Third, have any of you checked out their site? Are you kidding me? It is full of junk! Adds, photos, stupid celebrity information, etc. I mean, this is web design 1990s style, covered with the "modernizing" sheep's clothing of flash. They just don't get it: we don't go to an encyclopedia to get bombarded by useless information and junk. On the contrary! Worse, the interface is clumsy, it is really hard to navigate with the keyboard because of the heavy use of frames, the Javascript is buggy with the keyboard focus randomly shifting away from the article text to the outline and scrolling is horribly sluggish, and can run on for 20 - 30 seconds with the interface unresponsive. During that pain I'm getting served with intrusive ads.
Other problems: the articles are very thinly hyperlinked with typically less than one link per page of text, betraying the print media origin of the material. They tend to be written in a flowery, self absorbed language. In general, I want to be impressed by the content and not the form.
The Britannica articles are often longer and more informative than Wikipedia ones but generally not to a compelling degree. With Wikipedia evolving much faster I don't see any chance at all for Britannica's current (partial) advantage in content to overcome its huge drawbacks compared to Wikipedia: subscription model and bespoke content.
Wikipedia may have serious accuracy problems in a lot of areas (not all of coruse, but it's not hard to find them) but at least they aren't using me as unpaid labor to save them from having to hire researchers. Sure they are, and that is not a bug, it is a feature.
if I have a SSD I want to use the main memory for either HD io caching or programs. Caching disk blocks from the fast SSD in main memory seems suboptimal Bandwidth to the SSD is 300 MB/sec (sata 2) while bandwidth to main memory is more than 10 GB/sec, 33 times faster.
Yeah, I worked with the original SGI machines. Flat shading, no texture mapping, no depth buffer... If everybody's clear that this will only do very basic 3D graphics then fine. Reading this thread though, that doesn't seem to be the case... It is specced to do a OpenGL 1.3 pipeline at respectable frame rate and resolution. I've been involved somewhat in the gate counting and algorithm design to the point I find this credible. The 96 18x18 multipliers are a big help, I doubt the original SGI machines had any such extravagance. A tile rendering method is used to be used to sufficient rendering accuracy out of the 18 bit multipliers, including the perspective texture divides. Roughly speaking, the rendering technology is Quake 3, that is, perspective-correct lit textures with alpha, but no pixel shaders. Since the FPGA is user-reprogrammable, one could have some fun experimenting with trying shoehorning some pixel shading into the pipeline.
the European Commission won't be doing anything particular about it... A Commission press officer said, "We are already looking into the issues raised in that complaint already and we are not treating it as a formal complaint to us." Remember, these are the same guys who tried to push through software patents in violation of EU law. The European Commission is distinct from the European Parliament. The commission is not particularly democratic, or apparently even particularly law abiding judging from the software patent affair. It should come as no surprise that the Commission would wish to look the other way in the OOXML affair.
Good, hopefully the ZFS guys will read this and hold off their development for the next 2 years until you catch up. I hope they develop like crazy, but I also kind of hope they continue their de facto Linux embargo, it just makes it more fun and interesting over here to recover the functionality. Maybe do it better. Certainly do it a more Linuxy way, after all you get to keep using your tried and true Ext3 filesystem and still have the latest sexy features.
I note that you didn't answer what *you* are going to *use* it for. Carry it in your pocket and customize it all day?:) Sorry about that. I am going to use the GPS because I don't currently have one in my car, and this one I can not only use in the car but carry around. Sure, it's not the greatest GPS, but it's serviceable by the accounts I've seen. I also like to text message... a lot, and the halfway usable keyboard is going to be way faster than my phone, which I currently use. I normally do this in an office with WIFI access available, so I don't worry about the lack of cell phone network connectivity, and if I did, I would get a bluetooth enabled phone, in fact I certainly will do that when my love affair with my credit card sized Samsung phone finally ends. I'd do it tomorrow if Samsung would kindly update the phone with Bluetooth, sigh.
I would play videos on it and ssh into my home server, I do that a lot normally with a laptop but that really is not using much of the power of the laptop and I don't like having to carry the laptop around. I would download my contact information from my computer into it, and keep my calendar on the device. Those things would already justify the device for me I think, but I doubt I have scratched the surface of what it can do. It's a computer and it's programmable.
What the heck will you do with the 810? No phone, no keyboard, lousy battery life, lousy distro... any ideas? It has GPS, a lovely screen, tons of apps, an active developer community, is infinitely customizable and programmable, small enough to put in your pocket, has WIFI, and yes, a decent keyboard.
