Well I know people who run Windows 98 or Me for days on without a single crash... one exception doesn't prove much. X is unstable compared to Windows NT/2000 (I've installed several PC with either ones, and as far as stability goes, X is the worst)
I see several flaws :
- it's slow (SLOW SLOW SLOW) when used locally. Windows beats X-Windows anytime as far as speed is concerned (granted, Windows drivers are probably better tuned than on X, but still)
- old : having been designed decades ago, when 2D/3D graphic accelerators where more science-fiction than reality, X-Windows can't benefit fully from the hardware. While there haven't been any substantial paradigm change in the way computers are built, which is why Unix is still good 30 years later, there have been tremendous changes in the graphic and GUI area in 30 years.
- unstable : the huge code-bloat is why it crashes so often
just have a look at the DirectX API : you can use it to program directly the graphic chip (but with a unified API model, not to the metal of course). You can ask it to bitblt this or that, scroll here, make several buffers, use T&L engines, etc... things that X won't do.
IMHO X is great for admins, but for the other Linux/UNIX users (which are 99% of them...) it totally sucks. Those users don't care about remote controlling some boxes, they wan't to play Starcraft or work in Photoshop or stuff like that. What's the point of paying 500 $ for the latest nVidia video card if 90% of it's silicon is never used by X ?
It's my belief that the 8.5 GB are PER SIDE. They are double layer DVDs, 4.7 GB per layer (the second optional layer is slightly smaller for some reason). So 8.5 GB discs refers to only one sided disc, two layers (it's cheaper and more convenient to make them this way than single layer double side). As for buring a double layer DVD into a double sides DVD-R, I'd really hate to have to stop in the middle of the movie to open the player and switch the sides (I mean, it's almost year 2001 !)
I seriously doubt this :
1) what's the point of having a DVD-R writer if you can't author your own videos and play them on a regular DVD player ? Surely, preventing all DVD-R from reading on a stand alone DVD player would kill a lot of the legit market for DVD-R. Many people want to edit their own DV videos and then burn them on a DVD-R to watch WITHOUT A COMPUTER.
2) if current DVD player don't like the unencrypted DVD-R, the new players will (see point 1).
3) if not point 2, then someone will offer firmware hacking (like all the dezoning and de-macrovisioning currently happening on the market)
The problem is NOT the media price (it will go down like CD-R once did). The problem is, most movies are done on two layers discs, which mean over 8.5 MB of datas... way too much for those tiny DVD-R.
Well considering Dell now sells laptops with "S-XGA+" screens (15" LCD but with the amazing resoluton of 1400x1050, or 15,4" with 1600x1200), your laptop screen was already outdated before those new IBM screens.
Now my laptop which is 2 years old IS outdated (yet works amazingly well with its 226 MB or RAM:)
Unless you expect huge traffic (like Yahoo!, eBay or such) don't bother managing and hosting your own servers, this is just begging for troubles. For a 10th of the cost you can get colocatted servers, who will share huge pipes (which helps to handle peak traffic), have 24/7 control by administrators whose only job is to take care of the servers, controlled and safe environement, etc...
Well the best solution seems to reduce DB dependance... this can be done by :
a) rethinking queries or DB architecture (reduce or eliminate lock, add more indexes, etc.)
b) make more caching
As for caching there's good solution I use with PHP/MySQL. It can save lots of work for the DB. Here's how it is done :
a) The page are generated as usual thru PHP (no big modification to apply)
b) The PHP is modified just at the beginning and the end to buffer the output of the script (use the ob_start(), ob_stop() and ob_* functions of PHP 4). Whenever the page is called the output is written to disk as well as sent to the user browser. The file is usually called "script_param1_param2.html" if the original script is "script.php3param1=xxx¶m2=xxx"
c) I use mod_rewrite (very usefull Apache module, a must have!) to, when a url of the form "script_param1_param2.html" is requested :
- check for the file with this name, and serve it if it exists
- serve the script.php3 with parsed arguments if not
this takes 3 lines of code to do... then just use the url form script_param1_param2.html everywhere on your site. This will always work because Apache won't issue a redirect to the browser, it will redirect itself to the script whenever needed and the browser will never see the difference
d) whenever content needs to be refreshed (new post, DB change, etc...) delete the.html file. This can be done by a cron job too.
