All of which still exist. As Microsoft crumbles under the weight of penguins, their frankenstein versions of these standards will too. My point is that it doesn't matter that the OSS world is doing something that may or may not damage them, Microsoft will do what they want regardless of linux/icazza/standards. Basically - let's not worry about this. If you build it, they will come, etc.
I see OpenOffice's support for MS Word documents merely a way of porting vendor lock in.
Ooop. Except that Microsoft don't make either openoffice or Mono. You don't think that it might be a method of removing vendor lock in?
While I do agree that Microsoft will jump on Mono if they perceive it as a threat they will find it difficult to do the more they use it as evidence of how nice they are now and continue to point at it as demonstrating their "love" of open standards.
Re:Is KDE trying to be Windows?
on
KDE 3.1 Released
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· Score: 1
Fair enough - a lot of the features are also available under windows; however we should not accept the idea that because it is a feature that the competition has we should not have it. A good idea is a good idea. In fact, personally, the problem I have with windows is not particularly its features it is their implementation of those features.
Looking through the list of features there are many innovations as well as feature copy. As an example: I particularly like the secure access to remote file systems using nothing other than ssh. That's certainly not in windows but could easily get lost in the noise of the other eye candy features.
It is unfair to expect 100% innovation; only by leaveraging the work of others do we truly ever move forward.
I don't use KDE myself, but it doesn't stop me from recognising that the beauty of KDE is in the underlying libraries. They have been designed with great care and thought; it demonstrates the benefit of getting API design right from an early stage and reaping the benefits in the future - no other open source project seems to advance as quickly as KDE does.
I wasn't really commenting on whether it's possible to run it in that configuration - there must be all manner of set ups that people use. My point is that the minimum hardware requirements for Windows go up and up. On the other hand the minimum hardware requirements for Linux have remained as 386 for ever.
I can still remember running windows 95 on a 386. I've still got the CD so it would still be possible for me to do so. I could not do the same with windows XP. My supposition is that the reason older hardware is ignored (and thus options for pareing down software to meet everyone's requirements) is that developers are too keen on having the latest and greatest and thus forget about everyone not in the same lucky position.
I believe that Alan Cox, as an example, still uses a console with vi for editing the kernel. I have some confidence therefore that he will make sure that that configuration remains available to us all -- including those who might want to run a 3GHz P4 at blistering text console speeds.
It's interesting that the same problems don't occur under Windows. I understood that the code base is now unified for both the Linux and Windows drivers.
Increasing performance, while always appreciated, for me is secondary - I want reliability first.
I don't really think that nVidia are going to just go under, but they could very easily slip into being a secondary player. As an example I'd use Matrox rather than ATI. Around the time of the Mystique they were untouchable, then they lost it and they have still not recovered.
Tried lots of options and the problem presents itself (at present count) on five different machines with three different sets of hardware. As I say though - great with the open source driver so we still get what we want.
I'm running UT2003 on a 1Ghz athlon with a geforce2. What are you talking about? It runs perfectly acceptably - i've not noticed any slow down at all (admittedly only 1024x768 but that's fine for a game). I think this sort of comment is just fear mongering and rationalisation on your part. Spend a bit too much money on your graphics card did you?
We've got some GeForce 4's installed where I work. We've had to use nvidia's own driver because the open source one doesn't support the card yet. I've just lost a days worth of simulation results because nVidia's binary only driver crashed the X server.
Every nVidia card I have had suffers exactly this problem. Geforce2 MX200/400, tnt2, Geforce4. With the open source driver they are an absolute dream; with nVidia's driver - crashes of varying degrees. I would imagine that since the linux and windows drivers are now from a unified code base that exactly the same problem occurs under windows but noone notices because windows crashes so much.
How can they allow the open source X driver to be better? I mean seriously - what are nVidia doing? This sort of thing does not instill confidence. Open the source, if you can't because of patent issues then open the parts of the source that you can open. Hire the guys writing the open source driver as they are clearly infinitely better at it than your current lot.
Essentially we are buying graphics cards from a hardware company - the fact that we need drivers is an inconvenience that we all live with because the convenience of being able to mix and match our pc hardware outweighs it. I am not interested in the internals of your drivers - I just want the card to work. Here is an easy business plan for all hardware manufacturers:
Make hardware
Open the driver source/hardware specs
....
Profit
Linux is coming, accept this and get ready to jump on the bandwagon.
Now they are putting out cards that apparently don't perform much better than their competition. This is a dangerous position to be in. Just one year ago, this would have been laughable - nVidia produced cards that were cheaper and better than everyone elses. Now... no one is blown away. This is a company that is on a downard slope.
