about the creation of the Earth as we know it:
Genesis 1:2 "The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep"
I've spent a lot of time considering that beginning passage. I just don't think that the Bible is talking about the creation of the Universe. I think that Moses received a vision of the beginning of life on Earth, which would be consistent with the Bible's purpose. (The purpose of the Bible is to catalog the lineage of Christ.)
In the context of Genesis, the "heavens" refers to the sky above us. Moses probably saw the Earth go from a lifeless rock in space (without form and void) to a habitable planet (God's spirit moved upon the waters).
Without an atomosphere to diffuse light, the Earth would appear quite dark, even when lit. (Like the moon's surface.) Alternatively, the thick atmosphere during formation may have blocked out the light until God said "let there be light". This would have made the Earth's rotation apparent, thus "separat[ing] the light from the darkness".
In that case, we have the perfect product for you! The P-P-P-Powerbook can play a lifetime of silence, and never requires a battery change! Due to popular demand, we'll soon be following up with the more compant i-i-i-iPod! All of the same great features, but in a smaller package!
Sometimes you have to ask the right questions. The right question in this case is:
Is the DRM draining the battery, or the more sophisticated compression algorithms used in the newer formats like AAC and WMA?
They don't seem to have tested for that question. If it is the newer formats rather than the DRM, the question arises, "Would you accept a shorter battery life for higher fidelity and/or better compressed files?"
The problem is that non-technical language doesn't distinguish between "theory" and "hypothesis," nor between "sufficient evidence to accept" and "proof."
I agree completely. However, if you're going to take things down to laymans terms, you need to explain what you're talking about. Saying "the theory is proven" is not correct, even in laymans terms. Saying "the theory is effectively proven, with a vanishing small chance for error" better conveys the reality.
In any case, most people have pointed out that the story is misleading anyway. While this is evidence for a big bang type event, it is more interesting because it provides evidence for an inflationary universe; something that has had far less evidence to back it before now.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
My thoughts exactly. I cringe to think to what it would be like to maintain an entire Unix application that did everything in X11. Even with a development environment that was built to support X11, I think it would still be a nightmare. X11 is good for little apps like calculators and graphical terminals, but is not the best way to do the entire application.
Or, on the other hand, maybe we could make widget libraries that do all the heavy lifting of X11 for us? Then we could program to the widget libraries rather than the uber-complex X11 drawing library! Genius!
The same is true of AJAX. Right now, everyone is programming at the lowest level. What AJAX needs is a higher level set of widgets that can accelerate development. Mozilla took the XUL path, but that won't work for cross-browser applications. We need a general-purpose widget library written using the standard HTML DOM. Then AJAX will become a quick and easy option.
Unfortunately, Atlas isn't it. This is just a collection of custom tags to simplify and standardize ASP programming.
s/releaved/relieved/g
For those who don't know, Atlas is Microsoft's AJAX API for ASP.NET 2, which they claim will greatly reduce the effort in developing AJAX style applications on their platform.
Really? I thought it was a rocket.* </sarcasm>
Sorry, but I'm decidedly unimpressed. I was sitting here thinking that Microsoft might be in a position to nail the AJAX market with ASP.NET. If so, then there would need to be an immediate cross-platform response. As much as I'd like to be releaved that Microsoft hasn't taken the lead, I'm finding myself shocked at how absolutely terrible this library is. There's not a shred of AJAX to be found.
In a nutshell, this library is a collection of ASP custom tags (similar to the ones that have existed in JSP for half a decade or so) that produce common controls like buttons, advertisements, tables with data, and a few other bits and pieces. There is no XMLHttpRequest communication that I can find, and precious little DHTML. Unless I'm missing something, this library is a wash.
Is Microsoft really having that much trouble understanding a concept that they invented? Because this library certainly suggests this is the case.
* Sorry for the sarcasm, it's not directed at the poster. Just my own annoyance at Microsoft polluting the technology sphere with such nonsense.
You may find this article interesting. :-)
What ever happened to the hype about dedicated physics chips?
1. "Game" Physics tend to be more fun than real-world physics. (Who really wants to compute orbits for their starfighter? We want to bank on afterburners!)
2. Game programmers haven't yet managed to create complex enough engines to demand physics engines. See point 1.
3. Game production is hideously expensive these days, and game programmers are already stretched to the limit. If you try to get realistic physics like rigid body dynamics into the game as well, the game will never get shipped. It's far easier to show animations for special effects like a train moving rather than properly compute the force vectors applied to the entire machine during the compression/expansion cycles.
Besides, the story tech is just for fancier particle physics like a wall of bricks collapsing. Very cool to look at, but not useful in a general sense.
Or did you just come and bitch on /. about things not working exactly as they do in Windows?
Dude. Seriously. Not helping.
