Actually, smaller fonts become a lot *less* legible than their corresponding non-aliased fonts. They get unrecognizably fuzzy. Subpixel rendering is the next advanced technique for font clarity at all resolutions.
This seems slightly embarrassing. *nix should be best not only on normal hardware, but on high performance hardware under extreme load. It really surprises me that a closed product like NT/IIS can really perform so much better. My guess is that if anyone *else* actually had a crack at it they would do much better...it just so happens that MS was the one with R+D $$.
I've heard that Linux performance penalties were due to a single-threaded IP stack (???), and also large-grained locks in the kernal. Most PHBs won't realize that while Mincraft's or C't's benchmarks represent a snapshot of Linux/NT performance at some point in time, it is only a matter of time before *nix outdoes NT simply because it is accelerating much faster. What is 50% slower today will be 25% faster a few days from now. This is not the case with NT. *nix is the ship to board. NT doesn't look like it's going anywhere. Besides, even if NT DOES perform X times better, with a FREE OS and web server one can AFFORD to buy X *nix boxes (with those 1000s of $$ saved).
I hope this didn't come off sounding critical (which I am not by a long shot). I think in no time the Linux kernel will be outperforming NT on tests like these...just a matter of time (somebody should also be including *BSD in these tests, really...I've heard it can handle load better). Anyway, this is just AISOMLB (As I Sit On My Lazy Butt) commentary.
How come, less than a decade ago, users were still expected to use an archaic command-line interface called "DOS"? Were they so much more brilliant back then? Did they just get increasingly dumber over the years (perhaps MS had something to do with this?). How come the average user was expected to read a DOS manual and figure out how to setup up initialization file and device drivers?
I really don't buy "Linux is too hard ". The only difference between Linux and DOS is that Linux is "billions and billions" of times better, stabler, more secure, etc. If people could do it THEN they can do it NOW if they HAVE to. The thing is they don't HAVE too. GUIs are coming out that are even more intuitive than Windows...and they DON'T randomly break. Yes, Linux is a bit behind in GUI, but it is catching up really fast.
I also don't buy "There's no support for Linux ". If you could grab a brother/father/friend/manual in the 80's with DOS, you can grab one of the millions of people around the world who either are currently *working on* Linux, or who run it and are knowledgable about it. How about RTF HOWTOs? Nothing in any brain-dead iconic imagery-laden aneroxic MS manual has *ever* given as much help as a FAQ or HOWTO, from *actual* people who *actually* use the methods to solve the problems. *Experienced* professional programmers and systems administrators have trouble diagnosing Windows problems...are they really all that stupid? Or is it the OS? You really can't criticize Linux for something Windows doesn't even have.
Users are not going to have trouble with Linux because it is "hard". They won't have trouble because users are brain-dead lemmings. They will have trouble because it is something they're not *familiar* with. They are not familiar with it because it is foreign, because they have been constantly adapting to MS paradigms and propaganda.
"Beware the FUDmonster my son the jaws that bite the claws that catch"
says he:
"Let's hope there's something coming soon that's better than both Linux and W2K. What would that be? Java or what? Let's be looking."
Well I guess he wasn't at JavaOne last week, along with 20,000+ developers, now outnumbering C++ programmers. Java is *already* here. I guess he doesn't realize that Java is in his cell phone, his palmtop, in his set top, in his smart cards, in his toys, and, in the future, in his car, and the systems of airplanes he flies in and other systems and vehicles. Perhaps he doesn't know that Java is being used for superscalar multi-processor super-computer number-crunching. Java is in almost every enterprise. It is a phenomenally successful (and threatening to MS, et al) platform. Java is enabling the network-centric computing paradigm. Yeah, right, "Java or what?". How clueless is this person?
Wasn't it just in the news that Dolly is aging faster than normal because her DNA chains are shorter (please, will a Bio geek help me here...), and therefore her cells cannot reproduce for as long as a "normally" concieved organism?
I am by far NOT one of those people who have the knee-jerk "genetic-engineering-is-evil" reaction...but what happens [legally, ethically, etc.] when we're able to create people who have naturally shortened lifespans? Is that "fair"?
> (Of course, I've been fighting for YEARS to get > them to use the actual definition of the word > "escrow" (which requires a *trusted*, *third* > *party*, thus ruling out J. Edgar Freeh > entirely) without success...
Also ruling out the Federal Government, which has been keeping the tons of money it OWES to Native Americans under its treaties, in "escrow" for them (since "savages" can't really understand currency, right?). trusted third party my ass...
Targeted assassination. Read the Holloween papers. Take out major components of the open-source movement. Attack the process by making them proprietary. PERL and Wall are a threat.
| Ok, no self-respecting script kiddies - let | alone skilled system crackers - would call | themselves something as lame as "Masters of | Downloading".
