Whenever I see a list of FTP mirrors with one HTTP version, the HTTP version is faster and more reliable 9 times out of 10.
I suspect that's because 99% of people are downloading from one of the FTP servers.
I put to you that would be more logical to suspect it's because HTTP is faster than FTP as a transfer protocol. It generates less traffic (and uses less CPU overhead) which means downloads end quicker.
Additionally the CPU overhead generated by FTP connections also causes many sites to limit the number of users who can connect, which often results in 'busy sessions', something much rarer with HTTP (as HTTP servers typically have very high thresholds for the number of concurrent connections they will support). The overhead on a server of a user downloading a file over FTP is much greater than that of a user downloading the same file over HTTP.
Although FTP is of course theoretically more reliable than HTTP, in practice, because of 'Server busy: Too many users' messages combined with the speed and reliability of modern connections (which in turn makes HTTP more reliable) mean the the reverse is often the case from a user perspective - which is what I think the poster is getting at.
This may be partly due to poor FTP server configuration defaults and/or poor administration, but they cannot shoulder all the blame.
The potential lack of reliability with HTTP is a very minor issue these days, and the extra overhead of integrity checking files in addition to relying on TCP is just not warranted for all but the largest of files.
This doesn't make FTP completely redundant, but it does make it make it redundant when your files are small and your users are on fast, reliable connections (though the value of 'fast' varies in relation to the size of the file, even 33 kbps is 'fast' compared to the speed of connections that proliferated when the File Transfer Protocol was developed).
Wow - that's quite a statement to make (for someone spreading quite so much Fear Uncertainty and Doubt)!
HTTP is restricted by browsers, many of which will not support files larger than a certain size
This is not going be be an issue for anyone using a modern web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla). To suggest this a a potential problem really is beyond misleading.
Sacrificing a bit of speed and capabilities such as resume might be made up for with ease of use..
HTTP is much faster you are sacrificing speed when using FTP (which should be immediately obvious). Using FTP transfer requires additional overhead, greater than that of HTTP, more traffic equals slower download. It also equals greater CPU overhead on your server, which is dramatically noticeable on servers taking many hits.
HTTP also offers support for resume - I'm astounded that so many posters do not know this. Many browsers, as well as CLI tools such as 'wget' and 'curl' both support HTTP resume (and of course Apache supports it too).
So, by your own admission, it's easier, and as a point of fact, it's also faster and supports resumable downloads.
Add to this that not running an FTP server unless you have do reduces your exposure to exploits and that maintaining an FTP server will require more administration then FTP becomes a very hard sell for anything by large downloads (beyond the size the poster has indicated they will be serving).
There was a time when network connection speeds were so slow that I'd only download files over FTP, as that was the only reliable way to download files, but that was over 6 years ago.
The.xinit rc bug was annoying (I re-installed with a custom install and chose their configuration files before I worked it out) - particularly as this wasn't an issue in.1, but there is something else I can't work around...
Is anyone else having touble getting the 'Applications' menu to work? I can't get GIMP to start except by starting it from an xterm and I'd really like to be able to use the menu for it (and other applications).
I've tried using an absolute path, creating a symlink to it in/usr/X11R6/bin/, putting/usr/local/bin in my path (for that is where it resides) all to no avail.
Is this happening to you? If anyone knows how to fix this I'd appreciate a hint.
Here is some many people don't talk about but any rocket that does up into space has a remote selfdistruct system.
No they don't, from an engineering and risk assessment perspective that simply makes no sense to me.
Rockets are either designed to be:
1) Re-usable.
Take the SRB's (Solid Rocket Boosters) or the Baikal (the reusable part of the new Russian Angara rocket) - they are reusable, that is: specifically designed to be reused. They are supposed to return to earth once they are spent, ready to be reused, bolted on to new second stage apparatus and fired back into space time after time.
Putting self-destruct systems in case they fall back to earth (which is something it's designed to do deliberately) would be silly. Particularly as the SRB's are (a) fitted with parachutes for a nice soft landing and (b) only launched so that they fall back to earth over the sea (where there aren't any cities).
2) Disintegrate.
Though they are not really rockets, ET's (External Tank's - i.e. the big orange thing an Orbiter is attached to) are designed to self distruct in earths atmosphere when their role is complete. I use this as an example to demonstrate that if don't want your 'Rocket' to self-destruct then it's fairly simple to have it disintegrate (burn-up) on re-entry.
In fact, as we've just seen, getting things to NOT burn up on re-entry is the problem.
Moving on...
I'd also like to point out that not only is the Orbiter not a 'rocket', but that if you really have as much knowledge as you want us to believe then I'm surprised that you didn't call the Orbiter an Orbiter and instead only ever referred to it in your posts as a 'shuttle' (which seems an odd, though not entirely unprecedented, thing for someone in the field - bearing in mind it was on it's return trip).
If as you suggest, self-destruct systems exist on rockets and Orbiters, why not on satellites? After all, satellites like Skylab clearly lack such systems (as was demonstrated by Skylabs ungracious 'landing' over Australia) - this odd proclivity towards putting self-destruct systems on space craft, while simultaneously discriminating against satellites makes little sense.
Additionally I'd point out, that it is extremely difficult to hit any precise target with an Orbiter, even with the aid of OMS/RCS (Orbital Manoeuvring System/Reaction Control System) and the avionics system, hence the unusual landing pattern that all Orbiter's follow - it's a difficult enough task just getting to the runway. In fact only one human has ever landed an Orbiter without the aid of the avionics system (and this individual had hundreds of flights logged).
This is relevant because hitting a target as big as a city with a returning Orbiter _ON_PURPOSE_ would be a difficult task for any pilot. Hitting a built up area, let alone any people, purely through random chance would take a miracle.
Besides which - did you not see the chunks of the Orbiter that came down? They were massive - some of the pieces that fell (which were numbered in the thousands) were easily the size of an engine block.
Explain to be how this is better - and in any way safer - than letting the Orbiter come down in once big piece?*
*= Especially when there is an inflight crew escape system (which was fitted after the Challenger incident in 86) - which would mean even if the Orbiter was heading off course the crew would still have the chance to slide along the escape rail and parachute out when they reach a low enough altitude (assuming the Orbiter was not spining or rolling).
I was watching the incident which lead directly to the withdrawal of publicly accessible 24 live (non encrypted or artificially delayed) audio visual broadcasts from space - I used to have a constant feed streaming where I worked and at home (as I also had a permanent connection at home too).
If you'd actually seen the broadcast you'd know it had nothing to do with UFO's or 'Space debris being pushed around by thrusters' as you put it (this is related to an entirely different reported incident and has nothing to do with why they cancelled some of the live a/v feeds, it didn't even happen at the same time). Additionally, the concern astronauts expressed about the space debris was not that it might be a UFO, but rather it might be part of the ISS or the shuttle which was, to them, of much more immediate concern.
I remember the actual incident quite vividly and it had everything to do with dust and small particles, some of which were suspected to be metallic by the crew, being pushed around by the air filters on board the ISS - as it was this which lead to complaints from the crew.
