I'm not really Sure what the big deal is... anytime you connect through an ISP they can watch what you do. As far as I'm concerned I trust Google quite a bit more than the un-encrypted coffee slop down the street... but hey... to each his own.
Intersting that you ask since in Gentoo KDE has (recently) been split into a _bunch_ of smaller packages for just this reason.... so when something like Kopete puts out a small security update only that app gets updated when you do an "emerge -u world"... instead of updating all of KDE.
But yes... when a security release of firefox happens you have to recompile the entire thing. But of course if you are smart (and have the room) and use ccache you have already cached all of the compiled object files for the program (except the changed ones of course) so compilation happens extremely quickly.
I used to use verisign but have recently switched to using Yahoo I dont know if yahoo farms out the actual registry Service or not... but I at least trust yahoo with my credit Card. Further their domain controls are nice... providing an easy way to configure multiple domains.
Only problem with Yahoo is that they don't yet allow you to move already registered sites over to them.... it looks like they are planning to implement this soon, but I don't know how long.
For that reason I still have one domain at network solutions... A little tip for everyone still with NS... if it comes time to reregister call them up and tell them that $35 is outrageous... and they will lower the price to $13 a year....;-)
For me, I use MySQL mainly for website backends (as do LOTS of other people). In that context the 2 things you cited make more sense...
Truncating varchars is handy for webforms... you don't want to reject the data... but usually the data isn't important enough (like a slashdot post) to really care if a couple words get chopped off by accident (in case you didn't set the character limit on your textbox to match the database).
And filling in NOT NULLS is also handy for the same reason.... if you REALLY need the logic to reject things like blank inputs in web forms then you should be doing that in your application logic anyway.... or if you really don't care all that much you probably just want to accept the submission quietly.
I am by no means sticking up for non-conformity... just trying to relay the idea that in the context that mysql is usually used, these small quirks don't have a large impact.
If I was going to do a "real" database for storing transactional records for a large company... I would probably use a more full-featured database (like Postgres).... but since that's not my use case MySQL fits the bill well.
In case you didn't notice this was a presentation from an Apache developer... so no reason to talk about forks.
I actually think it's really good to see that developers are able to see some of the problems we deal with all the time. It gives me hope that things might actually get better.:-)
You state: "If open source wants to survive we need more focus on a narrower range of products"
Again I ask.. Survive what? Hobbies don't die. You can't kill my ability to collaborate with people across the web and create a good environment for myself.
No amount of people claiming "OSS Sucks" can do anything... it's like telling a coin collector that "Coins are dumb!".... if the person enjoys what they are doing they will continue regardless of outside criticism.
I do see your point but I think that it is just from a different point of view.
What I was trying to get at is that a lot of open source developers don't have end users in mind at all when they create the software they do. I certainly don't have any goals of winning anyone over to OSS. I use it because it fits my needs and I don't mind all the diversity.
For people that "Just want stuff to work" there are other options out there (Windows, Mac). For people who like to hack around and find new things and collaborate/cooperate to build better environments _for themselves_ we have OSS.
What I'm trying to say is don't corrupt my open and collaborative environment just because it doesn't suit your needs. If people don't like the diversity then they can look elsewhere.
OSS has ALWAYS had diversity and it ALWAYS will. I personally see this as a strength (OSS becomes a melting pot of ideas, where everyone learns from eachother). Again, the goal is not to conquer the world, but instead to make ourselves happy.
When you say "having thousands of distros,f ew of which work well, is a bad bad thing"... who is it a "bad bad thing" for? The people making the distros are (for the most part) doing it because it is interesting _for them_. If people use it then that is great... if they don't then that person still had the experience of creating something... something which appeals to all scientific and engineering types.
This type of argument reminds me of when people criticise other people for having odd hobbies. "What an idiot! I can't believe he spent 2 months designing and building that case mod!" In general humans are very diverse and have lots of different interests. Some like to collect beanie babies, some like to code up pet projects on the weekend (regardless of whether or not something already exists that does the same job).
In essence I'm saying that for most OSS developers it is a hobby. As such let us do what we like. If you don't like the way it turns out then use the other alternatives.... no skin off our back.
"And for every OSS trophy project you'll find a thousand half-assed weekend hacks that never make it past Alpha stage because, to the developer, posting it on sourceforge or whatever is more important that making a program usable to more than just himself."
