I think it's safe to say that like the recent article about there not being a "best language," neither is there a "best OS." Windows 98 is still King of the Games. Linux is generally considered King of all Geekdom. BSD is considered by some to be the King of the Server. Solaris is considered to be the King of CADates. The assumption that this would work best doesn't seem to hold water. If done properly, programmers could make a cross-platform game relatively easily, and still be able to develop for specific playform optimization.
That sounds like my final project for a CS class I took/am taking this semester. (Final is at 2pm tomorrow... er, today...)
We had both forgotten the due date of the project. I realized, on Saturday, that it was due Monday, and tried to contact him. I was unable to do so until early Sunday afternoon. At the time, he thought it wasn't due till Wednesday, and was busy working on another project, so I went at it. This was at about 2PM Sunday.
Being that I'm not the best programmer in the world, and more of a 'systems guy,' writing the program was fairly difficult for me. The course is pretty crappy, being a first year CS program, and was oritented for the non-geek... For instance, we went over C++ vectors in the class, which IMNSHO, are total crap, and didn't go over linked lists, arrays, pointers, etc... lots of STL stuff, and little practical things.
I ended up having a lot of practical things in my final project, and only as many vectors as were required.:) ~40k of commented code and 22 hours with no sleep later, my online friends and I were done with the project. (Thank God for their help!) It was mostly broken, but it worked decently enough to submit.
Needless to say, I shall crush the balls of my supposed project partner, and feed them to him in a bottle.
...the person fails physical fitness tests. Space travel, exiting Earth's gravitational field, and re-entry, are all very stressful activities which take years off astronaut's lives - who are in peak physical condition. Just think what it would to to Joe Couchpatato.
Also, what gives them the right to claim such a thing? What makes them special? It's an international station. Does this mean anyone can? Who granted them permission? It's not going to fly.
I know this is quite possibly a troll... but, I'm in the mood for baddy-slaying. If it's not a troll, well, then I'm sorry.:)
I don't think this endangers commercial software at all. Linux is, and always was, by hackers and for hackers.
Then maybe RedHat, Mandrake, and the like, as well as groups like KDE, are taking the wrong approach entirely.:) After all, they are trying to make Linux useable for Average Joe Idiot, to a great extent. "A viable alternative for Windows" means that windows users should be able to use it without much hastle. And there are a lot of stupid windows users. (And linux users - but there's definately a higher percentage of stupid windows users).
For one, if I can run Outlook, notes, VC++, and IE, then I can install Linux on my corporate workstation. Otherwise I can't.
You might be aware of the project called kdevelop. Or you may not. At any rate, if you need a graphical 'development tool' with the debugger and such built in, that's your candy. (No idea how it'd work with kludged MS app devel, though.) As far as outlook, IE, and this 'notes' thing you're talking about - I use mozilla/netscape and pronto! on my box on a purely MS network which is standardized around WinNT4.0, and I have no problems. (Also standardized around Office2k, and I use Abiword... granted, I don't want or need the more 'advanced' crap that MS throws in there, but what the hey. I'm doing it.)
They already have this. It's called "Mandrake". It's also called compiling your own kernel, for i386 systems. You don't really see much benefit, if any, above i586 optimizations. (obviously for x86 stuff... no idea about ppc procs, etc)
Many people are commenting on how we shouldn't endorse a closed-source browser if we support open source software. While open source does generally produce better software on a technical level, this arguement doesn't really hold its water.
While there are some people that, I am sure, will not use something if it's not open source (I'm sure there are some debian users out there that feel this way, bless their data access) the vast majority of the linux users I've met don't really care - yes, linux is better because its open source, but were it not open source, it would be just as cool, merely because it does indeed, haul. If OSS didn't create good, solid software, then nobody would be attracted to it. This doesn't exclude the ecceptance of other software from our tastes naturally. Yes, I use linux. I use it for all of my work. However, I'll play Counter-Strike in windows. Does this mean I don't support open source software? No, it means that there's a better 'solution' for games than linux provides, and counter-strike in paticular. The same goes for browsers.
I personally don't like any of the browsers out there right now. Gaeleon faster than netscape? Not in my experience (maybe I should try a more recent version from CVS?). Opera is ugly, and has a very odd user interface which I find inefficient and convoluted. Skiptsone is too slow and buggy still. Mozilla requires at least one stick of 256 megs... it's huge, and I don't have the finances for that - so much for 'free' software.:) Netscape standalone is currently the best option for me. As soon as I find a fast, stable, lightweight browser that supports images, basic HTML/CSS functionality, and a modular design - that is, it can easily take a plugin at any time - I'll be quite happy. A browser that weighs in at under 5 megs on start, and doesn't ever go much above that in proportion to the memory cache specified, will bear my children. No pretty widgets necessary - just use a good ol' standard toolkit, please. Just a couple buttons, too - back, forward, stop, and reload should be plenty. The rest can be done with menus. I think Skipstone has the right, or at least the best, idea behind it, but it's really quite slow as of the last time I tested it. Still, pretty decent work on their part (they made pronto, it should be good). When the ghecko engine actually is at a 1.0 versioning, and all the kludgish devel code is removed, things might improve, but we'll see when the time comes.