Needless to say, the crew were not happy about this situation - particularly as a complaint regarding this issue had already been made, yet it had been seen to be ignored by mission control. NASA ground control attempted to disregard the importance of the complaint, they even seemed to doubt it's credibility (I hypothesise that in such an incident some ground staff may have downgraded the severity of the complaint in the own minds and put down to the perception of an understandable crankiness of a crew living in close, cramped quarters for months at a time).
It was the appearance of disharmony and complaints from the crew which lead to the decision not to have 24 hour 'live' streaming as it was decided that this was not in the best interests of NASA, or the ISS, from a public relations perspective.
In their defence, the crew on board the ISS had been wound up even further as the communications to the ground kept breaking up and cutting out due to interference, which forced them to have to keep repeating their report. They also had other on going issues which give them cause for complaint, but I don't remember what they were.
Personally I do not think they were being particularly cranky - certainly I'd expect to see much more negative retoric in an office environment over issues considerably less trivial than small flakes of metal in the air conditioning, but I can only assume that NASA feels the significance of the project demands a greater sense of sensitivity that most work environments. Overall, I think the withdrawal of the video on these grounds was a mistake, as it has hurt NASA and ISS public relations rather than helped (due the relative triviality of the incident).
Of course there may be other reasons which lead to the cutting of the a/v feed, but this was the incident and reason cited by NASA at the time...
* IIRC this happend in the first half of 2000, but I could be wrong about that as I often find I get time periods mixed up.
Right, so I post that I dislike a product (and GIVE REASONS WHY!, i.e. I dislike the rendering engine and it's speed compared to alternatives) and it's modded as 'flamebait'?
Ooh he said something mean about a product he doesn't like! That's flamebait!
The origional post I replied to is a far better canidate for 'flamebait'.
I STILL don't like Opera and I STILL think it's a worse product than Omiweb, Safari, Konquerer, Galeon, Mozilla, Internet Explorer and iCab (though in the case of the latter, only just).
Furthermore, the reason many people dislike it has STILL gto nothing to do with cost as the origional post suggested (otherwise I would clearly not have paid for Netscape or Omniweb - for which payment was OPTIONAL and neither punished you with adverts for not purchasing).
Or how about: 'It's shitty because I, like the poster and lots of other people, think that it is slower than the alternatives and has a poor user interface.'
It's nothing to do with the fact that it costs money, IMO it just sucks. I've paid for web browsers, I paid for Netscape 4.0, I paid for Omniweb (both around 40 USD) but I wouldn't use Opera if it was the only free browser on earth. I would rather use the Hot Java browser and it _really_ sucks.
Opera just doesn't render as quickly or as well as Galeon, Chimera or a number of other similar derivatives. It's 'speed' claims are actually primarily related to it's UI responsiveness - not, in many cases, actually how fast it renders real world pages, particularly with embeded content.
On OS X it's slower than Chimera, Safari, IE, Mozilla (!), and even the god awful crud that is iCab.
I want a cross between Omniweb's great feature set, but with tabs, the Google bar, snap back, Chimera's rendering system (NOT KHTML, yuck!) and Safari's speed.
I fail to see how rpm is superior to dpkg in verifying the 'compatibility' of installed programs -- that is to say, only as good as the packager
There are two answers I'd like to give to this:
(1) Red Hat have always provided better quality packages (by which I mean they are more polished, with much more accurate meta data). Additionaly, in actuality, I belive that debsum -ca is no where near as useful as rpm -Va. If your a Debian user too I don't need to point that 'stable' is wildly out of date and that 'un-stable' is, as the name implies, often wildly unstable.
2) The idea that the only difference factor is simply the quality of the package and that there is no significant differnce in the package management systems is false. Crucialy, Debian lacks anything which matches the power of rpmlib.
In summary, while Debian manages to be much easier to maintain and use for personal desktop systems, it does not have the professional level of polish and intergrity that is required by most corporate (server) environments - partly due the the package management system (and rpmlib) and partly due to the quality of Red Hat's packages. As the forcus of Debian's maintainers is primarily users and developers, rather than the servers of large corporations, I think this situation is unlikely to change in immediate future.
As a UNIX Systems Engineer, here's my perspective...
I understand that "if it ain't broke, don't touch it" is a good rule for IT.
Of course this is very true.
If it ain't broke, you don't need support, right?
Unfortunately, new exploits for software (such as sql, ssh, web, ftp and dns servers) come out all the time, and these programs need to be patched. The situation is even worse if you have users logging in and/or executing programs on the server.
While possible, installing programs without using 'official' packages throws away the benefits of using a RPM system in the first place, particularly it's ability to verify the integrity and compatibility of installed programs (which it's main point of superiority over Debian's package management system).
Fortunately having done this for various versions of Red Hat on many systems, I can say it's a complete breeze to upgrade Red Hat systems (and as such it's hard to criticise Red Hat for EOL'ing these old distributions). You only need to pop in a CD of the latest version of Red Hat and select 'Upgrade'. It does an excellent job of not screwing up your system configuration or other data, while still upgrading all your applications.
It's quite possible to let someone who's never run Linux in their life and doesn't know a single UNIX command to upgrade a Red Hat system, as it only requires clicking through the graphical installation wizard, selecting 'Upgrade' where appropriate. The only downside is having to hook up an interface (i.e. keyboard/monitor) to the server, and that it requires downtime.
Finally, I run Debian, and it's easy for me to upgrade a system with just an ssh connection. Can Red Hat admins remotely upgrade packages over ssh, without having to install APT for Red Hat?
You can upgrade packages over ssh, Red Hat systems are even capable of being updated with a single click over the web or 'pushed' signed updates by Red Hat's central server, if you register with the Red Hat Network (IIRC you may register 1 system with them for free, or pay ~$65 a year for each system, it's a genuinely excellent server management system and well worth it IMO). However this does not help when said system is running a version of the distribution that has been EOL'd, as there will be no official packages to patch the bugs which are subsequently found.
Additionally, the features of RPM which make it better in ensuring a high level of compatibility and allow it, unlike Debian, to offer package integrity checking also make it awkward to use in many cases (and not nearly as pleasant as Debian!), which of course would be cured by APT-GET for RPM, which brings us on to...
(And if not, how do real sysadmins feel about APT for Red Hat?)
I love APT. I use Debian on all my home systems, and I even use apt on my OS X based PowerBook. (Though I admit I have reservations about using APT on production servers).
Sadly, however, all implementations of APT for RPM that I have tried have been dreadful and hideously bug ridden, and I have only heard of the same poor experiences from friends and colleagues. I think a workable version of APT for RPM would require active effort by Red Hat, but I do not see that happening any time soon as they have other priorities (and the corporate market they are targeting does not bemoan the lack of APT, the existing RPM system adequately meets their needs).
No professional programmer hacks it until it works
I think that is evidently not true.
Sadly, layout managers cannot do everything a developer can envisage with out such pixel based kludging. In particular, cross platform layout managers are almost guaranteed to give you an aesthetically (and often functionally) ugly result on at least one platform.