This is called 'static from dynamic' and is used by many many big sites (like Yahoo!, although they probably don't use mod_rewrite)
In fact those instructions are lost when the CPU when there's a reset/restart (which is why it is reloaded by the BIOS at startup). At worst it could make a bad hangup... which there are easier ways to do.
"The Patriot" depicts Americans as nice, humane, honest, freedom loving, etc... people, while the UK soldiers are supposed to be ultra-evil, bent on terror and destruction, fachist peoples. In the movie, UK soldiers commit the worst more abominable crimes.
Of course this wasn't like that : there were an equal number of good and bad people on both sides, and the war was mildly violent for the time. There were innocents killed on both side, but civilians were not specifically targeted. Of course, "heroes" going to war to have a tax break from the Queen doesn't sound half as good, but reality is reality.
Another thing : in the movie, UK soldiers burn women and children in a church. Such a thing never happened during the civil war (it only happened once in France in 1944, when the SS took vengeance over a vilage and killed everybody this way).
We all know the American public doesn't learn history in books, so what will they think once they see the movie ? The average American is arrogant enough like this with his country, without the need of movies bending history to reinforce this feeling.
However, I do doubt that a language is tied to a single country would ever become a world language. That rules out Chinese and Hindi. For multi-national languages with large numbers of speakers, you've got English, Spanish, Arabic, Swahili, Russian, any others?
English and Spanish : sure - but French is about as big as Spanish (very spoken in Africa and in a few other countries all over the world).
Swahili : big African language - but no influance outside of Africa, 0 economic influence and almost 0 cultural influence... doubtfull it could get big !
Russian : declining economy, declining population (the Russian population shrinks by more than 1% every year), declining foreign influence : likely not a big internationnal language.
English is by far the easiest language to learn (Esperanto aside;). The only problem is US English, which look less and less like English... and is more and more a combination of a few basic verbs and a word like in/out/off/on/over/under. Memorizing all the different meaning of those combinations is a problem to foreigners.
This is pretty true - French is the "other" official language of the UN, and it's pretty hard to work for the EU too if you don't speak French (or German for that matter). Besides, there are many more French words going in the US English than Spanish words (heck, it gives speakers a European distinctive class to use French words, while using Spanish ones just gives you a "I just crossed Rio Grande yesterday" style that isn't so chic;)
In fact there's no such thing as NT4, since the huge number of service packs, patches and updates makes it a very variable platform. Oddly enough, I never got twice the same exact NT4 install !!
Re:Unix Clones are the ONLY OS's!
on
Is UNIX An OS?
·
· Score: 1
[noflame]
Duh... I'm using Windows 2000 7 days a week, and while I certainly hate Microsoft as much as the next Linux freak, I've to say it's pretty darn good. Never crashed on me since I installed it, and it feels quite snappy (especially since I use it on a not-so-new laptop).
On the other hand if I could get a penny for every time X crashed, I'd be rich...
[/noflame]
What about Linus ? Isn't he a mortal (or am I just an heretic ?)
Re:Religion vs Cult (for real)
on
Is UNIX An OS?
·
· Score: 1
A cult is something that a person is indoctrinated into, while a religion is something that a person honestly belives in.
I'd like to know how, when meeting someone who follows a religion/cult, you make the difference between "indoctrinated into" and "honestly believing in". Because to me, that's about the same thing, except the words you choosed for a cult sound evil (indoctrinated) while the one for a religion sounds nice (honestly...).
To quote someone I forgot the name of :
"A religion is a successful cult"
The UK economy isn't very much smaller than the German economy at all. Per capita GDP is about the same. Remember - Germany is a bigger country...
You are right about the GDP/capita being close, but wrong about the conclusion. Following your logic, Monaco has a bigger economy than US (it has a way bigger GDP/capita than the US)... per capita GDP is fine for evaluating the living standard of a country, but for the size of the economy it is useless. Germany really has a much bigger economy than UK, eventhought the average German has about the same living standard as the average British gentleman (except when both go to the hospital : you don't want to be in the UK when that happens, unless you like dying a painfull death on the waiting list).