I suppose Konqueror or whatever the KDE browser is called, might be worth a shot. *scampers over to KDE's site* Sure, I'd prefer GTK, but anything beats Motif.
That soft of defeats the purpose of including them in the magazines in the first place - what about skeet shooting?:)
This sounds vastly like vaporware to me. No web site, for a company that is supposedly developing new technology for mass distribution?
Also, I wonder, if in fact it were real, if current cdrom/dvd drives would be able to read the format? (might the flimsy nature of the media also cause for misreading of information?)
The assumption that Transmeta chips are quite good quility is probably rubbing off of the fact hat Linus works for Transmeta, thus, since linux is good, the Crusoe must be good. It's not linear, or even proper, logic, though. It's a nice thought, but torvalds isn't the only hacker their, either. They're sure to have hardware that do all the hardware, while Torvalds makes sure the firmware is AOK. Highly likely the CPU's are quite stable, though.:)
Let's see. Just to rehash the monopoly that MS holds, and how greatly they've pushed out competitors by mundling everything with Windows:
DirectX - people devel for DX, thus games don't get developed for OGL, and we Linux users don't get a port, since one would take a total conversion of the engine.
Office - 'if you don't use the latest version, you can't read anybody's documents, and they can't read your's. This also crushes presentation software, site design software, and most other 'productivity' software, since if people have something that 'does the job,' they generally aren't willing to shell out money for another program that does something similar, even if it does it better. Not many people get office for much more than being able to read those horrid Word documents, but use all the other parts of it, because they would rather not pay more money. (Possibly why MS hiked the price of MS Office/again/?)
Browser - this has already been overly stated.
SMB - constantly mutating the protocol.
Media - Windows Media Player. Crappy product at it's most recent release, and comes bundled and installed.
Utilities - a miriad of utilities that have increased in abundance since the Dark Beginning of Windows, which have over time decreased the demand for other company's products, such as defrag tools, editors, etc.
Games - MS has a fairly large collection of relatively popular games on the market.
Servers - all their lovely servers which constantly change protocols, requiring the latest OS or software package from MS in order for them to work properly together. Never mind that they're inferior server products and cost a lot more - businesses 'need' them because they offer new 'features' which other programs are cross dependant on. Upgrade the server, you have to upgrade the client.
Email - everyone using windows has either OE or Outlook that comes w/ Office. Lovely, formatted email that nobody else can read without having to search through the message for meaningful content. Nevermind the address books, etc, that go alongside the Exchange server.
There you have it. They have a very strong presence in every major computer software market: productivity, games, media, internet, and email. Granted, these things are 'given away' mostly for free, such as Media Player, but my goodness... like you haven't already pawned your soul for the OS and it's license.
I'm sure MS would enjoy their way being incorrect, being that it would benefit their monopoly. But of course, people would never put up with paying full price for MS products - for goodness sake, 500 and 800 USD for the two Office 2000 version, Personal and Professional, repsectively!
How could a book entitled "Embracing Insanity" NOT deliver?! My goodness, of course it delivers. Embracing insanity - that's soemthing I've been doing for years, and trying to brainwashH^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^convince others to do for nearly as long!
...I can't wait for the games to be ported to Linux.
Seriously, what's the good of having a gaming 'mouse' for linux, when the game selection in linux is slightly less than nothing? RTS are even less sparse when it comes to Linux than most other generes.
Sure, there's WINE and vmware - but they hardly work as well as native, and good luck getting your devices working properly. It's hard enough to get a game in, without having WINE crash, and vmware is just slow.
Yes, the republicans are evil too. They're politicians, what more can you expect?
But I'm not talking about just Democrats and Republicans. I was talking specifically about Clinton. Clinton's list compares quite nicely to the entire 'Republican list,' have you. That's pathetic on Clinton's part.
Lying under oath tends to be a big one. No, you can't 'prove' it... but it's like OJ Simposon... everyone knows he did it.
Sexual harassment...
All his illigal political dealings in Arkansas...
Mafia dealings...
Whitewater, et al....
Underhanded campeign deals with the Chinese, etc...
Anything else? Sure, not all of them have been proven, but it's just beuracracy at it's worst that's prevented that, alongside overpowering government that has changed laws to it's advantage. Scary thing is, Gore was in a good deal of his presidential follies.