While it is important to make applications behave 'correctly' under varying conditions, such as UI theme's (a topic around which there is a big debate), resolution and font size, it is not acceptable that developers should design programs within the confines of an inadequate layout manager, particularly when the know the layout manager is not up to the task.
I'd also add that it is utterly unreasonably for developers to be forced to build UI's that are governed by the possibility of major changes in the way user interfaces are rendered on screen by the operating system - changes that may or may not happen, and if they do, will not happen for another 5 years.
If an operating systems developer such Microsoft decide that they wish to drastically change how a user 'views' an app, applications should re-released with that new approach in mind. Existing UI's should not be 'shoe horned' into working with a drastically new approach, and they should certainly not be limited by the requirement that they may be subject to unforeseeable changes in the way the widget-rendering API's behave.
I think to argue otherwise is to undervalue the importance of a good User Interface.
Case in point:
Microsoft applications for Windows CE required that you not provide any way to quit the application - if you did you were not allowed to use the Microsoft logo in conjunction with your product. This of course was a fiasco and made WinCE devices usable (without a 3rd party hack to work around the problem).
Re:Slower because of file-based swap? YES!
on
Is Mac OS X Slow?
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· Score: 2
Your absoluetly right, of course this isn't the only reason it is / appears slow, but Stepwise (stepwise.com) did do a comparison and noted the difference reguarding how you setup your Swap file, they also published user instructions on how to use a dedicate swap partition.
Having the Swap File on a seperate disk makes a big difference, even having the Swap File on a dedicate partition on a disk makes a difference (though of course not as much as more RAM:).
Though it should be noted that, IIRC this was still using a Swap File on a Disk (and not a Swap Filesystem) unless I remeber wrongly. The issue of having inreased overhead by having to do file IO rather than simple direct-to-disk writes is interesting!
The sad thing is that many media users would benifit from even being able to decide what disk to put their swap file on, but they aren't technical enough to be confortable doing it and the user interface/installer doesn't provide any easy way of doing it.
You are free to go get my job and do it better. It's easy to be a smart-ass like you when all you do is commenting on Slashdot.
As it happens I already do a job much like yours (and better, it would seem).
I am simply professional in my work and very demanding - I constantly strive to deliver the best results and look for the same in others. Because of this I don't see any merit in a poor and unscientific comparison of the performance of two operating systems and would rather see no review than a poor one with a misleading outcome done by someone incapable of doing a comparison.
If you are not familiar with the basic fundamentals of Unix (like how to make a program run at startup, or prevent a program from running at startup) and also unable to read manuals (for the process is well documented on Apple's web site) it is fair to call into question whether you ought to be writing articles or books about Unix at all.
Though I do not take pleasure in criticizing the work of others I make no apologies for making just criticism.
Apart from the obvious -i.e. I don't see the point in comparing out dated operating systems - the following quote from the article stuck out:
Since for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to shut down the GUI environment of OS X, I configured a simple VGA X server for Linux and started KDE, just to have a fair basis for comparison.
Good grief, is this reviewer simple?
Well the text at the bottom of the article says this:
Moshe Bar is a systems administrator and OS researcher who started learning UNIX on a PDP-11 with AT&T UNIX Release 6, back in 1981. Moshe has a M.Sc and a Ph.D. in computer science and writes UNIX-related books.
I don't care how much experience they have, or what qualifications they have, if a so-called "Systems Administrator" can't do something so simple I'd expect a recently graduated this-is-their-first-job PFY to do they should not be writing articles, let alone books, about Unix.
For a start, apart from commenting out the Quartz window manager at startup, which is both the obvious solution and easy to do (How on earth did you imagine it would be started? By tiny pixies living inside the hard drive perhaps?), you can simply login in with ">console" as your username and you'll instantly get a command line prompt.
BOTH of these options are perfectly well documented.
With this in mind, I'd say that any 'comparison' done by this individual is unreliable at best, and completely misleading at worst.
It's worse than pointless, because whatever random outcome comes out of this not-even-half-assed excuse for a comparison will be used in arguments and by other journals and taken as gospel for months to come.
Any why on earth chose SuSe and not "Yellow Dog Linux" or "LinuxPPC" the two most commonly used PPC distributions? SuSe isn't that common among Linux PPC users (compared to either Yellow Dog or LinuxPPC) and for good reason (it's just not as well build for PPC).
I don't upgrade my PDA every 2 years. I do it every 6 months and I will do until the functionality reaches a plateu. Specifically, greater storage capacity (something approaching an iPod, primarily for music and document storage).
I don't have a PDA as a fashion statement, I have one because it means I can play my MP3's (without having to carry around my iPod) browse the web, read emails (without having to carry my Laptop) and play games (without having to carry a Gamebody Advance), read ebooks (without having to carry a round 'real' books), the latest copy from major newspapers (having them in Avant Go means I don't have to carry the Economist every where I go on the of chance I get time to read it) and take quick pictures (without having to carry around a seperate camera) as well as do all the traditional PDA related features.
It's a choice of carrying:
- Gameboy Advance - iPod - Laptop - Several Books (Novels and reference material) - Address Book - Note Pad - Digital Camera - This weeks copy of the Economist - Several daily news papers (Guardian, FT, Wall Street Journal)
or:
- Sony Clie
I don't see why anyone would difficulty grasping why that's a vast improvement. It's a pretty simple premise.
It may note be quite as good as a dedicated digital camera or an iPod, but it's good enough to be better than carrying them around on me everywhere I go. As for browsing the internet with IR at 9600 (or at most ~28k, with bonding) to hell with that! I am never going back to that, I did that with my Newton, my Palm OS devices (all of them) and my Win CE (it was Win CE 2.0, rather than Pocket PC) based device, it sucked massively compared to using BlueTooth & GPRS (which both of my most recent PDA's have supported).
And, for your information I play a LOT of games on my PDA. I have a Sony Clie Game Controller (which comes with Sega Columns), on the evidence that more Palm software purchases are for games than _any_ other type of software, it would seem other Palm OS users do to. Seems your out of touch!
FWIW actually 480x160 is not that great and I would certainly call it low res! Even the standard 320x320 Clie models have better resolution! With regard to watching movies, 480x320 in 16 bit is significantly better Sony Clie *can* play full screen movies, with sound. The NX70 can both play and record (using the built in Camera and Mic) in MPEG4 format. This means that if you want to take a quick movie to stick on the web later when you get home, or show the family what you got up to with friends/relatives on a day out you don't need to pre-plan to take your digital video camera with you, and the 640x480 MPEG 4 format means the quality is better than most Video-8 or VHS based traditional camcorders.
Paying a few hundred quid a couple of times a year is not a big hardship for something I use every day and so drastically changes my lifestyle, and it's easy to afford if you work for it.
As for being a Troll....
I'm not, a lot at my previous posts will tell you that. And the fact that you used to be a Troll is utterly dispicable. The fact that you think I am also makes you a poor judge of character.
Again, I should say it's now called Pocket PC, not WinCE. That was changed quite some time ago!
It's a sad thing that the People in the UK give up their superior technology to crappy products from the US.
