"Soon, you will learn that GSM makes for better cell networks, PAL is the better display standard"
Actually,
CDMA makes for better cell networks. 2x as many people per cell, more efficent spectrum usage, no hard handoffs, better voice quality, greater data bandwidth, larger cell sizes, better interference handling, and safer radio emissions (it's spread spectrum) make for an altogether better cell network.
Of course, if you absolutely detest CDMA and must have your GSM, no one is stopping you. There are three major GSM carriers in the US. They all have roaming agreements, so coverage is quite good. They all offer GPRS. One carrier even offers unlimited GPRS for $20 a month. And, yes, it's the same GSM that Europe uses. The same SIM cards. The same GPRS, SMS, and MMS.
"PAL is the better display standard"
Compared to NTSC, perhaps, but not to ATSC. If you haven't seen a 1080i or 720p HDTV picture, you don't know what you're missing. The European DTV standard doesn't support HDTV. Meanwhile, in the US, I'm getting 190 channels of digital, programming, some with 5.1 audio, three HD movie channels, one HD sports channel, one HD variety channel, two HD pay-per-view channels, and one HD nature channel. Oh, and did I mention that I get all of the major broadcast channels in HDTV as well?
"Anyway, next time you need a "coalition partner" to give your oil-grabbing excercise a veneer of legitimacy"
Your? I didn't support the war in Iraq. Neither did anyone I knew. Don't blame the actions of a dickhead president on the people of the US.
"just because I think the US is silly for not adopting existing, tried and tested technologies"
Oh, like PAL. Wait... we already had a standard... NTSC. That's because we INVENTED television as we know it. Oh, what about GSM? Hmmm... we INVENTED cellular technology (AMPS). And then Europe came up with a digital technology that has very limited cell-sizes (16km) compared to AMPS (30 miles, depending on power). So a little company called Qualcomm came up with something better. Damn straight we re-invented the wheel, and we made it better.
Also to be noted, is that the US is nearly 3x the size of Western Europe. Also to be noted, the US Interstate system is toll-free. When you're building highways across Wyoming, it doesn't really matter how much noise pollution you have. US roads are cheaper to build. European roads last longer. Both approaches are valid.
"Open source is the way to go for software development and deployment (Europe leads the way in terms of OSS deployment)"
Open source is a valid model, but commercial software still has many advantages. Europe leads the way in deployment because they don't want to buy their software from a foreign corporation. That's why Berlin chose SuSe over Windows, even when Windows was cheaper. Don't tell me that there wasn't politics in that decision.
So, no, the US isn't technologically "backwards". I have unlimited GPRS service anywhere in the country. My friend has unlimited 3G CDMA service. I get 190 channels of satellite TV, recorded on a database-backed Linux-powered direct-digital-copy two-tuner PVR. I get real HDTV. I have 2.5mbit internet. I pay $.03 per minute to call anyone in this country of 300 million. My son's public high school has nearly 600 computers (for a student body of 1800) - the're all on an Active Directory domain so he can access his work anywhere in the district. They have a 10 megabit connection to the internet, and a gigabit connection to other schools in the district. Hell, they even have cable TV. I drive a hybrid car (Civic Hybrid). I have a Java-Powered PDA/Phone (Danger Hiptop). My computer has a NVIDIA chipset and GPU, AMD CPU, and Crucial memory. All are designed by southern-california corporations (and likely manufactured in Taiwan).
Most mice (especially optical mice) only have a couple of screws on the bottom. Open it up and pop the little wheel out, then wash and dry it. If you hate the clickiness that the wheel has (as I do), or the weight that Logitech inserts into their optical mice (as I do), now would be a good time to remove them. Be sure to keep all the little parts handy.
"Opening from the top is pretty silly in this age of home entertainment centers"
Actually, I love top-loading. The mechanism is much simpler and harder to break than a front-loader. Plus, there's no delay between when you press the open button and the thing actually opens.
This shows the major problems with capitolism. In almost any other country nobody would even care about this. where as i believe that capitolism is of the best ways to manage a country, it still needs work.
"Apple's iPod reeks of great design and simplicity. By the looks of it, that device doesn't."
Except that it's ligher, cheaper, smaller, plays OGG/FLAC, and has ethernet built in. Oh, and it's compatible with Linux too.
Now, I agree that outselling the iPod is an unrealistic goal. But that has to do with the fact that the iPod has become a very strong brand, not the design of the device.
"Personally, I won't be getting one of these laptops from China"
Actually, all of Apple's notebooks are made in Taiwan by "Quanta Computer Inc." and "Eslitegroup Computer System". They may very well soon be made in China, if it is cheaper to produce them there.
Apple may represent "quality" to many people, but the reality is that the're made by the same companies as every other computer. The chips are made by Motorola/IBM/TSMC (vs. AMD/Intel/TSMC for PCs), and the drives/LCD screens/keyboards/cases are likely made by the same corporations.
"Can you imagine the bandwidth between CPU and video?"
It actually doesn't matter much. The bandwidth of the AGP bus is used mostly for loading textures into the GPU; it's the memory bandwidth on the card that makes it fast. Now, a GPU/Memory integrated combo would be very interesting. Unfortunately, it would also be far more expensive than discrete memory.