It all depends on the individual's/group's point of view.
I recall that ZDNET, at the time of Windows 98, considered Windows 98 quite stable. If an individual has never experienced the thrill of Wild Thing or various other large rollercoasters, the rides at the local carnival are 'quite thrilling,' while in retrospect, they're quite dull compared to the thrill aquired from Wild Thing/Space Mountain/etc... The same thing here applies for stability. If you consider 3 days uptime, with no crashing, stable, then something that provides a week of decent uptime w/o crashing would be considered potentially rock solid. Likewise, someone who considers a year of uptime without crashes solid would consider such uptime as a week, or even several months, potentially laughable.
It's my opinion that MS may have possibly made the initial releases of Windows less stable on purpose - they could get away with it, because their marketing was so efficient. Then, as later versions were released, each subsequent release would look increasingly more 'rock solid,' based on the previous version's vantage of 'stable,' which in turn was based on the version previous to that being less stable. The reason I believe they did this was because they knew they didn't have the ability to compete with the big boys - all the various UNIX varients - based on stability. Eventually, the hype of their OS becoming more stable, and being even more rock solid, and such, would weaken the minds of the already weak, thus bringing them more market share...
Although I think this is a great thing, considering Clinton's track record on honesty and the like, and his habit to do things merely for his personal gain and party gain, I do wonder if this is an attempted maneuver to instill more respect/honor in him and his running mate for the last two elections, Al Gore. *pondering*
By NO means have I ever liked. Clinton (back in '92, I remember waking up in the morning to my radio, and hearing that Clinton won the election. I felt like the world was going to end.) But this one act alone, upholding the constitution (despite that he's broken every major law, and most of the minor ones himself and having dispicable personal and professional character) makes me respect him a lot more. He still has no respect in my book though, other than the fact that he is, indeed, the President of our nation, and that position alone demands respect, since as a whole we did elect him twice. (Those of you who actually voted for him should be ashamed.) Most of the things he has done have been nothing but self-serving and tools for his own personal gain. Maybe he's realized his error, and changed his ways?
LOL!
This is QUITE funny.:) I haven't laughed this hard in a while. My thanks to whoever posted/thought this up. And no, I don't think this is funny just because I'm dead tired and haven't slept yet.
This is worth positive moderation. Too bad my mod points ran out about 4 hours ago...
Slashdot Mirror
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CAIMLAS
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We had both forgotten the due date of the project. I realized, on Saturday, that it was due Monday, and tried to contact him. I was unable to do so until early Sunday afternoon. At the time, he thought it wasn't due till Wednesday, and was busy working on another project, so I went at it. This was at about 2PM Sunday.
Being that I'm not the best programmer in the world, and more of a 'systems guy,' writing the program was fairly difficult for me. The course is pretty crappy, being a first year CS program, and was oritented for the non-geek... For instance, we went over C++ vectors in the class, which IMNSHO, are total crap, and didn't go over linked lists, arrays, pointers, etc... lots of STL stuff, and little practical things.
I ended up having a lot of practical things in my final project, and only as many vectors as were required. :) ~40k of commented code and 22 hours with no sleep later, my online friends and I were done with the project. (Thank God for their help!) It was mostly broken, but it worked decently enough to submit.
Needless to say, I shall crush the balls of my supposed project partner, and feed them to him in a bottle.
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CAIMLAS
Also, what gives them the right to claim such a thing? What makes them special? It's an international station. Does this mean anyone can? Who granted them permission? It's not going to fly.
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CAIMLAS
I don't think this endangers commercial software at all. Linux is, and always was, by hackers and for hackers.
Then maybe RedHat, Mandrake, and the like, as well as groups like KDE, are taking the wrong approach entirely. :) After all, they are trying to make Linux useable for Average Joe Idiot, to a great extent. "A viable alternative for Windows" means that windows users should be able to use it without much hastle. And there are a lot of stupid windows users. (And linux users - but there's definately a higher percentage of stupid windows users).
For one, if I can run Outlook, notes, VC++, and IE, then I can install Linux on my corporate workstation. Otherwise I can't.
You might be aware of the project called kdevelop. Or you may not. At any rate, if you need a graphical 'development tool' with the debugger and such built in, that's your candy. (No idea how it'd work with kludged MS app devel, though.) As far as outlook, IE, and this 'notes' thing you're talking about - I use mozilla/netscape and pronto! on my box on a purely MS network which is standardized around WinNT4.0, and I have no problems. (Also standardized around Office2k, and I use Abiword... granted, I don't want or need the more 'advanced' crap that MS throws in there, but what the hey. I'm doing it.)