With high res color screens, wireless high-speed color web surfing (using Bluetooth and GPRS), MP3 playing and gaming...
Boy are stupid, of course we should be using Psions!
When was the last time a Psion had a built in camera, played MP3's, surfed the web using GPRS over BlueTooth and allowed you to plug in a portable game controller to play games on a high res colour screen (yet all still fit in a shirt pocket)?
My Clie (NR70v) does all these.
Luxembourg is not as high tech as London (and London is not as high tech as New York, and New York is miles behind Toyko).
The UK and Germany are both leagues ahead of the rest of Europe technologically, you just don't get access to the same hardware in other countries, even other affulent countires like France, Italy and Spain.
Saying 'but I don't need a computer that is able to do x, y or z powerful feature' is historically the same as saying 'I have old technology and don't care and why would anyone want a color screen/more than 640k/a faster CPU/etc/etc'. Certainly most/.ers have heard that all before and I don't think anyone belives you when you say it.
Unless your personal computers all have less than 640k? If that's true then I'm wrong, you must not mind!
WinCE devices? Have yet to seen one in use by someone.
Actually it's called Pocket PC now (though I had an origional Win CE device, a Jornada 420 a few years back) and if you haven't seen anyone use one - where have you been!?:)
I live in London, almost everyone I know has a Palm OS based device (friends, cow-orkers, boss, parents, drinking buddies, collegues in business meetings, contractors).
It's very, very common for me to bump into people (strangers in the street or tube) using a Palm (typically a Visor or Clie) and beam things, like games, back and forth. People often say, ooh what's that your playing? Or hey, I've got a really great game, want a copy? I've had that happen a couple of times in the tube, and it's even more common in bars.
I see a lot of people also using iPaq's and second to that Jornada's (though the iPaq's are more common, not surprising really, they are the best Pocket PC device). I see people use them every day on the tube and train.
Everyone I know who had a Psion has ditched it, they are deemed as very unfashionable. I'm not saying they are bad (I've never owned one, though I played around with one when they first came out and was quite impressed), it's just that as I've said, I see people using both Palm OS and Pocket PC every day, but have not seen anyone use a Psion in about 2 years.
I think I'd wave my sexy twisty 480x320 Sony Clie at him and point and laugh at his Psion!:)
and its OS [Symbian] has beaten both Palm and Microsoft in the European handheld device market
Now *I* had a Symbian phone, but that statement is utter garbage! Quite simply they are lying to deceive the public.
Palm OS is the market leader in Europe by a long long way. Pocket PC also has a *much* larger takeup than Symbian devices.
This is blatant misrepresentation of something that sounds like it *could* be true, but because it's in Europe most Americans might be persuaded.
I think they have the audacity to claim that it's 'beaten both palm and Microsoft' because a large number of phone manufacturors have signed up to use Symbian, but there is no way that can realistically be labeld has having 'beaten' Palm. At it's most fanciful it could be construed as 'will beat Palm', but if you've ever used it, there is no way in hell it could compete with Palm OS 4, let alone Palm OS 5.
From what I've seen of it (having owned a Symbian based smart phone), Symbian is more about hype than an attempt to create a real mobile operating system that will expand and scale. Even the shortly marginalised Palm OS 4 (which has been/will be effectively marginalised by Palm OS 5) has better scope for expandability than Symbian!
What I don't understand is why people can't accept that a person can be reasonable, logical, mature, AND lean on religion.
Because it's not 'logical' nor 'reasonable' to follow main stream religious practices. They are based on faith and superstition, not on using logic.
That's why mainstream religions have spent the over a thousand years persecuting and humiliating scientists and those trying to use logic to explain the world around us and why it still happens on US television every single day of the year.
This is why people on/. are so very resistant to religion, this is a community of engineers, developers and hackers after all, and we don't like being persecuted and hounded by people who are resistant to change, science and to logic - to our discoveries and inventions.
To paraphrase Spider Jerusalem in Transmetropolitan...religion comes from a time when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth and people hallucinated daily...
Apart from the current lack of JFS support - no Mandatory Access Controls, no Access Control Lists and no process control (i.e. it's not possible to limit process to ports, or to limit what data they can read, write and append to) and the fact that anyone with the root user id can totally control the system uninhibited mean OS X that will stay on my PowerBook and GNU/Linux will stay on our server farm.
It's the same reason that I just junked FreeBSD (installed by the previous project lead) for GNU/Linux (which is able to do all of these things, with the appropriate kernel patches).
It's just not up to it for Serious Serving (TM) (though I'll admit that most installations are half assed and done by professionaly incompetant goofballs and don't use many, or indeed any of these features [I should say this is a general point and not aimed at the previous project lead, lol - in fact it's based more around the many overpaid luser consultants I've met]).
GNU/Linux is only only hard to use if your not a competant Unix Systems Engineer, infact I find it easier than *BSD, HP-UP, AIX, IRIX, GNU/HURD, and Solaris. Though I run Debian on the desktop much of this improved easy of use is primarily due to the work Red Hat have done in making their distribution much more suited to a coporate environment.
While your advice is eminately sensible, I would have a differnet take on this situation...
Now IANAL (nor related to one;-) but this would make me see $$$ signs in front of my eyes, and get me thinking about counter suits.
At the very least (and to be honest more relistically, few of us have the time or desire to persue counter suits for small sums of money) I would be utterly extatic that this vindictive and inept boob is about to spend hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars taking quite insane legal action against me for something it's entirely trivial to prove was not my fault.
I think it would be safe to assume legal assitance is quite appropriate in this insitance (it's not as if court appointed lawyers/soliciters are incompotent) and more than sufficent to let you off the hook (it's not like they have to be Robert Shapiro). Assuming of course the origional poster hasn't been up to anything else he's not admitted to:-)
It should be noted that fortunately I am in a position where I could afford to take a few days of work to take care of this, again a luxury many people can't afford!:)
When the Internet came out and someone said "It's fun surfing the Internet!" did you say "I've been surfing [surfline.com] for years"?
I doubt it, because surfing is a verb, not a noun. But then that was obvious to everybody but you it seems.
Apple (the recording company) did how ever say to Apple (Computer) 'hey, we've been using that name for years'.
Just as Apple Computer have said to companies who make products that look like or have names that sound like their's (even ones that were clearly not actual attempts at rip-offs). The makers of some recent iPod software for Linux can testify to this.
There is no way the post that drew attention to this hyporacy is a troll. I've known about for a while and it's quite amazingly hypocritical of Apple, even though the project has not been updated in some time.
Even though 'Claris Emailer', 'Newton' and 'Cyberdog' are no longer active projects Apple would not hesitate to sue to prevent someone from using those names in conjunction with similar software (or hardware, in the case of the Newton).
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever I see a list of FTP mirrors with one HTTP version, the HTTP version is faster and more reliable 9 times out of 10.
I suspect that's because 99% of people are downloading from one of the FTP servers.
I put to you that would be more logical to suspect it's because HTTP is faster than FTP as a transfer protocol. It generates less traffic (and uses less CPU overhead) which means downloads end quicker.