"Something with that ability is beyond the capabilities of any microsoft product."
Well, except any microsoft product with a NT kernel OS and the services turned off, which is likely the case of that south-pole computer. Remember that ad with the five nines? They weren't making that up.
"Remember microsoft = toy OS... linux = a true professional OS."
Wow... what is that stench? Oh, it's the smell of a troll.
Why is it so important to have a DVD player in your console? The GameCube is $50 cheaper than the PS2. Conveniently, you can buy a real DVD player for $50. One with a real remote that doesn't cost extra. One that plays VCDs and MP3 CDs flawlessly. One that your friends can borrow without borrowing your console.
"Latex+xemacs? You'd take that away? Over my cold dead body."
No, I wouldn't take it away. On the other hand, it shouldn't be included in the GNOME menu. Perhaps it shouldn't even be a part of the default install. Unless, of course, there's a nice GTK or QT frontend for LATEX.
"Editing config on apache: vi/etc/apache/httpd.conf ->/$(Term of interest) -> change value ->/etc/init.d/apache restart. Done. From anywhere in the world."
Oops. Doesn't work. Config files are fine - I never said get rid of them. However, there are a few things I'd like to see:
- XML based. XML allows you to use standard editors with syntax checking against the schema. Plus it's human readable and has standard syntax. IIS6 has this right. - GUI config tool. There should be a GUI tool to edit the most important/popular options. Apacheconfig or something.
"It makes me angry that the open-source community has to waste so much effort trying to interface with MS protocols when they put so much effort into obfuscating them"
Linux has to be compatible with Microsoft protocols if it hopes to replace their software. Switching to Linux is much easier when you can do it one department or one server at a time.
"could it just be you're spouting crap"
No, I'm not. I just mean that, like Mac OS, the user should not be exposed to the directory structure. There should be no/home/username. From the user's perspective, their home directory should be at the root of the filesystem. Now, of course, you should be able to type "/" in the run dialog or URL field and get "/", but the user doesn't need to know that.
Linux geeks don't get it. Users don't care why something works or doesn't work, they just want it to work. Autoprobing should be the standard, not the exception. A user should be able to plug in a digital camera, have it mount automatically, and be given a screen that lets them choose what they want to do. This is called polish, and it is what sets the commercial operating systems apart from Linux.
But you see, that's the problem: people don't want to have ten different library versions on their computer. Nor do they want to have to remember to get this version of glibc when they want to run this version of this app. Nor do they want to get drivers that are specifically built for their kernel.
Repeat after me: (this applies to the desktop system for a typycal user)
- Compiling from source is NOT ok - Recompiling the kernel is NEVER OK for ANY reason - Installing drivers or software MUST NOT require accessing the shell - There MUST NOT be different packages for different linux distributions - There MUST NOT be different packages for different kernels or different glibc/gnome versions. I can still run Internet Explorer 6 or Windows 98; I highly doubt that you could run most GNOME or KDE apps on GNOME/KDE 1.0 - Rebooting is NOT OK. Windows just got over this, Linux shouldn't have it. - There MUST BE a way to detect unknown hardware and query for the driver. Perhaps even a central server. Asking the user to figure out what chipset their DFE-530TX+ (Hint: It's Realtek) uses is NOT OK. - There MUST BE driver support OUT OF THE BOX for any device which has a stable driver. - Legacy crap must go. A modern distro SHOULD NOT include apps that are not GTK+ or QT based (at least not visibly). - Config tools are a must. Editing the config file for Apache is not an option. - Samba must be integrated flawlessly. You should be able to share a folder as a CIFS share flwawlessly. Likewise, you should be able to access a CIFS share just by typing in it's name in Nautilus/Konq (e.g. \\tux). This needs to apply to printers too. - The directory tree must be hidden. The tree should be for programmers and sysadmins. For normal users, the filesystem should start at their home directory. There should be a special location for applications (applications:/// is a good start on GNOME). - All applications MUST install a shortcut in the GNOME/KDE menu. - KDE/GNOME MUST settle on a common menu location. There is no need to have two seperate menus - after all, you can run GNOME apps within KDE and vice-versa. - When running in another desktop environment, apps should attempt to adapt to the theme of the rest of the system as closely as possible. This means that GTK+ should have support for QT thems and QT should have support for GTK+ themes. RedHaT is making a nice stab at this with Bluecurve. - No more "control center". It doesn't work. Make it a stupid shell folder. Oh, and put system options in a subfolder. - KDE needs to take a page from the GNOME people and cut down on the number of preferences. It is extremely difficult to find what you're looking for when there are so many pages - each with it's own tabs. - No more stupidly named applications. Also, the filebrowser is not an "application". It is the desktop - you get it when you type a folder in "run" or when you double-click on an icon on the desktop. GNOME has this right with Nautilus - most users wouldn't even know what the file browser is called.