Honestly, I hope Sun doesn't change the ZFS licence, because in another couple of years I expect we will have been able to achieve pretty much everything ZFS does without having to roll it all into one jinormous all singing+dancing filesystem that ate the OS. In other words, we think we can do snapshots, flexible raid, allocate from pools etc, efficiently without violating layers. And actually, we were replicating before the ZFS guys and, um, the ZFS algorithm bears a striking resemblance to ours, which we published a few months before they showed up with a prototype. Hmm. Anyway, even if ZFS does go non-evil it certainly won't mean we will stop, because we still do things they don't do like run underneath _any_ filesystem so you can stick with what you know or what works for you. But it would definitely remove some of the incentive for further developing our stuff. Smartest think Sun could do to tell the truth, but personally I think they won't do it, and one day Mr. Schwartz will wake up and find ZFS irrelevant because Ext4 + ddsnap outperforms it plus has millions more installs and ten times as many developers to widen the gap. We shall see.
I intended to pick one up at Christmas, did not get around to it in time, was waiting for the inevitable re-introduction of the give-one-get-one program. Thankfully I can forget about that now and be $400 richer. Hmm, I think I will spend it on a Nokia n810
I was under the impression that 2x4s are, in fact, actually 2in by 4in when cut wet, but shrink to the standard size when seasoned. 2x4 when cut rough, before planing, actually. Or it is supposed to be. Lumber companies argue that planing + shrinkage takes 1/4 inch off each side, resulting in 1 1/2 x 3 1/2, a 35% reduction in volume. I have a trouble believing this, personally I believe this is more about saving money by scamming consumers by getting the official standard changed, who knows how.
basically what they're doing is developing new features to be put in MySQL 6.0 enterprise, and these _new_ features won't show up in community. Obviously. The old features are GPLed and can't be retracted. But nothing about this makes it better for the community or smarter for Sun. Sun has forked MySQL, make no mistake about it. As a community, there are three correct responses:
For example variable-length arrays (added by C99) are not supported by C++ (which has vector objects instead). Vector objects are not a replacement for C99 variable length arrays. In the test application I wrote I found them to be quite expensive, to the point where the relatively trivial bookkeeping I had them doing was eating as much time as the (many) syscalls. C99 VLA's on the other hand seem to generate impressively efficient code (gcc, which is traditionally not noted for its great code generator). A rather natural extension involving no new syntax, just allowing a dynamic expression for the array dimension where a constant expression used to be required. C++ should add VLA's, and while I'm making my asks, let's finally have designated initializers in C++ please, this is a serious language deficiency as it stands. As I understand it, the only obstacle is sorting out the object initialization/destruction order, as if "in the order writen" would not do. Feh.
C++ language overseers should take the job of keeping up with good improvements from the C side more seriously. NIH?
Except the "average computer user" cannot use the command line interface where you yupe "sudo aptitude update", because that's too hard, and this article is about Linux on the desktop. If you want to argue Windows vs. Linux for uptimes, power user ease-of-use, etc., that's fine. For the average computer user, you can't really say that Linux is easier or as functional. And for those people, greater ease and functionality = better OS. Utter nonsense. Try kpackage or many similarly easy to use graphical package management frontends if you would rather not use the commandline method. Interesting, my wife, who is very nontechnical, prefers the command line method for installing packages. After I showed her how to open the console and give the commands she never used the gui version again.
Interesting, I missed that whole mplayer thing. Looks like Joe stepped in it. I still think he has done more good than harm for the Linux community. It seems he would benefit from a big drink of mellow.
For what it's worth, I love Mplayer and I am awed by the dedication of the Mplayer development team. The next geek toy to arrive here will most likely be the MP965D, which is to be a kick-butt Mplayer box to sit beside the PS3, which is a great media center as far as it goes but just can't do everything a general purpose Linux box can.
Robert didn't develop the preemptive Linux kernel
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Linux System Programming
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· Score: 2, Informative
Robert has done plenty of useful work, but it was George AnzigerAnzinger who developed the Linux preemption patch. Robert picked it up, maintained it and got it merged. The credits to George seemed to have gotten lost somewhere in that process.
When the journalists turn up, propose work items on desktop issues and promise not to run away and write up events in some rag, they will have dragged themselves out of the bottom of the barrel. Joe Barr is not just any journalist where Linux is concerned. He is right that this "summit" was non-representative. We are getting a lot of that lately, just look at all the Linux invite-only "summits" going on, with key players not invited.
This particular "summit" seemed largely useless to me. I don't really know anybody who cares about it or even knew about it other then the participants.
Just one question: unless you are Einstein or Galileo or Hitler, who cares about your life? Much better to be remembered by your good works than how you brushed your teeth in the morning every day for 90 years.
There is a beta driver for the D2X. Since, according to TFA:
The DX employs what's marked as an Asus AV100 audio processor while the D2X uses an AV200. Don't pay too much attention to the names silk-screened onto the chips, though; they're the very same C-Media Oxygen HD audio processor under the hood. Asus says the chips go through a "quality sorting" process to separate the AV100s from the AV200s.
So, since the chipsets are the same, I would guess that the D2X driver might work for the DX, perhaps with little or no modifications. Thanks, that's enough for me to go do the buy and try thing.