Additionally the CPU overhead generated by FTP connections also causes many sites to limit the number of users who can connect, which often results in 'busy sessions', something much rarer with HTTP (as HTTP servers typically have very high thresholds for the number of concurrent connections they will support). The overhead on a server of a user downloading a file over FTP is much greater than that of a user downloading the same file over HTTP.
Although FTP is of course theoretically more reliable than HTTP, in practice, because of 'Server busy: Too many users' messages combined with the speed and reliability of modern connections (which in turn makes HTTP more reliable) mean the the reverse is often the case from a user perspective - which is what I think the poster is getting at.
This may be partly due to poor FTP server configuration defaults and/or poor administration, but they cannot shoulder all the blame.
The potential lack of reliability with HTTP is a very minor issue these days, and the extra overhead of integrity checking files in addition to relying on TCP is just not warranted for all but the largest of files.
This doesn't make FTP completely redundant, but it does make it make it redundant when your files are small and your users are on fast, reliable connections (though the value of 'fast' varies in relation to the size of the file, even 33 kbps is 'fast' compared to the speed of connections that proliferated when the File Transfer Protocol was developed).
FTP is much better.
Wow - that's quite a statement to make (for someone spreading quite so much Fear Uncertainty and Doubt)!
HTTP is restricted by browsers, many of which will not support files larger than a certain size
This is not going be be an issue for anyone using a modern web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla). To suggest this a a potential problem really is beyond misleading.
Sacrificing a bit of speed and capabilities such as resume might be made up for with ease of use..
HTTP is much faster you are sacrificing speed when using FTP (which should be immediately obvious). Using FTP transfer requires additional overhead, greater than that of HTTP, more traffic equals slower download. It also equals greater CPU overhead on your server, which is dramatically noticeable on servers taking many hits.
HTTP also offers support for resume - I'm astounded that so many posters do not know this. Many browsers, as well as CLI tools such as 'wget' and 'curl' both support HTTP resume (and of course Apache supports it too).
So, by your own admission, it's easier, and as a point of fact, it's also faster and supports resumable downloads.
Add to this that not running an FTP server unless you have do reduces your exposure to exploits and that maintaining an FTP server will require more administration then FTP becomes a very hard sell for anything by large downloads (beyond the size the poster has indicated they will be serving).
There was a time when network connection speeds were so slow that I'd only download files over FTP, as that was the only reliable way to download files, but that was over 6 years ago.
Ah - many thanks!
The .xinit rc bug was annoying (I re-installed with a custom install and chose their configuration files before I worked it out) - particularly as this wasn't an issue in .1, but there is something else I can't work around...
/usr/X11R6/bin/, putting /usr/local/bin in my path (for that is where it resides) all to no avail.
Is anyone else having touble getting the 'Applications' menu to work? I can't get GIMP to start except by starting it from an xterm and I'd really like to be able to use the menu for it (and other applications).
I've tried using an absolute path, creating a symlink to it in
Is this happening to you? If anyone knows how to fix this I'd appreciate a hint.
Here is some many people don't talk about but any rocket that does up into space has a remote selfdistruct system.
No they don't, from an engineering and risk assessment perspective that simply makes no sense to me.
Rockets are either designed to be:
1) Re-usable.
Take the SRB's (Solid Rocket Boosters) or the Baikal (the reusable part of the new Russian Angara rocket) - they are reusable, that is: specifically designed to be reused. They are supposed to return to earth once they are spent, ready to be reused, bolted on to new second stage apparatus and fired back into space time after time.
Putting self-destruct systems in case they fall back to earth (which is something it's designed to do deliberately) would be silly. Particularly as the SRB's are (a) fitted with parachutes for a nice soft landing and (b) only launched so that they fall back to earth over the sea (where there aren't any cities).
2) Disintegrate.
Though they are not really rockets, ET's (External Tank's - i.e. the big orange thing an Orbiter is attached to) are designed to self distruct in earths atmosphere when their role is complete. I use this as an example to demonstrate that if don't want your 'Rocket' to self-destruct then it's fairly simple to have it disintegrate (burn-up) on re-entry.
In fact, as we've just seen, getting things to NOT burn up on re-entry is the problem.
Moving on...
I'd also like to point out that not only is the Orbiter not a 'rocket', but that if you really have as much knowledge as you want us to believe then I'm surprised that you didn't call the Orbiter an Orbiter and instead only ever referred to it in your posts as a 'shuttle' (which seems an odd, though not entirely unprecedented, thing for someone in the field - bearing in mind it was on it's return trip).
If as you suggest, self-destruct systems exist on rockets and Orbiters, why not on satellites? After all, satellites like Skylab clearly lack such systems (as was demonstrated by Skylabs ungracious 'landing' over Australia) - this odd proclivity towards putting self-destruct systems on space craft, while simultaneously discriminating against satellites makes little sense.
Additionally I'd point out, that it is extremely difficult to hit any precise target with an Orbiter, even with the aid of OMS/RCS (Orbital Manoeuvring System/Reaction Control System) and the avionics system, hence the unusual landing pattern that all Orbiter's follow - it's a difficult enough task just getting to the runway. In fact only one human has ever landed an Orbiter without the aid of the avionics system (and this individual had hundreds of flights logged).
This is relevant because hitting a target as big as a city with a returning Orbiter _ON_PURPOSE_ would be a difficult task for any pilot. Hitting a built up area, let alone any people, purely through random chance would take a miracle.
Besides which - did you not see the chunks of the Orbiter that came down? They were massive - some of the pieces that fell (which were numbered in the thousands) were easily the size of an engine block.
Explain to be how this is better - and in any way safer - than letting the Orbiter come down in once big piece?*
*= Especially when there is an inflight crew escape system (which was fitted after the Challenger incident in 86) - which would mean even if the Orbiter was heading off course the crew would still have the chance to slide along the escape rail and parachute out when they reach a low enough altitude (assuming the Orbiter was not spining or rolling).
I was watching the incident which lead directly to the withdrawal of publicly accessible 24 live (non encrypted or artificially delayed) audio visual broadcasts from space - I used to have a constant feed streaming where I worked and at home (as I also had a permanent connection at home too).
If you'd actually seen the broadcast you'd know it had nothing to do with UFO's or 'Space debris being pushed around by thrusters' as you put it (this is related to an entirely different reported incident and has nothing to do with why they cancelled some of the live a/v feeds, it didn't even happen at the same time). Additionally, the concern astronauts expressed about the space debris was not that it might be a UFO, but rather it might be part of the ISS or the shuttle which was, to them, of much more immediate concern.
I remember the actual incident quite vividly and it had everything to do with dust and small particles, some of which were suspected to be metallic by the crew, being pushed around by the air filters on board the ISS - as it was this which lead to complaints from the crew.
Needless to say, the crew were not happy about this situation - particularly as a complaint regarding this issue had already been made, yet it had been seen to be ignored by mission control. NASA ground control attempted to disregard the importance of the complaint, they even seemed to doubt it's credibility (I hypothesise that in such an incident some ground staff may have downgraded the severity of the complaint in the own minds and put down to the perception of an understandable crankiness of a crew living in close, cramped quarters for months at a time).