Yes, MoD does exist. Yes, it is lame.
On another note, in the post below this, someone appears to be arguing for the disbandment of the term "cracker" as differentiated from "hacker". I think a distinction does really need to be made verbally. Whether it be "good hacker" and "evil hacker" or whatever. Really, one should read ESR's Hacker Ethic. It's really not fair for hackers to be grouped with people so diametrically opposed. And especially not with the likes of MoD.
I was just reading a few posts about readers being able to rate posts. How about take it one step further and have all moderation done by readers? I would leave some real moderators to sift out duplicates, but non-duplicates could stand on their own merit, or fall for their lack thereof. There already appears to be a way to make a "good" posts stand out -- expanding them inline and giving them headers. What if all messages started at some base state, their status derived from their deviation from the average quality of posts. The posts that readers like would score more points and automatically be raised up from the mean and made more presentable. Posts which fell from the mean might go into some thread-folding/overflow mode in which they were less visible (or invisible if they were really bad, according to user preference). Then the problem becomes, what to do with the original posts the the article, who all will be at a base state until people start reading them. The average state would then have to have some modicum of visibility. OR, one could just give the first posts highest state/visibility until some number of them occumulated, at which point they would revert to average visibility. Usually, it's the early posts which get replied to. You'd want this as visible as possible.
Using this sort of auto-moderation, moderators could just sift out duplicates, or really heinous posts. Of course, I do not know if the Slashdot engine can really handle maintaining ALL posts until they sink to a "auto-delete-me" level.
I would suggest
Quality of post: -5..5
and *perhaps* an
Extent to which I agree: -2..2
The second option would be there for people who don't realize that a post can be high quality yet they can still disagree. The quality of the post is more important than the extent to which people agree...in fact, the posts which more people disagree with generate the most discussion.
Yes, but perhaps there is intelligent life elsewher in the universe? If the Slashdot team finds it, perhaps it will write articles for us?
Re:Moderation suggestions
on
Slashdot Notes
·
· Score: 1
> I think rating a moderation by "I Agree / I > Disagree" is a good idea. The more "I Agree" > votes a particular moderation gets, the more > points that moderator should get.
I don't think moderators should get point on whether people agree or not. A very good post could address an issue on which there is much conflict. People not agreeing with the post doesn't make it a bad post. It could very well be informational and thought-provoking without people necessarily agreeing to it. Take, for instance, the stance of Michael Leventhal on XML.com (that XSL is "dangerous"). It's not necessarily a popular opinion, but it is thought-provoking and the articles are worthwhile. It would be bad to reward posters for simply fostering a "Me Too" attitude in their posts.
Off topic sorta...Slashdot account
on
Slashdot Notes
·
· Score: 1
My Slashdot account is all munged up somehow... I think the problem is that the UserLogin box the the right (which shows up when you're not logged in) sends me to slashdot.org/index.pl, while going to Preferences, logging out (apparently I am partially logged in?? I get some warning), and logging back in again sends me to slashdot.org/. I can't seem to remain logged in even though I am accept all cookies, etc. I am not behind a firewall or using a proxy or anything...
anybody experience this?? It's just annoying as I have to manually log in each and every time I come here...
It seems to me when one talks about bandwidth brokering as a commodity, one expects behavoir displayed in the commodities market. E.g., the price of bread I buy at the store may fluctuate...if country Foo had a whole bunch of wheat it needed to sell cheap, then BreadCo. could snap that up and subsequently prices would drop. I don't see that as a consumer. It's transparent.
Now, bandwidth brokering as being able to buy bandwidth yourself via a broker might be a bit different. As some people said, that might not be feasible right now. I know a lot of effort is being made to somehow merge ATM and TCP/IP networks. If that is done, then perhaps the "quality" guaranteed by an ATM network could be added to the internet. For instance, if you wanted a T1 connection from computer Foo on the west coast to computer Bar on the east coast, an ATM switch path could be set up, from only Foo to only Bar, with little or no interference between. As it is, the internet does not guarantee and "path", per se. Your packets could go around the world before landing where they're supposed to.
SETI client doesn't multithread?? I am running it (v1.0) on Win NT with 2 PIIs and both CPUs are pegged to the max. Something must be going on for it to use both processors. It must be multithreading.
If it is in application mode and is not minimized, yes it will eat cycles like it were a normal application. If you then minimize the application to the systray, it behaves better, only taking idle cycles. I have it set to "always running", and have it minimized to the systray (as normal priority), and it doesn't interfere with my work. Once it's restored, though, it goes back on the cycle rampage.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, smaller fonts become a lot *less* legible than their corresponding non-aliased fonts. They get unrecognizably fuzzy. Subpixel rendering is the next advanced technique for font clarity at all resolutions.
