Yeah... and apropos is a word that is the vast majority of folks' everyday vocabulary. Just another example of how Linux and Un*x turn folks off. First, almost no commands have vowels in them... mv = move, cp = copy, rm = remove. The ones that do have vowels in them are words that nobody would think of... apropos.
Am I the only one who finds MS's newer crayonware interfaces a colossal PITA?
Yeah, funny thing is that KDE and GNOME both try to be very close to it (the XP "Classic" interface, which is what everyone I know uses - not the Fisher-Price one).
Same here (I'm a Linux software developer as well)... for example, how many Office-like suites are there on Linux? how many different X shells? (GNOME, KDE, etc.) Call it OSS, "freedom", "choice", or whatever... it's redundant effort beating to death things that have already been done 100 times before. (Many times, these are redundant and well known/understood problems already not needing yet-another-solution, they are just easy to put out and "gather fame" in the community for doing it yet-again.) Think what could be done if those projects were off solving problems other than these beaten-to-death-redundant problems.
I have seen very few projects use publicly available libraries and instead, rewrite libraries like linked-lists, trees, etc. typically because the developers can't "trust" the libraries out there because they didn't write it and aren't intimately familiar with the inner workings and claim that they have to rewrite so that they can be (what in effect is often like 1%) more efficient by having their own "custom" library to do the work.
Yeah but the home consumer... Who can we pit up against MS not to mention the lack of a mechanism to do so...
Substitute pretty much any other vendor in place of "MS" (Sun, etc.) and this statement also holds. None of these companies will give such deals to the home user (someone who will by 1 or 2 systems as opposed to 10 or 20 or more).
often sitting for hours on end contemplating alien mechanisms that I don't understand. Sometimes I click on a control or two (or ten), and sometimes things start working as a result.
Do this with a blindfold on and/or have all the labels in a language you don't understand and you'll have the equivalent that most of the Windows user base feel when they try to install and use Linux.
I can afford Windows, but I still choose Linux. Why would I want to pay for an inferior, insecure product when I can get Linux for free?
I can afford to buy Windows and I can afford to buy Linux (and have a few times now, each). Neither Windows nor Linux solves all my problems at this point in time and/or does everything I want a computer to do. Therefore, I need both and I support the people who bring me Linux instead of being a leech. They have to eat just like I do.
I call it more of a act of civil disobedience in protest of the current laws that are in place that remove the rights of the end consumer and allow Corporations draconian control over what is deemed fair use.
It's easy to use anything to justify doing whatever you want to do. "I don't want to pay for the MS license and it's easily available for free by downloading on the 'net, therefore, I'm using civil disobedience to use it anyway for free."
Whenever I hear someone complain about packaging on Linux, I ask them what distro they're using, and if they've considered trying alternatives...
Heh... you serious? THAT will go over well... If you can't get that software to install, reinstall your OS and use a distribution that is more favorable to the software you want to install. I'm really hoping you meant alternative packaging systems or alternatives to the software package that they want to install (sometimes, there is no choice because they either don't exist or you need to use what everybody else is using).
I don't know about you, but I've had a Linux installation that couldn't stay running for an hour at a time without a kernel panic. On the other hand, I've had Linux installations that have run a year without going down.
I've also had Windows servers run for a year with no downtime (it was only on an intranet so we didn't have to apply every patch) and the only time it was eventually taken down was for patches. It also had no degredation of performance that we measured during that time.
Now... on *average*, I would say that Linux servers tend to have higher uptimes but people who usually talk about Windows crashing every few minutes are talking 5 years ago.
Yeah, I guess you folks have never worked with a debug version of Windows before, or a debug version of anything I guess. Even on Linux you can easily get 4x or more the executable size compiling for debug.
Man, do I disagree! Yeah, the performance of the systems was close, as long as you ignore the fact that the AMD's were running at 2/3 the clock speed with 1/4 the cache!
Who cares. You cannot compare two different architectures on a clock per clock basis. It makes no sense.
AMD clearly has a better design than Intel.
Purely subjective.
All of the technology that Intel has will eventually belong to AMD, also, and their design obviously takes better advantage of any technology!
This statement makes no sense at all. AMD does not make Borg chips.
