If I am getting my history correct, isn't this chip basically the evolution of the motorola 68000?
No. It can trace some lineage back to the m88k, though[1], which was an even cleaner design than the 68k.
If pushed to pick my favourite CPU of all time, I'd probably have to go for the m88k. It was an absolute joy to
work with.
Heh... having the member population at large choose who's in charge? That's crazy!! Who knows what could happen? Any smiling idiot could be placed in power...
"Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?"
IIRC the core of Xara Xtreme were put on some binary only libs.
Kind of. There are two renderers. They've open sourced the slower one, and are keeping the faster
one closed, for now, at least. The software is fully functional, but it's slower than the closed
source version (although still fast enough -- it's comparable to inkscape for the things for which
I've been using it.
FWIW, I'm using 0.7 right now, and it's very impressive. There are still a few graphical glitches,
and some things that I find easier to do in inkscape/sodipodi. Conversely, there are some things
that I can do in Xara that are all but impossible in inkscape. Feathered variable transparency
rocks my world. I think it's great that we have both options. Each have their strengths and
weaknesses, and I use both for my projects.
Isn't evolution still based on a blind belief that someday in the past, life just magically began with a strike of lightning?
No. Evolution explains how one species turns into another over time. It says nothing about
how the original one got there in the first place. Sure, there are various theories, such
as the lightning strike you mentioned. But they're not part of the science that is evolution,
(at least as the word is most commonly used).
And while I'm bitching why is Blogger.com there? Didn't LiveJournal come first on the free blogging scene?
Not only were they first (albeit only by a few months),
but they really created the whole blogging scene in the first place. LiveJournal is far more worthy of
a "website that changes the world" award than Blogger. I don't use either, but LJ started it all, and for
the first few years, no one had even heard of Blogger. This is just yet another article from an uninformed
journalist that wasn't there at the time, and didn't do their research properly. So what's new?
How so? By collating data that either you've given them directly, or is publicly
available from elsewhere? I see no privacy concerns there. It's nothing that anyone
else couldn't already do. Indeed, it's the sort of thing that private detectives do
on a regular basis. And for that matter, IT security consultants.
No, privacy is the least of my concerns here. The real issue is that they think it's
patentable. Err... correlating data from multiple sources. Because obviously no one's
ever thought of doing that before. If there's any justice, this patent will be thrown
out at its first reading. But the very fact that they're submitting it implies they
thing there's a chance it'll be granted. That in itself is a very worrying statement
about the world in which we live.
Sure, they're behind, but the 965 series is better than, say, ATI's 8500 (the highest of their cards that is properly supported in Linux).
Actually, the 9250 is the fasted fully supported ATI card under
Linux. The r300 driver (9600, 9800 and X800) will probably soon
be stable enough for widespread use, too. How the 965 compares to
those, I don't know. But I suspect it'll be more than good
enough for 99% of all users.
The introduction of yum has vastly improved the user experience when installing software, or updating existing packages.
However, it's brought with it a new kind of dependency hell. For example, if I want to install a PostScript previewer:
% yum install evince
[...]
Installing:
evince x86_64 0.5.1-3 core 773 k
Installing for dependencies:
nautilus x86_64 2.14.1-1.fc5.1 updates-released 3.9 M
nautilus-cd-burner x86_64 2.14.2-1 updates-released 414 k
That's clearly wrong. I only want to install a PostScript previewer. Doing so should not require a filemanager
(which I don't need or want), and certainly not a CD burner. But these are added as dependencies due to the
clumsy packaging that seems to be increasingly prevalent in Fedora. Perhaps (and I remain unconvinced) there's
some aspect of evince that can make use of nautilus being present. But if so, I haven't seen it. I could well
believe that nautilus could make use of evince, but not really the other way around. But assume for the sake
of argument that it can use nautilus. That still isn't a reason to have it depend on it. Dependencies
should be packages that are required in order for another to run, not packages that will merely
enable additional functionality. In this case -- the prime function of evince is to view documents, which
isn't significantly enhanced by having a file browser present.
Fedora is still my distribution of choice, but it's becoming increasingly hard to use for those of us
that prefer to run with a minimal system due to the way that the dependencies have been getting out of
hand. Are there any plans to fix this, or is any work already underway to do so? I understand that some
consideration has been given to providing "soft dependencies" within RPM (like dpkg's suggested
dependencies), which would help. Is there a timeframe for this? Is anything else being done?