Right, because anybody who happens to be smart enough to learn as many languages and platforms as possible is automatically labeled an MS AstroTurfer. In the real world, it's called being versatile and being marketable. When an open source programming gig comes along, I can get it. When a MS programming gig comes along, I can get that too. No offense, but what a waste of a good mind. Incidentally, these days there is more open source work than there are open source programmers and it pays very well indeed. So you don't really need those minion gigs at all.
I like to bash MS as much as possible. I use MS at $work and FAMP at home. Standard opening out of the Microsoft astroturfer handbook. Astroturfer or not, you sound like one. Tell me this, can I get the source code for Windows Server? Can I improve it, fix bugs in it? It does have bugs, right? I mean, be honest.
So what? Msft has $40 billion in the bank. So what if EU gets $25 million, or whatever. And so what if the slashdot/groklaw crowd knows about all the corruption? Msft has hundreds of millions of customers, and 99% of them don't give a damn. Sorry to rain on your parade, but MSFT has must less than $40 billion in the bank, and hopes to spend more than twice that on stupid new adventures. EU can fine MSFT much more than $25 million, fines so far are approaching $2 billion and that is only a fraction of what EU can fine MSFT if MSFT continues to disobey the laws of the EU.
I think you are just saying "so what about the rule of law". You play life that way my friend, I will obey the law.
Slashdot Mirror
Other problems: the articles are very thinly hyperlinked with typically less than one link per page of text, betraying the print media origin of the material. They tend to be written in a flowery, self absorbed language. In general, I want to be impressed by the content and not the form.
The Britannica articles are often longer and more informative than Wikipedia ones but generally not to a compelling degree. With Wikipedia evolving much faster I don't see any chance at all for Britannica's current (partial) advantage in content to overcome its huge drawbacks compared to Wikipedia: subscription model and bespoke content.
I would play videos on it and ssh into my home server, I do that a lot normally with a laptop but that really is not using much of the power of the laptop and I don't like having to carry the laptop around. I would download my contact information from my computer into it, and keep my calendar on the device. Those things would already justify the device for me I think, but I doubt I have scratched the surface of what it can do. It's a computer and it's programmable.
Honestly, I hope Sun doesn't change the ZFS licence, because in another couple of years I expect we will have been able to achieve pretty much everything ZFS does without having to roll it all into one jinormous all singing+dancing filesystem that ate the OS. In other words, we think we can do snapshots, flexible raid, allocate from pools etc, efficiently without violating layers. And actually, we were replicating before the ZFS guys and, um, the ZFS algorithm bears a striking resemblance to ours, which we published a few months before they showed up with a prototype. Hmm. Anyway, even if ZFS does go non-evil it certainly won't mean we will stop, because we still do things they don't do like run underneath _any_ filesystem so you can stick with what you know or what works for you. But it would definitely remove some of the incentive for further developing our stuff. Smartest think Sun could do to tell the truth, but personally I think they won't do it, and one day Mr. Schwartz will wake up and find ZFS irrelevant because Ext4 + ddsnap outperforms it plus has millions more installs and ten times as many developers to widen the gap. We shall see.
I intended to pick one up at Christmas, did not get around to it in time, was waiting for the inevitable re-introduction of the give-one-get-one program. Thankfully I can forget about that now and be $400 richer. Hmm, I think I will spend it on a Nokia n810
1) Fork MySQL (OurSQL anybody?)
2) Switch to PostgreSQL
3) Both of the above
C++ language overseers should take the job of keeping up with good improvements from the C side more seriously. NIH?
Interesting, I missed that whole mplayer thing. Looks like Joe stepped in it. I still think he has done more good than harm for the Linux community. It seems he would benefit from a big drink of mellow.
For what it's worth, I love Mplayer and I am awed by the dedication of the Mplayer development team. The next geek toy to arrive here will most likely be the MP965D, which is to be a kick-butt Mplayer box to sit beside the PS3, which is a great media center as far as it goes but just can't do everything a general purpose Linux box can.
Robert has done plenty of useful work, but it was George AnzigerAnzinger who developed the Linux preemption patch. Robert picked it up, maintained it and got it merged. The credits to George seemed to have gotten lost somewhere in that process.
Credit where credit is due please.
This particular "summit" seemed largely useless to me. I don't really know anybody who cares about it or even knew about it other then the participants.
Just one question: unless you are Einstein or Galileo or Hitler, who cares about your life? Much better to be remembered by your good works than how you brushed your teeth in the morning every day for 90 years.
So, since the chipsets are the same, I would guess that the D2X driver might work for the DX, perhaps with little or no modifications. Thanks, that's enough for me to go do the buy and try thing.
Can anybody clue me in on the state of ALSA support for this card?
I think you are just saying "so what about the rule of law". You play life that way my friend, I will obey the law.