I don't want to sound like a elitist Linux user (I'm not), but if you had to switch from XP to 98 because the interface confused you and you were lost, then *NO* current or near-future version of Linux will be beneficial to you.
Every single time a new KDE or Gnome version is released, a *lot* of things change, especially configuration utilities (Control Panels.)
Are you serious? I find it hard to beleive that some people can be fooled by a rounded titlebar and some pastel colors. If I came to your house one night and painted all you walls, would you wake and be so lost you couldn't find your bathroom?
I would say that at least 95% of the interface of all Windows versions since 95 are exactly the same. Maybe if your daily tasks include configuring shared folders and setting up new network connections, then you would be *slightly* confused, as these procedures have evolved somewhat over the versions, but all in all, most of everything is identical. You should be just as (un)productive with Win95, 98, ME, 2K, or XP.
No, I wouldn't say that the Windows interface has changed at all in the past 8 years or so. Win95, NT4, 98, 98SE, ME, 2K, and XP all have the same interface. Maybe some colors and styles have changed over the years, and some extra "features" have been added, but there is still a "Start" button. There is still "My Computer." Right clicking on the desktop will still bring up "Display Properties." There's still a taskbar with a clock in the corner. All these things have been stable for years, and users can feel very comfortable with any of these versions of Windows for 90% of thier tasks.
KDE and Gnome may be pretty similiar, but try switching from KDE to IceWM. Everything changes.
Seriously, WTF? What kind of business practice is it to formally announce on your website and in press releases that "X is in late beta stage" when it hasn't even been started. I guess that's why they are the "ex" management team.
------------------ Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden to sedulously avoid it, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here. ------------------
I agree. I would hope that with the advent (and hopefully proliferation) of 64-bit and SMP desktops, the extra processing power can be devoted to better AI. I would *love* to play against a computer opponent that requires an entire CPU to plan its moves and strategy. Get to work, software writers! Oh wait, that's me.
I don't know if you can make the argument that "makes better use of dual CPUs" translates to "better performance at playing games." The few Opteron benchmarks I've seen have shown that it makes *much* better use of multiple CPU than the Xeons, but still lags behind single CPU system for game playing, due to the fact that dual CPUs provide little to no benefit in current games, and the SMP overhead actually reduces perfromance.
Rest assured, all these and more experiments/observations will be performed if/when we get a decent probe on Mars. The problem is hype. We, as a society, need and want hype. If NASA declared, "We're spending $5B on a probe to examine wind speed on Mars," the general public probably isn't going to rally behind them with anything even remotely resembling enthusiam. They need a little "potential alien life" hype to justify themselves once in a while. Meanwhile, those "in the know" will understand the true value of such research.
Why yes, that is true, O' Master of the Obvious. Conversing with aliens light years away and then building a interstellar ship and traveling there to meet them probably would garner more public attention than finding some microscopic bacteria fossils on Mars. Nice observation.
Sound good, except for the fact that you're talking about huge orders of magnitude of differences in difficulty. Landing on Mars is like throwing a baseball at the house across the street, as opposed to throwing it to the next block over, bouncing off the north side of the house on the lot, and landing in the water dish in the dog house in the back yard. Slightly more difficult.
I mean, if 2.8 billion people receive the same spam for item X, won't it be obviouos that the makers/sellers/promoters of item X are to blame. When push comes to shove, they will, of course, name names.
Another thing I think NASA needs to do is make the public more aware of just how much *good* it does, especially commercially.
I think they should produce quarterly/yearly results of their findings/discoveries, commercial applications, patents, etc along with thier respective monetary implications. Then maybe people like my dad will stop complaining about the "hundred of millions" of dollars wasted by some people just "floating around in space" and can see some of the more tangible benefits of space exploration.
I think the public in general doesn't have any idea how much comes from NASA's experiments. They probably still think the only things to come out of it are Tang and the pen that writes upside down!
Also, I would like for someone to simply give them a fixed budget for 3-5 years, saying "Here's all the money you are getting for a while. In 5 years, I want a fully detailed report on how you spent it. If you don't operate at X level of efficiency, you're getting budget cuts." Something like that in order to force NASA to think lean and aggressively, instead of trying to spend every dime they get in order to look like they really need it all. No more $10 million toilet re-designs! Force them to think more like a private company (but without the whole 'stepping on anyone who gets in their way' attitudes.)
.. to do your civic duty and protest this like there's no tomorrow. Otherwise, when our goverment sees you people roll over and take it, they will want to try the same things here. Set a good example for us all!
While a noble sentiment, I just don't see a market for it. Can you imagine AMD trying to pitch thier new, low-power 3GHz CPU against the newest Intel 5.5GHz (190W heat dissipation)?
"But that extra 2.5GHz doesn't really make a difference. Our chip will be saving you money on your cooling bill!"
Sorry, but MHz/GHz sell CPUs. That's not going to change anytime soon.
Bah, we all need some "dumbed" down humor once in a while. I enjoyed that shlock about seeing all those crates, but never any pallets. Gold, baby! And no, I actually keep Lane Bryant catalogs under my mattress.
Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are some of the best schools in the country!? I never saw that coming!
Seriously, I've never complained about./ stories before, but this really is a non-story. Maybe if I had a usnews *premium* account and could actually get more than a 1,2,3 list...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want to sound like a elitist Linux user (I'm not), but if you had to switch from XP to 98 because the interface confused you and you were lost, then *NO* current or near-future version of Linux will be beneficial to you.
Every single time a new KDE or Gnome version is released, a *lot* of things change, especially configuration utilities (Control Panels.)
Are you serious? I find it hard to beleive that some people can be fooled by a rounded titlebar and some pastel colors. If I came to your house one night and painted all you walls, would you wake and be so lost you couldn't find your bathroom?