I would imagine that you actually know very little about actual CPU inner workings but obviously have loud opinions on which you have no clue.
L3 cache is a generic term. You can think of the "L" as meaning "Level". L3 is 3 "steps" away from the CPU registers/core. Think of it this way (although it isn't necessarily implemented this way as there are optimizations that can be done to make this faster):
The CPU needs a value. If it isn't in a register, look in L1 cache first. If not in L1 cache, look in L2 cache. If not in L2 cache, look in L3 cache (etc through as many L* cache as you want). If not in L* cache, go ahead and fetch it from main memory.
Whether or not L3 cache runs at the core clock frequency or whether it is on die or not is completely dependent upon the implementation (which CPU are you talking about?).
For the P4 Xeons, the L3 is on the die and runs at core frequency (just has a few clocks of latency to access it).
AMD64 actually does get rid of a lot of garbage in x86 that is no longer in use
Thanks for confirming this. I haven't had time to investigate this as deep as I wanted... I was ***so*** hoping that when the "go-into-64-bit-mode" bit was set, that it really became a whole different CPU, and that CPU looks like a traditional load/store (some may call it RISC) machine with 16 GPRs. When the "go-into-x86-mode" bit was set, it would then look like an x86.
Where you run into problems is with 32-bit code, or pretty much any code not designed/optimized for EPIC.
I doubt anyone would have ever thought to buy an Itanium system to run x86 code.
In any case, x86 compatibility is the golden cage of computing. It's horrible so everyone wants to get away from it but at the same time, there is so much software that people "can't live without" that they cannot abandon the stuff. People bash the x86 architecture and at the same time, bash anything that isn't x86.
The AMD solution doesn't do away with x86, it keeps it alive and will require x86 to continue to live on, unfortunately.
Other people produce drivers - which are given away for free with hardware
This is where your story fails. The software is subsidized by the hardware in these cases because without the software, the hardware wouldn't sell at all. These hardware companies have a material product they are selling and the software is a part of that product and is included as a cost in the hardware. The software may be "free" for the person downloading it but it is certainly not free for the company writing it as they have to pay programmers to write it otherwise they would have no product that will sell.
He is making a fatal mistake. He is trapped in the old thinking that software is a product that needs to be sold like it is scarce. He thinks free software somehow makes it impossible to profit from.
Like most service things, it isn't that you are paying for the electrons/magnetic fields that make up the software. You are paying someone/something for the time and effort they have put into the thing and the ideas that they have given life in order to make the users of that software somehow better.
If you spend a year (2000 hours of work) making some software, how is it impossible to believe that you shouldn't be compensated for that time. Would you pay a janitor for that amount of time cleaning? or a doctor for that amount of time treating your illness?
It's still 2000 hours that the person spent giving life to the software for you to use. If they want to give that part of their life away, then that is up to that person, but unless that person makes some money somehow, they will not be able to buy the electricity to power their computer to write the software in the first place.
Software is a wierd combination of service and product. I believe my work output is a product. It isn't made of some material like an automobile tire or a wooden cabinet, but I occur expenses making it, just not as much material expense as time and effort. People equate software as being simply a CD or something and therefore the software should be equal to only the material cost. If this were the case, houses would costs $20k, even in Los Angeles. Automobiles would cost $5k at most because of the materials used to make them regardless of manufacturer or brand. A new sofa would cost $75. Computers would cost $50. It's about paying people for their time, effort, and ideas to make the product.
Do you think the USA textile industry is having problems because of the cost of materials? Not hardly. They are having problems because workers in the USA have a high price for their time compared to people in other countries.
I'd pay just as much for my Open Source software, more even, than I would for my Mac OSX or Windows software... which I also have and paid for.
"Would" implies that you haven't done so, yet... or have you? Then say "I've paid just as much..."
Otherwise, put your money where your mouth is or you are just riding the wave of free (as in beer) software like everybody else, despite your grand words.
Plenty of people have made lots of money "customizing" things using closed source software. Lots of work on top of MS Office using VBA, using Access/SQLServer, web "applications" such as intranets, etc.