I quite understand the focus on getting the system to be usable for the average unskilled user. But
the impression I'm getting is that it's being done at the expense of letting those of us that know
what we're doing do what we want. Does Fedora have a position on the type of users it's aiming for,
or is it still trying to be a general purpose OS?
I'm personally unconvinced about the whole idea of OLPC. However, I hope the project succeeds for completely unrelated reasons. OLPC is prompting a whole raft of work aimed at slimming down the Linux userland, in order to make it usable on
the modest hardware available. That can only be a good thing, given the recent trend towards bloat.
So, I see two possiblities here. Either they're lying about the reason
for the downtime, or they're uttlerly inept. According to the most recent
figures I've seen, MySpace is the most visited site on the Internet for
US surfers, and the 6th most visited site on the net worldwide. Are you
seriously telling me that they don't have redundant datacentres?
Hell, with a fairly limited budget, I set up two datacentres in an
active/active configuration for the last bank I worked at, and that
was only handling a 10 million hits a day. It took a while to get the
database replication working right, but once we'd done that, it was
all fine, and gave protection against total datacentre failure[1].
MySpace is way
larger that we were, and they can certainly afford multiple datacentres
to prevent an outage such as this. So why didn't they? As I said,
the only explanations I can see are ineptitude, or that they're using this
as an excuse to mask some other reason for the outage...
[1] Not that a power failure should ever happen in a datacentre anyway.
All of the ones I've used have had multiple power feeds from different
suppliers, entering on opposite sides of the building, plus redundant
UPSes with diesel generators for when the UPS runs out. If you're still
having power outages with that sort of infrastructure in place, then
something's seriously wrong. And if you don't have that sort of
infrastructure in place, then you've chosen the wrong datacentre.
It's been added to the upcoming CSS 2.1, but that's still only a draft. It's not like it's been a missing part of CSS support for seven years, until recently it was totally non-standard, and technically it still is.
Agreed. However, it is an essential layout ingredient (to the point, where many layouts can't be implemented without it, short of resorting to tables). Also, the W3C is shooting itself in the foot by releasing specs so slowly. The last officially approved CSS spec was released in 1999. At this point, no one really expects any significant changes to CSS2.1 before it's approved, and there's not really any excuse for
not implementing it fully in a browser released in 2006.
From TFA: the address bar is for URLs, not searches.
I couldn't disagree more. One of the things that kept me with the
original Mozilla suite for so long, rather than switching to Firefox
was the ability to trigger a search from the address bar. Now that
Firefox can do the same (and not waste screen real estate with an
unneccesary extra box), I've switched. What do you possibly gain by
having a separate search box? I just don't get it.
Now if only they could fix Gecko's inability to render
display: inline-block properly, it might become a halfway
usable browser. Quite why it's taken so long is beyond me. It's was
originally logged as a bug 7 years ago (it's bug 9458, if you want
to vote for it). So, Mozilla Organisation, *please* stop adding more
and more features that I really don't want, and fix your fscking
layout engine. Wasn't that meant to be one of the original goals
of Mozilla? To have a browser with a rendering engine that didn't
suck? What happened to that concept?
Maybe some of them will even invest in these silly radical concepts called "storyline" and "plot."
Yep, silly, and sadly all too prevalent these days. I doubt you'll find a game from the last 5 years
that doesn't have an overabundance of plot and storyline. But it doesn't matter.
What they should be investing in is gameplay.
But no one seems to care about that any more.
Why include prostitution? Nevada allows for both prostitution and "betting on certain outcomes" so that sort of undermines your argument.
Here's a thought. Perhaps it's because I'm not American, and don't know what is and what isn't allowed in each state.
Just that some states do allow such things. As to how it undermines my argument, well you've lost me a bit there...
What I don't understand is... why is gambling deemed such a
big deal in the USA? You allow people to drink, smoke, carry
guns and prostitute themselves (in some states, at least),
but not to bet on certain outcomes. It just seems really
bizarre to me, particularly when you
allow betting on other outcomes, such as dabbling in the
financial markets.
Disclaimer: I make my income through Internet gambling. However,
even before that, I just never saw the problem. Why is it so
demonized over there?
This is definitely a good thing, as I've known GMs who need the convenience of e-books badly enough that they either scan the whole thing themselves or (ahem) find another source of a scanned copy
I've tried GMing with PDF versions of the 2e manuals (legally bought), but I just found that it's not as convenient as having the book in front of you. I'm back to the good old paper manuals now.
