It's true that Gnome apps use GTK and KDE apps use Qt. However, GTK and KDE interoperate extremely well thanks to the efforts of freedesktop.org.
It may surprise you to hear that you do not even need to run a Gnome or KDE to use their applications. I'm running a blessedly clean IceWM setup and I still get to use Evolution.
I'm a programmer sort whose hardware goes obsolete every three years. Cheap cases work great for me.
Here's the problem with expensive cases: motherboard form factors change every two years. Even if the power supply still fits, you're going to have a hard time fitting the plugs on the back of a new motherboard into the back of your high-quality old case.
Cases are like $35 now, including power supply. That's too cheap to care about.
Here's how to buy a case:
0) Go to your local no-name computer shop. 1) Find the cheapest case that still looks decent. 2) Jam a quiet (Panaflo, etc) case fan in it. 3) Spend the $100 or so you saved over a CoolerMaster on a sweet pair of headphones or something.
If you ripped Dark Side of the Moon (or any other continuous-mix album), you wouldn't use MP3.
If it should come to this, then go for it!
on
XFree86 Politics
·
· Score: 1
If Kieth's code is removed from XFree86 4.3, then in the one year of intensive development since the release of 4.2 we have...
um...
Some driver updates.
And most of these were written by non "core" XFree86 members. They've been floating around the net as patches for months. And some of them (neomagic) still haven't been applied!
Go Kieth. Either you'll light the fire that gets XFree86 back on track, or your project will take off as XFree86 continues to decay. Either way, everybody wins.
Repeat after me: Before I freak out... I will always check the date. I will always check the date. I will always check the date. I will always check the date...
A solid state relay (S101S05v) is not a mechanical switch.
Who brings up solid state relays when talking about hooking to a parallel port? You've never done this, have you? Solid state relays are too expensive, have high hold currents and forward voltage drops, burn quiescent power, and are very large in comparison. In other words, they are simply wrong for this application.
But, you're right, they are not mechanical switches.
A relay is a mechanical switch. The constant clacking would drive you nuts (though, that would also be a good indication of the activity of your stocks...)
Google knows all. Click on the first link. Or any of the others.
Guido: "Strong typing catches many bugs, but it also makes you focus too much on getting the types right and not enough on getting the rest of the program correct."
Really? Really??? This blanket statement certainly doesn't describe anybody I've worked with. I wonder what information he bases it on...
In a production environment, I've found that writing strongly typed programs always saves time in the long run. It doesn't take much more time and, if you occasionally make a silly mistake (like using == instead of eq in Perl), it can save you hours of aggrivation and headache.
For quick one-offs, of course, losely-typed is always the way to go.
a scripting language has minimal overhead memory requirements because it does not have much of a memory management job to do.
No, scripting languages typically have significanlty more difficult memory management requirements. Memory managers in low-level languages are simple because the programmer does everything. Since Java lies somewhere between simple C/C++ and complex Perl/Python, why is its memory management slower and more complex than all the above?
Complaining about 'will not fix' items on an older JRE is dumb as their must be SOME reason for the 1.4. If everything could have been fixed in 1.3.1, it would have been 1.3.2.
When everything is fixed in version 1.3.1, it does get called 1.3.2. You call it 1.4 when you add features. Refusing to release a 1.3.2 is the same as refusing to fix bugs.
The article writer suggest that each release of the JRE causes classes to be dropped and added. I have NEVER experienced this and its a violation of SUN's stated practice.
Then you either haven't been programming Java very long, or you don't do much in it. Sun documented the proper way to do GUI programming, date conversion, and a whole bunch of other things in Java 1.1, then deprecated it ALL in 1.2. Haven't you noticed that most Java 1.1 programs won't compile under Java 1.4 without massive deprecation warnings? Most of these programs were 100% legal java programs when written, following Sun's documentation to the letter.
As for large footprints, I stopped complaining about even M$ abuse of memory after the price came down so much. Just go buy some more. Its a valid issue, but I wouldn't mark it as worth of writing a letter.