...and you buy support in with the hardware. I haven't purchased any IBM hardware lately but I doubt there is a checkbox on the invoice that lets you opt-out of the support cost so in effect, you *are* paying for the OS. Whether you call it "support costs" or "licensing fee" or whatever you want, you are paying for it. If this is the case, then they just up the price on the hardware a little and/or shift the "support costs" to "hardware support costs" and you will pay it right along.
How many times have you called Microsoft to find out how to use a feature in Office? Most help is built-in, or web-based at this point, making it a function of easily replicable software. Incremental improvement at exhorbitant prices.
Someone had to make/develop the help at one point and put it in there, just as someone else had to write the code and such.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah... and apropos is a word that is the vast majority of folks' everyday vocabulary. Just another example of how Linux and Un*x turn folks off. First, almost no commands have vowels in them... mv = move, cp = copy, rm = remove. The ones that do have vowels in them are words that nobody would think of... apropos.
Am I the only one who finds MS's newer crayonware interfaces a colossal PITA?
Yeah, funny thing is that KDE and GNOME both try to be very close to it (the XP "Classic" interface, which is what everyone I know uses - not the Fisher-Price one).
A quote from one CTO: [Linux is] "going to force Microsoft to spend more time on security and stability, and less time on adding new features.""
So... this is supposed to be a bad thing?
Same here (I'm a Linux software developer as well)... for example, how many Office-like suites are there on Linux? how many different X shells? (GNOME, KDE, etc.) Call it OSS, "freedom", "choice", or whatever... it's redundant effort beating to death things that have already been done 100 times before. (Many times, these are redundant and well known/understood problems already not needing yet-another-solution, they are just easy to put out and "gather fame" in the community for doing it yet-again.) Think what could be done if those projects were off solving problems other than these beaten-to-death-redundant problems.
I have seen very few projects use publicly available libraries and instead, rewrite libraries like linked-lists, trees, etc. typically because the developers can't "trust" the libraries out there because they didn't write it and aren't intimately familiar with the inner workings and claim that they have to rewrite so that they can be (what in effect is often like 1%) more efficient by having their own "custom" library to do the work.
Yeah but the home consumer... Who can we pit up against MS not to mention the lack of a mechanism to do so...
Substitute pretty much any other vendor in place of "MS" (Sun, etc.) and this statement also holds. None of these companies will give such deals to the home user (someone who will by 1 or 2 systems as opposed to 10 or 20 or more).
often sitting for hours on end contemplating alien mechanisms that I don't understand. Sometimes I click on a control or two (or ten), and sometimes things start working as a result.
Do this with a blindfold on and/or have all the labels in a language you don't understand and you'll have the equivalent that most of the Windows user base feel when they try to install and use Linux.
I can afford Windows, but I still choose Linux. Why would I want to pay for an inferior, insecure product when I can get Linux for free?
I can afford to buy Windows and I can afford to buy Linux (and have a few times now, each). Neither Windows nor Linux solves all my problems at this point in time and/or does everything I want a computer to do. Therefore, I need both and I support the people who bring me Linux instead of being a leech. They have to eat just like I do.
There are instances where I think it's okay to pirate stuff, and there are instances where I think it's not, but that isn't the point I was making.
The point that you are making then, is that you are a hypocrit.
I call it more of a act of civil disobedience in protest of the current laws that are in place that remove the rights of the end consumer and allow Corporations draconian control over what is deemed fair use.
It's easy to use anything to justify doing whatever you want to do. "I don't want to pay for the MS license and it's easily available for free by downloading on the 'net, therefore, I'm using civil disobedience to use it anyway for free."
Whenever I hear someone complain about packaging on Linux, I ask them what distro they're using, and if they've considered trying alternatives...
Heh... you serious? THAT will go over well...
If you can't get that software to install, reinstall your OS and use a distribution that is more favorable to the software you want to install. I'm really hoping you meant alternative packaging systems or alternatives to the software package that they want to install (sometimes, there is no choice because they either don't exist or you need to use what everybody else is using).
But that suggestion wasn't meant for normal users! It was meant for Slashdotters.
LoL... then you need to dumb it up even more and then add a few flames to it... Like this:
You can burn all mp3's in the current directory by using
mp3burn -o 'dev=x,x,x speed=XX' *mp3
Microsoft sux! OSS is teh win!