- UK economy is much smaller than Germany. The German economy is the third in the world, right behind Japan and before France
- UK does not have a "very boyant economy" as you said - the UK economic boom was several years ago and is now slowing down (just look at Rover or any other UK car brand : they all got bought buy foreign car makers)
- there is no "money lost" in a weak currency. Your imports are more expensive, but your exports get cheaper and hence, better. Many country volontarily decide to weaken their currency to boost their economy. Plus, for the German govt., the imports have almost no influence on the spendings (which are mostly salaries)
- if there was any money to gain from this trial, it would be so ridiculous compared to the German governement budget that it would be totally useless.
- they are NOT suing two nations, they are suing individuals (not known yet) from those two nations. In fact you can't sue a country at your local court.
- they are not suing for money, they are suing to shut down Echelon (yeah - it's not a "get rich quick" scheme, what a novel idea for you)
Well I see two major roadblocks with that :
- what about MP3 software ? I can't see winamp or sonic or one of the other 435436 existing MP3 playing software to refuse to play an MP3 with a watermark.
- most hardware MP3 player have user upgradable firmware. Like DVD-ROM drives whose firmware get hacked and dezoned, those MP3 player firmware will get hacked in the same way. And it is usually very easy to modify a piece of someone else binary code when all you want is disable a function
Obviously I think cracking the SDMI watermark is not very important - a watermark is useless if nobody is reading it.
I'd agree that both Visual C++ and Visual Basic somewhat sucks - but so far the only powerfull PDAs on the market (iPaq, E125, etc...) all run Windows CE. Palm still use the same low-res tiny screen they used on the original Palm Pilot, years ago.
Don't have any problem with IE 5.5. Then of course, I'm using the latest browser from the Evil Empire (TM). Since old Netscape accounts for less than 15% of my logs, it wouldn't be such a problem to use these certs.
You can order it here :
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/embedded/ce/too ls/emvt30order.asp
all you have to do is pay for the 7.5$ shipping charges (which is not excessive considered you get the full working Embedded Visual C++ et Visual Basic plus the SDKs).
Slashdot Mirror
Well I know people who run Windows 98 or Me for days on without a single crash... one exception doesn't prove much. X is unstable compared to Windows NT/2000 (I've installed several PC with either ones, and as far as stability goes, X is the worst)
I see several flaws :
- it's slow (SLOW SLOW SLOW) when used locally. Windows beats X-Windows anytime as far as speed is concerned (granted, Windows drivers are probably better tuned than on X, but still)
- old : having been designed decades ago, when 2D/3D graphic accelerators where more science-fiction than reality, X-Windows can't benefit fully from the hardware. While there haven't been any substantial paradigm change in the way computers are built, which is why Unix is still good 30 years later, there have been tremendous changes in the graphic and GUI area in 30 years.
- unstable : the huge code-bloat is why it crashes so often
just have a look at the DirectX API : you can use it to program directly the graphic chip (but with a unified API model, not to the metal of course). You can ask it to bitblt this or that, scroll here, make several buffers, use T&L engines, etc... things that X won't do.
IMHO X is great for admins, but for the other Linux/UNIX users (which are 99% of them...) it totally sucks. Those users don't care about remote controlling some boxes, they wan't to play Starcraft or work in Photoshop or stuff like that. What's the point of paying 500 $ for the latest nVidia video card if 90% of it's silicon is never used by X ?
My mistake - 8.5 GB of course
It's my belief that the 8.5 GB are PER SIDE. They are double layer DVDs, 4.7 GB per layer (the second optional layer is slightly smaller for some reason). So 8.5 GB discs refers to only one sided disc, two layers (it's cheaper and more convenient to make them this way than single layer double side). As for buring a double layer DVD into a double sides DVD-R, I'd really hate to have to stop in the middle of the movie to open the player and switch the sides (I mean, it's almost year 2001 !)
I seriously doubt this :
1) what's the point of having a DVD-R writer if you can't author your own videos and play them on a regular DVD player ? Surely, preventing all DVD-R from reading on a stand alone DVD player would kill a lot of the legit market for DVD-R. Many people want to edit their own DV videos and then burn them on a DVD-R to watch WITHOUT A COMPUTER.