As a _very_ part time open source developer I think this is fine.
I personally have published a couple of my own weekend hacks in Alpha stage... never to touch them again. I still recieved a lot of feedback... most of which was "Thanks!". Why? Because it gave people something to start from, or an example to use for a different implementation. I'm sure no one used anything in a "production" environment but that was never the purpose.
Publishing an open-source project is _never_ a bad idea. The more code and collaboration out there the stronger the community is. I never wanted to be the best at making program X... I just wanted to be helpful.
I think people have a hard time understanding that you don't always have to "win" at everything. Sometimes just being nice, or helpful can be its own reward (both to you and the community).
"Why should a company not use it's marketshare to leverage it's products?"
Your basic premise is fine... that in general companies should be able to use their marketshare as a selling point. The problem is that in Market economies Monopolies develop (either "naturally" because they are the best, or through illegal practices).
In our economy once a company or product reaches the state of "Monopoly" there are certain rules that they must play by in order to allow natural market forces to continue (rules as in laws). One of those is that you can't use a Monopoly in one sector to force your way into another sector.
Microsoft has violated this time and time again... and to the detriment of consumers and consumer choice. A few recent examples:
1. Internet Explorer. Bundling IE with Windows was how MS pushed itself into the "internet sector" using their monopoly on operating systems.
"But IE is free! How is this bad for the consumer?!". Because MS then put proprietary extensions into IE that only it's web-server and authoring tools (Frontpage and Visual Studio) are equiped to serve/create (ActiveX and extensions to Java). So if you want to talk to IE the best way to do it is with Windows Server after creating it in Visual Studio/Frontpage... and since they used their monopoly to deploy IE... 90% of people are using it.....
2. Windows Media Player (Both the format and the player). This one is the next MS cash cow. They bundle WMP with Windows so everyone has it...
"But WMP is free! And it works well! How is that bad for consumers?!"
Becuase of what they are doing now. They are pushing WMP as the next format for EVERYTHING. Music, Movies, Streaming Media... Have you noticed that the new HD-DVD codec is WMP based? Do you think you'll be able to play those without a license from MS? All MS has to do is start making set top DVD players and they can force everyone else out of the market (by not licensing the codec to them).... wait they already are! (Think XBox 360).
What about streaming wmp?? What kind of server do you need to do that? Oh.. right.. Windows Server.
What about music? Oh you mean WMPs with DRM will only be playable in Windows? Hmmm.
#
For some reason people have a hard time understanding just how evil MS really is. And when I say "evil" I don't mean that trying to make money is evil. That's capitalism. What's evil is trying to make money at the detriment to consumer choice and product quality.
This is really a problem because destructive Monopolies are bad for the entire economy. They stagnate innovation and produce "economic blackholes" where all the money from the economy pours... but nothing comes out (how many billions does Microsoft have just sitting around in liquid assets?)
In Konquerer tabbing between the checkboxes works... but when you press space to check/uncheck them it tries to scroll down the page instead of checking the item....
That said... I'm sure it's a browser problem. This is some interesting work... and I just might put it to use.
Just to balance things out a bit I would like to mention that I enjoy my Comcast service. Sure it's a bit more expensive than I would like (somewhere around $60 a month including the modem rental), but the service itself has been great.
I get 5Mbits/sec down, and 256Kb up... and I can always hit these speeds (routinely download at around 500KBytes/sec and upload at 25KBytes/sec to my webserver). It is _never_ down (hasn't been in 5 months anyway) and always reliable.
I looked at going with DSL and satellite (I really do want satellite... but it's tough to do in an apartment)... but the DSL only had a downspeed of 1.5Mb/sec. Sure it was only $30 a month... but the way I see it, I'm paying double that for more than double the bandwidth (and my previous experience with DSL was poor).
Trust me when I say that I have _no_ love for the cable companies (ask my wife... she'll tell you about my rants)... but I just wanted to mention that some of us do get good _internet_ service through them.
"There's nothing more scary to him than the concept of having an accident and not having to pay a hospital bill"
I already have this... it's called insurance. Oh... I see... you mean that you want all of us that work for our paychecks so we can get insurance, to pay for the "insurance" for everyone who is too damn lazy. No thanks.