Installation problems always have and always will be key areas that users complain about. Users think of Macs and Windows machines as "easy" in that respect, because the OS ships with the machine. They've completely forgotten how they used to have that kid next door come over to install Windows for them in exchange for a few bucks or some homemade cookies.
A more complete analysis would show that Linux needs the crucial "early adopters" in the home market who are willing to put up with its faults to have the latest and greatest. Those early adopters would then drive sales of OEM Linux machines.
Unfortunately, Linux has already experienced quite a few cycles of early adopters. Every time it fails on the follow through. Whether it be support for the distro ending (e.g. JDS), a breakneck upgrade cycle (e.g. Mandrake/Mandriva), or just plain user unfriendliness (e.g. user can't upgrade to latest package X from the repository because they need to upgrade to the latest OS version), users end up becoming frustrated with Linux and leave. The vendors take notice of this and drop support for their commercial Linux software. Thus Linux loses popular support until the next cycle.
I've talked about this many times before. Linux distro providers need to decide if they're really trying to target the home desktop or not. If they are, they need to stop targetting the workstation market and make something that really blows the home market away. Linspire is pretty much the only distro that is taking this step. It's too bad that they've got their technology wired all wrong. Perhaps Ubuntu can do it, but it will need to nail both the OEM Linux market, as well as user's needs going forward. Given that much of their success and failure is still dependent on areas farther back in the pipeline (e.g. GNOME), only time will tell if Ubuntu becomes a serious contender in the home.
GoogleFight confirms it. Slashdot wins. :-P
Offtopic interesting link: Digg vs. Slashdot
Interesting site. Unfortunately, it's only a "FIRST POST!" tracker. It doesn't really compare the quality of the two sites. Digg has its ups in that just about everything that you might find cool flies through there. On the other hand, that also means that the noise ratio is pretty darn high. On top of that, Slashdot has a much better comment system. (Though Digg is really trying with their latest Slashdot-ripped-off-threaded-comment-system.)
Slashdot's focus and superior discussion forums really put it ahead of Digg for most professional users. As a result, the far more attractive (and generally better constructed) Digg ends up attracted far more students, highschoolers, and budding programmers than it may intend.
Final Analysis? Go whereever you feel more comfortable. The Internet is big enough for both.
The article advertises itself as "brutal honesty that leaves out the free software philosophy." With a headline like that, I was hoping to get a real analysis of what's going right and what's going wrong for all three. Instead, the author ends up dodging the key positives and negatives of each system in favor of more nebulous concepts like available software. His conclusion is that Linux is losing because it doesn't have eductional titles or tax software. Excuse me?
A more thorough analysis would have focused on why these packages are lacking. What is so special about Windows and Mac that they have these markets clinched? Does his analysis show that Linux needs this software, or is it actually competing in a different market? These are the types of questions that are actually important.
Finally, some of his analysis was just confusing. According to the author, Apple is nicer than Windows because they make nice hardware. Wait. Aren't we comparing software? If hardware is a key issue, why isn't that brought up in all three analyses? And why does he believe that the higher price of Apple's hardware makes it only appealing to Enterprise users when it's quite obviously home users who use it?
All in all, I give him an A+ for effort, but a D- for content. He's really trying, but he doesn't have any real goal in mind during his comparisons. As a result, his analysis comes out confused and unfocused.
I fear you're confused. "Baud" is the number of changes per second in a modulated signal, not the bits per second. Since we're discussing data changes per second on a serial line, the term "baud" is correct.
I'd invite you to look up the origins of serial communications for a better understanding of what "baud" really is. Note that RS-232 was a direct descendent of Baudot's serial communications work.
FWIW, Red Hat has always liked to be on the Bleeding Edge of Linux, but in their own way. (e.g. If GNOME 2.x isn't ready to ship, make quick patches around the problems and ship it.) This tended to get them into a lot of trouble, because their OS would have all kinds of idiosynchrasies and inconsistencies that other distributions didn't exhibit.
RedHat decided to address the matter with the Fedora branch. Fedora is a perpetual beta of RedHat's enterprise product. By releasing this beta, RedHat is able to get real-world testing of their latest tech before they foist it upon paying customers.
As a result, Fedora tends to look very nice and has a lot of nice features that are hard to find elsewhere. (e.g. Its beautiful BlueCurve theme.) Unfortunately, it also means that you're testing beta software. Unless you are completely comfortable with that, you shouldn't use Fedora.
So you're right. Your professor was being a little kooky on this one. He was probably blinded by the "latest and greatest" mentality that tends to permeate the software industry.
Xen has been included since Fedora Core 4. So it's not that new of a feature. :-)
I never understood why Redhat chose Fedora.
Fedora is a hat. You see the "Red Hat" logo? The type of hat the guy is wearing in the logo is called a Fedora. Given that the hat is named after a Frech play, I don't think that anyone is really worried about what it means in Portugese.
-1 Troll? Drats, I thought it was funny. Ah well.
