Now, if I want to change options, I can quite trivially do so
That's one place where I definitely prefer FreeBSD over Gentoo. There are quite a few "global" ports options, like "WITHOUT_X11=YES" that you'd use on a server or anywhere else you don't want to drag in all of X.org because some random program has an optional GUI. Those are the equivalent of Gentoo's USE flags.
But beyond that, configuration options for a port are store with that port and not globally, so you don't have to look through a list of every USE flag possible on your system and try to guess which might come into play based on what portage might decide to install. I much prefer it asking me for build options the first time I install a new port and then remembering those settings until new ones come available. I don't have to remember that "installing Perl might eventually bring in mpg123 as a dependency, so be sure to set 'MPG123_DONT_USE_KDE=YES' before you being the build."
Even if you don't agree with software patents in principle, patents that introduce a new technology tend to expire before the technology matures enough to become profitable.
BS. While that might make since in the physical world, it's completely inappropriate for software. For example, Tim Berners-Lee published a working description of the Web in March 1989. From my (admittedly amateur) interpretation of patent law, had he patented the concept on the same date he published that proposal, we'd still have two years to wait before it was possible to write an unencumbered web browser.
In what way could that be rationally justified? Although he made a leap to tie the pre-existing pieces together, how why would he deserve a 20 year monopoly on it? And since patents were meant for the betterment of society, how would you and I have benefitted from not having the web for the last 18 years (reasonably assuming that a proprietary version wouldn't have caught on long-term)? Other than not being able to waste time reading Slashdot at work, that is.
How effective can this really be? What if both sides have said tech?
Both sides have men, guns, tanks, and planes now, and yet all those can still be effectively used. If the output of the simulation is "the other side will encircle our capital and fight until they've killed us all", you may not be able to do much with it.
For a real life example, consider modern Iraq. Saddam knew America was coming and that it would invade with overwhelming force. Would he have had some advantage by a computer telling him the same thing?
That was the first computer listed in Dell's small business section, but all the other choices there also have XP as an option. Maybe XP isn't as common on new machines as Vista, but when Dell offers to sell it as one of their customization options, it's not exactly hard to get.
However, I agree with the basic premise that even software MP3 decoders don't need much general purpose hardware power to run.
To clarify, "not much" means "practically none". mpg123 on my three-year-old Dell uses 1.7% CPU according to top. How does Vista manage to make it use another 78% on newer hardware?
For the love of God editors, I understand that it is fine to write a sensationalist title on some articles but that is blatant FALSE. It is a complete LIE. People at Skype specifically stated that the fault was in *their* log-in mechanisms.
Really? So when they said, "[t]he disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update", they didn't really mean it?
Come on, just admit that you're wrong. It was a fault with their auth service in the sense that it wasn't able to cope with a Patch Tuesday-induced slashdotting that it wasn't designed for.
After watching Sycko now I am very afraid to live in the USA. How can you live there?
The same way Australians can live in Australia, even though I've seen "The Road Warrior" and personally would not wish to.
However, for more extreme requirements of both high torque AND high speed you might run into limitations of electric machine design, which might force you into adding a smaller gearbox anyway.
How do diesel trains do it, since they handle both extreme low-end torque and reasonably high top ends?
The corporations should be forced to pay upfront for the plaintiff's defense if he can't afford a good one.
My wife's small-city medical practice is structured as a corporation. Why do you want to make it impossible for us to sue someone if they damage us? Do we automatically lose that right just because we incorporated?
Another point is that people don't share just RIAA stuff, they share everything (I bet you do too).
Actually, I have a few hundred ripped CDs that I don't share, but strictly for legal reasons.
But really, I see copying an RIAA-member record company's files as akin to stealing from a drug dealer. It's fear of retribution holding people back, not any particular sense of impropriety.
I happen to think it's unethical to share copyrighted work without the artist's permission (regardless of whether it's legal or not).
Sorry, but I had to say something here. It's not the artist's permission 99% of the time - it's the permission of the record company that coerced ownership away from the artist.
I don't approve of copyright violation as a general rule, but in this one case, why not? The record companies are basically evil incarnate these days. Want to predict how they'll handle a given situation? Ask yourself What Satan Would Do. Given that they're working to change the law to steal from me (by effectively revoking copyright expiration) and don't care whom they destroy or bankrupt in the process, I see no moral reason whatsoever why it's wrong to copy their stuff.
Frankly, I wouldn't care if someone flat-out stole CDs from their warehouse. I think they've reached the point where it's no longer possible to violate their rights. As far as I'm concerned, they no longer have any.
Couldn't tell ya. For all the Boot Camp happiness that they use to give potential customers a risk-free trial of their hardware, I guess that philosophy doesn't apply to their applications. If I wanted a proprietary format, I'd go with MS Office - at least then I'd be compatible with 95% of the rest of the world.
An ideal language would provide a way to express that a function has no side effects, allowing map() to farm out different slices of the array to different CPUs.
I wrote something like that for Python. The idea is that you'd use a "decorator" to indicate that a method is parallelizable (doesn't have any side effects) and roughly how many processes to spread it across (because you don't want to hit your database with 10,000 simultaneous queries just because your client could theoretically do so, for instance). For example:
would tell the multiprocessing map() that timestwo() can be run up to 4 times per CPU, up to a total limit of 10 times. The per-CPU limit is because some tasks spend a lot of time waiting on external data (DB calls, file reads, etc) and it's OK to load out the system with those mostly-idle processes. The hard limit is because there's likely to be a maximum you still don't want to exceed.
BTW, this was meant mainly as a proof of concept and not something you'd just randomly use all over the place. Please consider the idea behind it and not just my particular implementation that I hammered out one afternoon.