It was the appearance of disharmony and complaints from the crew which lead to the decision not to have 24 hour 'live' streaming as it was decided that this was not in the best interests of NASA, or the ISS, from a public relations perspective.
In their defence, the crew on board the ISS had been wound up even further as the communications to the ground kept breaking up and cutting out due to interference, which forced them to have to keep repeating their report. They also had other on going issues which give them cause for complaint, but I don't remember what they were.
Personally I do not think they were being particularly cranky - certainly I'd expect to see much more negative retoric in an office environment over issues considerably less trivial than small flakes of metal in the air conditioning, but I can only assume that NASA feels the significance of the project demands a greater sense of sensitivity that most work environments. Overall, I think the withdrawal of the video on these grounds was a mistake, as it has hurt NASA and ISS public relations rather than helped (due the relative triviality of the incident).
Of course there may be other reasons which lead to the cutting of the a/v feed, but this was the incident and reason cited by NASA at the time...
* IIRC this happend in the first half of 2000, but I could be wrong about that as I often find I get time periods mixed up.
Right, so I post that I dislike a product (and GIVE REASONS WHY!, i.e. I dislike the rendering engine and it's speed compared to alternatives) and it's modded as 'flamebait'?
Ooh he said something mean about a product he doesn't like! That's flamebait!
The origional post I replied to is a far better canidate for 'flamebait'.
I STILL don't like Opera and I STILL think it's a worse product than Omiweb, Safari, Konquerer, Galeon, Mozilla, Internet Explorer and iCab (though in the case of the latter, only just).
Furthermore, the reason many people dislike it has STILL gto nothing to do with cost as the origional post suggested (otherwise I would clearly not have paid for Netscape or Omniweb - for which payment was OPTIONAL and neither punished you with adverts for not purchasing).
Or how about: 'It's shitty because I, like the poster and lots of other people, think that it is slower than the alternatives and has a poor user interface.'
It's nothing to do with the fact that it costs money, IMO it just sucks. I've paid for web browsers, I paid for Netscape 4.0, I paid for Omniweb (both around 40 USD) but I wouldn't use Opera if it was the only free browser on earth. I would rather use the Hot Java browser and it _really_ sucks.
Opera just doesn't render as quickly or as well as Galeon, Chimera or a number of other similar derivatives. It's 'speed' claims are actually primarily related to it's UI responsiveness - not, in many cases, actually how fast it renders real world pages, particularly with embeded content.
On OS X it's slower than Chimera, Safari, IE, Mozilla (!), and even the god awful crud that is iCab.
I want a cross between Omniweb's great feature set, but with tabs, the Google bar, snap back, Chimera's rendering system (NOT KHTML, yuck!) and Safari's speed.
I fail to see how rpm is superior to dpkg in verifying the 'compatibility' of installed programs -- that is to say, only as good as the packager
There are two answers I'd like to give to this:
(1) Red Hat have always provided better quality packages (by which I mean they are more polished, with much more accurate meta data). Additionaly, in actuality, I belive that debsum -ca is no where near as useful as rpm -Va. If your a Debian user too I don't need to point that 'stable' is wildly out of date and that 'un-stable' is, as the name implies, often wildly unstable.
2) The idea that the only difference factor is simply the quality of the package and that there is no significant differnce in the package management systems is false. Crucialy, Debian lacks anything which matches the power of rpmlib.
In summary, while Debian manages to be much easier to maintain and use for personal desktop systems, it does not have the professional level of polish and intergrity that is required by most corporate (server) environments - partly due the the package management system (and rpmlib) and partly due to the quality of Red Hat's packages. As the forcus of Debian's maintainers is primarily users and developers, rather than the servers of large corporations, I think this situation is unlikely to change in immediate future.
As a UNIX Systems Engineer, here's my perspective...
I understand that "if it ain't broke, don't touch it" is a good rule for IT.
Of course this is very true.
If it ain't broke, you don't need support, right?
Unfortunately, new exploits for software (such as sql, ssh, web, ftp and dns servers) come out all the time, and these programs need to be patched. The situation is even worse if you have users logging in and/or executing programs on the server.
While possible, installing programs without using 'official' packages throws away the benefits of using a RPM system in the first place, particularly it's ability to verify the integrity and compatibility of installed programs (which it's main point of superiority over Debian's package management system).
Fortunately having done this for various versions of Red Hat on many systems, I can say it's a complete breeze to upgrade Red Hat systems (and as such it's hard to criticise Red Hat for EOL'ing these old distributions). You only need to pop in a CD of the latest version of Red Hat and select 'Upgrade'. It does an excellent job of not screwing up your system configuration or other data, while still upgrading all your applications.
It's quite possible to let someone who's never run Linux in their life and doesn't know a single UNIX command to upgrade a Red Hat system, as it only requires clicking through the graphical installation wizard, selecting 'Upgrade' where appropriate. The only downside is having to hook up an interface (i.e. keyboard/monitor) to the server, and that it requires downtime.
Finally, I run Debian, and it's easy for me to upgrade a system with just an ssh connection. Can Red Hat admins remotely upgrade packages over ssh, without having to install APT for Red Hat?
You can upgrade packages over ssh, Red Hat systems are even capable of being updated with a single click over the web or 'pushed' signed updates by Red Hat's central server, if you register with the Red Hat Network (IIRC you may register 1 system with them for free, or pay ~$65 a year for each system, it's a genuinely excellent server management system and well worth it IMO). However this does not help when said system is running a version of the distribution that has been EOL'd, as there will be no official packages to patch the bugs which are subsequently found.
Additionally, the features of RPM which make it better in ensuring a high level of compatibility and allow it, unlike Debian, to offer package integrity checking also make it awkward to use in many cases (and not nearly as pleasant as Debian!), which of course would be cured by APT-GET for RPM, which brings us on to...
(And if not, how do real sysadmins feel about APT for Red Hat?)
I love APT. I use Debian on all my home systems, and I even use apt on my OS X based PowerBook. (Though I admit I have reservations about using APT on production servers).
Sadly, however, all implementations of APT for RPM that I have tried have been dreadful and hideously bug ridden, and I have only heard of the same poor experiences from friends and colleagues. I think a workable version of APT for RPM would require active effort by Red Hat, but I do not see that happening any time soon as they have other priorities (and the corporate market they are targeting does not bemoan the lack of APT, the existing RPM system adequately meets their needs).
No professional programmer hacks it until it works
I think that is evidently not true.
Sadly, layout managers cannot do everything a developer can envisage with out such pixel based kludging. In particular, cross platform layout managers are almost guaranteed to give you an aesthetically (and often functionally) ugly result on at least one platform.
While it is important to make applications behave 'correctly' under varying conditions, such as UI theme's (a topic around which there is a big debate), resolution and font size, it is not acceptable that developers should design programs within the confines of an inadequate layout manager, particularly when the know the layout manager is not up to the task.
I'd also add that it is utterly unreasonably for developers to be forced to build UI's that are governed by the possibility of major changes in the way user interfaces are rendered on screen by the operating system - changes that may or may not happen, and if they do, will not happen for another 5 years.