"and a trade union looking out for him"
If by "him" you mean the lazy bastard on your team that does jack shit while you work your ass off for the same pay "because unions are cool". No thanks... I'll look after myself by earning a good education and working hard.
Friedmud
Re:I don't suppose John Carmack is reading but...
on
GeForce 7800 GTX Review
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· Score: 2, Insightful
id does get new graphics cards _far_ in advance of their release... something like 6 months to a year in advance. Nvidia and ATI both keep in very close contact with John all the way through the development process. John has even talked about how he has helped them track down driver bugs for unreleased hardware before.
If you can, try to go to QuakeCon sometime. John's keynote is always enlightening (except that last year he gave it via a prerecorded DVD... which was kind of boring.... but I guess the birth of his child was a little more important;-)
I agree with some of what you are saying... but you did miss some key points.
For my wife and I to go to the movies it is closer to $30 a movie. $10 each for tickets and around $10 for food/drinks. Using your same reasoning it now only takes around 30 movies to make up the $1000 home entertainment system - which is completely doable.
I was in the same place as you 2 years ago so I know where you're coming from. I finally bit the bullet and picked up a decent home theater system and have never looked back. I got a nice 27" TV and a pretty good (for my apartment) "surround sound in a box" system all for around $1000. It's not the nicest system in the world but it definitely gets the job done. We now rent atleast 2 movies a week... it has more than paid for itself.
I still go to the theater though... infact I have plans to see Batman Begins tonight with a bunch of friends... and it will be $10 each... but sometimes it's worth it;-)
"However, you based your arguments on single core benchmarks."
Indeed I did... and you are right to point this out.
The reason I did was mostly based on how much easier it is to compare... things get all whacked out when trying to do multitasking benchmarks (although I do agree that Anand did a really great job).
There are a lot of factors to take into account when looking at multitasking benchmarks... WHAT YOU DO and HOW YOU DO IT makes a HUGE difference... therefor it is harder to make a point on slashdot (someone will always say "well they ran 15 tasks! I only run 12!").
On the other hand we all game... and as far as this (and most likely the near future) generation of games go they are single threaded and will (for the most part) behave as they do on today's single core processors (except of course you can do other things and game... but this gets into a grey area again).
So, in short (which is not at all in my character), it was quick for me to demonstrate that the AMDX2 cpus are in no way DOUBLE the price of the pentiumD's by demonstrating single threaded gaming benchmarks. Even if you look at the multi-threaded benchmarks the X2's aren't double the price... and that was the point I was trying to make. And I still claim that the 2.2Ghz A64X2 will trounce the 2.8GHz PD (and be close to the performance of a 3.4Ghz PD with benchmarks showing it falls a bit behind in some multi-tasking instances)... but everyone has a right to their opinion.
Friedmud
PS - one last thing. The one place where most of us need the horses under the hood is not in Mozilla (most computers over 1.5Ghz with 512MB of RAM run a web browser and MP3 player about the same... as in within a couple of seconds) but in games... if you look at the multi-tasking games benchmarks you will see that the A64X2 is WAY out in front... and again try to put a 2.8Ghz PD on the chart with your brain.
See how the 3200+ running at "just" 2Ghz is outperforming even a 3.4Ghz P4 and sometimes even a 3.5 or 3.6Ghz P4.
Also look at how a 2.8Ghz P4 isn't even on the charts... use your brain and extrapolate from the P4's what the 2.8Ghz P4 would be posting and you can see that it is WAY slower than even a 2Ghz Athlon64.
Now let's talk about what was in this article.
They told us that the lowest end Athlon64X2 is clocked at 2.2Ghz (the same as a 3500+ and faster than the 2Ghz chip in my above examples) and comes in at $537. The lowest end PentiumD is clocked at 2.8Ghz and comes in at $241.
At first glance it looks like the A64X2 is double the price... but then look at the highest end PentiumD at 3.2Ghz it's priced at $530.
Ok... use your brain again and realize that the 2Ghz A64 was outperforming a 3.4Ghz P4 and it's easy to see that the A64X2 at 2.2Ghz priced the SAME as a 3.2Ghz PD means that the A64 is actually the LOWER priced part.
The difference here is that AMD chose to focus on the high end. They didn't play "low-ball" with Intel because they don't have to. Their cheap single core chips will wipe the plate with the low-ball PD and will be cheaper as well... while their A64X2 is there AT THE SAME PRICE POINT to compete with the high end PD.