Here are a few tips: - Lose the branding. GNOME shouldn't have GNOME plastered all over it. Neither is KDE. Remember, people are using "The Computer", "Linux", or "Red Hat" - they don't need another abstraction layer. - No acronyms. People don't know what "The GIMP" or "VNC" is. They are more likely to know what "Paint" or "Remote Desktop Connection" is. - The best programs describe themselves with their names. Outlook. Word. Internet Explorer. Notepad. Paint. Evolution/OpenOffice.Org/Epiphany/Gedit/GIMP - these names don't do nearly as good of a job at describing the application. - If you must use a cute name, append the descriptor to the brand. Epiphany Web Browser. Balsa Email Reader. - If you write a generic app, use a generic name. Eye of GNOME is a perfect example - it's a basic, no frills image viewer. Thus, it should be called "Image Viewer". GEdit is a text editor. Call it "Text Editor".
I actually have no job. I'm a high school student. I have an uncle, however, who works at Wal-Mart. His wife works at the local King Soopers. They both make barely above minimum wage, but through frugality and savings they have enough money to send their daughter to UC Boulder (in state, and she had good NMSQT scores). They don't own a Suburban, but they do manage.
Oh, I have used virtual desktops. I've used them since CDE on HPUX back in 1993. But I never really saw the usefulness.
"plus it's always nice to be able to get to a command prompt (virtual terminal) with a single keystroke if the windowing system starts to get flaky and needs to be restarted without rebooting the machine"
CTRL+ALT+DEL seems to do a fine job in most cases - you can bring up the task manager to kill an unruly process or log off. I have never seen a NT kernel OS crash (except because of hardware failure, but that doesn't count). Explorer seems to like to segfault every ten minutes, but that's hardly the fault of the kernel. Plus, you can kill it just fine.
Now, the one time I do appreciate CTRL+ALT+Backspace (or CTRL+ALT+F1) is when an OpenGL (or Direct3D) app goes nuts and takes over the display buffer. Under XP, I have to use remote desktop to log in and kill the process.
"And as there are no standard C extensions to program mmx or sse code (unlike for altivec), I think it's safe to assume that those filters are even written in assembler."
No, but most good compilers (e.g. GCC) can optimize for SSE/SSE2. Also, ICC and other compilers have their own extentions for programming SSE/SSE2.
I know that Photoshop is optimized for MMX/SSE/SSE2. Heck, maybe they did a great job of it. My point was that the algorithms were developed to be efficent on the PowerPC, and that they just don't run as fast on a different architecture.
"You also forget that most other non-hacked CPUs have boatloads of GPRs(usually 20 or more, 32 on most powerpcs) whereas the x86 kludges have ~8 available."
Yes, the number of registers is an issue on x86. Luckily, Athlon 64 has greatly improved upon this (when it is running in 64 bit mode). Some apps don't really need the extra registers, some do - I don't know if Photoshop is one of those apps.
"Also more recent x86s tend to have VERY deep pipelines which means that any stalls, branch mispredictions etc are very costly"
Yes, the P4's 20 stage pipeline is quite long (Athlon is actually quite a bit shorter with 10 stages). However, the P4 has what is, by far, the best branch predictor in a production CPU. It also has various caches to reduce the penalty of a branch mispredict. Clock for clock, the P4 is not the fastest CPU - but it doesn't have to be. It only has to be 2/3 as good as a PowerPC CPU per clock. "#2 I seriously doubt that photoshop is "more optimized" for powerpc any longer"
What I said was that the algorithms were designed in such a way that they ran fast on a PowerPC. Adobe is probably reluctant to change those algorithms because they might change the functionality of the filter.
Anyway, my point was that the statement that the G5 has much more memory bandwidth than the P4 is false. The P4 has equivelent memory bandwidth - 6.4 gigabytes a second.
Hmmm... when you're running a Photoshop filter, you shouldn't be writing to the disk or the network. And if you are, you have bigger problems (swapping yourself to oblivion)
"Multiple virtual desktops, for instance - I feel so limited under Windows for not having this simple feature."
I don't see what the big deal is. You can just minimize your mailer or whatnot when you're not using it. Then again, I run my display at 1600x1200 and my secondary LCD panel at 1280x1024, so I can understand how it would be useful with lower resolutions.
I have one friend who put two PCI Voodoo3 cards in his computer along with his GeForce4 so he could have four displays. He had over 7 megapixels going.
That's why the close button is red in XP - so you don't accidentilly click it. It's also larger in XP, and the buttons have more contrast and are better spaced.
The start button is larger and stands out better, as does the taskbar - making it a different color sets it apart from the rest of the controls.
Microsoft actually does do UI research.
I think that the GNOME project shows much more innovation in "getting away from Windows". They have introduced several major UI changes (e.g. instant-apply preference dialogs) and have an interface unlike Windows or Mac OS. KDE, on the other hand, is much more of a Windows clone - it has a familiar taskbar, "start" menu, filebrowser/web browser in one, etc.
GNOME2/KDE3 makes for a very usable desktop, I'd say it's along the caliber of WinXP/Mac OS. Linux starts to fall down when you try to install 3rd party applications (what if you can't get RPMs? what if you're running an older GLIBC?) or hardware.
"One of the reasons the new Mac walks over PCs in Photoshop benchmarks is massive memory bandwidth."
Actually, No.
Canterwood systems have a Pentium 4 with the 800 megahertz FSB and Dual DDR 400. Dual DDR 400 happens to have a total theoretical bandwidth of 6.4 Gigabytes a second, exactly the same as the P4's front-side bus. Plus, the busses are running synchronously so latency is lower.
