KDE and GNOME have a genuine competitive spirit between them. However, the free.NET replacements are not competing against eachother; the are competing against MS. In this, they somewhat dilute the Open Source side's efforts in the matter.
If the different Open Source efforts cooperate to reduce risk of failure rather than dilute themselves to increase the risk of failure, everything will be fine. Cooperation doesn't necessarily mean consolodation but reinforcement. They need to reinforce eachother.
Existing not-out-of-the-ordinary technology was used to break the CD "noise." It is sad that the CD companies thought they had it licked, when, again, their efforts were trounced by basic human ingenuity. It is really terrible that calling the bluff of the CD makers puts one into "a legal gray area." It should be unambiguous (it is law, after all).
I wonder if the media companies are doing this on purpose to create a pool of defendants they can publicly crush. Seriously, predictable noise on CDs and two thousand year old ciphers (PDF encryption) can't be the product of real engineering prowess on the part of the companies. Is this some sort of sick game the media companies are playing?
Okay, lots of benchmarks, MHz, etc., being quoted above. Here is another question that is more appropriate: does the Itanium have the built-in fault tolerance features of the UltraSPARC architecture? I really don't know (that's why I posed the question).
I do know that Solaris on SPARC is pretty robust, and I can jerk it around without it complaining. A Solaris/SPARC system is also very resilient when hardware fails (if the system is set up for it). The reason for this is that Solaris, SPARC processors, and the rest of the computer are in a sort of symbiosis--they are designed to work together very well (and they do). That's why I prefer my 9-year-old SPARCStation over my more modern PC; it is just a better architecture to work with.
I also know that this is generally not the case for Pentium-based systems. Many Pentium-based servers look and behave as if they were engineered by monkeys--especially when they are forced to suffer under Windows. Will this improve with the Itanium?
If trade secrets leak out of a company, because the employees put critical secrets on networked computers running Outlook, then that's just too bad. If companies haven't learned by now the dangers of casual networking, then they deserve what they get.
Even worse than these viruses are advertising spy programs that setup shop as a background process on PCs. These scare me more because they are installed discretely with otherwise well-known software and track your activities. No networked computer is safe. No matter how much you try to secure it, it still is not safe. There are people, if only the network admins, who can easily know everything you do without you knowing that they know.
Important trade secrets should be stored on totally isolated networks that have no route to the Internet. The computers should be stored behind securely locked doors. The set of people who know of this inner network should be controlled at all times. This is the only way to truly secure a computer. Anything less is foolish.
There are a lot of computer-related books that are timeless. This may suprise the readers of those flashy something-unleashed or learn-something-in-15-minutes books.
Library rule of thumb: 90% (perhaps 99%) of the books at your local bookstore are garbage. Hesitate to buy any book that is 2 inches thick with a single (often vague) topic, such as "Internet Programming" (how does one program the Internet?). Don't get pulled in by the hype. Also avoid version-specific books, such as "Using Word 97" as they are good for a maximum of five years (if not fewer).
I second the above votes for Brooks' "The Mythical Man Month." It is 26 years old and still worthwhile to read. It is a computer book that is really about people--hence it is timeless.
Other high level books, such as Object Oriented Analysis books, are good, because they address how people go about designing software--hence they are timeless.
Philosophical books, such as Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" are good for a library, because they are a part of our computing history--hence they are also timeless.
Again, don't get pulled in by the hype. There are a precious subset of computer books that are cited time and time again in literature, have withstood years of criticism and have formed loyal bases of readers. These are the books that should go into a library.
Sun Microsystems produces MAJC, which supports multiprocessing in a single package. I think the architecture can support lots (perhaps 128 or 512) processors in a single package. I'm not sure if they are truly single-die or several dies assembled together.
I really don't think Windows runs on this. Nor Solaris for that matter. It appears MAJC is pretty application-specific. But it shows what sort of technology is out there.
Has anyone profiled the efficiency of these cache-inhibited chips against their "real" bretheren? I learned in computer pre-school (university) that the processor's efficiency increases dramatically as cache is added (256KB=fair; 512KB=good; 1MB=quite good; 4MB=very very good) even for low MHz processors. Just how much of the "value" processor's time is completely wasted due to pipeline flushes, etc.? Are "value" customers taken to be ignorant drool-buckets, or are they really getting better price/performance?
