Bloat is a problem, especially in projects where communication between developers is limited. That said, in my experience, the amount of code required to add features is often surprisingly large. What can seem like a trivial feature before starting development can turn out to have wider ranging effects than you predicted. The other problem is that optimisation is time-consuming and hard. A lot of OSS projects don't have time to exhaustively profile their code and then go through removing bottlenecks.
Better vector support in GIMP would be nice, but I think that the Vector vs Raster is too radical a difference to incorporate nicely in one package with a good UI. I think the workflow for most web artists is draw in vector (Illustrator etc) and then finish the image in raster (Photoshop etc). A vector drawing package on a par with commercial offerings would be a huge addition to the free software world, and UI is very important in that area. Sodipodi is pretty good, IIRC.
In the UK at least, the Liberal Democrats seem to have some idea at least about copyright and patents as they relate to software. This paper mentions software patents as a bad thing, states that allowing only copyright protection on code rather than patents encourage competition in the software market place, along with a bunch of other generally sensible ideas.
Negative equity refers to the state where the value of something which the lender borrowed money against falls until it isn't sufficient to cover the loan. It generally happens in the housing market with mortgages after a housing price crash.
If that review is at all correct, why would anyone buy JDS? For $100/year/seat, I would want tech support I can rely on to help *now*. Otherwise, what's the point? I can get an answer to most problems online with a one-business day turnaround on most Linux forums (Gentoo, for example) for free.
If Sun want to charge extra money, shouldn't they have to provide something of value? Or do too many companies follow the idea "it's more expensive, therefore it must be better, or they wouldn't charge so much"?
Re:I stopped reading this when...
on
Browser Wars Mark II
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Come on, this guy is posting articles about web browsers and technology trends yet makes two technology-related mistakes on one page. Five minutes with Google could have told him he was wrong.
He also uses the tired old incorrect Betamax vs VHS argument. VHS won because you could record a two-hour movie on one tape, which you couldn't with beta, not because superior technologies lose or whatever it is he says.
All in all, an article void of interesting content.
Windows XP can handle this trivial process with ease....why not FC2?
A better statement would be "Other linux distros can handle this trivial process with ease...why not FC2?". For example, with SuSE 9.1 I just install it, bung a writeable CD in and burn away. I imagine you've probably just found a bug between your hardware and FC2.
From reading the interview, this guy seems to 'get' Adams humour, so this could be an exception.
As for US remakes, I really never know why they bother most of the time. The Ladykillers? For the love of good, why are they remaking the Ladykillers? Personally, I reckon the Orange adverts at the cinema are far too close to the truth of how movies get made.
Lies, damned lies and statistics and all that I guess.
I wish people wouldn't spoof their browser ID - things will never change if IE still appears to be the most common. I've written several emails to sites complaining about lack of access to non-IE browsers, with some success. www.argos.co.uk, for example, used to not allow non-IE browsers in, until they received enough complaints from people like me that they changed their site.
As he explains in the article, the value he uses is the average value extrapolated from the amount people are prepared to spend in order to reduce the risk of their death.
You have to place some kind of finite monetary value on a human life, or spending on safety would tend to infinity. Safety reviews do this sort of thing all the time - IIRC, the value we used in our Safety lectures (Chemical Engineering degree) was rather less than $10 million.
I have to say I agree. I tried Mdk 10 for a fortnight. While it had plenty of great features and very good hardware support (even auto-detected and configured my HP laserjet 1000), it was just too unreliable for me to use it for work. SuSE 9.1 seems much more stable to me so far.
I separate them because they serve different purposes. The criteria for the two are different: my desktop should be fast enough to run automated tests quickly, run BF1942 and generally be powerful enough to run all the complex tasks (MILP/CLP solvers etc) it has to do comfortably fast. Size, power, weight and heat aren't much of an issue.
My laptop is for taking with me on trips away. It needs to fit neatly in a small rucksack, weigh about as much as a programming textbook and last at least three hours on batteries. Provided I can compile small projects, run LaTeX, kmail, firefox and openoffice at reasonable speed, performance isn't vital. Disk space isn't an issue - my home directory is only a gigabyte or so at maximum, and syncing the two systems is simple (rsync/NFS etc). The cost of the two systems is probably less than $1000 at current prices.