I'm not so sure about the "IE being faster than FF" statement.
I know that lots of tests show this to be true... but my own experiences differ. IE might load the entirety of a page faster (that is, finish loading every little bit of it), but FF seems to get me the most relevant content the fastest... and fill in the gaps later (for instance, loading the text of a news article first.. then filling in the ads). For me this means I get to browse faster and start reading pages sooner.
I guess it all depends on how you look at it. I'm just not sure you can make a statement like "hands down". They are different, and personally I think both are plenty fast.
I don't know what's happening... but I don't think it's trolls. I seem to be seeing a lot of the same comments repeated over in different stories... it is really weird, I would be interested in finding out what is broken.
It gets even more interesting when you consider that you probably "share" less than 1% to any individual peer.
Is "talking about" a "piece" of a book considered copyright infringement?
I was thinking a while ago that Azureus should be modified so that less than 5% of your outgoing traffic will go to the same peer. It would be tough to argue that you have given away "copies" of the song/program to anyone....
I'm typing this message on a laptop with a 7200 RPM hardrive.... quite simply, I won't ever go back to slow HDs in a laptop. As a developer the fast HD really helps (compile times are highly dependent on seek and read rates).
Also... this is a fairly thin laptop (but it does get pretty hot... mostly do to the QuadroFX videocard in it).
Actually, it does (running KDE 3.4)... and I keep one desktop (#2) specifically for my browser.
But, I also have all of my applications that are currently running in the taskbar... that way I can click one and skip right to the desktop it's on and have it be in focus.
Of course people have lots of different ways of working, but I do think that just about everyone can benefit from tabs. I enjoy using tabs in just about all of the programs I use on a daily basis (my code editor, IRC client, Terminal program, file browser). I usually have all of these programs open (and more) and each one has atleast 2 or 3 tabs each. If those were spammed into my taskbar it would be an utter mess. As it is, tabs keep things that are associated together and I keep a clean and efficient work environment.
Obviously, do whatever makes you more productive. I was just trying to give the "Lazy" guy some ideas about why a good portion of us think tabs are a good idea.
People that say the "taskbar is my tabs" make me laugh.
Seriously... try some tabbed browsing... even if you just buy an addon for IE... you should really try it.
Using the taskbar makes a mess when you are doing more than just browsing the web. All of your websites get mixed in with your regular programs. Tabbed browsing keeps everything nice a neat. You can also browse a lot faster (Run down slashdot middle clicking on the interesting links then just close off tabs as you read them... much better than click a link... read.... click back... click a link... read).
What are you comparing it to? I have worked on a lot of large object oriented code bases (my day job is maintaining a LARGE finite-element code written in C++) and working in KDE is atleast an order of magnitude better than any large piece of code I can think of.
There are very well laid out docs that describe the core pieces of the system and tie it all together with the Qt heritage. The inheritance trees is KDE are very good... with just the right amount of inherit and extend mixed in with a good amount of functionality (some codes go too far down the OO paradigm path while others don't go far enough).
If you're not comparing it to other object oriented code bases then you are probably comparing it to Gnome... which, quite frankly, would be hilarious. Gnome is a HUGE mess (architecturally) compared to KDE. To do anything you have to use a huge kludge of disparate libraries that never follow the same design patterns (because they are external to Gnome). Most of the time you end up implementing your own widgets because the standard base isn't expressive enough (one of the reasons why toolbars look different in a lot of Gnome apps)... and in general it is just really tough to get anything done.
As for no-one ever cleaning up anything... that is just rediculous. KDE has gone through SEVERAL large cleanups... including a fairly recent one which switched everything over to stricter namespaces (to prevent collisions).
I am not saying that KDE is in any way simple... but there's no way it could be with all it does. It is a LOT of code, but I feel that they manage it better than most.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not really Sure what the big deal is... anytime you connect through an ISP they can watch what you do. As far as I'm concerned I trust Google quite a bit more than the un-encrypted coffee slop down the street... but hey... to each his own.
Friedmud
Intersting that you ask since in Gentoo KDE has (recently) been split into a _bunch_ of smaller packages for just this reason.... so when something like Kopete puts out a small security update only that app gets updated when you do an "emerge -u world"... instead of updating all of KDE.