Isn't XML a bit too verbose? At least X worked ten years ago and it still works now. Its network transparency has always been quite nice, too. The XML method would be fine as long as it is concise and network transparent. Concise is the key word here, because even X can saturate a network (even a modern one).
Correct. Given that the average licensed automobile driver is barely competent at driving, imagine putting these people into airplanes. This is why it is fairly difficult to get a licence to pilot aircraft. Flying is a fundamentally more difficult problem versus driving (it's like you enter a whole new dimension!).
Also, imagine the number of people who, out of arrogance or stupidity, would fly in conditions they are simply not fit to fly in. Think of that Kennedy kid who flew into the ocean.
Unless the whole process is automated (taking the human out of the flying process), these nifty aircraft will simply become museum pieces.
To be pure, a database should never rely on the social security number as a primary key. It is NOT unique. It has been corrupted by criminals (some people have several SSNs, I've heard). It also limits you to the United States. Database designers who put the SSN in a primary key role are acting naievely.
The SSN may be included as an attribute of United States citizens, but it shouldn't have a role greater than that.
If scientists want to distribute their own papers without journal publishers getting in the way, let napster set them up with a free paper-sharing service.
LaTeX should be the platform-independent format, of course. Oh wait, no one knows what LaTeX is, anymore, because that bloated unreadable corruptable.doc format has taken over! Well, then, perhaps SGML or XML/XSL/DSSSL/XYZUGHL?
I'm not really big into anime, but I do appreciate that much of it is quite good. Pokemon is marketed towards children. However, many anime movies are very much geared to teenagers, while others are strictly for adults. Even if you don't like the plot or the characters, the design aspect alone is enough to make watching anime enjoyable.
Another aspect of anime that deserves attention is that the style of caricature exemplifies important aspects of human culture. There's a fair amount of psychology behind those large eyes. Anime characters are an exaggerated demonstration of what many people find attractive about other people.
Each of us is addressing a slightly different issue. Encryption and intrusion countermeasures are necessary, because so many computers are connected to the anything-goes public Internet. I prefer to use encryption for the same reason I seal the envelopes I send in the mail. I prefer to stay behind a firewall and limit the services offered on my workstation for the same reason I lock the doors and draw the blinds in my house.
However, the piss-ant viruses that proliferate on the most popular OS in the world are just wasting our time and effort. They aren't elegant or smart; they are just a pain in the ass. This isn't just about sloppy programming in the mail daemon or the web server, it is about a cronic illness that is entrenched in the whole platform. These things just shouldn't be! Anti-virus software attempts to band-aid these cronic inadequacies. It shouldn't exist because the underlying problems in the platform should have been addressed long ago.
If developers prosper by not cutting corners, then how did this OS become so popular? Was it sheer technical prowess or was it the naivete of and the subsequent choke collars wrapped around our planet's business people?
The good operating systems of the world are implemented well enough that I don't have to worry about these piss-ant viruses. I am left with the luxury of only worrying about real people--real criminals--who want to attack my computers. This is where encryption and intrusion countermeasures come back into the picture. This arena is where the innovation should be occurring--and it is for those people who have made better choices about their OS.
It's not just him. Think of the many millions of people spending this time over the same problem. Think of the many millions of administrators wasting their time with anti-virus software that shouldn't even exist. Think of the many millions of people who can't work because the many millions of administrators are still trying to fix their computers.
There are huge industries, such as anti-virus software companies, that exist only to prop up a flawed OS and its applications. When I see how much of our world's resources are wasted over these unnecessary and preventable problems, I wonder where we would be if there resources were put to real use.
This argument is losing validity every day. Within a few years, all of the applications that tie us to Windows will be mature and useful under Linux. I long for the day that my household can be truly free of M$. That day will come; it is just a matter of time.
Sun probably won't be dropping CDE. It is more likely that they will drop OpenLook (three interfaces is probably too much) when GNOME is fully adopted.
Also, CDE still has a place. On my old SPARCStation, CDE runs well, but GNOME is just too much. With GNOME, I can watch the window frame come up, then watch the text getting drawn, then watch the button outlines get drawn, then watch the button text get drawn, then I can finally click on a button, then another window appears, and the whole thing repeats.