The Apple G5 has a 1Ghz FSB and Dual DDR 400. Hmmm... that extra 200 mhz of FSB doesn't really do much, does it? It's still limited by memory bandwidth. Moreover, that bandwidth is shared between both processors in a DP system.
So, no, the G5 doesn't walk all over PCs in Photoshop because of two reasons:
- Photoshop is more optimized for the Mac. Adobe designed the filter algorithms to run fast with Altivec and the PPC architecture, therefore, they are inefficent when run on an x86 processor - Apple ran the test, and therefore they chose which filters to run with which settings and how many times on which images. Clearly, Apple would choose tests that benefit them. According to their results, they used a 650MB test image.
Here's why Apple's numbers don't mean shit:
- They don't give the system configuration of the PCs. Or the Macs. We have no idea if they loaded the Mac with 8GB of memory and left the PC with 256MB. Hell, the default configruation of the Dell system with the 3Ghz P4 is 512MB of DDR - the high-end PowerMac (which they undoubtibly used) has 1GB. So, if they used the systems stock (as I suspect they did), the 640MB Photoshop image they did the test on would fit in memory on the Mac but have to be swapped on the PC. - Assuming 32-bit RGBA color on the image, that's a 160 MEGAPIXEL image. Why would they use an image so large? Perhaps it's because it fits neatly inside the PowerMac's high-end configuration's default memory allocation but not the high-end Dell's default configuration. Makes you wonder.
The P4 with 800mhz FSB has JUST AS MUCH MEMORY BANDWIDTH as the fastest dual G5 system.
A 2-way Opteron system, on the other hand, has Dual DDR 400 for each CPU. Twice as much bandwidth as the fastest Apple system. Of course, you need a NUMA aware OS to take advantage of this bandwidth.
"A new version of Preview that renders PDFs faster than any other piece of software xp doesn't have it"
Hmmm... Acrobat or GSView seems plenty fast on my moderate 450mhz Celeron.
"Built-in faxing xp doesn't have it"
Actually, it does. You just have to install it from the CD (ever wonder why they call it "Printers and Faxes"?). It then shows up with all of your other printers.
"Hardware accelerated user interface xp doesn't have it"
Actually, it does. On many cards, XP can take advantage of hardware accelerated alphablending, bitblitting, video/image resizing, and other features. No, it's not 3D accelerated, but it's plenty nippy.
"OS level HWR software xp doesn't have it"
Hmmm... I care.... why? Why do I want handwriting recognition when I have A STINKING KEYBOARD.
"Why did MS choose to have every menu in the entire system cascade down except for the single most important one? Any sane UI designer would put the Start button in the upper-left of the screen."
Hmmm... like it in the upper left. Right click on taskbar, unclick "Lock the taskbar". Drag taskbar to top of screen.
"Expose (tiles all windows and lets you pick which to switch to) xp doesn't have it"
Hmmm.... you can right click on the taskbar and choose "Tile Windows". Or you can just use the stinking taskbar. Or ALT+TAB. Oh, right, ALT+TAB doesn't display little images of the programs. Oh, wait... it does. You just have to download the free PowerToy.
"A control layout that makes sense xp doesn't have it"
I don't even know what you're talking about.
"Print anything to PDF xp doesn't have it"
Hmmm... there are many 3rd party programs that let you output to PDF. Of course, most people like to stay as far away from PDF as possible. Still, you get one point.
So... let's see what XP has over Panther...
- Encrypt any folder, even the entire FS - Compressing file system - A file browser that can actually handle folders with 1,000 files in them. - Compatibility with millions of computers and hardware devices. Hmmm... I'd like to see you install Mac OS X on two completely different hardware architectures (EPIC/IA-32), not to mention AMD64. And I'd like to see if Mac OS X is compatible with virtually every USB, PCI, or other perhipheral ever made. - The most used web browser, media player, and game API included - Hibernation - Compatibility with nearly every program ever written. - Support for several different processors. Pentium/Pentium Pro/Pentium II/Pentium III/Pentium 4/K6/K6-2/K6-III+/Athlon/Athlon XP/Opteron/Pentium M/Cyrix WinChip/Rise MP6/Via C3/Athlon 64/Itanium/Itanium 2/Itanium 2 Madison/Transmeta Crusoe. - Peppiness on old hardware. I'd like to see Mac OS X run on a 233 mhz iMac with 64 MB of memory. Windows XP runs fine on a similar PC.
As another user said, SHVIA prevents HOAs from banning satellite dishes.
Get a DirecTV/TiVo unit. 2 tuners, direct digital recording (no recompression), 30 hours of storage, and all of those great TiVo features (Season Pass, WishList).
It's about $175 for the box and installation, $40 per month for DirecTV service (including 130 channels and local channels) and $5 a month for the TiVo service.
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"Soon, you will learn that GSM makes for better cell networks, PAL is the better display standard"
Actually,
CDMA makes for better cell networks. 2x as many people per cell, more efficent spectrum usage, no hard handoffs, better voice quality, greater data bandwidth, larger cell sizes, better interference handling, and safer radio emissions (it's spread spectrum) make for an altogether better cell network.