Re:A little more information
on
Adopt a KDE Geek
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The analogy is not implicitly flawed it's just incomplete. Also, KDE includes *lots* of applications, Windows does not. You'd better start adding in the amount of cruft in Office as well.
Comparisons like this are always going to be subjective. I can say right back at you that on this machine Windows XP is less responsive than KDE. Does it prove anything? Nope.
Re:this world has plenty of really helpless out th
on
Adopt a KDE Geek
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· Score: 1
I think you've misunderstood -- IT'S MY MONEY AND I'LL DO WHAT I LIKE WITH IT.
If you want to give money to an african child, go ahead. If I want to burn my cash in front of an african child, I will.
I do not wish to minimise the plight of these poorer people. This is a separate issue. Where does anyone get the audacity to instruct others what they should do with their money? The mere fact that you are writing on a technical website demonstrates that you are most likely in front of a computer in a westernised country and have chosen not to sell all your excess and unneeded posessions, fly to africa and start an educational programme to pull third world countries into a better state. I have no problem with the fact that you haven't done this, you are not required to. Please do the rest of us the same courtesy.
During my formative years as a geek I (as I'm sure many of you did) had to make do with whatever was available. Although being pampered and showered with cool gear would have been nice, my lack of up-to-the-minute equipment did not damage me - in fact, I would go as far as saying that my abilities to fix equipment in the middle of a field come directly from those early days and put me and my skills in demand today.
The reason the requirements for Windows keep increasing and increasing, every release requiring the most modern hardware is because the developers all have modern hardware and don't see it as a problem to make full use of it. (Games are even more of a culprit here, but that's a little more forgiveable)
Whatever hardware the developers have is what the hardware requirements will be in the end; if that is a gameboy and a piece of string then so much the better for the project.
Nonsense. Novelty detection is a well established field in pattern recognition circles. Although these methods improve with the addition of abnormal examples as well as normal; there is no requirement for them.
They are often used in condition monitoring applications to detect faults in cases where the particular fault has never been seen before. The system's learn what is a working model and then shout when something falls outside those boundaries. Have a look at self organising maps and novelty detection in general
Clustering is not necessarily used to get performance increases. We're looking at using openMosix to make better use of a room full of lab computers. Certainly during the night their CPU's are completely unused. Getting processes to migrate to them and make use of the CPU is the goal NOT to gain some huge parallel computing benefit. The original poster might not want to get higher performance but rather to "steal" cycles from idle desktops, that otherwise would go to waste.
Would need at least a recompile with identical API. Presumably the Galeon guys would rather use the new release to get some other changes in as well which would be why they don't just recompile the existing version.
zilla \Zil"la\, n. (Bot.) A low, thorny, suffrutescent, crucifeous plant (Zilla myagroides) found in the deserts of Egypt. Its leaves are boiled in water, and eaten, by the Arabs.
In other news, Egyptian Arabs are to sue Japan for constantly being destroyed by a *.zilla; their trademark clearly states is should be boiled and eaten.
Isn't this exactly the same as when SSH first connects to a host you get an unknown fingerprint message (unless you've already copied the key of course)?
Personally I always say yes. I just accept that the likelyhood of me being spoofed at exactly that moment is very small. Given that that is true that host becomes "safe" from then on. Could the same principle not be applied to these self-signing web hosts.
Most of the secure sites I use get used again and again so this would work perfectly. And for the truely paranoid what about when you register for a site you get sent the site public key and can just start encrypting away.
I think you're missing the beauty of ISO paper sizes. A4, A3, etc. The clever part is that the sides are in the ratio 1:sqrt(2). This then allows the characteristic that when you fold a piece of A3 in half you get A4, A4 in half gives A5, etc.
It also means that when you shrink things on a photocopier you know it will fit on the smaller piece of paper without chopping edges or getting huge, wasteful, margins.
It's not a uniquely metric property, especially as the metric size of A4 is the lunatic 297x210mm WTF?
a) wouldn't have let these issues which have been known for months only crop up now.
Using his psychic powers.
b) should have known earlier than the day before to announce the delay.
Using his powers of precognition.
Seriously though, it's not entirely fair to blame the messenger. A manager of a project at some point must rely on people not to be actively (or by omission) lying to him. I don't know the actual situation of course, but if someone working for me came up to me the day before release and said "oh by the way, you can't release my stuff because it's all broken", I'd be a little miffed too.
It seems to me that Anthony Towns is taking responsibility - i.e. doing something about it, informing us and being the focal point for all our moaning.