As long as Sun continues OS support for its old 32-bit workstations and even the older 64-bit workstations, they will need to ship an alternative to GNOME.
I disagree. Even though building a computer may not be cheaper, it still guarantees that the computer will fit your needs better. If I build my own computer I get:
1) All manuals. Many OEMS ship only brain-dead manuals with no useful specs.
2) Guaranteed upgrade paths. Getting a top-notch motherboard and planning for spare memory slots goes a long way to making a long-lived and very flexible system.
3) Nothing you don't want, such as useless bundled software or crappy speakers.
The only disadvantages to building a computer are that it requires more experience to make proper choices and more time for research. Also, you have to buy from a reputable vendor that won't be going bankrupt anytime soon.
Unless the OEM is willing to let you dictate the specs of the system, building the computer yourself is the best way to go. If the OEM makes all of the decisions, the quality of the computer is really luck-of-the-draw. I have seen really nice OEM computers behave badly due to odd hardware choices and preconfigured software.
Amazon.com may be the exception rather than the rule. Their customer service department is so accomodating that I was suprised and even felt awkward as they worked to resolve a shipping problem a while back. Their support was mainly through e-mail, but it was prompt, in English, and competent. After dealing with other companies' support morons, Amazon.com was rather refreshing.
The word "innovate" no longer has meaning. It makes me cringe, now, when I hear it. M$ has turned the word into a brainwashing marketing buzzword that turns on the utopia center of the brain in all of the M$ dopeheads in the world. Everyone wants so badly for this word to mean something that many of them actually believe it. M$ are marketing geniuses.
I'm not an astronomer, but my guess is that these galaxies are orbiting each other and are moving away from everything else as a pair (bumping into each other along the way). Or, not everything is moving perfectly radially from the center of the universe, and the galaxies just cross paths.
What's with these "*BSD is dead" posts? *BSD systems will never die off as long as there are people who appreciate their attributes. Raw market share numbers are not relevant, as Linux and the *BSD systems have different development goals and philosophies that fundamentally affect their raw popularity. Also, I never really got the impression that the free OSs are competing hard for market share, anyway. They are available (for free) to whomever wishes to use them.
Posts claiming "*BSD is dead" are nothing more than FUD of the sort produced by M$. The post above reads like a TV infomercial--written to influence the most stupid among us.
Slashdot Mirror
KDE and GNOME have a genuine competitive spirit between them. However, the free .NET replacements are not competing against eachother; the are competing against MS. In this, they somewhat dilute the Open Source side's efforts in the matter.
If the different Open Source efforts cooperate to reduce risk of failure rather than dilute themselves to increase the risk of failure, everything will be fine. Cooperation doesn't necessarily mean consolodation but reinforcement. They need to reinforce eachother.
That's why money spent on good monitors is money well spent.
Existing not-out-of-the-ordinary technology was used to break the CD "noise." It is sad that the CD companies thought they had it licked, when, again, their efforts were trounced by basic human ingenuity. It is really terrible that calling the bluff of the CD makers puts one into "a legal gray area." It should be unambiguous (it is law, after all).
I wonder if the media companies are doing this on purpose to create a pool of defendants they can publicly crush. Seriously, predictable noise on CDs and two thousand year old ciphers (PDF encryption) can't be the product of real engineering prowess on the part of the companies. Is this some sort of sick game the media companies are playing?
I do know that Solaris on SPARC is pretty robust, and I can jerk it around without it complaining. A Solaris/SPARC system is also very resilient when hardware fails (if the system is set up for it). The reason for this is that Solaris, SPARC processors, and the rest of the computer are in a sort of symbiosis--they are designed to work together very well (and they do). That's why I prefer my 9-year-old SPARCStation over my more modern PC; it is just a better architecture to work with.
I also know that this is generally not the case for Pentium-based systems. Many Pentium-based servers look and behave as if they were engineered by monkeys--especially when they are forced to suffer under Windows. Will this improve with the Itanium?
Even worse than these viruses are advertising spy programs that setup shop as a background process on PCs. These scare me more because they are installed discretely with otherwise well-known software and track your activities. No networked computer is safe. No matter how much you try to secure it, it still is not safe. There are people, if only the network admins, who can easily know everything you do without you knowing that they know.