2) if current DVD player don't like the unencrypted DVD-R, the new players will (see point 1).
3) if not point 2, then someone will offer firmware hacking (like all the dezoning and de-macrovisioning currently happening on the market)
The problem is NOT the media price (it will go down like CD-R once did). The problem is, most movies are done on two layers discs, which mean over 8.5 MB of datas... way too much for those tiny DVD-R.
Ohh, then don't complain, I've the 7000 with 14" screen... :(
Well considering Dell now sells laptops with "S-XGA+" screens (15" LCD but with the amazing resoluton of 1400x1050, or 15,4" with 1600x1200), your laptop screen was already outdated before those new IBM screens.
:)
Now my laptop which is 2 years old IS outdated (yet works amazingly well with its 226 MB or RAM
Unless you expect huge traffic (like Yahoo!, eBay or such) don't bother managing and hosting your own servers, this is just begging for troubles. For a 10th of the cost you can get colocatted servers, who will share huge pipes (which helps to handle peak traffic), have 24/7 control by administrators whose only job is to take care of the servers, controlled and safe environement, etc...
Well the best solution seems to reduce DB dependance... this can be done by :
.html file. This can be done by a cron job too.
a) rethinking queries or DB architecture (reduce or eliminate lock, add more indexes, etc.)
b) make more caching
As for caching there's good solution I use with PHP/MySQL. It can save lots of work for the DB. Here's how it is done :
a) The page are generated as usual thru PHP (no big modification to apply)
b) The PHP is modified just at the beginning and the end to buffer the output of the script (use the ob_start(), ob_stop() and ob_* functions of PHP 4). Whenever the page is called the output is written to disk as well as sent to the user browser. The file is usually called "script_param1_param2.html" if the original script is "script.php3param1=xxx¶m2=xxx"
c) I use mod_rewrite (very usefull Apache module, a must have!) to, when a url of the form "script_param1_param2.html" is requested :
- check for the file with this name, and serve it if it exists
- serve the script.php3 with parsed arguments if not
this takes 3 lines of code to do... then just use the url form script_param1_param2.html everywhere on your site. This will always work because Apache won't issue a redirect to the browser, it will redirect itself to the script whenever needed and the browser will never see the difference
d) whenever content needs to be refreshed (new post, DB change, etc...) delete the
This is called 'static from dynamic' and is used by many many big sites (like Yahoo!, although they probably don't use mod_rewrite)
In fact those instructions are lost when the CPU when there's a reset/restart (which is why it is reloaded by the BIOS at startup). At worst it could make a bad hangup... which there are easier ways to do.
"The Patriot" depicts Americans as nice, humane, honest, freedom loving, etc... people, while the UK soldiers are supposed to be ultra-evil, bent on terror and destruction, fachist peoples. In the movie, UK soldiers commit the worst more abominable crimes.
Of course this wasn't like that : there were an equal number of good and bad people on both sides, and the war was mildly violent for the time. There were innocents killed on both side, but civilians were not specifically targeted. Of course, "heroes" going to war to have a tax break from the Queen doesn't sound half as good, but reality is reality.
Another thing : in the movie, UK soldiers burn women and children in a church. Such a thing never happened during the civil war (it only happened once in France in 1944, when the SS took vengeance over a vilage and killed everybody this way).
We all know the American public doesn't learn history in books, so what will they think once they see the movie ? The average American is arrogant enough like this with his country, without the need of movies bending history to reinforce this feeling.
However, I do doubt that a language is tied to a single country would ever become a world language. That rules out Chinese and Hindi. For multi-national languages with large numbers of speakers, you've got English, Spanish, Arabic, Swahili, Russian, any others?
English and Spanish : sure - but French is about as big as Spanish (very spoken in Africa and in a few other countries all over the world).
Swahili : big African language - but no influance outside of Africa, 0 economic influence and almost 0 cultural influence... doubtfull it could get big !
Russian : declining economy, declining population (the Russian population shrinks by more than 1% every year), declining foreign influence : likely not a big internationnal language.
English is by far the easiest language to learn (Esperanto aside ;). The only problem is US English, which look less and less like English... and is more and more a combination of a few basic verbs and a word like in/out/off/on/over/under. Memorizing all the different meaning of those combinations is a problem to foreigners.