I never really expected woody to go on May the 1st but still am obviously disappointed. However, getting over my own selfish wish to have new toys to play with - this demonstrates why debian is good. The guys preparing it have to deal with the same problems every other distributor deals with, except they seem to be obsessive about not releasing shoddy work just to meet a deadline. Given the enormous pressure to release they must be under from the community I reckon that takes guts and they should all be commended for it. (Doesn't stop me being desperate for woody though does it?:-))
For a component that is so desparately tied into the operating system. No really, windows won't work without IE. Oh and it won't work without an instant messenger either.
Your honour, I don't know how technical you are... but the instant messenger is a key component of windows, every time a use looks at a folder on their disk they need their instant messenger to contact support and ask why the hell can't I look at this folder?
Ooo, ooo, ooo, and we're going to use MSN messenger as an interface to the operating system - want to know if you're system is still running? Simply look at the instant messenger window. Has the WindowsXP contact got a little smiley face by it, then all is well. What? It says this contact is currently away from the computer... well that's not right...
I notice that they didn't have any trouble at all putting the inseparable IE in to my operating system when it was Windows 95.
I think you are about five years out of date. Exactly which "headache" are you talking about for configuring serial and parallel ports on a modern PC? The problems that seem to occur most as far as causing headaches is concerned is playing musical chairs with PCI cards until you get the configuration that works.
I think the main benefit to throwing away these legacy ports will be to free up the four IRQs that are being gobbled up by serial/parallel/mouse and keyboard.
I personally will be sad to see the serial ports go - I like my old and trusted RS232 connections. However, I can still buy PCI cards to supply them if I want them so roll on the revolution I say.
The thing that worries me about USB connections primarily is that the higher bandwidth will be used as an excuse by modem manufacturers to make all the modems software - internal and external.
Re:Sounds like something from a big business to me
on
Missing Kernel Patches
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· Score: 4, Interesting
"Out of all the people who moan that these sort of issues should be fixed by someone else isn't there someone who could be ordered to do this in their own free time instead of having fun to fix this for small minded whingers like me?"
Yes, fortunately the kerneljanitors project does this. And I think they do it out for altruistic reasons rather than because someone assigned them to.
This is not backwards logic. I am not suggesting you do it. I am suggesting you stop whining about there being noone else to do it when you can't be bothered either.
Slashdot Mirror
All of which still exist. As Microsoft crumbles under the weight of penguins, their frankenstein versions of these standards will too. My point is that it doesn't matter that the OSS world is doing something that may or may not damage them, Microsoft will do what they want regardless of linux/icazza/standards. Basically - let's not worry about this. If you build it, they will come, etc.
I see OpenOffice's support for MS Word documents merely a way of porting vendor lock in.
Ooop. Except that Microsoft don't make either openoffice or Mono. You don't think that it might be a method of removing vendor lock in?
While I do agree that Microsoft will jump on Mono if they perceive it as a threat they will find it difficult to do the more they use it as evidence of how nice they are now and continue to point at it as demonstrating their "love" of open standards.
Fair enough - a lot of the features are also available under windows; however we should not accept the idea that because it is a feature that the competition has we should not have it. A good idea is a good idea. In fact, personally, the problem I have with windows is not particularly its features it is their implementation of those features.
Looking through the list of features there are many innovations as well as feature copy. As an example: I particularly like the secure access to remote file systems using nothing other than ssh. That's certainly not in windows but could easily get lost in the noise of the other eye candy features.
It is unfair to expect 100% innovation; only by leaveraging the work of others do we truly ever move forward.
I don't use KDE myself, but it doesn't stop me from recognising that the beauty of KDE is in the underlying libraries. They have been designed with great care and thought; it demonstrates the benefit of getting API design right from an early stage and reaping the benefits in the future - no other open source project seems to advance as quickly as KDE does.
I wasn't really commenting on whether it's possible to run it in that configuration - there must be all manner of set ups that people use. My point is that the minimum hardware requirements for Windows go up and up. On the other hand the minimum hardware requirements for Linux have remained as 386 for ever.
I can still remember running windows 95 on a 386. I've still got the CD so it would still be possible for me to do so. I could not do the same with windows XP. My supposition is that the reason older hardware is ignored (and thus options for pareing down software to meet everyone's requirements) is that developers are too keen on having the latest and greatest and thus forget about everyone not in the same lucky position.
I believe that Alan Cox, as an example, still uses a console with vi for editing the kernel. I have some confidence therefore that he will make sure that that configuration remains available to us all -- including those who might want to run a 3GHz P4 at blistering text console speeds.