Important trade secrets should be stored on totally isolated networks that have no route to the Internet. The computers should be stored behind securely locked doors. The set of people who know of this inner network should be controlled at all times. This is the only way to truly secure a computer. Anything less is foolish.
There are a lot of computer-related books that are timeless. This may suprise the readers of those flashy something-unleashed or learn-something-in-15-minutes books.
Library rule of thumb: 90% (perhaps 99%) of the books at your local bookstore are garbage. Hesitate to buy any book that is 2 inches thick with a single (often vague) topic, such as "Internet Programming" (how does one program the Internet?). Don't get pulled in by the hype. Also avoid version-specific books, such as "Using Word 97" as they are good for a maximum of five years (if not fewer).
I second the above votes for Brooks' "The Mythical Man Month." It is 26 years old and still worthwhile to read. It is a computer book that is really about people--hence it is timeless.
Other high level books, such as Object Oriented Analysis books, are good, because they address how people go about designing software--hence they are timeless.
Philosophical books, such as Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" are good for a library, because they are a part of our computing history--hence they are also timeless.
Again, don't get pulled in by the hype. There are a precious subset of computer books that are cited time and time again in literature, have withstood years of criticism and have formed loyal bases of readers. These are the books that should go into a library.
Sun Microsystems produces MAJC, which supports multiprocessing in a single package. I think the architecture can support lots (perhaps 128 or 512) processors in a single package. I'm not sure if they are truly single-die or several dies assembled together. I really don't think Windows runs on this. Nor Solaris for that matter. It appears MAJC is pretty application-specific. But it shows what sort of technology is out there.
Has anyone profiled the efficiency of these cache-inhibited chips against their "real" bretheren? I learned in computer pre-school (university) that the processor's efficiency increases dramatically as cache is added (256KB=fair; 512KB=good; 1MB=quite good; 4MB=very very good) even for low MHz processors. Just how much of the "value" processor's time is completely wasted due to pipeline flushes, etc.? Are "value" customers taken to be ignorant drool-buckets, or are they really getting better price/performance?
Isn't XML a bit too verbose? At least X worked ten years ago and it still works now. Its network transparency has always been quite nice, too. The XML method would be fine as long as it is concise and network transparent. Concise is the key word here, because even X can saturate a network (even a modern one).
Correct. Given that the average licensed automobile driver is barely competent at driving, imagine putting these people into airplanes. This is why it is fairly difficult to get a licence to pilot aircraft. Flying is a fundamentally more difficult problem versus driving (it's like you enter a whole new dimension!).
Also, imagine the number of people who, out of arrogance or stupidity, would fly in conditions they are simply not fit to fly in. Think of that Kennedy kid who flew into the ocean.
Unless the whole process is automated (taking the human out of the flying process), these nifty aircraft will simply become museum pieces.
To be pure, a database should never rely on the social security number as a primary key. It is NOT unique. It has been corrupted by criminals (some people have several SSNs, I've heard). It also limits you to the United States. Database designers who put the SSN in a primary key role are acting naievely.
The SSN may be included as an attribute of United States citizens, but it shouldn't have a role greater than that.
If scientists want to distribute their own papers without journal publishers getting in the way, let napster set them up with a free paper-sharing service.
LaTeX should be the platform-independent format, of course. Oh wait, no one knows what LaTeX is, anymore, because that bloated unreadable corruptable .doc format has taken over! Well, then, perhaps SGML or XML/XSL/DSSSL/XYZUGHL?
Another aspect of anime that deserves attention is that the style of caricature exemplifies important aspects of human culture. There's a fair amount of psychology behind those large eyes. Anime characters are an exaggerated demonstration of what many people find attractive about other people.
Each of us is addressing a slightly different issue. Encryption and intrusion countermeasures are necessary, because so many computers are connected to the anything-goes public Internet. I prefer to use encryption for the same reason I seal the envelopes I send in the mail. I prefer to stay behind a firewall and limit the services offered on my workstation for the same reason I lock the doors and draw the blinds in my house.
However, the piss-ant viruses that proliferate on the most popular OS in the world are just wasting our time and effort. They aren't elegant or smart; they are just a pain in the ass. This isn't just about sloppy programming in the mail daemon or the web server, it is about a cronic illness that is entrenched in the whole platform. These things just shouldn't be! Anti-virus software attempts to band-aid these cronic inadequacies. It shouldn't exist because the underlying problems in the platform should have been addressed long ago.