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CAIMLAS
Everyone knows that IRC is a quick, responsive way to communicate, as well as very stable and dynamic.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
While there are some people that, I am sure, will not use something if it's not open source (I'm sure there are some debian users out there that feel this way, bless their data access) the vast majority of the linux users I've met don't really care - yes, linux is better because its open source, but were it not open source, it would be just as cool, merely because it does indeed, haul. If OSS didn't create good, solid software, then nobody would be attracted to it. This doesn't exclude the ecceptance of other software from our tastes naturally. Yes, I use linux. I use it for all of my work. However, I'll play Counter-Strike in windows. Does this mean I don't support open source software? No, it means that there's a better 'solution' for games than linux provides, and counter-strike in paticular. The same goes for browsers.
I personally don't like any of the browsers out there right now. Gaeleon faster than netscape? Not in my experience (maybe I should try a more recent version from CVS?). Opera is ugly, and has a very odd user interface which I find inefficient and convoluted. Skiptsone is too slow and buggy still. Mozilla requires at least one stick of 256 megs... it's huge, and I don't have the finances for that - so much for 'free' software. :) Netscape standalone is currently the best option for me. As soon as I find a fast, stable, lightweight browser that supports images, basic HTML/CSS functionality, and a modular design - that is, it can easily take a plugin at any time - I'll be quite happy. A browser that weighs in at under 5 megs on start, and doesn't ever go much above that in proportion to the memory cache specified, will bear my children. No pretty widgets necessary - just use a good ol' standard toolkit, please. Just a couple buttons, too - back, forward, stop, and reload should be plenty. The rest can be done with menus. I think Skipstone has the right, or at least the best, idea behind it, but it's really quite slow as of the last time I tested it. Still, pretty decent work on their part (they made pronto, it should be good). When the ghecko engine actually is at a 1.0 versioning, and all the kludgish devel code is removed, things might improve, but we'll see when the time comes.
I suppose Konqueror or whatever the KDE browser is called, might be worth a shot. *scampers over to KDE's site* Sure, I'd prefer GTK, but anything beats Motif.
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CAIMLAS
This sounds vastly like vaporware to me. No web site, for a company that is supposedly developing new technology for mass distribution?
Also, I wonder, if in fact it were real, if current cdrom/dvd drives would be able to read the format? (might the flimsy nature of the media also cause for misreading of information?)
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
Seriously, what's the good of having a gaming 'mouse' for linux, when the game selection in linux is slightly less than nothing? RTS are even less sparse when it comes to Linux than most other generes.
Sure, there's WINE and vmware - but they hardly work as well as native, and good luck getting your devices working properly. It's hard enough to get a game in, without having WINE crash, and vmware is just slow.
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CAIMLAS
Does this mean I can't have something positive to say about him?
Nobody's totally evil or wrong.
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CAIMLAS
*sigh*
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CAIMLAS
But I'm not talking about just Democrats and Republicans. I was talking specifically about Clinton. Clinton's list compares quite nicely to the entire 'Republican list,' have you. That's pathetic on Clinton's part.
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CAIMLAS
Sexual harassment...
All his illigal political dealings in Arkansas...
Mafia dealings...
Whitewater, et al....
Underhanded campeign deals with the Chinese, etc...
Anything else? Sure, not all of them have been proven, but it's just beuracracy at it's worst that's prevented that, alongside overpowering government that has changed laws to it's advantage. Scary thing is, Gore was in a good deal of his presidential follies.
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CAIMLAS
I recall that ZDNET, at the time of Windows 98, considered Windows 98 quite stable. If an individual has never experienced the thrill of Wild Thing or various other large rollercoasters, the rides at the local carnival are 'quite thrilling,' while in retrospect, they're quite dull compared to the thrill aquired from Wild Thing/Space Mountain/etc... The same thing here applies for stability. If you consider 3 days uptime, with no crashing, stable, then something that provides a week of decent uptime w/o crashing would be considered potentially rock solid. Likewise, someone who considers a year of uptime without crashes solid would consider such uptime as a week, or even several months, potentially laughable.
It's my opinion that MS may have possibly made the initial releases of Windows less stable on purpose - they could get away with it, because their marketing was so efficient. Then, as later versions were released, each subsequent release would look increasingly more 'rock solid,' based on the previous version's vantage of 'stable,' which in turn was based on the version previous to that being less stable. The reason I believe they did this was because they knew they didn't have the ability to compete with the big boys - all the various UNIX varients - based on stability. Eventually, the hype of their OS becoming more stable, and being even more rock solid, and such, would weaken the minds of the already weak, thus bringing them more market share...
Just my .035$
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
This is worth positive moderation. Too bad my mod points ran out about 4 hours ago...
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CAIMLAS
You should have read the all-encompassing Linux-HOWTO!
Or better yet, the more specific, completely non-generic Beowulf-HOWTO!
Everyone knows that.
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CAIMLAS