Check it out:
www.woz.org
(yes, Steve Wozniak)
This seems slightly embarrassing. *nix should be best not only on normal hardware, but on high performance hardware under extreme load. It really surprises me that a closed product like NT/IIS can really perform so much better. My guess is that if anyone *else* actually had a crack at it they would do much better...it just so happens that MS was the one with R+D $$.
I've heard that Linux performance penalties were due to a single-threaded IP stack (???), and also large-grained locks in the kernal. Most PHBs won't realize that while Mincraft's or C't's benchmarks represent a snapshot of Linux/NT performance at some point in time, it is only a matter of time before *nix outdoes NT simply because it is accelerating much faster. What is 50% slower today will be 25% faster a few days from now. This is not the case with NT. *nix is the ship to board. NT doesn't look like it's going anywhere. Besides, even if NT DOES perform X times better, with a FREE OS and web server one can AFFORD to buy X *nix boxes (with those 1000s of $$ saved).
I hope this didn't come off sounding critical (which I am not by a long shot). I think in no time the Linux kernel will be outperforming NT on tests like these...just a matter of time (somebody should also be including *BSD in these tests, really...I've heard it can handle load better). Anyway, this is just AISOMLB (As I Sit On My Lazy Butt) commentary.
How come, less than a decade ago, users were still expected to use an archaic command-line interface called "DOS"? Were they so much more brilliant back then? Did they just get increasingly dumber over the years (perhaps MS had something to do with this?). How come the average user was expected to read a DOS manual and figure out how to setup up initialization file and device drivers?
I really don't buy "Linux is too hard ". The only difference between Linux and DOS is that Linux is "billions and billions" of times better, stabler, more secure, etc. If people could do it THEN they can do it NOW if they HAVE to. The thing is they don't HAVE too. GUIs are coming out that are even more intuitive than Windows...and they DON'T randomly break. Yes, Linux is a bit behind in GUI, but it is catching up really fast.
I also don't buy "There's no support for Linux ". If you could grab a brother/father/friend/manual in the 80's with DOS, you can grab one of the millions of people around the world who either are currently *working on* Linux, or who run it and are knowledgable about it. How about RTF HOWTOs? Nothing in any brain-dead iconic imagery-laden aneroxic MS manual has *ever* given as much help as a FAQ or HOWTO, from *actual* people who *actually* use the methods to solve the problems. *Experienced* professional programmers and systems administrators have trouble diagnosing Windows problems...are they really all that stupid? Or is it the OS? You really can't criticize Linux for something Windows doesn't even have.
Users are not going to have trouble with Linux because it is "hard". They won't have trouble because users are brain-dead lemmings. They will have trouble because it is something they're not *familiar* with. They are not familiar with it because it is foreign, because they have been constantly adapting to MS paradigms and propaganda.
You have to get off the methadone some day.
"Beware the FUDmonster my son
the jaws that bite the claws that catch"
says he:
"Let's hope there's something coming soon that's better than both Linux and W2K. What would that be? Java or what? Let's be looking."
Well I guess he wasn't at JavaOne last week, along with 20,000+ developers, now outnumbering C++ programmers. Java is *already* here. I guess he doesn't realize that Java is in his cell phone, his palmtop, in his set top, in his smart cards, in his toys, and, in the future, in his car, and the systems of airplanes he flies in and other systems and vehicles. Perhaps he doesn't know that Java is being used for superscalar multi-processor super-computer number-crunching. Java is in almost every enterprise. It is a phenomenally successful (and threatening to MS, et al) platform. Java is enabling the network-centric computing paradigm. Yeah, right, "Java or what?". How clueless is this person?
Wasn't it just in the news that Dolly is aging faster than normal because her DNA chains are shorter (please, will a Bio geek help me here...), and therefore her cells cannot reproduce for as long as a "normally" concieved organism?
I am by far NOT one of those people who have the knee-jerk "genetic-engineering-is-evil" reaction...but what happens [legally, ethically, etc.] when we're able to create people who have naturally shortened lifespans? Is that "fair"?
"Hacker" all the way.
Semper fi.
> (Of course, I've been fighting for YEARS to get
> them to use the actual definition of the word
> "escrow" (which requires a *trusted*, *third*
> *party*, thus ruling out J. Edgar Freeh
> entirely) without success...
Also ruling out the Federal Government, which has been keeping the tons of money it OWES to Native Americans under its treaties, in "escrow" for them (since "savages" can't really understand currency, right?). trusted third party my ass...
Targeted assassination.
Read the Holloween papers.
Take out major components of the open-source movement. Attack the process by making them proprietary.