Crap. Most of the terrorists I've had to worry about during my life have been Irish Catholics.
Indeed. In fact, of the three terrorist incidents of which I've had personal experience, two have been
perpetrated by Irish Catholics, mostly funded by the USA.
The
third was just a lunatic. No arabs were involved that I'm aware of -- other than as casualties.
Does this mean that Sun is endorsing the Debian package management system over RPM-based approaches? IMNSHO, it's high-time that an enterprise IT vendor saw value in dpkg.
Sigh. yet more anti-RPM FUD. While dpkg is indeed a fine packaging system, it has little to make it superior to RPM.
With dependency management handled by apt and yum, the two are broadly comparable these days. So let me ask you, what
value do you see in dpkg, that isn't also present in RPM?
Overall, I think the W3C compliancy requirements are fairly stupid. I see no reason why something like is somehow better than for any practical reason.
It's not. But that doesn't make W3C compliancy requirements stupid. All of my sites validate as HTML 4.01 Strict.
However, XHTML is just pointless buzzword compliance, and I see no reason to go there. There is nothing you can
do with XHTML that can't be expressed in HTML, in a fully compliant manner, without the pain of XML.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps not, but some of them are awesome: Xiquets De Banyoles.
No. It can trace some lineage back to the m88k, though[1], which was an even cleaner design than the 68k. If pushed to pick my favourite CPU of all time, I'd probably have to go for the m88k. It was an absolute joy to work with.
[1] As well as to the IBM POWER chip, of course.
Minor nitpick: the vast majority of turban wearers are Sikh, not Muslim.
It's written in assembly language, IIRC...
It exports to EPSF, but can't import from it.
Kind of. There are two renderers. They've open sourced the slower one, and are keeping the faster one closed, for now, at least. The software is fully functional, but it's slower than the closed source version (although still fast enough -- it's comparable to inkscape for the things for which I've been using it.
FWIW, I'm using 0.7 right now, and it's very impressive. There are still a few graphical glitches, and some things that I find easier to do in inkscape/sodipodi. Conversely, there are some things that I can do in Xara that are all but impossible in inkscape. Feathered variable transparency rocks my world. I think it's great that we have both options. Each have their strengths and weaknesses, and I use both for my projects.
No. Evolution explains how one species turns into another over time. It says nothing about how the original one got there in the first place. Sure, there are various theories, such as the lightning strike you mentioned. But they're not part of the science that is evolution, (at least as the word is most commonly used).
Not only were they first (albeit only by a few months), but they really created the whole blogging scene in the first place. LiveJournal is far more worthy of a "website that changes the world" award than Blogger. I don't use either, but LJ started it all, and for the first few years, no one had even heard of Blogger. This is just yet another article from an uninformed journalist that wasn't there at the time, and didn't do their research properly. So what's new?
How so? By collating data that either you've given them directly, or is publicly available from elsewhere? I see no privacy concerns there. It's nothing that anyone else couldn't already do. Indeed, it's the sort of thing that private detectives do on a regular basis. And for that matter, IT security consultants.
No, privacy is the least of my concerns here. The real issue is that they think it's patentable. Err... correlating data from multiple sources. Because obviously no one's ever thought of doing that before. If there's any justice, this patent will be thrown out at its first reading. But the very fact that they're submitting it implies they thing there's a chance it'll be granted. That in itself is a very worrying statement about the world in which we live.
Actually, the 9250 is the fasted fully supported ATI card under Linux. The r300 driver (9600, 9800 and X800) will probably soon be stable enough for widespread use, too. How the 965 compares to those, I don't know. But I suspect it'll be more than good enough for 99% of all users.
That's clearly wrong. I only want to install a PostScript previewer. Doing so should not require a filemanager (which I don't need or want), and certainly not a CD burner. But these are added as dependencies due to the clumsy packaging that seems to be increasingly prevalent in Fedora. Perhaps (and I remain unconvinced) there's some aspect of evince that can make use of nautilus being present. But if so, I haven't seen it. I could well believe that nautilus could make use of evince, but not really the other way around. But assume for the sake of argument that it can use nautilus. That still isn't a reason to have it depend on it. Dependencies should be packages that are required in order for another to run, not packages that will merely enable additional functionality. In this case -- the prime function of evince is to view documents, which isn't significantly enhanced by having a file browser present.