Of course, if you absolutely detest CDMA and must have your GSM, no one is stopping you. There are three major GSM carriers in the US. They all have roaming agreements, so coverage is quite good. They all offer GPRS. One carrier even offers unlimited GPRS for $20 a month. And, yes, it's the same GSM that Europe uses. The same SIM cards. The same GPRS, SMS, and MMS.
"PAL is the better display standard"
Compared to NTSC, perhaps, but not to ATSC. If you haven't seen a 1080i or 720p HDTV picture, you don't know what you're missing. The European DTV standard doesn't support HDTV. Meanwhile, in the US, I'm getting 190 channels of digital, programming, some with 5.1 audio, three HD movie channels, one HD sports channel, one HD variety channel, two HD pay-per-view channels, and one HD nature channel. Oh, and did I mention that I get all of the major broadcast channels in HDTV as well?
"Anyway, next time you need a "coalition partner" to give your oil-grabbing excercise a veneer of legitimacy"
Your? I didn't support the war in Iraq. Neither did anyone I knew. Don't blame the actions of a dickhead president on the people of the US.
"just because I think the US is silly for not adopting existing, tried and tested technologies"
Oh, like PAL. Wait... we already had a standard... NTSC. That's because we INVENTED television as we know it. Oh, what about GSM? Hmmm... we INVENTED cellular technology (AMPS). And then Europe came up with a digital technology that has very limited cell-sizes (16km) compared to AMPS (30 miles, depending on power). So a little company called Qualcomm came up with something better. Damn straight we re-invented the wheel, and we made it better.
Also to be noted, is that the US is nearly 3x the size of Western Europe. Also to be noted, the US Interstate system is toll-free. When you're building highways across Wyoming, it doesn't really matter how much noise pollution you have. US roads are cheaper to build. European roads last longer. Both approaches are valid.
"Open source is the way to go for software development and deployment (Europe leads the way in terms of OSS deployment)"
Open source is a valid model, but commercial software still has many advantages. Europe leads the way in deployment because they don't want to buy their software from a foreign corporation. That's why Berlin chose SuSe over Windows, even when Windows was cheaper. Don't tell me that there wasn't politics in that decision.
So, no, the US isn't technologically "backwards". I have unlimited GPRS service anywhere in the country. My friend has unlimited 3G CDMA service. I get 190 channels of satellite TV, recorded on a database-backed Linux-powered direct-digital-copy two-tuner PVR. I get real HDTV. I have 2.5mbit internet. I pay $.03 per minute to call anyone in this country of 300 million. My son's public high school has nearly 600 computers (for a student body of 1800) - the're all on an Active Directory domain so he can access his work anywhere in the district. They have a 10 megabit connection to the internet, and a gigabit connection to other schools in the district. Hell, they even have cable TV. I drive a hybrid car (Civic Hybrid). I have a Java-Powered PDA/Phone (Danger Hiptop). My computer has a NVIDIA chipset and GPU, AMD CPU, and Crucial memory. All are designed by southern-california corporations (and likely manufactured in Taiwan).
Wow! You made a relavent point AND made a shameless Apple plug! Slashdot salutes you!
Most mice (especially optical mice) only have a couple of screws on the bottom. Open it up and pop the little wheel out, then wash and dry it. If you hate the clickiness that the wheel has (as I do), or the weight that Logitech inserts into their optical mice (as I do), now would be a good time to remove them. Be sure to keep all the little parts handy.
"Opening from the top is pretty silly in this age of home entertainment centers"
Actually, I love top-loading. The mechanism is much simpler and harder to break than a front-loader. Plus, there's no delay between when you press the open button and the thing actually opens.
This shows the major problems with capitolism. In almost any other country nobody would even care about this. where as i believe that capitolism is of the best ways to manage a country, it still needs work.
"Apple's iPod reeks of great design and simplicity. By the looks of it, that device doesn't."
Except that it's ligher, cheaper, smaller, plays OGG/FLAC, and has ethernet built in. Oh, and it's compatible with Linux too.
Now, I agree that outselling the iPod is an unrealistic goal. But that has to do with the fact that the iPod has become a very strong brand, not the design of the device.
Remember, Rio is a well known brand too.
"Personally, I won't be getting one of these laptops from China"
Actually, all of Apple's notebooks are made in Taiwan by "Quanta Computer Inc." and "Eslitegroup Computer System". They may very well soon be made in China, if it is cheaper to produce them there.
Apple may represent "quality" to many people, but the reality is that the're made by the same companies as every other computer. The chips are made by Motorola/IBM/TSMC (vs. AMD/Intel/TSMC for PCs), and the drives/LCD screens/keyboards/cases are likely made by the same corporations.
"Can you imagine the bandwidth between CPU and video?"
It actually doesn't matter much. The bandwidth of the AGP bus is used mostly for loading textures into the GPU; it's the memory bandwidth on the card that makes it fast. Now, a GPU/Memory integrated combo would be very interesting. Unfortunately, it would also be far more expensive than discrete memory.
"Something with that ability is beyond the capabilities of any microsoft product."
Well, except any microsoft product with a NT kernel OS and the services turned off, which is likely the case of that south-pole computer. Remember that ad with the five nines? They weren't making that up.