PERL and Wall are a threat.
| Ok, no self-respecting script kiddies - let
| alone skilled system crackers - would call
| themselves something as lame as "Masters of
| Downloading".
Yes, MoD does exist. Yes, it is lame.
On another note, in the post below this, someone appears to be arguing for the disbandment of the term "cracker" as differentiated from "hacker". I think a distinction does really need to be made verbally. Whether it be "good hacker" and "evil hacker" or whatever. Really, one should read ESR's Hacker Ethic. It's really not fair for hackers to be grouped with people so diametrically opposed. And especially not with the likes of MoD.
I was just reading a few posts about readers being able to rate posts. How about take it one step further and have all moderation done by readers? I would leave some real moderators to sift out duplicates, but non-duplicates could stand on their own merit, or fall for their lack thereof. There already appears to be a way to make a "good" posts stand out -- expanding them inline and giving them headers. What if all messages started at some base state, their status derived from their deviation from the average quality of posts. The posts that readers like would score more points and automatically be raised up from the mean and made more presentable. Posts which fell from the mean might go into some thread-folding/overflow mode in which they were less visible (or invisible if they were really bad, according to user preference). Then the problem becomes, what to do with the original posts the the article, who all will be at a base state until people start reading them. The average state would then have to have some modicum of visibility. OR, one could just give the first posts highest state/visibility until some number of them occumulated, at which point they would revert to average visibility. Usually, it's the early posts which get replied to. You'd want this as visible as possible.
Using this sort of auto-moderation, moderators could just sift out duplicates, or really heinous posts. Of course, I do not know if the Slashdot engine can really handle maintaining ALL posts until they sink to a "auto-delete-me" level.
I would suggest
Quality of post: -5..5
and *perhaps* an
Extent to which I agree: -2..2
The second option would be there for people who don't realize that a post can be high quality yet they can still disagree. The quality of the post is more important than the extent to which people agree...in fact, the posts which more people disagree with generate the most discussion.
Yes, but perhaps there is intelligent life elsewher in the universe? If the Slashdot team finds it, perhaps it will write articles for us?
> I think rating a moderation by "I Agree / I
> Disagree" is a good idea. The more "I Agree"
> votes a particular moderation gets, the more
> points that moderator should get.
I don't think moderators should get point on whether people agree or not. A very good post could address an issue on which there is much conflict. People not agreeing with the post doesn't make it a bad post. It could very well be informational and thought-provoking without people necessarily agreeing to it. Take, for instance, the stance of Michael Leventhal on XML.com (that XSL is "dangerous"). It's not necessarily a popular opinion, but it is thought-provoking and the articles are worthwhile. It would be bad to reward posters for simply fostering a "Me Too" attitude in their posts.
My Slashdot account is all munged up somehow...
I think the problem is that the UserLogin box the the right (which shows up when you're not logged in) sends me to slashdot.org/index.pl, while going to Preferences, logging out (apparently I am partially logged in?? I get some warning), and logging back in again sends me to slashdot.org/. I can't seem to remain logged in even though I am accept all cookies, etc. I am not behind a firewall or using a proxy or anything...
anybody experience this??
It's just annoying as I have to manually log in each and every time I come here...
It seems to me when one talks about bandwidth brokering as a commodity, one expects behavoir displayed in the commodities market. E.g., the price of bread I buy at the store may fluctuate...if country Foo had a whole bunch of wheat it needed to sell cheap, then BreadCo. could snap that up and subsequently prices would drop. I don't see that as a consumer. It's transparent.
Now, bandwidth brokering as being able to buy bandwidth yourself via a broker might be a bit different. As some people said, that might not be feasible right now. I know a lot of effort is being made to somehow merge ATM and TCP/IP networks. If that is done, then perhaps the "quality" guaranteed by an ATM network could be added to the internet. For instance, if you wanted a T1 connection from computer Foo on the west coast to computer Bar on the east coast, an ATM switch path could be set up, from only Foo to only Bar, with little or no interference between. As it is, the internet does not guarantee and "path", per se. Your packets could go around the world before landing where they're supposed to.
Hey, maybe this is just an alien plot to get us to do their number crunching. Freeloading alien bastards...
I am running WinNT on 2 PIIs and can get a unit done in @10 hours. How come I'm not on the list.
SETI client doesn't multithread?? I am running it (v1.0) on Win NT with 2 PIIs and both CPUs are pegged to the max. Something must be going on for it to use both processors. It must be multithreading.
Drake was at Cornell and I missed it?! Damn!
If it is in application mode and is not minimized, yes it will eat cycles like it were a normal application. If you then minimize the application to the systray, it behaves better, only taking idle cycles. I have it set to "always running", and have it minimized to the systray (as normal priority), and it doesn't interfere with my work. Once it's restored, though, it goes back on the cycle rampage.