Fedora is still my distribution of choice, but it's becoming increasingly hard to use for those of us that prefer to run with a minimal system due to the way that the dependencies have been getting out of hand. Are there any plans to fix this, or is any work already underway to do so? I understand that some consideration has been given to providing "soft dependencies" within RPM (like dpkg's suggested dependencies), which would help. Is there a timeframe for this? Is anything else being done?
I quite understand the focus on getting the system to be usable for the average unskilled user. But the impression I'm getting is that it's being done at the expense of letting those of us that know what we're doing do what we want. Does Fedora have a position on the type of users it's aiming for, or is it still trying to be a general purpose OS?
I'm personally unconvinced about the whole idea of OLPC. However, I hope the project succeeds for completely unrelated reasons. OLPC is prompting a whole raft of work aimed at slimming down the Linux userland, in order to make it usable on the modest hardware available. That can only be a good thing, given the recent trend towards bloat.
Hell, with a fairly limited budget, I set up two datacentres in an active/active configuration for the last bank I worked at, and that was only handling a 10 million hits a day. It took a while to get the database replication working right, but once we'd done that, it was all fine, and gave protection against total datacentre failure[1]. MySpace is way larger that we were, and they can certainly afford multiple datacentres to prevent an outage such as this. So why didn't they? As I said, the only explanations I can see are ineptitude, or that they're using this as an excuse to mask some other reason for the outage...
[1] Not that a power failure should ever happen in a datacentre anyway. All of the ones I've used have had multiple power feeds from different suppliers, entering on opposite sides of the building, plus redundant UPSes with diesel generators for when the UPS runs out. If you're still having power outages with that sort of infrastructure in place, then something's seriously wrong. And if you don't have that sort of infrastructure in place, then you've chosen the wrong datacentre.
Agreed. However, it is an essential layout ingredient (to the point, where many layouts can't be implemented without it, short of resorting to tables). Also, the W3C is shooting itself in the foot by releasing specs so slowly. The last officially approved CSS spec was released in 1999. At this point, no one really expects any significant changes to CSS2.1 before it's approved, and there's not really any excuse for not implementing it fully in a browser released in 2006.
I couldn't disagree more. One of the things that kept me with the original Mozilla suite for so long, rather than switching to Firefox was the ability to trigger a search from the address bar. Now that Firefox can do the same (and not waste screen real estate with an unneccesary extra box), I've switched. What do you possibly gain by having a separate search box? I just don't get it.
Now if only they could fix Gecko's inability to render display: inline-block properly, it might become a halfway usable browser. Quite why it's taken so long is beyond me. It's was originally logged as a bug 7 years ago (it's bug 9458, if you want to vote for it). So, Mozilla Organisation, *please* stop adding more and more features that I really don't want, and fix your fscking layout engine. Wasn't that meant to be one of the original goals of Mozilla? To have a browser with a rendering engine that didn't suck? What happened to that concept?
Yep, silly, and sadly all too prevalent these days. I doubt you'll find a game from the last 5 years that doesn't have an overabundance of plot and storyline. But it doesn't matter. What they should be investing in is gameplay. But no one seems to care about that any more.
Here's a thought. Perhaps it's because I'm not American, and don't know what is and what isn't allowed in each state. Just that some states do allow such things. As to how it undermines my argument, well you've lost me a bit there...
Disclaimer: I make my income through Internet gambling. However, even before that, I just never saw the problem. Why is it so demonized over there?
I've tried GMing with PDF versions of the 2e manuals (legally bought), but I just found that it's not as convenient as having the book in front of you. I'm back to the good old paper manuals now.
Indeed. In fact, of the three terrorist incidents of which I've had personal experience, two have been perpetrated by Irish Catholics, mostly funded by the USA. The third was just a lunatic. No arabs were involved that I'm aware of -- other than as casualties.
If only I had mod points... agreed 100%
Sure you can. As a general principle, I agree with you. But not everything they've published is high quality.
Sigh. yet more anti-RPM FUD. While dpkg is indeed a fine packaging system, it has little to make it superior to RPM. With dependency management handled by apt and yum, the two are broadly comparable these days. So let me ask you, what value do you see in dpkg, that isn't also present in RPM?
is somehow better than
for any practical reason.
It's not. But that doesn't make W3C compliancy requirements stupid. All of my sites validate as HTML 4.01 Strict. However, XHTML is just pointless buzzword compliance, and I see no reason to go there. There is nothing you can do with XHTML that can't be expressed in HTML, in a fully compliant manner, without the pain of XML.