Go back and read his examples to see why Java is very bad in this resepct, even on today's hardware. It takes my Athlon 1800+/512MB machine 4 seconds to start a stupid command-line utility. Why? It has to reserve 26Mb of memory (and the classloader takes forever). The same program takes less than 1Mb in C and requires next to no time to start up.
Finally I'd like to ask why none of his bug numbers appear in the Java BugDatabase on the javasoft website http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/b ugParade/ index.jshtml
Because he works for Sun and uses the internal bug database? Did you READ this memo?
Re:What's wrong with the old ones?
on
A Sound Server For X
·
· Score: 4, Informative
aRts is every bit as bad as esd. That performance/latency slider is impossible to set such that sound has decent latency and doesn't stutter.
This is life with aRts:
Open control panel. Tweak slider down. Launch MAME. Open control panel. Tweak slider way up. Play mp3s while I work. Open control panel. Tweak slider down. Launch Quake3. Open control panel. Tweak slider up. Launch Xine. Live with audio and video being ~300ms out of sync because anything less causes horrible stutter.
The worst part is, if aRts were designed properly, this slider would be totally unnecessary. aRts also uses an insane amount of CPU time.
I'd like to see Gnome and KDE adopt Jack. Jack works. MAS sounds interesting too. I look forward to seeing comparisons.
If you bothered to click on the "Here's a page that details the licenses" link at the top of the page...
RealNetworks Public Source License (RPSL) - the no-cost open source license that requires the developer to make his/her entire work available under the RPSL or a combination of the RPSL and a compatible open source license.
It's viral, like the GPL. Other than that, at first glance, it seems OK.
A few years ago, I travelled around Europe supporting my company's product on site. I'd try to fix a bug, then send the patch back to the US to be built (no source code could ever touch a client's computer). Turnaround times were over a day, due to the time change.
Then I got one of these (for hrumptyhrumptens of thousands of dollars). It paid for itself in a month. I could do builds on-site, leading to turaround times of less than an hour. I no longer had to get a hotel for most support visits! I sure had a need for a non-Linux notebook.
Of course, it radiated so much heat out the keyboard that my hands would just drench the thing in sweat. That got a little gross. But it worked like a champ.
Minix is frozen in time, and any of the old XFree86 sources that have ever worked with it will work with it forever. After a certain amount of debugging has taken place, one no longer needs to support software for an unchanging OS.
Not true. What if you want it to run on the hardware that's being sold today?
Re:Which Network gear manufacturer?
on
Ask Donald Becker
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Yes! If any question is to be answered, please let it be this one. After my Tulip card, my ethernet HW has all been poo. Does anyone make decent gear these days?
Re:Role of GNU in GNU/Linux
on
Ask Donald Becker
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
This is not a good question for Donald Becker or any kernel hacker. His answer will probably be along the lines of, "Linux? GNU/Linux? Who cares?" Of course, it would be worse if he actually had an opinion on this tired, pointless argument.
Even Linus doesn't feel strongly one way or the other. The only person who seems to be working up a lather is RMS. It's sad.
I'm using Gnome 1.4 for a VLSI Layout class and Win XP for Signal Processing. Here's what I've noticed...
Gnome:
1) Recently Gnome suddenly started refusing to start up. I needed to log into a Windows machine and blow away "~/.gnome*". Bye bye settings. Figuring that out and then setting everything up again killed a LOT of time. It was infuriating.
2) No decent text editor. gedit stinks. Today, Kate is just now becoming usable. It'll take two more years for today's version to get onto the lab computers.
3) No word processor. AbiWord is only just now becoming usable. OpenOffice is becoming decent too, but holy cow is it big and slow. Again, two years until today's versions are in the labs.
4) Motif apps. Mathematica and Matlab are big, slow (try resizing a window), clunky (careful of the numlock key), and ugly. Mouse wheel doesn't work. They are painful to use.