"Remember microsoft = toy OS... linux = a true professional OS."
Wow... what is that stench? Oh, it's the smell of a troll.
Why is it so important to have a DVD player in your console? The GameCube is $50 cheaper than the PS2. Conveniently, you can buy a real DVD player for $50. One with a real remote that doesn't cost extra. One that plays VCDs and MP3 CDs flawlessly. One that your friends can borrow without borrowing your console.
"Latex+xemacs? You'd take that away? Over my cold dead body."
/etc/apache/httpd.conf -> /$(Term of interest) -> change value -> /etc/init.d/apache restart. Done. From anywhere in the world."
/home/username. From the user's perspective, their home directory should be at the root of the filesystem. Now, of course, you should be able to type "/" in the run dialog or URL field and get "/", but the user doesn't need to know that.
No, I wouldn't take it away. On the other hand, it shouldn't be included in the GNOME menu. Perhaps it shouldn't even be a part of the default install. Unless, of course, there's a nice GTK or QT frontend for LATEX.
"Editing config on apache: vi
Oops. Doesn't work. Config files are fine - I never said get rid of them. However, there are a few things I'd like to see:
- XML based. XML allows you to use standard editors with syntax checking against the schema. Plus it's human readable and has standard syntax. IIS6 has this right.
- GUI config tool. There should be a GUI tool to edit the most important/popular options. Apacheconfig or something.
"It makes me angry that the open-source community has to waste so much effort trying to interface with MS protocols when they put so much effort into obfuscating them"
Linux has to be compatible with Microsoft protocols if it hopes to replace their software. Switching to Linux is much easier when you can do it one department or one server at a time.
"could it just be you're spouting crap"
No, I'm not. I just mean that, like Mac OS, the user should not be exposed to the directory structure. There should be no
Linux geeks don't get it. Users don't care why something works or doesn't work, they just want it to work. Autoprobing should be the standard, not the exception. A user should be able to plug in a digital camera, have it mount automatically, and be given a screen that lets them choose what they want to do. This is called polish, and it is what sets the commercial operating systems apart from Linux.
But you see, that's the problem: people don't want to have ten different library versions on their computer. Nor do they want to have to remember to get this version of glibc when they want to run this version of this app. Nor do they want to get drivers that are specifically built for their kernel.
Repeat after me:
(this applies to the desktop system for a typycal user)
- Compiling from source is NOT ok
- Recompiling the kernel is NEVER OK for ANY reason
- Installing drivers or software MUST NOT require accessing the shell
- There MUST NOT be different packages for different linux distributions
- There MUST NOT be different packages for different kernels or different glibc/gnome versions. I can still run Internet Explorer 6 or Windows 98; I highly doubt that you could run most GNOME or KDE apps on GNOME/KDE 1.0
- Rebooting is NOT OK. Windows just got over this, Linux shouldn't have it.
- There MUST BE a way to detect unknown hardware and query for the driver. Perhaps even a central server. Asking the user to figure out what chipset their DFE-530TX+ (Hint: It's Realtek) uses is NOT OK.
- There MUST BE driver support OUT OF THE BOX for any device which has a stable driver.
- Legacy crap must go. A modern distro SHOULD NOT include apps that are not GTK+ or QT based (at least not visibly).
- Config tools are a must. Editing the config file for Apache is not an option.
- Samba must be integrated flawlessly. You should be able to share a folder as a CIFS share flwawlessly. Likewise, you should be able to access a CIFS share just by typing in it's name in Nautilus/Konq (e.g. \\tux). This needs to apply to printers too.
- The directory tree must be hidden. The tree should be for programmers and sysadmins. For normal users, the filesystem should start at their home directory. There should be a special location for applications (applications:/// is a good start on GNOME).
- All applications MUST install a shortcut in the GNOME/KDE menu.
- KDE/GNOME MUST settle on a common menu location. There is no need to have two seperate menus - after all, you can run GNOME apps within KDE and vice-versa.
- When running in another desktop environment, apps should attempt to adapt to the theme of the rest of the system as closely as possible. This means that GTK+ should have support for QT thems and QT should have support for GTK+ themes. RedHaT is making a nice stab at this with Bluecurve.
- No more "control center". It doesn't work. Make it a stupid shell folder. Oh, and put system options in a subfolder.
- KDE needs to take a page from the GNOME people and cut down on the number of preferences. It is extremely difficult to find what you're looking for when there are so many pages - each with it's own tabs.
- No more stupidly named applications. Also, the filebrowser is not an "application". It is the desktop - you get it when you type a folder in "run" or when you double-click on an icon on the desktop. GNOME has this right with Nautilus - most users wouldn't even know what the file browser is called.
Here are a few tips:
- Lose the branding. GNOME shouldn't have GNOME plastered all over it. Neither is KDE. Remember, people are using "The Computer", "Linux", or "Red Hat" - they don't need another abstraction layer.
- No acronyms. People don't know what "The GIMP" or "VNC" is. They are more likely to know what "Paint" or "Remote Desktop Connection" is.
- The best programs describe themselves with their names. Outlook. Word. Internet Explorer. Notepad. Paint. Evolution/OpenOffice.Org/Epiphany/Gedit/GIMP - these names don't do nearly as good of a job at describing the application.