If developers prosper by not cutting corners, then how did this OS become so popular? Was it sheer technical prowess or was it the naivete of and the subsequent choke collars wrapped around our planet's business people?
The good operating systems of the world are implemented well enough that I don't have to worry about these piss-ant viruses. I am left with the luxury of only worrying about real people--real criminals--who want to attack my computers. This is where encryption and intrusion countermeasures come back into the picture. This arena is where the innovation should be occurring--and it is for those people who have made better choices about their OS.
It's not just him. Think of the many millions of people spending this time over the same problem. Think of the many millions of administrators wasting their time with anti-virus software that shouldn't even exist. Think of the many millions of people who can't work because the many millions of administrators are still trying to fix their computers.
There are huge industries, such as anti-virus software companies, that exist only to prop up a flawed OS and its applications. When I see how much of our world's resources are wasted over these unnecessary and preventable problems, I wonder where we would be if there resources were put to real use.
A: Because Linux does not run...
This argument is losing validity every day. Within a few years, all of the applications that tie us to Windows will be mature and useful under Linux. I long for the day that my household can be truly free of M$. That day will come; it is just a matter of time.
Also, CDE still has a place. On my old SPARCStation, CDE runs well, but GNOME is just too much. With GNOME, I can watch the window frame come up, then watch the text getting drawn, then watch the button outlines get drawn, then watch the button text get drawn, then I can finally click on a button, then another window appears, and the whole thing repeats.
As long as Sun continues OS support for its old 32-bit workstations and even the older 64-bit workstations, they will need to ship an alternative to GNOME.
I disagree. Even though building a computer may not be cheaper, it still guarantees that the computer will fit your needs better. If I build my own computer I get:
1) All manuals. Many OEMS ship only brain-dead manuals with no useful specs.
2) Guaranteed upgrade paths. Getting a top-notch motherboard and planning for spare memory slots goes a long way to making a long-lived and very flexible system.
3) Nothing you don't want, such as useless bundled software or crappy speakers.
The only disadvantages to building a computer are that it requires more experience to make proper choices and more time for research. Also, you have to buy from a reputable vendor that won't be going bankrupt anytime soon.
Unless the OEM is willing to let you dictate the specs of the system, building the computer yourself is the best way to go. If the OEM makes all of the decisions, the quality of the computer is really luck-of-the-draw. I have seen really nice OEM computers behave badly due to odd hardware choices and preconfigured software.
Amazon.com may be the exception rather than the rule. Their customer service department is so accomodating that I was suprised and even felt awkward as they worked to resolve a shipping problem a while back. Their support was mainly through e-mail, but it was prompt, in English, and competent. After dealing with other companies' support morons, Amazon.com was rather refreshing.
The word "innovate" no longer has meaning. It makes me cringe, now, when I hear it. M$ has turned the word into a brainwashing marketing buzzword that turns on the utopia center of the brain in all of the M$ dopeheads in the world. Everyone wants so badly for this word to mean something that many of them actually believe it. M$ are marketing geniuses.
Anyone know where the Internet came from? Certainly, it couldn't have been a big bloated US military project...
Can space travel be made as safe as air travel, while allowing $10,000 fares to the moon?
I'm not an astronomer, but my guess is that these galaxies are orbiting each other and are moving away from everything else as a pair (bumping into each other along the way). Or, not everything is moving perfectly radially from the center of the universe, and the galaxies just cross paths.
Sun will be a red giant in about 15 billion years, and its size will increase dramaticaly beyond the Mercury orbit
Does this mean I should buy a lot of SUNW stock?
What's with these "*BSD is dead" posts? *BSD systems will never die off as long as there are people who appreciate their attributes. Raw market share numbers are not relevant, as Linux and the *BSD systems have different development goals and philosophies that fundamentally affect their raw popularity. Also, I never really got the impression that the free OSs are competing hard for market share, anyway. They are available (for free) to whomever wishes to use them. Posts claiming "*BSD is dead" are nothing more than FUD of the sort produced by M$. The post above reads like a TV infomercial--written to influence the most stupid among us.