I used a "desktop replacement" laptop recently - the heat pouring off the keyboard was enough to make my hands drip with sweat, which doesn't help typing speed much! That was x86 though - I imagine the bigger powerbooks are probably better, although you pay for the privilege.
We're talking about laptops here, not workstations. Most laptop use is running presentations, reading email and writing documents. For that, a 500Mhz P3 or so is fine. Yes, if you want to demonstrate a new numerical solver you may want a faster machine, but otherwise the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.
I don't understand the drive for such powerful laptops for non-specialist use these days. A 5kg doorstop with a short battery life that runs so hot it needs a fan on while idle and burns your hands doesn't seem my ideal portable computing platform.
Noooo. Don't do it. Don't install Solaris x86! I used it for a few months because we had solaris/Sparc at college and I wanted to get used to it, and I would never do it again. Hardware support is very limited, it runs very slowly and getting a lot of free software to run is a nightmare. Solaris x86 was my introduction to the Unix world and it would have been enough to make me run back to windows if someone hadn't given me a SuSE(7.something, IIRC) disk.
The UK cinema industry seems to be doing OK with our rating system, so the economic argument doesn't make much sense. (over here, films are rated Universal, "Parental Guidance", 12A, 12, 15 and 18. For the last three, if you are younger than the age set you aren't allowed in at all, accompanied by an adult or not. 12A is "under 12's accompanied allowed" IIRC)
This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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Bloat is a problem, especially in projects where communication between developers is limited. That said, in my experience, the amount of code required to add features is often surprisingly large. What can seem like a trivial feature before starting development can turn out to have wider ranging effects than you predicted.
The other problem is that optimisation is time-consuming and hard. A lot of OSS projects don't have time to exhaustively profile their code and then go through removing bottlenecks.
Better vector support in GIMP would be nice, but I think that the Vector vs Raster is too radical a difference to incorporate nicely in one package with a good UI. I think the workflow for most web artists is draw in vector (Illustrator etc) and then finish the image in raster (Photoshop etc).
A vector drawing package on a par with commercial offerings would be a huge addition to the free software world, and UI is very important in that area. Sodipodi is pretty good, IIRC.
In the UK at least, the Liberal Democrats seem to have some idea at least about copyright and patents as they relate to software. This paper mentions software patents as a bad thing, states that allowing only copyright protection on code rather than patents encourage competition in the software market place, along with a bunch of other generally sensible ideas.
Negative equity refers to the state where the value of something which the lender borrowed money against falls until it isn't sufficient to cover the loan.
It generally happens in the housing market with mortgages after a housing price crash.
Just sat through Harry Potter under the watchful eye of a night vision equipped usher. That's a London Warner cinema. So they really are doing it.
You have an x86 box that's slower than a Blade 100? Just how old is it?
If that review is at all correct, why would anyone buy JDS? For $100/year/seat, I would want tech support I can rely on to help *now*. Otherwise, what's the point? I can get an answer to most problems online with a one-business day turnaround on most Linux forums (Gentoo, for example) for free.
If Sun want to charge extra money, shouldn't they have to provide something of value? Or do too many companies follow the idea "it's more expensive, therefore it must be better, or they wouldn't charge so much"?
Come on, this guy is posting articles about web browsers and technology trends yet makes two technology-related mistakes on one page. Five minutes with Google could have told him he was wrong.
He also uses the tired old incorrect Betamax vs VHS argument. VHS won because you could record a two-hour movie on one tape, which you couldn't with beta, not because superior technologies lose or whatever it is he says.
All in all, an article void of interesting content.
Windows XP can handle this trivial process with ease....why not FC2?
A better statement would be "Other linux distros can handle this trivial process with ease...why not FC2?". For example, with SuSE 9.1 I just install it, bung a writeable CD in and burn away. I imagine you've probably just found a bug between your hardware and FC2.
From reading the interview, this guy seems to 'get' Adams humour, so this could be an exception.