If an operating systems developer such Microsoft decide that they wish to drastically change how a user 'views' an app, applications should re-released with that new approach in mind. Existing UI's should not be 'shoe horned' into working with a drastically new approach, and they should certainly not be limited by the requirement that they may be subject to unforeseeable changes in the way the widget-rendering API's behave.
I think to argue otherwise is to undervalue the importance of a good User Interface.
Case in point:
Microsoft applications for Windows CE required that you not provide any way to quit the application - if you did you were not allowed to use the Microsoft logo in conjunction with your product. This of course was a fiasco and made WinCE devices usable (without a 3rd party hack to work around the problem).
Your absoluetly right, of course this isn't the only reason it is / appears slow, but Stepwise (stepwise.com) did do a comparison and noted the difference reguarding how you setup your Swap file, they also published user instructions on how to use a dedicate swap partition.
:).
Having the Swap File on a seperate disk makes a big difference, even having the Swap File on a dedicate partition on a disk makes a difference (though of course not as much as more RAM
Though it should be noted that, IIRC this was still using a Swap File on a Disk (and not a Swap Filesystem) unless I remeber wrongly. The issue of having inreased overhead by having to do file IO rather than simple direct-to-disk writes is interesting!
The sad thing is that many media users would benifit from even being able to decide what disk to put their swap file on, but they aren't technical enough to be confortable doing it and the user interface/installer doesn't provide any easy way of doing it.
your blind claim that "he should be using LinuxPPC or something!"
I didn't make any such claim. Your assertion is false.
Specifically I did not say "he should be using LinuxPPC or something!", not did I say anything which can be paraphrased as such.
I suggested that he was incompetent in his review (which stands) and that his poor choice of distribution was a factor in that.
You are free to go get my job and do it better. It's easy to be a smart-ass like you when all you do is commenting on Slashdot.
As it happens I already do a job much like yours (and better, it would seem).
I am simply professional in my work and very demanding - I constantly strive to deliver the best results and look for the same in others. Because of this I don't see any merit in a poor and unscientific comparison of the performance of two operating systems and would rather see no review than a poor one with a misleading outcome done by someone incapable of doing a comparison.
If you are not familiar with the basic fundamentals of Unix (like how to make a program run at startup, or prevent a program from running at startup) and also unable to read manuals (for the process is well documented on Apple's web site) it is fair to call into question whether you ought to be writing articles or books about Unix at all.
Though I do not take pleasure in criticizing the work of others I make no apologies for making just criticism.
Apart from the obvious -i.e. I don't see the point in comparing out dated operating systems - the following quote from the article stuck out:
Since for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to shut down the GUI environment of OS X, I configured a simple VGA X server for Linux and started KDE, just to have a fair basis for comparison.
Good grief, is this reviewer simple?
Well the text at the bottom of the article says this:
Moshe Bar is a systems administrator and OS researcher who started learning UNIX on a PDP-11 with AT&T UNIX Release 6, back in 1981. Moshe has a M.Sc and a Ph.D. in computer science and writes UNIX-related books.
I don't care how much experience they have, or what qualifications they have, if a so-called "Systems Administrator" can't do something so simple I'd expect a recently graduated this-is-their-first-job PFY to do they should not be writing articles, let alone books, about Unix.
For a start, apart from commenting out the Quartz window manager at startup, which is both the obvious solution and easy to do (How on earth did you imagine it would be started? By tiny pixies living inside the hard drive perhaps?), you can simply login in with ">console" as your username and you'll instantly get a command line prompt.
BOTH of these options are perfectly well documented.
With this in mind, I'd say that any 'comparison' done by this individual is unreliable at best, and completely misleading at worst.
It's worse than pointless, because whatever random outcome comes out of this not-even-half-assed excuse for a comparison will be used in arguments and by other journals and taken as gospel for months to come.
Any why on earth chose SuSe and not "Yellow Dog Linux" or "LinuxPPC" the two most commonly used PPC distributions? SuSe isn't that common among Linux PPC users (compared to either Yellow Dog or LinuxPPC) and for good reason (it's just not as well build for PPC).
This article is a farse.
I don't upgrade my PDA every 2 years. I do it every 6 months and I will do until the functionality reaches a plateu. Specifically, greater storage capacity (something approaching an iPod, primarily for music and document storage).
I don't have a PDA as a fashion statement, I have one because it means I can play my MP3's (without having to carry around my iPod) browse the web, read emails (without having to carry my Laptop) and play games (without having to carry a Gamebody Advance), read ebooks (without having to carry a round 'real' books), the latest copy from major newspapers (having them in Avant Go means I don't have to carry the Economist every where I go on the of chance I get time to read it) and take quick pictures (without having to carry around a seperate camera) as well as do all the traditional PDA related features.
It's a choice of carrying:
- Gameboy Advance
- iPod
- Laptop
- Several Books (Novels and reference material)
- Address Book
- Note Pad
- Digital Camera
- This weeks copy of the Economist
- Several daily news papers (Guardian, FT, Wall Street Journal)
or:
- Sony Clie
I don't see why anyone would difficulty grasping why that's a vast improvement. It's a pretty simple premise.
It may note be quite as good as a dedicated digital camera or an iPod, but it's good enough to be better than carrying them around on me everywhere I go. As for browsing the internet with IR at 9600 (or at most ~28k, with bonding) to hell with that! I am never going back to that, I did that with my Newton, my Palm OS devices (all of them) and my Win CE (it was Win CE 2.0, rather than Pocket PC) based device, it sucked massively compared to using BlueTooth & GPRS (which both of my most recent PDA's have supported).
And, for your information I play a LOT of games on my PDA. I have a Sony Clie Game Controller (which comes with Sega Columns), on the evidence that more Palm software purchases are for games than _any_ other type of software, it would seem other Palm OS users do to. Seems your out of touch!
FWIW actually 480x160 is not that great and I would certainly call it low res! Even the standard 320x320 Clie models have better resolution!
With regard to watching movies, 480x320 in 16 bit is significantly better Sony Clie *can* play full screen movies, with sound. The NX70 can both play and record (using the built in Camera and Mic) in MPEG4 format. This means that if you want to take a quick movie to stick on the web later when you get home, or show the family what you got up to with friends/relatives on a day out you don't need to pre-plan to take your digital video camera with you, and the 640x480 MPEG 4 format means the quality is better than most Video-8 or VHS based traditional camcorders.
Paying a few hundred quid a couple of times a year is not a big hardship for something I use every day and so drastically changes my lifestyle, and it's easy to afford if you work for it.
As for being a Troll....
I'm not, a lot at my previous posts will tell you that. And the fact that you used to be a Troll is utterly dispicable. The fact that you think I am also makes you a poor judge of character.
Again, I should say it's now called Pocket PC, not WinCE. That was changed quite some time ago!
/.ers have heard that all before and I don't think anyone belives you when you say it.
It's a sad thing that the People in the UK give up their superior technology to crappy products from the US.
With high res color screens, wireless high-speed color web surfing (using Bluetooth and GPRS), MP3 playing and gaming...