This is pretty true - French is the "other" official language of the UN, and it's pretty hard to work for the EU too if you don't speak French (or German for that matter). Besides, there are many more French words going in the US English than Spanish words (heck, it gives speakers a European distinctive class to use French words, while using Spanish ones just gives you a "I just crossed Rio Grande yesterday" style that isn't so chic ;)
In fact there's no such thing as NT4, since the huge number of service packs, patches and updates makes it a very variable platform. Oddly enough, I never got twice the same exact NT4 install !!
[noflame]
Duh... I'm using Windows 2000 7 days a week, and while I certainly hate Microsoft as much as the next Linux freak, I've to say it's pretty darn good. Never crashed on me since I installed it, and it feels quite snappy (especially since I use it on a not-so-new laptop).
On the other hand if I could get a penny for every time X crashed, I'd be rich...
[/noflame]
What about Linus ? Isn't he a mortal (or am I just an heretic ?)
A cult is something that a person is indoctrinated into, while a religion is something that a person honestly belives in.
I'd like to know how, when meeting someone who follows a religion/cult, you make the difference between "indoctrinated into" and "honestly believing in". Because to me, that's about the same thing, except the words you choosed for a cult sound evil (indoctrinated) while the one for a religion sounds nice (honestly...).
To quote someone I forgot the name of :
"A religion is a successful cult"
The UK economy isn't very much smaller than the German economy at all. Per capita GDP is about the same. Remember - Germany is a bigger country...
You are right about the GDP/capita being close, but wrong about the conclusion. Following your logic, Monaco has a bigger economy than US (it has a way bigger GDP/capita than the US)... per capita GDP is fine for evaluating the living standard of a country, but for the size of the economy it is useless. Germany really has a much bigger economy than UK, eventhought the average German has about the same living standard as the average British gentleman (except when both go to the hospital : you don't want to be in the UK when that happens, unless you like dying a painfull death on the waiting list).
You are either a troll and/or a total idiot.
- UK economy is much smaller than Germany. The German economy is the third in the world, right behind Japan and before France
- UK does not have a "very boyant economy" as you said - the UK economic boom was several years ago and is now slowing down (just look at Rover or any other UK car brand : they all got bought buy foreign car makers)
- there is no "money lost" in a weak currency. Your imports are more expensive, but your exports get cheaper and hence, better. Many country volontarily decide to weaken their currency to boost their economy. Plus, for the German govt., the imports have almost no influence on the spendings (which are mostly salaries)
- if there was any money to gain from this trial, it would be so ridiculous compared to the German governement budget that it would be totally useless.
- they are NOT suing two nations, they are suing individuals (not known yet) from those two nations. In fact you can't sue a country at your local court.
- they are not suing for money, they are suing to shut down Echelon (yeah - it's not a "get rich quick" scheme, what a novel idea for you)
NO ! Suing is NOT about money - suing is about justice. People who sue for money are just greedy bastards who believe a trial is a lottery game.
Well I see two major roadblocks with that :
- what about MP3 software ? I can't see winamp or sonic or one of the other 435436 existing MP3 playing software to refuse to play an MP3 with a watermark.
- most hardware MP3 player have user upgradable firmware. Like DVD-ROM drives whose firmware get hacked and dezoned, those MP3 player firmware will get hacked in the same way. And it is usually very easy to modify a piece of someone else binary code when all you want is disable a function
Obviously I think cracking the SDMI watermark is not very important - a watermark is useless if nobody is reading it.
I'd agree that both Visual C++ and Visual Basic somewhat sucks - but so far the only powerfull PDAs on the market (iPaq, E125, etc...) all run Windows CE. Palm still use the same low-res tiny screen they used on the original Palm Pilot, years ago.
Don't have any problem with IE 5.5. Then of course, I'm using the latest browser from the Evil Empire (TM). Since old Netscape accounts for less than 15% of my logs, it wouldn't be such a problem to use these certs.
You can order it here :o ls/emvt30order.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/embedded/ce/to
all you have to do is pay for the 7.5$ shipping charges (which is not excessive considered you get the full working Embedded Visual C++ et Visual Basic plus the SDKs).