But yes... when a security release of firefox happens you have to recompile the entire thing. But of course if you are smart (and have the room) and use ccache you have already cached all of the compiled object files for the program (except the changed ones of course) so compilation happens extremely quickly.
Friedmud
I used to use verisign but have recently switched to using Yahoo I dont know if yahoo farms out the actual registry Service or not... but I at least trust yahoo with my credit Card. Further their domain controls are nice... providing an easy way to configure multiple domains.
;-)
Find more info over here: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains
I think the $9.95 price is just right.
Only problem with Yahoo is that they don't yet allow you to move already registered sites over to them.... it looks like they are planning to implement this soon, but I don't know how long.
For that reason I still have one domain at network solutions... A little tip for everyone still with NS... if it comes time to reregister call them up and tell them that $35 is outrageous... and they will lower the price to $13 a year....
Friedmud
It all depends on what you're doing...
For me, I use MySQL mainly for website backends (as do LOTS of other people). In that context the 2 things you cited make more sense...
Truncating varchars is handy for webforms... you don't want to reject the data... but usually the data isn't important enough (like a slashdot post) to really care if a couple words get chopped off by accident (in case you didn't set the character limit on your textbox to match the database).
And filling in NOT NULLS is also handy for the same reason.... if you REALLY need the logic to reject things like blank inputs in web forms then you should be doing that in your application logic anyway.... or if you really don't care all that much you probably just want to accept the submission quietly.
I am by no means sticking up for non-conformity... just trying to relay the idea that in the context that mysql is usually used, these small quirks don't have a large impact.
If I was going to do a "real" database for storing transactional records for a large company... I would probably use a more full-featured database (like Postgres).... but since that's not my use case MySQL fits the bill well.
Friedmud
In case you didn't notice this was a presentation from an Apache developer... so no reason to talk about forks.
:-)
I actually think it's really good to see that developers are able to see some of the problems we deal with all the time. It gives me hope that things might actually get better.
Friedmud
Sorry to reply again...
You state: "If open source wants to survive we need more focus on a narrower range of products"
Again I ask.. Survive what? Hobbies don't die. You can't kill my ability to collaborate with people across the web and create a good environment for myself.
No amount of people claiming "OSS Sucks" can do anything... it's like telling a coin collector that "Coins are dumb!".... if the person enjoys what they are doing they will continue regardless of outside criticism.
Friedmud
I do see your point but I think that it is just from a different point of view.
What I was trying to get at is that a lot of open source developers don't have end users in mind at all when they create the software they do. I certainly don't have any goals of winning anyone over to OSS. I use it because it fits my needs and I don't mind all the diversity.
For people that "Just want stuff to work" there are other options out there (Windows, Mac). For people who like to hack around and find new things and collaborate/cooperate to build better environments _for themselves_ we have OSS.
What I'm trying to say is don't corrupt my open and collaborative environment just because it doesn't suit your needs. If people don't like the diversity then they can look elsewhere.
OSS has ALWAYS had diversity and it ALWAYS will. I personally see this as a strength (OSS becomes a melting pot of ideas, where everyone learns from eachother). Again, the goal is not to conquer the world, but instead to make ourselves happy.
When you say "having thousands of distros,f ew of which work well, is a bad bad thing"... who is it a "bad bad thing" for? The people making the distros are (for the most part) doing it because it is interesting _for them_. If people use it then that is great... if they don't then that person still had the experience of creating something... something which appeals to all scientific and engineering types.
This type of argument reminds me of when people criticise other people for having odd hobbies. "What an idiot! I can't believe he spent 2 months designing and building that case mod!" In general humans are very diverse and have lots of different interests. Some like to collect beanie babies, some like to code up pet projects on the weekend (regardless of whether or not something already exists that does the same job).
In essence I'm saying that for most OSS developers it is a hobby. As such let us do what we like. If you don't like the way it turns out then use the other alternatives.... no skin off our back.
Friedmud
"And for every OSS trophy project you'll find a thousand half-assed weekend hacks that never make it past Alpha stage because, to the developer, posting it on sourceforge or whatever is more important that making a program usable to more than just himself."
As a _very_ part time open source developer I think this is fine.
I personally have published a couple of my own weekend hacks in Alpha stage... never to touch them again. I still recieved a lot of feedback... most of which was "Thanks!". Why? Because it gave people something to start from, or an example to use for a different implementation. I'm sure no one used anything in a "production" environment but that was never the purpose.