- If you must use a cute name, append the descriptor to the brand. Epiphany Web Browser. Balsa Email Reader.
- If you write a generic app, use a generic name. Eye of GNOME is a perfect example - it's a basic, no frills image viewer. Thus, it should be called "Image Viewer". GEdit is a text editor. Call it "Text Editor".
Here are some examples of badly named application
I actually have no job. I'm a high school student. I have an uncle, however, who works at Wal-Mart. His wife works at the local King Soopers. They both make barely above minimum wage, but through frugality and savings they have enough money to send their daughter to UC Boulder (in state, and she had good NMSQT scores). They don't own a Suburban, but they do manage.
Oh, I have used virtual desktops. I've used them since CDE on HPUX back in 1993. But I never really saw the usefulness.
"plus it's always nice to be able to get to a command prompt (virtual terminal) with a single keystroke if the windowing system starts to get flaky and needs to be restarted without rebooting the machine"
CTRL+ALT+DEL seems to do a fine job in most cases - you can bring up the task manager to kill an unruly process or log off. I have never seen a NT kernel OS crash (except because of hardware failure, but that doesn't count). Explorer seems to like to segfault every ten minutes, but that's hardly the fault of the kernel. Plus, you can kill it just fine.
Now, the one time I do appreciate CTRL+ALT+Backspace (or CTRL+ALT+F1) is when an OpenGL (or Direct3D) app goes nuts and takes over the display buffer. Under XP, I have to use remote desktop to log in and kill the process.
"And as there are no standard C extensions to program mmx or sse code (unlike for altivec), I think it's safe to assume that those filters are even written in assembler."
No, but most good compilers (e.g. GCC) can optimize for SSE/SSE2. Also, ICC and other compilers have their own extentions for programming SSE/SSE2.
I know that Photoshop is optimized for MMX/SSE/SSE2. Heck, maybe they did a great job of it. My point was that the algorithms were developed to be efficent on the PowerPC, and that they just don't run as fast on a different architecture.
"You also forget that most other non-hacked CPUs have boatloads of GPRs(usually 20 or more, 32 on most powerpcs) whereas the x86 kludges have ~8 available."
Yes, the number of registers is an issue on x86. Luckily, Athlon 64 has greatly improved upon this (when it is running in 64 bit mode). Some apps don't really need the extra registers, some do - I don't know if Photoshop is one of those apps.
"Also more recent x86s tend to have VERY deep pipelines which means that any stalls, branch mispredictions etc are very costly"
Yes, the P4's 20 stage pipeline is quite long (Athlon is actually quite a bit shorter with 10 stages). However, the P4 has what is, by far, the best branch predictor in a production CPU. It also has various caches to reduce the penalty of a branch mispredict. Clock for clock, the P4 is not the fastest CPU - but it doesn't have to be. It only has to be 2/3 as good as a PowerPC CPU per clock.
"#2 I seriously doubt that photoshop is "more optimized" for powerpc any longer"
What I said was that the algorithms were designed in such a way that they ran fast on a PowerPC. Adobe is probably reluctant to change those algorithms because they might change the functionality of the filter.
Anyway, my point was that the statement that the G5 has much more memory bandwidth than the P4 is false. The P4 has equivelent memory bandwidth - 6.4 gigabytes a second.
Hmmm... when you're running a Photoshop filter, you shouldn't be writing to the disk or the network. And if you are, you have bigger problems (swapping yourself to oblivion)
"Multiple virtual desktops, for instance - I feel so limited under Windows for not having this simple feature."
I don't see what the big deal is. You can just minimize your mailer or whatnot when you're not using it. Then again, I run my display at 1600x1200 and my secondary LCD panel at 1280x1024, so I can understand how it would be useful with lower resolutions.
I have one friend who put two PCI Voodoo3 cards in his computer along with his GeForce4 so he could have four displays. He had over 7 megapixels going.
That's why the close button is red in XP - so you don't accidentilly click it. It's also larger in XP, and the buttons have more contrast and are better spaced.
The start button is larger and stands out better, as does the taskbar - making it a different color sets it apart from the rest of the controls.
Microsoft actually does do UI research.
I think that the GNOME project shows much more innovation in "getting away from Windows". They have introduced several major UI changes (e.g. instant-apply preference dialogs) and have an interface unlike Windows or Mac OS. KDE, on the other hand, is much more of a Windows clone - it has a familiar taskbar, "start" menu, filebrowser/web browser in one, etc.
GNOME2/KDE3 makes for a very usable desktop, I'd say it's along the caliber of WinXP/Mac OS. Linux starts to fall down when you try to install 3rd party applications (what if you can't get RPMs? what if you're running an older GLIBC?) or hardware.
The TI-89 now has a real-time clock, as of AMS version 2.05.
You can download a free calendar/planner from TI's website.
"One of the reasons the new Mac walks over PCs in Photoshop benchmarks is massive memory bandwidth."
Actually,
No.
Canterwood systems have a Pentium 4 with the 800 megahertz FSB and Dual DDR 400. Dual DDR 400 happens to have a total theoretical bandwidth of 6.4 Gigabytes a second, exactly the same as the P4's front-side bus. Plus, the busses are running synchronously so latency is lower.