I would say that at least 95% of the interface of all Windows versions since 95 are exactly the same. Maybe if your daily tasks include configuring shared folders and setting up new network connections, then you would be *slightly* confused, as these procedures have evolved somewhat over the versions, but all in all, most of everything is identical. You should be just as (un)productive with Win95, 98, ME, 2K, or XP.
No, I wouldn't say that the Windows interface has changed at all in the past 8 years or so. Win95, NT4, 98, 98SE, ME, 2K, and XP all have the same interface. Maybe some colors and styles have changed over the years, and some extra "features" have been added, but there is still a "Start" button. There is still "My Computer." Right clicking on the desktop will still bring up "Display Properties." There's still a taskbar with a clock in the corner. All these things have been stable for years, and users can feel very comfortable with any of these versions of Windows for 90% of thier tasks.
KDE and Gnome may be pretty similiar, but try switching from KDE to IceWM. Everything changes.
Haha, you got me. I didn't even notice the release version, I just looked at the article date (today.) Ignore me and carry on.
Unfortunately, bandwidth plays but a miniscule part in online gaming. Latency (delay) is what makes-or-breaks game play.
When installing Mandrake, you can carve off a piece of an existing NTFS partition to use.
Link
From news.com.com
Linkage
Looks like they have ACPI support!
HAHA!
Seriously, WTF? What kind of business practice is it to formally announce on your website and in press releases that "X is in late beta stage" when it hasn't even been started. I guess that's why they are the "ex" management team.
Oh yeah? Well..
------------------
Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden to sedulously avoid it, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here.
------------------
So there!
I agree. I would hope that with the advent (and hopefully proliferation) of 64-bit and SMP desktops, the extra processing power can be devoted to better AI. I would *love* to play against a computer opponent that requires an entire CPU to plan its moves and strategy. Get to work, software writers! Oh wait, that's me.
I don't know if you can make the argument that "makes better use of dual CPUs" translates to "better performance at playing games." The few Opteron benchmarks I've seen have shown that it makes *much* better use of multiple CPU than the Xeons, but still lags behind single CPU system for game playing, due to the fact that dual CPUs provide little to no benefit in current games, and the SMP overhead actually reduces perfromance.
Rest assured, all these and more experiments/observations will be performed if/when we get a decent probe on Mars. The problem is hype. We, as a society, need and want hype. If NASA declared, "We're spending $5B on a probe to examine wind speed on Mars," the general public probably isn't going to rally behind them with anything even remotely resembling enthusiam. They need a little "potential alien life" hype to justify themselves once in a while. Meanwhile, those "in the know" will understand the true value of such research.
Why yes, that is true, O' Master of the Obvious. Conversing with aliens light years away and then building a interstellar ship and traveling there to meet them probably would garner more public attention than finding some microscopic bacteria fossils on Mars. Nice observation.
Sound good, except for the fact that you're talking about huge orders of magnitude of differences in difficulty. Landing on Mars is like throwing a baseball at the house across the street, as opposed to throwing it to the next block over, bouncing off the north side of the house on the lot, and landing in the water dish in the dog house in the back yard. Slightly more difficult.
I mean, if 2.8 billion people receive the same spam for item X, won't it be obviouos that the makers/sellers/promoters of item X are to blame. When push comes to shove, they will, of course, name names.
Somebody will go down, hard.
That website used Slashcode, right? Either that, or I've been spending so much time here that all sites are starting to remind me of /.
Another thing I think NASA needs to do is make the public more aware of just how much *good* it does, especially commercially.
I think they should produce quarterly/yearly results of their findings/discoveries, commercial applications, patents, etc along with thier respective monetary implications. Then maybe people like my dad will stop complaining about the "hundred of millions" of dollars wasted by some people just "floating around in space" and can see some of the more tangible benefits of space exploration.
I think the public in general doesn't have any idea how much comes from NASA's experiments. They probably still think the only things to come out of it are Tang and the pen that writes upside down!
Also, I would like for someone to simply give them a fixed budget for 3-5 years, saying "Here's all the money you are getting for a while. In 5 years, I want a fully detailed report on how you spent it. If you don't operate at X level of efficiency, you're getting budget cuts." Something like that in order to force NASA to think lean and aggressively, instead of trying to spend every dime they get in order to look like they really need it all. No more $10 million toilet re-designs! Force them to think more like a private company (but without the whole 'stepping on anyone who gets in their way' attitudes.)
.. to do your civic duty and protest this like there's no tomorrow. Otherwise, when our goverment sees you people roll over and take it, they will want to try the same things here. Set a good example for us all!
Hulk smash puny web server!
While a noble sentiment, I just don't see a market for it. Can you imagine AMD trying to pitch thier new, low-power 3GHz CPU against the newest Intel 5.5GHz (190W heat dissipation)?
"But that extra 2.5GHz doesn't really make a difference. Our chip will be saving you money on your cooling bill!"
Sorry, but MHz/GHz sell CPUs. That's not going to change anytime soon.
Exactly! I also wonder if someone had the original idea for Post-it Notes, but didn't have anything to jot it down on...
Bah, we all need some "dumbed" down humor once in a while. I enjoyed that shlock about seeing all those crates, but never any pallets. Gold, baby! And no, I actually keep Lane Bryant catalogs under my mattress.
Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are some of the best schools in the country!? I never saw that coming!
./ stories before, but this really is a non-story. Maybe if I had a usnews *premium* account and could actually get more than a 1,2,3 list...
Seriously, I've never complained about
Wow. I never believed that the whole "humor-impaired" condition actually existed, but it looks like I have been wrong all this time!
"Humor, this is nacturation. Nacturation, humor."