Slashdot Mirror
That's one place where I definitely prefer FreeBSD over Gentoo. There are quite a few "global" ports options, like "WITHOUT_X11=YES" that you'd use on a server or anywhere else you don't want to drag in all of X.org because some random program has an optional GUI. Those are the equivalent of Gentoo's USE flags.
But beyond that, configuration options for a port are store with that port and not globally, so you don't have to look through a list of every USE flag possible on your system and try to guess which might come into play based on what portage might decide to install. I much prefer it asking me for build options the first time I install a new port and then remembering those settings until new ones come available. I don't have to remember that "installing Perl might eventually bring in mpg123 as a dependency, so be sure to set 'MPG123_DONT_USE_KDE=YES' before you being the build."
BS. While that might make since in the physical world, it's completely inappropriate for software. For example, Tim Berners-Lee published a working description of the Web in March 1989. From my (admittedly amateur) interpretation of patent law, had he patented the concept on the same date he published that proposal, we'd still have two years to wait before it was possible to write an unencumbered web browser.
In what way could that be rationally justified? Although he made a leap to tie the pre-existing pieces together, how why would he deserve a 20 year monopoly on it? And since patents were meant for the betterment of society, how would you and I have benefitted from not having the web for the last 18 years (reasonably assuming that a proprietary version wouldn't have caught on long-term)? Other than not being able to waste time reading Slashdot at work, that is.
That had me cracking up. Thank you.
Both sides have men, guns, tanks, and planes now, and yet all those can still be effectively used. If the output of the simulation is "the other side will encircle our capital and fight until they've killed us all", you may not be able to do much with it.
For a real life example, consider modern Iraq. Saddam knew America was coming and that it would invade with overwhelming force. Would he have had some advantage by a computer telling him the same thing?
Yeah. I discovered it a week later and now I'm permanently saddled with close-but-no-cigar.
Oh?
That was the first computer listed in Dell's small business section, but all the other choices there also have XP as an option. Maybe XP isn't as common on new machines as Vista, but when Dell offers to sell it as one of their customization options, it's not exactly hard to get.
No, you're not. He hasn't posted in a while.
There is one thing that can summon the Great Old Ones.
One.
And that is the implication that someone with a higher UID is one of them.
I claim my prize for having successfully beckoned a few and retire to the library for brandy and cigars.
Run along, newbie.
To clarify, "not much" means "practically none". mpg123 on my three-year-old Dell uses 1.7% CPU according to top. How does Vista manage to make it use another 78% on newer hardware?
Mu. Only Mac users listen to Coldplay.
Except you're wrong. My words were a verbatim quote from the linked report.
Really? So when they said, "[t]he disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update", they didn't really mean it?
Come on, just admit that you're wrong. It was a fault with their auth service in the sense that it wasn't able to cope with a Patch Tuesday-induced slashdotting that it wasn't designed for.
After watching Sycko now I am very afraid to live in the USA. How can you live there?The same way Australians can live in Australia, even though I've seen "The Road Warrior" and personally would not wish to.
So Windows' niche is strategy games. Gotcha.
Utterly OT: when are you getting your blog back online?
How do diesel trains do it, since they handle both extreme low-end torque and reasonably high top ends?
If only there were some alternative means of playing video games in one's own home. Like an appliance for video games, a console if you will...
And on that subject, this Amiga ex-user is taking enormous pleasure in seeing Windows relegated to "games system" status.
For the sake of the rest of us, could you elaborate?
My wife's small-city medical practice is structured as a corporation. Why do you want to make it impossible for us to sue someone if they damage us? Do we automatically lose that right just because we incorporated?
Actually, I have a few hundred ripped CDs that I don't share, but strictly for legal reasons.
But really, I see copying an RIAA-member record company's files as akin to stealing from a drug dealer. It's fear of retribution holding people back, not any particular sense of impropriety.
Sorry, but I had to say something here. It's not the artist's permission 99% of the time - it's the permission of the record company that coerced ownership away from the artist.
I don't approve of copyright violation as a general rule, but in this one case, why not? The record companies are basically evil incarnate these days. Want to predict how they'll handle a given situation? Ask yourself What Satan Would Do. Given that they're working to change the law to steal from me (by effectively revoking copyright expiration) and don't care whom they destroy or bankrupt in the process, I see no moral reason whatsoever why it's wrong to copy their stuff.
Frankly, I wouldn't care if someone flat-out stole CDs from their warehouse. I think they've reached the point where it's no longer possible to violate their rights. As far as I'm concerned, they no longer have any.
Isn't that pretty much the definition of abandonware?
Couldn't tell ya. For all the Boot Camp happiness that they use to give potential customers a risk-free trial of their hardware, I guess that philosophy doesn't apply to their applications. If I wanted a proprietary format, I'd go with MS Office - at least then I'd be compatible with 95% of the rest of the world.
Fixed that.
I wrote something like that for Python. The idea is that you'd use a "decorator" to indicate that a method is parallelizable (doesn't have any side effects) and roughly how many processes to spread it across (because you don't want to hit your database with 10,000 simultaneous queries just because your client could theoretically do so, for instance). For example:
would tell the multiprocessing map() that timestwo() can be run up to 4 times per CPU, up to a total limit of 10 times. The per-CPU limit is because some tasks spend a lot of time waiting on external data (DB calls, file reads, etc) and it's OK to load out the system with those mostly-idle processes. The hard limit is because there's likely to be a maximum you still don't want to exceed.
BTW, this was meant mainly as a proof of concept and not something you'd just randomly use all over the place. Please consider the idea behind it and not just my particular implementation that I hammered out one afternoon.