The Apple G5 has a 1Ghz FSB and Dual DDR 400. Hmmm... that extra 200 mhz of FSB doesn't really do much, does it? It's still limited by memory bandwidth. Moreover, that bandwidth is shared between both processors in a DP system.
So, no, the G5 doesn't walk all over PCs in Photoshop because of two reasons:
- Photoshop is more optimized for the Mac. Adobe designed the filter algorithms to run fast with Altivec and the PPC architecture, therefore, they are inefficent when run on an x86 processor
- Apple ran the test, and therefore they chose which filters to run with which settings and how many times on which images. Clearly, Apple would choose tests that benefit them. According to their results, they used a 650MB test image.
Here's why Apple's numbers don't mean shit:
- They don't give the system configuration of the PCs. Or the Macs. We have no idea if they loaded the Mac with 8GB of memory and left the PC with 256MB. Hell, the default configruation of the Dell system with the 3Ghz P4 is 512MB of DDR - the high-end PowerMac (which they undoubtibly used) has 1GB. So, if they used the systems stock (as I suspect they did), the 640MB Photoshop image they did the test on would fit in memory on the Mac but have to be swapped on the PC.
- Assuming 32-bit RGBA color on the image, that's a 160 MEGAPIXEL image. Why would they use an image so large? Perhaps it's because it fits neatly inside the PowerMac's high-end configuration's default memory allocation but not the high-end Dell's default configuration. Makes you wonder.
The P4 with 800mhz FSB has JUST AS MUCH MEMORY BANDWIDTH as the fastest dual G5 system.
A 2-way Opteron system, on the other hand, has Dual DDR 400 for each CPU. Twice as much bandwidth as the fastest Apple system. Of course, you need a NUMA aware OS to take advantage of this bandwidth.
"Journaling file system
xp doesn't have it"
NTFS
"A new version of Preview that renders PDFs faster than any other piece of software
xp doesn't have it"
Hmmm... Acrobat or GSView seems plenty fast on my moderate 450mhz Celeron.
"Built-in faxing
xp doesn't have it"
Actually, it does. You just have to install it from the CD (ever wonder why they call it "Printers and Faxes"?). It then shows up with all of your other printers.
"Hardware accelerated user interface
xp doesn't have it"
Actually, it does. On many cards, XP can take advantage of hardware accelerated alphablending, bitblitting, video/image resizing, and other features. No, it's not 3D accelerated, but it's plenty nippy.
"OS level HWR software
xp doesn't have it"
Hmmm... I care.... why? Why do I want handwriting recognition when I have A STINKING KEYBOARD.
"Why did MS choose to have every menu in the entire system cascade down except for the single most important one? Any sane UI designer would put the Start button in the upper-left of the screen."
Hmmm... like it in the upper left. Right click on taskbar, unclick "Lock the taskbar". Drag taskbar to top of screen.
"Expose (tiles all windows and lets you pick which to switch to)
xp doesn't have it"
Hmmm.... you can right click on the taskbar and choose "Tile Windows". Or you can just use the stinking taskbar. Or ALT+TAB. Oh, right, ALT+TAB doesn't display little images of the programs. Oh, wait... it does. You just have to download the free PowerToy.
"A control layout that makes sense
xp doesn't have it"
I don't even know what you're talking about.
"Print anything to PDF
xp doesn't have it"
Hmmm... there are many 3rd party programs that let you output to PDF. Of course, most people like to stay as far away from PDF as possible. Still, you get one point.
So... let's see what XP has over Panther...
- Encrypt any folder, even the entire FS
- Compressing file system
- A file browser that can actually handle folders with 1,000 files in them.
- Compatibility with millions of computers and hardware devices. Hmmm... I'd like to see you install Mac OS X on two completely different hardware architectures (EPIC/IA-32), not to mention AMD64. And I'd like to see if Mac OS X is compatible with virtually every USB, PCI, or other perhipheral ever made.
- The most used web browser, media player, and game API included
- Hibernation
- Compatibility with nearly every program ever written.
- Support for several different processors. Pentium/Pentium Pro/Pentium II/Pentium III/Pentium 4/K6/K6-2/K6-III+/Athlon/Athlon XP/Opteron/Pentium M/Cyrix WinChip/Rise MP6/Via C3/Athlon 64/Itanium/Itanium 2/Itanium 2 Madison/Transmeta Crusoe.
- Peppiness on old hardware. I'd like to see Mac OS X run on a 233 mhz iMac with 64 MB of memory. Windows XP runs fine on a similar PC.
Need I go on...
Lets see... what's new in Panther?
Fast user switching.
XP has it.
Videoconfrencing combined with IM
XP has it.
HTML Email
XP has it.
Encrypting File System
XP has it.
Folder Syncronization
XP has it.
Hmmm.... you might as well call it "Mac OS XP".
As another user said, SHVIA prevents HOAs from banning satellite dishes.
Get a DirecTV/TiVo unit. 2 tuners, direct digital recording (no recompression), 30 hours of storage, and all of those great TiVo features (Season Pass, WishList).
It's about $175 for the box and installation, $40 per month for DirecTV service (including 130 channels and local channels) and $5 a month for the TiVo service.