It's interesting that the same problems don't occur under Windows. I understood that the code base is now unified for both the Linux and Windows drivers.
Increasing performance, while always appreciated, for me is secondary - I want reliability first.
I don't really think that nVidia are going to just go under, but they could very easily slip into being a secondary player. As an example I'd use Matrox rather than ATI. Around the time of the Mystique they were untouchable, then they lost it and they have still not recovered.
Tried lots of options and the problem presents itself (at present count) on five different machines with three different sets of hardware. As I say though - great with the open source driver so we still get what we want.
I'm running UT2003 on a 1Ghz athlon with a geforce2. What are you talking about? It runs perfectly acceptably - i've not noticed any slow down at all (admittedly only 1024x768 but that's fine for a game). I think this sort of comment is just fear mongering and rationalisation on your part. Spend a bit too much money on your graphics card did you?
Every nVidia card I have had suffers exactly this problem. Geforce2 MX200/400, tnt2, Geforce4. With the open source driver they are an absolute dream; with nVidia's driver - crashes of varying degrees. I would imagine that since the linux and windows drivers are now from a unified code base that exactly the same problem occurs under windows but noone notices because windows crashes so much.
How can they allow the open source X driver to be better? I mean seriously - what are nVidia doing? This sort of thing does not instill confidence. Open the source, if you can't because of patent issues then open the parts of the source that you can open. Hire the guys writing the open source driver as they are clearly infinitely better at it than your current lot.
Essentially we are buying graphics cards from a hardware company - the fact that we need drivers is an inconvenience that we all live with because the convenience of being able to mix and match our pc hardware outweighs it. I am not interested in the internals of your drivers - I just want the card to work. Here is an easy business plan for all hardware manufacturers:
Linux is coming, accept this and get ready to jump on the bandwagon.
Now they are putting out cards that apparently don't perform much better than their competition. This is a dangerous position to be in. Just one year ago, this would have been laughable - nVidia produced cards that were cheaper and better than everyone elses. Now... no one is blown away. This is a company that is on a downard slope.
LOS(KDE) + LOS(Linux kernel) < LOS(Windows)
QOS(KDE) + QOS(Linux kernel) > QOS(Windows)
The analogy is not implicitly flawed it's just incomplete. Also, KDE includes *lots* of applications, Windows does not. You'd better start adding in the amount of cruft in Office as well.
Comparisons like this are always going to be subjective. I can say right back at you that on this machine Windows XP is less responsive than KDE. Does it prove anything? Nope.
I think you've misunderstood -- IT'S MY MONEY AND I'LL DO WHAT I LIKE WITH IT.
If you want to give money to an african child, go ahead. If I want to burn my cash in front of an african child, I will.
I do not wish to minimise the plight of these poorer people. This is a separate issue. Where does anyone get the audacity to instruct others what they should do with their money? The mere fact that you are writing on a technical website demonstrates that you are most likely in front of a computer in a westernised country and have chosen not to sell all your excess and unneeded posessions, fly to africa and start an educational programme to pull third world countries into a better state. I have no problem with the fact that you haven't done this, you are not required to. Please do the rest of us the same courtesy.
During my formative years as a geek I (as I'm sure many of you did) had to make do with whatever was available. Although being pampered and showered with cool gear would have been nice, my lack of up-to-the-minute equipment did not damage me - in fact, I would go as far as saying that my abilities to fix equipment in the middle of a field come directly from those early days and put me and my skills in demand today.
The reason the requirements for Windows keep increasing and increasing, every release requiring the most modern hardware is because the developers all have modern hardware and don't see it as a problem to make full use of it. (Games are even more of a culprit here, but that's a little more forgiveable)
Whatever hardware the developers have is what the hardware requirements will be in the end; if that is a gameboy and a piece of string then so much the better for the project.
Nonsense. Novelty detection is a well established field in pattern recognition circles. Although these methods improve with the addition of abnormal examples as well as normal; there is no requirement for them.
They are often used in condition monitoring applications to detect faults in cases where the particular fault has never been seen before. The system's learn what is a working model and then shout when something falls outside those boundaries. Have a look at self organising maps and novelty detection in general
Clustering is not necessarily used to get performance increases. We're looking at using openMosix to make better use of a room full of lab computers. Certainly during the night their CPU's are completely unused. Getting processes to migrate to them and make use of the CPU is the goal NOT to gain some huge parallel computing benefit. The original poster might not want to get higher performance but rather to "steal" cycles from idle desktops, that otherwise would go to waste.
... that this arrives a week after Linux gets it?