Publishing an open-source project is _never_ a bad idea. The more code and collaboration out there the stronger the community is. I never wanted to be the best at making program X... I just wanted to be helpful.
I think people have a hard time understanding that you don't always have to "win" at everything. Sometimes just being nice, or helpful can be its own reward (both to you and the community).
Friedmud
Ok, I'll bite..
"Why should a company not use it's marketshare to leverage it's products?"
Your basic premise is fine... that in general companies should be able to use their marketshare as a selling point. The problem is that in Market economies Monopolies develop (either "naturally" because they are the best, or through illegal practices).
In our economy once a company or product reaches the state of "Monopoly" there are certain rules that they must play by in order to allow natural market forces to continue (rules as in laws). One of those is that you can't use a Monopoly in one sector to force your way into another sector.
Microsoft has violated this time and time again... and to the detriment of consumers and consumer choice. A few recent examples:
1. Internet Explorer. Bundling IE with Windows was how MS pushed itself into the "internet sector" using their monopoly on operating systems.
"But IE is free! How is this bad for the consumer?!". Because MS then put proprietary extensions into IE that only it's web-server and authoring tools (Frontpage and Visual Studio) are equiped to serve/create (ActiveX and extensions to Java). So if you want to talk to IE the best way to do it is with Windows Server after creating it in Visual Studio/Frontpage... and since they used their monopoly to deploy IE... 90% of people are using it.....
2. Windows Media Player (Both the format and the player). This one is the next MS cash cow. They bundle WMP with Windows so everyone has it...
"But WMP is free! And it works well! How is that bad for consumers?!"
Becuase of what they are doing now. They are pushing WMP as the next format for EVERYTHING. Music, Movies, Streaming Media... Have you noticed that the new HD-DVD codec is WMP based? Do you think you'll be able to play those without a license from MS? All MS has to do is start making set top DVD players and they can force everyone else out of the market (by not licensing the codec to them).... wait they already are! (Think XBox 360).
What about streaming wmp?? What kind of server do you need to do that? Oh.. right.. Windows Server.
What about music? Oh you mean WMPs with DRM will only be playable in Windows? Hmmm.
#
For some reason people have a hard time understanding just how evil MS really is. And when I say "evil" I don't mean that trying to make money is evil. That's capitalism. What's evil is trying to make money at the detriment to consumer choice and product quality.
This is really a problem because destructive Monopolies are bad for the entire economy. They stagnate innovation and produce "economic blackholes" where all the money from the economy pours... but nothing comes out (how many billions does Microsoft have just sitting around in liquid assets?)
Ok. That should do, nobody read this far anyway.
Friedmud
In Konquerer tabbing between the checkboxes works... but when you press space to check/uncheck them it tries to scroll down the page instead of checking the item....
That said... I'm sure it's a browser problem. This is some interesting work... and I just might put it to use.
Friedmud
Just to balance things out a bit I would like to mention that I enjoy my Comcast service. Sure it's a bit more expensive than I would like (somewhere around $60 a month including the modem rental), but the service itself has been great.
I get 5Mbits/sec down, and 256Kb up... and I can always hit these speeds (routinely download at around 500KBytes/sec and upload at 25KBytes/sec to my webserver). It is _never_ down (hasn't been in 5 months anyway) and always reliable.
I looked at going with DSL and satellite (I really do want satellite... but it's tough to do in an apartment)... but the DSL only had a downspeed of 1.5Mb/sec. Sure it was only $30 a month... but the way I see it, I'm paying double that for more than double the bandwidth (and my previous experience with DSL was poor).
Trust me when I say that I have _no_ love for the cable companies (ask my wife... she'll tell you about my rants)... but I just wanted to mention that some of us do get good _internet_ service through them.
Friedmud
Looks like they're working on it right now... and lots of people aren't happy about it:
n dex.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050623005497& newsLang=en
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/i
"There's nothing more scary to him than the concept of having an accident and not having to pay a hospital bill"
I already have this... it's called insurance. Oh... I see... you mean that you want all of us that work for our paychecks so we can get insurance, to pay for the "insurance" for everyone who is too damn lazy. No thanks.
"and a trade union looking out for him"
If by "him" you mean the lazy bastard on your team that does jack shit while you work your ass off for the same pay "because unions are cool". No thanks... I'll look after myself by earning a good education and working hard.