5) Can't copy and paste pictures. Think I'm kidding? Try writing a paper where you need to save all 45 Matlab plots to disk and manually open them in AbiWord. It takes forever.
XP: I use Matlab and Word and I've never had a single issue. Well, the XP UI is one of the most hideous things I've ever seen, but it seems to work well enough.
I run Linux exclusively at home. At school, though, it is time-consuming and hard to use. Right now, Microsoft deserves to dominate the computer labs. I just need to get my work done ASAP, not fiddle with.login files and corrupt desktop settings. XP provides this, Linux doesn't. I believe this will change in a few years...
What did you do, throw yours out? I kept mine Blinkenlights, GeekPort and all.
Funny thing: interprocessor interrupt latencies were so high that usually the two 603s just ended up stomping all over each other. Try this some time: run one of Pierre's pheonomenal threaded 3D demos in dual-processor mode. Then turn one CPU off. Watch frame rates go up.:)
If Be had stuck to its original vision, it would still be a small but successful company today. Gassee had to ruin everything in the name of ego.
Joe User deserves to get as much out of his computer as the beowulf people.
Have you ever benchmarked a modular kernel vs. a statically-linked one? It's really easy: do some work reconfigure, recompile, and then do the same work. Measure the times before and after. Notice any difference?
You haven't done this, though, have you? Because if you had, we would not be having this conversation. You would know that -- except for pathological work loads (super high volume network servers, etc) -- there is no noticeable performance difference between static and modular kernels. And, for the pathological work loads, you've already spent so much time researching and patching your kernel that autoconfig really won't save you much time.
Joe user is getting as much out of his computer as the Beowulf people right now.
Slashdot Mirror
It's true that Gnome apps use GTK and KDE apps use Qt. However, GTK and KDE interoperate extremely well thanks to the efforts of freedesktop.org.
It may surprise you to hear that you do not even need to run a Gnome or KDE to use their applications. I'm running a blessedly clean IceWM setup and I still get to use Evolution.
That rumor is most likely a myth.
u ell.htm
http://www.ideafinder.com/resource/archives/wow-d
Crystal Quest used the mouse better than any other game until the FPSes came along. That was a fun game.
As for the rest of the stuff C&G published, well, I never needed any of it...
I'm a programmer sort whose hardware goes obsolete every three years. Cheap cases work great for me.
Here's the problem with expensive cases: motherboard form factors change every two years. Even if the power supply still fits, you're going to have a hard time fitting the plugs on the back of a new motherboard into the back of your high-quality old case.
Cases are like $35 now, including power supply. That's too cheap to care about.
Here's how to buy a case:
0) Go to your local no-name computer shop.
1) Find the cheapest case that still looks decent.
2) Jam a quiet (Panaflo, etc) case fan in it.
3) Spend the $100 or so you saved over a CoolerMaster on a sweet pair of headphones or something.
It's really weird that they approve useless domains like
That's a little uninformed. This is AAC. 128kbps in AAC is equal to 256kbps in MP3 encoding.
Uninformed? Where did you come up with that statement? 128kbps AAC is better than 128 kbps MP3, true, but it comes nowhere near 256 kbps MP3.
If you ripped Dark Side of the Moon (or any other continuous-mix album), you wouldn't use MP3.
If Kieth's code is removed from XFree86 4.3, then in the one year of intensive development since the release of 4.2 we have...
um...
Some driver updates.
And most of these were written by non "core" XFree86 members. They've been floating around the net as patches for months. And some of them (neomagic) still haven't been applied!
Go Kieth. Either you'll light the fire that gets XFree86 back on track, or your project will take off as XFree86 continues to decay. Either way, everybody wins.
That's an old april fool's joke.
Repeat after me: Before I freak out...
I will always check the date.
I will always check the date.
I will always check the date.
I will always check the date...
A solid state relay (S101S05v) is not a mechanical switch.