Boy are stupid, of course we should be using Psions!
When was the last time a Psion had a built in camera, played MP3's, surfed the web using GPRS over BlueTooth and allowed you to plug in a portable game controller to play games on a high res colour screen (yet all still fit in a shirt pocket)?
My Clie (NR70v) does all these.
Luxembourg is not as high tech as London (and London is not as high tech as New York, and New York is miles behind Toyko).
The UK and Germany are both leagues ahead of the rest of Europe technologically, you just don't get access to the same hardware in other countries, even other affulent countires like France, Italy and Spain.
Saying 'but I don't need a computer that is able to do x, y or z powerful feature' is historically the same as saying 'I have old technology and don't care and why would anyone want a color screen/more than 640k/a faster CPU/etc/etc'. Certainly most
Unless your personal computers all have less than 640k? If that's true then I'm wrong, you must not mind!
WinCE devices? Have yet to seen one in use by someone.
:)
:)
Actually it's called Pocket PC now (though I had an origional Win CE device, a Jornada 420 a few years back) and if you haven't seen anyone use one - where have you been!?
I live in London, almost everyone I know has a Palm OS based device (friends, cow-orkers, boss, parents, drinking buddies, collegues in business meetings, contractors).
It's very, very common for me to bump into people (strangers in the street or tube) using a Palm (typically a Visor or Clie) and beam things, like games, back and forth. People often say, ooh what's that your playing? Or hey, I've got a really great game, want a copy? I've had that happen a couple of times in the tube, and it's even more common in bars.
I see a lot of people also using iPaq's and second to that Jornada's (though the iPaq's are more common, not surprising really, they are the best Pocket PC device). I see people use them every day on the tube and train.
Everyone I know who had a Psion has ditched it, they are deemed as very unfashionable. I'm not saying they are bad (I've never owned one, though I played around with one when they first came out and was quite impressed), it's just that as I've said, I see people using both Palm OS and Pocket PC every day, but have not seen anyone use a Psion in about 2 years.
I think I'd wave my sexy twisty 480x320 Sony Clie at him and point and laugh at his Psion!
Yes really!
'Shipments' and 'Shipped units in use' are not the same thing.
Just look around you! Go to business meetings! Ask friends!
Symbian is _NOT_ more prolific than Palm OS.
It's not even as prolific as Pocket PC (yet).
Quote:
and its OS [Symbian] has beaten both Palm and Microsoft in the European handheld device market
Now *I* had a Symbian phone, but that statement is utter garbage! Quite simply they are lying to deceive the public.
Palm OS is the market leader in Europe by a long long way. Pocket PC also has a *much* larger takeup than Symbian devices.
This is blatant misrepresentation of something that sounds like it *could* be true, but because it's in Europe most Americans might be persuaded.
I think they have the audacity to claim that it's 'beaten both palm and Microsoft' because a large number of phone manufacturors have signed up to use Symbian, but there is no way that can realistically be labeld has having 'beaten' Palm. At it's most fanciful it could be construed as 'will beat Palm', but if you've ever used it, there is no way in hell it could compete with Palm OS 4, let alone Palm OS 5.
From what I've seen of it (having owned a Symbian based smart phone), Symbian is more about hype than an attempt to create a real mobile operating system that will expand and scale. Even the shortly marginalised Palm OS 4 (which has been/will be effectively marginalised by Palm OS 5) has better scope for expandability than Symbian!
What I don't understand is why people can't accept that a person can be reasonable, logical, mature, AND lean on religion.
/. are so very resistant to religion, this is a community of engineers, developers and hackers after all, and we don't like being persecuted and hounded by people who are resistant to change, science and to logic - to our discoveries and inventions.
Because it's not 'logical' nor 'reasonable' to follow main stream religious practices. They are based on faith and superstition, not on using logic.
That's why mainstream religions have spent the over a thousand years persecuting and humiliating scientists and those trying to use logic to explain the world around us and why it still happens on US television every single day of the year.
This is why people on
To paraphrase Spider Jerusalem in Transmetropolitan...religion comes from a time when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth and people hallucinated daily...
Apart from the current lack of JFS support - no Mandatory Access Controls, no Access Control Lists and no process control (i.e. it's not possible to limit process to ports, or to limit what data they can read, write and append to) and the fact that anyone with the root user id can totally control the system uninhibited mean OS X that will stay on my PowerBook and GNU/Linux will stay on our server farm.
It's the same reason that I just junked FreeBSD (installed by the previous project lead) for GNU/Linux (which is able to do all of these things, with the appropriate kernel patches).
It's just not up to it for Serious Serving (TM) (though I'll admit that most installations are half assed and done by professionaly incompetant goofballs and don't use many, or indeed any of these features [I should say this is a general point and not aimed at the previous project lead, lol - in fact it's based more around the many overpaid luser consultants I've met]).
GNU/Linux is only only hard to use if your not a competant Unix Systems Engineer, infact I find it easier than *BSD, HP-UP, AIX, IRIX, GNU/HURD, and Solaris. Though I run Debian on the desktop much of this improved easy of use is primarily due to the work Red Hat have done in making their distribution much more suited to a coporate environment.
Being a religious fundamentalist is not something to be proud of.
A mature human being can be ethical, responsable and moral without having to lean on religion.
God does not love me, got does not exist and I am happy with that.
If he thinks other wise, he can come round to my house this weekend and I'll give him a damn good kicking.
While your advice is eminately sensible, I would have a differnet take on this situation...
;-) but this would make me see $$$ signs in front of my eyes, and get me thinking about counter suits.
:-)
:)
Now IANAL (nor related to one
At the very least (and to be honest more relistically, few of us have the time or desire to persue counter suits for small sums of money) I would be utterly extatic that this vindictive and inept boob is about to spend hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars taking quite insane legal action against me for something it's entirely trivial to prove was not my fault.
I think it would be safe to assume legal assitance is quite appropriate in this insitance (it's not as if court appointed lawyers/soliciters are incompotent) and more than sufficent to let you off the hook (it's not like they have to be Robert Shapiro). Assuming of course the origional poster hasn't been up to anything else he's not admitted to
It should be noted that fortunately I am in a position where I could afford to take a few days of work to take care of this, again a luxury many people can't afford!
When the Internet came out and someone said "It's fun surfing the Internet!" did you say "I've been surfing [surfline.com] for years"?
I doubt it, because surfing is a verb, not a noun. But then that was obvious to everybody but you it seems.
Apple (the recording company) did how ever say to Apple (Computer) 'hey, we've been using that name for years'.
Just as Apple Computer have said to companies who make products that look like or have names that sound like their's (even ones that were clearly not actual attempts at rip-offs). The makers of some recent iPod software for Linux can testify to this.
There is no way the post that drew attention to this hyporacy is a troll. I've known about for a while and it's quite amazingly hypocritical of Apple, even though the project has not been updated in some time.
Even though 'Claris Emailer', 'Newton' and 'Cyberdog' are no longer active projects Apple would not hesitate to sue to prevent someone from using those names in conjunction with similar software (or hardware, in the case of the Newton).