FWIW, the new Fedora version does look nice. Each version of GTK & Fedora really help smooth out the looks. However, am I the only one who thinks that the latest bluecurve is starting to look a lot like the alloy look and feel?
It's too bad that RedHat got out of the Desktop business at just the point where they started to become a strong competitor. Fedora has really been feeling a lot more solid than their jury-rigging of the past. Add in features like Multimedia playback for a RedHat branded Desktop, and you'd end up with a pretty decent home machine.
Linclips also has a short screencast on some of the default functionality.
That screencast is in Flash, and we all know that Flash is evil.
Thus, Fedora must be evil by extension.
Fedora is the development branch for RedHat. If Fedora is evil, RedHat must also be evil.
Microsoft is well known for being evil.
We all know that RedHat is a competitor to Microsoft.
Ergo, RedHat is the next Microsoft.
QED
(Yes, this is a joke. Laugh.)
Whoops. I can't count today. (Hey, it's a monday. :-P)
:)
Nanosecond == 1E-9 == 1,000,000,000/sec
Microsecond == 1E-6 == 1,000,000/sec
Thanks for pointing that out.
But just what in the hell is a 'High Resolution Timer'?
A "timer" is a software or hardware device that keeps track of how many time increments have passed. The "resolution" of the timer is how small the increments are. Thus a timer that tracks the number of milliseconds (1000 increments per second) wouldn't be of a particularly high resolution, a timer that tracks nanosecond increments (1,000,000 increments per second) would be.
The purpose of high resolution timers is to provide better performance through more accurate digital timing. Take a serial port as an example. At 9600 baud, the timer it uses will "tick" about 9,600 times per second. The computers on each side align with these ticks to know that there's new data on the line. Assuming that the electronics can handle it in a stable fashion, the speed of that connection can be increased by changing the timer used for the port. On many serial ports, this speed can be over 100,000 baud, or 100,000 ticks per second.
Modern USB ports can easily require timing in the nanosecond range to produce a high speed signal. Thus the need for high resolution timers capable of producing the necessary signal. Many other uses (such as video signal synchronization) exist.
Keep in mind that Sony is a Linux supporter. In the past, they've released Playstation dev kits that are based on the Linux Operating System. (requisite Wikipedia link) I don't see any reason why they'd stop the program, especially if the professional devs were also finding the technology useful.
SearchKing sued Google over the same thing a couple of years ago, and lost the suit. The judge's comment was:
KinderStart will lose. Case closed.
"God doesn't play dice with the Universe" - Albert Einstein
"Don't tell God how to run his Universe." -Neils Bohr
(Both quotes are actually paraphrasings rather than quotes, but what the hey.)
Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heaven[s] and the earth."
Also translatable to "When God began to create the heavens and the Earth." My reference is the footnote in the New Revised Standard Edition.
The second verse more clearly explains that the Bible is talking about the creation of the Earth as we know it:
Genesis 1:2 "The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep"
I've spent a lot of time considering that beginning passage. I just don't think that the Bible is talking about the creation of the Universe. I think that Moses received a vision of the beginning of life on Earth, which would be consistent with the Bible's purpose. (The purpose of the Bible is to catalog the lineage of Christ.)
In the context of Genesis, the "heavens" refers to the sky above us. Moses probably saw the Earth go from a lifeless rock in space (without form and void) to a habitable planet (God's spirit moved upon the waters).
Without an atomosphere to diffuse light, the Earth would appear quite dark, even when lit. (Like the moon's surface.) Alternatively, the thick atmosphere during formation may have blocked out the light until God said "let there be light". This would have made the Earth's rotation apparent, thus "separat[ing] the light from the darkness".
Um. Ok.
:-)
Thank you Mr. Bogie for your passionate restating of the original post. It was very... um... passionate.
In that case, we have the perfect product for you! The P-P-P-Powerbook can play a lifetime of silence, and never requires a battery change! Due to popular demand, we'll soon be following up with the more compant i-i-i-iPod! All of the same great features, but in a smaller package!
Buy yours today!
They don't seem to have tested for that question. If it is the newer formats rather than the DRM, the question arises, "Would you accept a shorter battery life for higher fidelity and/or better compressed files?"
I bet the ladies fought over who'd get [Jesus in bed] next.
;-)
You need to stop reading Dan Brown. It's rotting your brain.
The problem is that non-technical language doesn't distinguish between "theory" and "hypothesis," nor between "sufficient evidence to accept" and "proof."
:-)
I agree completely. However, if you're going to take things down to laymans terms, you need to explain what you're talking about. Saying "the theory is proven" is not correct, even in laymans terms. Saying "the theory is effectively proven, with a vanishing small chance for error" better conveys the reality.
In any case, most people have pointed out that the story is misleading anyway. While this is evidence for a big bang type event, it is more interesting because it provides evidence for an inflationary universe; something that has had far less evidence to back it before now.