Who brings up solid state relays when talking about hooking to a parallel port? You've never done this, have you? Solid state relays are too expensive, have high hold currents and forward voltage drops, burn quiescent power, and are very large in comparison. In other words, they are simply wrong for this application.
But, you're right, they are not mechanical switches.
A relay is a mechanical switch. The constant clacking would drive you nuts (though, that would also be a good indication of the activity of your stocks...)
Google knows all. Click on the first link. Or any of the others.
Guido: "Strong typing catches many bugs, but it also makes you focus too much on getting the types right and not enough on getting the rest of the program correct."
Really? Really??? This blanket statement certainly doesn't describe anybody I've worked with. I wonder what information he bases it on...
In a production environment, I've found that writing strongly typed programs always saves time in the long run. It doesn't take much more time and, if you occasionally make a silly mistake (like using == instead of eq in Perl), it can save you hours of aggrivation and headache.
For quick one-offs, of course, losely-typed is always the way to go.
a scripting language has minimal overhead memory requirements because it does not have much of a memory management job to do.
b ugParade/ index.jshtml
No, scripting languages typically have significanlty more difficult memory management requirements. Memory managers in low-level languages are simple because the programmer does everything. Since Java lies somewhere between simple C/C++ and complex Perl/Python, why is its memory management slower and more complex than all the above?
Complaining about 'will not fix' items on an older JRE is dumb as their must be SOME reason for the 1.4. If everything could have been fixed in 1.3.1, it would have been 1.3.2.
When everything is fixed in version 1.3.1, it does get called 1.3.2. You call it 1.4 when you add features. Refusing to release a 1.3.2 is the same as refusing to fix bugs.
The article writer suggest that each release of the JRE causes classes to be dropped and added. I have NEVER experienced this and its a violation of SUN's stated practice.
Then you either haven't been programming Java very long, or you don't do much in it. Sun documented the proper way to do GUI programming, date conversion, and a whole bunch of other things in Java 1.1, then deprecated it ALL in 1.2. Haven't you noticed that most Java 1.1 programs won't compile under Java 1.4 without massive deprecation warnings? Most of these programs were 100% legal java programs when written, following Sun's documentation to the letter.
As for large footprints, I stopped complaining about even M$ abuse of memory after the price came down so much. Just go buy some more. Its a valid issue, but I wouldn't mark it as worth of writing a letter.
Go back and read his examples to see why Java is very bad in this resepct, even on today's hardware. It takes my Athlon 1800+/512MB machine 4 seconds to start a stupid command-line utility. Why? It has to reserve 26Mb of memory (and the classloader takes forever). The same program takes less than 1Mb in C and requires next to no time to start up.
Finally I'd like to ask why none of his bug numbers appear in the Java BugDatabase on the javasoft website
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/
Because he works for Sun and uses the internal bug database? Did you READ this memo?
aRts is every bit as bad as esd. That performance/latency slider is impossible to set such that sound has decent latency and doesn't stutter.
This is life with aRts:
Open control panel. Tweak slider down. Launch MAME.
Open control panel. Tweak slider way up. Play mp3s while I work.
Open control panel. Tweak slider down. Launch Quake3.
Open control panel. Tweak slider up. Launch Xine. Live with audio and video being ~300ms out of sync because anything less causes horrible stutter.
The worst part is, if aRts were designed properly, this slider would be totally unnecessary. aRts also uses an insane amount of CPU time.
I'd like to see Gnome and KDE adopt Jack. Jack works. MAS sounds interesting too. I look forward to seeing comparisons.
Sounds like it might be time for Santa Barbara to turn on the desalinization plant it built in 1991...
w orks/water_resources/bffaq.html
http://ci.santa-barbara.ca.us/departments/public_
RealNetworks Public Source License (RPSL) - the no-cost open source license that requires the developer to make his/her entire work available under the RPSL or a combination of the RPSL and a compatible open source license.