As for US remakes, I really never know why they bother most of the time. The Ladykillers? For the love of good, why are they remaking the Ladykillers? Personally, I reckon the Orange adverts at the cinema are far too close to the truth of how movies get made.
Six days to emerge the system? Sounds about right.
Lies, damned lies and statistics and all that I guess.
I wish people wouldn't spoof their browser ID - things will never change if IE still appears to be the most common. I've written several emails to sites complaining about lack of access to non-IE browsers, with some success. www.argos.co.uk, for example, used to not allow non-IE browsers in, until they received enough complaints from people like me that they changed their site.
Maybe you're right. Stats from my XHTML-strict site:
MS Internet Explorer 56.4 %
Mozilla 25.6 %
Opera 5.4 %
Netscape 4 %
Safari 3.4 %
Konqueror 1.7 %
Personally, given that the site is an open-source software site, I find the greater than 50% share of IE depressing.
As he explains in the article, the value he uses is the average value extrapolated from the amount people are prepared to spend in order to reduce the risk of their death.
You have to place some kind of finite monetary value on a human life, or spending on safety would tend to infinity. Safety reviews do this sort of thing all the time - IIRC, the value we used in our Safety lectures (Chemical Engineering degree) was rather less than $10 million.
3.14159
0.12345
Looks like the 5th (decimal) digit to me.
It's a UK ISP called Plus.net. Unfortunately, they're only in the 51st State.
I have to say I agree. I tried Mdk 10 for a fortnight. While it had plenty of great features and very good hardware support (even auto-detected and configured my HP laserjet 1000), it was just too unreliable for me to use it for work. SuSE 9.1 seems much more stable to me so far.
I found that problem too - the workaround is to switch off the file selector plugin for now.
I separate them because they serve different purposes. The criteria for the two are different: my desktop should be fast enough to run automated tests quickly, run BF1942 and generally be powerful enough to run all the complex tasks (MILP/CLP solvers etc) it has to do comfortably fast. Size, power, weight and heat aren't much of an issue.
My laptop is for taking with me on trips away. It needs to fit neatly in a small rucksack, weigh about as much as a programming textbook and last at least three hours on batteries. Provided I can compile small projects, run LaTeX, kmail, firefox and openoffice at reasonable speed, performance isn't vital. Disk space isn't an issue - my home directory is only a gigabyte or so at maximum, and syncing the two systems is simple (rsync/NFS etc). The cost of the two systems is probably less than $1000 at current prices.
I used a "desktop replacement" laptop recently - the heat pouring off the keyboard was enough to make my hands drip with sweat, which doesn't help typing speed much! That was x86 though - I imagine the bigger powerbooks are probably better, although you pay for the privilege.
We're talking about laptops here, not workstations. Most laptop use is running presentations, reading email and writing documents. For that, a 500Mhz P3 or so is fine. Yes, if you want to demonstrate a new numerical solver you may want a faster machine, but otherwise the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.
I don't understand the drive for such powerful laptops for non-specialist use these days. A 5kg doorstop with a short battery life that runs so hot it needs a fan on while idle and burns your hands doesn't seem my ideal portable computing platform.
Except that getting the same connection speed with a static IP vs dynamic goes from $30 to $60+
No it doesn't - my static IP 512k ADSL costs me $33/month (19GBP). I could choose to have a dynamic IP if I wanted, but the default is static.
Noooo. Don't do it. Don't install Solaris x86! I used it for a few months because we had solaris/Sparc at college and I wanted to get used to it, and I would never do it again. Hardware support is very limited, it runs very slowly and getting a lot of free software to run is a nightmare.
Solaris x86 was my introduction to the Unix world and it would have been enough to make me run back to windows if someone hadn't given me a SuSE(7.something, IIRC) disk.
The UK cinema industry seems to be doing OK with our rating system, so the economic argument doesn't make much sense.
(over here, films are rated Universal, "Parental Guidance", 12A, 12, 15 and 18. For the last three, if you are younger than the age set you aren't allowed in at all, accompanied by an adult or not. 12A is "under 12's accompanied allowed" IIRC)
This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.