Friedmud
id does get new graphics cards _far_ in advance of their release... something like 6 months to a year in advance. Nvidia and ATI both keep in very close contact with John all the way through the development process. John has even talked about how he has helped them track down driver bugs for unreleased hardware before.
;-)
If you can, try to go to QuakeCon sometime. John's keynote is always enlightening (except that last year he gave it via a prerecorded DVD... which was kind of boring.... but I guess the birth of his child was a little more important
Friedmud
Ok, I'll bite.
;-)
I agree with some of what you are saying... but you did miss some key points.
For my wife and I to go to the movies it is closer to $30 a movie. $10 each for tickets and around $10 for food/drinks. Using your same reasoning it now only takes around 30 movies to make up the $1000 home entertainment system - which is completely doable.
I was in the same place as you 2 years ago so I know where you're coming from. I finally bit the bullet and picked up a decent home theater system and have never looked back. I got a nice 27" TV and a pretty good (for my apartment) "surround sound in a box" system all for around $1000. It's not the nicest system in the world but it definitely gets the job done. We now rent atleast 2 movies a week... it has more than paid for itself.
I still go to the theater though... infact I have plans to see Batman Begins tonight with a bunch of friends... and it will be $10 each... but sometimes it's worth it
Friedmud
"However, you based your arguments on single core benchmarks."
Indeed I did... and you are right to point this out.
The reason I did was mostly based on how much easier it is to compare... things get all whacked out when trying to do multitasking benchmarks (although I do agree that Anand did a really great job).
There are a lot of factors to take into account when looking at multitasking benchmarks... WHAT YOU DO and HOW YOU DO IT makes a HUGE difference... therefor it is harder to make a point on slashdot (someone will always say "well they ran 15 tasks! I only run 12!").
On the other hand we all game... and as far as this (and most likely the near future) generation of games go they are single threaded and will (for the most part) behave as they do on today's single core processors (except of course you can do other things and game... but this gets into a grey area again).
So, in short (which is not at all in my character), it was quick for me to demonstrate that the AMDX2 cpus are in no way DOUBLE the price of the pentiumD's by demonstrating single threaded gaming benchmarks. Even if you look at the multi-threaded benchmarks the X2's aren't double the price... and that was the point I was trying to make. And I still claim that the 2.2Ghz A64X2 will trounce the 2.8GHz PD (and be close to the performance of a 3.4Ghz PD with benchmarks showing it falls a bit behind in some multi-tasking instances)... but everyone has a right to their opinion.
Friedmud
PS - one last thing. The one place where most of us need the horses under the hood is not in Mozilla (most computers over 1.5Ghz with 512MB of RAM run a web browser and MP3 player about the same... as in within a couple of seconds) but in games... if you look at the multi-tasking games benchmarks you will see that the A64X2 is WAY out in front... and again try to put a 2.8Ghz PD on the chart with your brain.
The problem is that you are comparing a 2.8Ghz P4 to a 2.2Ghz Athlon64... which is completely off.
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Note the graphs over here: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx
See how the 3200+ running at "just" 2Ghz is outperforming even a 3.4Ghz P4 and sometimes even a 3.5 or 3.6Ghz P4.
Also look at how a 2.8Ghz P4 isn't even on the charts... use your brain and extrapolate from the P4's what the 2.8Ghz P4 would be posting and you can see that it is WAY slower than even a 2Ghz Athlon64.
Now let's talk about what was in this article.
They told us that the lowest end Athlon64X2 is clocked at 2.2Ghz (the same as a 3500+ and faster than the 2Ghz chip in my above examples) and comes in at $537. The lowest end PentiumD is clocked at 2.8Ghz and comes in at $241.
At first glance it looks like the A64X2 is double the price... but then look at the highest end PentiumD at 3.2Ghz it's priced at $530.
Ok... use your brain again and realize that the 2Ghz A64 was outperforming a 3.4Ghz P4 and it's easy to see that the A64X2 at 2.2Ghz priced the SAME as a 3.2Ghz PD means that the A64 is actually the LOWER priced part.
The difference here is that AMD chose to focus on the high end. They didn't play "low-ball" with Intel because they don't have to. Their cheap single core chips will wipe the plate with the low-ball PD and will be cheaper as well... while their A64X2 is there AT THE SAME PRICE POINT to compete with the high end PD.