API != ABI
Would need at least a recompile with identical API. Presumably the Galeon guys would rather use the new release to get some other changes in as well which would be why they don't just recompile the existing version.
zilla \Zil"la\, n. (Bot.) A low, thorny, suffrutescent, crucifeous plant (Zilla myagroides) found in the deserts of Egypt. Its leaves are boiled in water, and eaten, by the Arabs.
In other news, Egyptian Arabs are to sue Japan for constantly being destroyed by a *.zilla; their trademark clearly states is should be boiled and eaten.
Isn't this exactly the same as when SSH first connects to a host you get an unknown fingerprint message (unless you've already copied the key of course)?
Personally I always say yes. I just accept that the likelyhood of me being spoofed at exactly that moment is very small. Given that that is true that host becomes "safe" from then on. Could the same principle not be applied to these self-signing web hosts.
Most of the secure sites I use get used again and again so this would work perfectly. And for the truely paranoid what about when you register for a site you get sent the site public key and can just start encrypting away.
run "install -net" as root and install to somewhere generic (/opt/openoffice) then run setup/install as a user.
I think you're missing the beauty of ISO paper sizes. A4, A3, etc. The clever part is that the sides are in the ratio 1:sqrt(2). This then allows the characteristic that when you fold a piece of A3 in half you get A4, A4 in half gives A5, etc.
It also means that when you shrink things on a photocopier you know it will fit on the smaller piece of paper without chopping edges or getting huge, wasteful, margins.
It's not a uniquely metric property, especially as the metric size of A4 is the lunatic 297x210mm WTF?
Okay, I'm sad - I admit.
a) wouldn't have let these issues which have been known for months only crop up now.
Using his psychic powers.
b) should have known earlier than the day before to announce the delay.
Using his powers of precognition.
Seriously though, it's not entirely fair to blame the messenger. A manager of a project at some point must rely on people not to be actively (or by omission) lying to him. I don't know the actual situation of course, but if someone working for me came up to me the day before release and said "oh by the way, you can't release my stuff because it's all broken", I'd be a little miffed too.
It seems to me that Anthony Towns is taking responsibility - i.e. doing something about it, informing us and being the focal point for all our moaning.
I never really expected woody to go on May the 1st but still am obviously disappointed. However, getting over my own selfish wish to have new toys to play with - this demonstrates why debian is good. The guys preparing it have to deal with the same problems every other distributor deals with, except they seem to be obsessive about not releasing shoddy work just to meet a deadline. Given the enormous pressure to release they must be under from the community I reckon that takes guts and they should all be commended for it. (Doesn't stop me being desperate for woody though does it? :-))
For a component that is so desparately tied into the operating system. No really, windows won't work without IE. Oh and it won't work without an instant messenger either.
Your honour, I don't know how technical you are... but the instant messenger is a key component of windows, every time a use looks at a folder on their disk they need their instant messenger to contact support and ask why the hell can't I look at this folder?
Ooo, ooo, ooo, and we're going to use MSN messenger as an interface to the operating system - want to know if you're system is still running? Simply look at the instant messenger window. Has the WindowsXP contact got a little smiley face by it, then all is well. What? It says this contact is currently away from the computer... well that's not right...
I notice that they didn't have any trouble at all putting the inseparable IE in to my operating system when it was Windows 95.
- PIC development
- 8051 development
- Z80 development
- AVR development
- Rabbit development
- My gameboy programmable cartridge
- Talking to my Nokia phone
- Null modem cable for developing embedded software using a simulator
I think I'm with you on this one.I think you are about five years out of date. Exactly which "headache" are you talking about for configuring serial and parallel ports on a modern PC? The problems that seem to occur most as far as causing headaches is concerned is playing musical chairs with PCI cards until you get the configuration that works.
I think the main benefit to throwing away these legacy ports will be to free up the four IRQs that are being gobbled up by serial/parallel/mouse and keyboard.
I personally will be sad to see the serial ports go - I like my old and trusted RS232 connections. However, I can still buy PCI cards to supply them if I want them so roll on the revolution I say.
The thing that worries me about USB connections primarily is that the higher bandwidth will be used as an excuse by modem manufacturers to make all the modems software - internal and external.
"Out of all the people who moan that these sort of issues should be fixed by someone else isn't there someone who could be ordered to do this in their own free time instead of having fun to fix this for small minded whingers like me?"
Yes, fortunately the kerneljanitors project does this. And I think they do it out for altruistic reasons rather than because someone assigned them to.
This is not backwards logic. I am not suggesting you do it. I am suggesting you stop whining about there being noone else to do it when you can't be bothered either.