It's viral, like the GPL. Other than that, at first glance, it seems OK.
A few years ago, I travelled around Europe supporting my company's product on site. I'd try to fix a bug, then send the patch back to the US to be built (no source code could ever touch a client's computer). Turnaround times were over a day, due to the time change.
Then I got one of these (for hrumptyhrumptens of thousands of dollars). It paid for itself in a month. I could do builds on-site, leading to turaround times of less than an hour. I no longer had to get a hotel for most support visits! I sure had a need for a non-Linux notebook.
Of course, it radiated so much heat out the keyboard that my hands would just drench the thing in sweat. That got a little gross. But it worked like a champ.
Actually, I have the source code to Windows Media Player. Here it is in its entirety:
/*
* Windows Media Player
*/
void main(void)
{
CallSecretWin32MediaPlayFunction();
exit(0);
}
Minix is frozen in time, and any of the old XFree86 sources that have ever worked with it will work with it forever. After a certain amount of debugging has taken place, one no longer needs to support software for an unchanging OS.
Not true. What if you want it to run on the hardware that's being sold today?
Yes! If any question is to be answered, please let it be this one. After my Tulip card, my ethernet HW has all been poo. Does anyone make decent gear these days?
This is not a good question for Donald Becker or any kernel hacker. His answer will probably be along the lines of, "Linux? GNU/Linux? Who cares?" Of course, it would be worse if he actually had an opinion on this tired, pointless argument.
Even Linus doesn't feel strongly one way or the other. The only person who seems to be working up a lather is RMS. It's sad.
I'm using Gnome 1.4 for a VLSI Layout class and Win XP for Signal Processing. Here's what I've noticed...
.login files and corrupt desktop settings. XP provides this, Linux doesn't. I believe this will change in a few years...
Gnome:
1) Recently Gnome suddenly started refusing to start up. I needed to log into a Windows machine and blow away "~/.gnome*". Bye bye settings. Figuring that out and then setting everything up again killed a LOT of time. It was infuriating.
2) No decent text editor. gedit stinks. Today, Kate is just now becoming usable. It'll take two more years for today's version to get onto the lab computers.
3) No word processor. AbiWord is only just now becoming usable. OpenOffice is becoming decent too, but holy cow is it big and slow. Again, two years until today's versions are in the labs.
4) Motif apps. Mathematica and Matlab are big, slow (try resizing a window), clunky (careful of the numlock key), and ugly. Mouse wheel doesn't work. They are painful to use.
5) Can't copy and paste pictures. Think I'm kidding? Try writing a paper where you need to save all 45 Matlab plots to disk and manually open them in AbiWord. It takes forever.
XP: I use Matlab and Word and I've never had a single issue. Well, the XP UI is one of the most hideous things I've ever seen, but it seems to work well enough.
I run Linux exclusively at home. At school, though, it is time-consuming and hard to use. Right now, Microsoft deserves to dominate the computer labs. I just need to get my work done ASAP, not fiddle with
What did you do, throw yours out? I kept mine Blinkenlights, GeekPort and all.
:)
Funny thing: interprocessor interrupt latencies were so high that usually the two 603s just ended up stomping all over each other. Try this some time: run one of Pierre's pheonomenal threaded 3D demos in dual-processor mode. Then turn one CPU off. Watch frame rates go up.
If Be had stuck to its original vision, it would still be a small but successful company today. Gassee had to ruin everything in the name of ego.
Have you ever benchmarked a modular kernel vs. a statically-linked one? It's really easy: do some work reconfigure, recompile, and then do the same work. Measure the times before and after. Notice any difference?
You haven't done this, though, have you? Because if you had, we would not be having this conversation. You would know that -- except for pathological work loads (super high volume network servers, etc) -- there is no noticeable performance difference between static and modular kernels. And, for the pathological work loads, you've already spent so much time researching and patching your kernel that autoconfig really won't save you much time.
Joe user is getting as much out of his computer as the Beowulf people right now.