In summary... they are priced competitively.
I hope all that made sense.
Friedmud
I'm not so sure about the "IE being faster than FF" statement.
I know that lots of tests show this to be true... but my own experiences differ. IE might load the entirety of a page faster (that is, finish loading every little bit of it), but FF seems to get me the most relevant content the fastest... and fill in the gaps later (for instance, loading the text of a news article first.. then filling in the ads). For me this means I get to browse faster and start reading pages sooner.
I guess it all depends on how you look at it. I'm just not sure you can make a statement like "hands down". They are different, and personally I think both are plenty fast.
Friedmud
In Firefox type "about:config" into the address bar and filter for "middle".
You should see a "Preferance Name" named: middlemouse.contentLoadURL
Set it to "False"... now it won't load what's on the clipboard when you middle click on something other than a link...
Friedmud
I don't know what's happening... but I don't think it's trolls. I seem to be seeing a lot of the same comments repeated over in different stories... it is really weird, I would be interested in finding out what is broken.
Friedmud
It gets even more interesting when you consider that you probably "share" less than 1% to any individual peer.
Is "talking about" a "piece" of a book considered copyright infringement?
I was thinking a while ago that Azureus should be modified so that less than 5% of your outgoing traffic will go to the same peer. It would be tough to argue that you have given away "copies" of the song/program to anyone....
Friedmud
I'm typing this message on a laptop with a 7200 RPM hardrive.... quite simply, I won't ever go back to slow HDs in a laptop. As a developer the fast HD really helps (compile times are highly dependent on seek and read rates).
Also... this is a fairly thin laptop (but it does get pretty hot... mostly do to the QuadroFX videocard in it).
Friedmud
Actually, it does (running KDE 3.4)... and I keep one desktop (#2) specifically for my browser.
But, I also have all of my applications that are currently running in the taskbar... that way I can click one and skip right to the desktop it's on and have it be in focus.
Of course people have lots of different ways of working, but I do think that just about everyone can benefit from tabs. I enjoy using tabs in just about all of the programs I use on a daily basis (my code editor, IRC client, Terminal program, file browser). I usually have all of these programs open (and more) and each one has atleast 2 or 3 tabs each. If those were spammed into my taskbar it would be an utter mess. As it is, tabs keep things that are associated together and I keep a clean and efficient work environment.
Obviously, do whatever makes you more productive. I was just trying to give the "Lazy" guy some ideas about why a good portion of us think tabs are a good idea.
Friedmud
People that say the "taskbar is my tabs" make me laugh.
Seriously... try some tabbed browsing... even if you just buy an addon for IE... you should really try it.
Using the taskbar makes a mess when you are doing more than just browsing the web. All of your websites get mixed in with your regular programs. Tabbed browsing keeps everything nice a neat. You can also browse a lot faster (Run down slashdot middle clicking on the interesting links then just close off tabs as you read them... much better than click a link... read.... click back... click a link... read).
Just try it already.
Friedmud
Are you kidding?
What are you comparing it to? I have worked on a lot of large object oriented code bases (my day job is maintaining a LARGE finite-element code written in C++) and working in KDE is atleast an order of magnitude better than any large piece of code I can think of.
There are very well laid out docs that describe the core pieces of the system and tie it all together with the Qt heritage. The inheritance trees is KDE are very good... with just the right amount of inherit and extend mixed in with a good amount of functionality (some codes go too far down the OO paradigm path while others don't go far enough).
If you're not comparing it to other object oriented code bases then you are probably comparing it to Gnome... which, quite frankly, would be hilarious. Gnome is a HUGE mess (architecturally) compared to KDE. To do anything you have to use a huge kludge of disparate libraries that never follow the same design patterns (because they are external to Gnome). Most of the time you end up implementing your own widgets because the standard base isn't expressive enough (one of the reasons why toolbars look different in a lot of Gnome apps)... and in general it is just really tough to get anything done.
As for no-one ever cleaning up anything... that is just rediculous. KDE has gone through SEVERAL large cleanups... including a fairly recent one which switched everything over to stricter namespaces (to prevent collisions).
I am not saying that KDE is in any way simple... but there's no way it could be with all it does. It is a LOT of code, but I feel that they manage it better than most.
Friedmud