I want to marry Linus!
I don't know about you, but I've had a Linux installation that couldn't stay running for an hour at a time without a kernel panic. On the other hand, I've had Linux installations that have run a year without going down.
I've also had Windows servers run for a year with no downtime (it was only on an intranet so we didn't have to apply every patch) and the only time it was eventually taken down was for patches. It also had no degredation of performance that we measured during that time.
Now... on *average*, I would say that Linux servers tend to have higher uptimes but people who usually talk about Windows crashing every few minutes are talking 5 years ago.
Yeah, I guess you folks have never worked with a debug version of Windows before, or a debug version of anything I guess. Even on Linux you can easily get 4x or more the executable size compiling for debug.
"Spoken like a true loser/script kiddie/whatever -- completely unprofessional."
Here's a hint - not everyone is professional at everything they want to do. Professionals get paid.
So... OSS developers (who don't get paid) are not professionals... I'm sure some here would take offense...
In the extended version, Sam actually says something like "look, Bilbo's trolls" as they have made their camp in the middle of the three stone trolls.
Man, do I disagree! Yeah, the performance of the systems was close, as long as you ignore the fact that the AMD's were running at 2/3 the clock speed with 1/4 the cache!
Who cares. You cannot compare two different architectures on a clock per clock basis. It makes no sense.
AMD clearly has a better design than Intel.
Purely subjective.
All of the technology that Intel has will eventually belong to AMD, also, and their design obviously takes better advantage of any technology!
This statement makes no sense at all. AMD does not make Borg chips.
I would imagine that you actually know very little about actual CPU inner workings but obviously have loud opinions on which you have no clue.
L3 cache is a generic term. You can think of the "L" as meaning "Level". L3 is 3 "steps" away from the CPU registers/core. Think of it this way (although it isn't necessarily implemented this way as there are optimizations that can be done to make this faster):
The CPU needs a value. If it isn't in a register, look in L1 cache first. If not in L1 cache, look in L2 cache. If not in L2 cache, look in L3 cache (etc through as many L* cache as you want). If not in L* cache, go ahead and fetch it from main memory.
Whether or not L3 cache runs at the core clock frequency or whether it is on die or not is completely dependent upon the implementation (which CPU are you talking about?).
For the P4 Xeons, the L3 is on the die and runs at core frequency (just has a few clocks of latency to access it).
AMD64 actually does get rid of a lot of garbage in x86 that is no longer in use
Thanks for confirming this. I haven't had time to investigate this as deep as I wanted... I was ***so*** hoping that when the "go-into-64-bit-mode" bit was set, that it really became a whole different CPU, and that CPU looks like a traditional load/store (some may call it RISC) machine with 16 GPRs. When the "go-into-x86-mode" bit was set, it would then look like an x86.
Where you run into problems is with 32-bit code, or pretty much any code not designed/optimized for EPIC.
I doubt anyone would have ever thought to buy an Itanium system to run x86 code.
In any case, x86 compatibility is the golden cage of computing. It's horrible so everyone wants to get away from it but at the same time, there is so much software that people "can't live without" that they cannot abandon the stuff. People bash the x86 architecture and at the same time, bash anything that isn't x86.
The AMD solution doesn't do away with x86, it keeps it alive and will require x86 to continue to live on, unfortunately.
Other people produce drivers - which are given away for free with hardware
This is where your story fails. The software is subsidized by the hardware in these cases because without the software, the hardware wouldn't sell at all. These hardware companies have a material product they are selling and the software is a part of that product and is included as a cost in the hardware. The software may be "free" for the person downloading it but it is certainly not free for the company writing it as they have to pay programmers to write it otherwise they would have no product that will sell.
He is making a fatal mistake.
He is trapped in the old thinking that software is a product that needs to be sold like it is scarce.
He thinks free software somehow makes it impossible to profit from.
Like most service things, it isn't that you are paying for the electrons/magnetic fields that make up the software. You are paying someone/something for the time and effort they have put into the thing and the ideas that they have given life in order to make the users of that software somehow better.
If you spend a year (2000 hours of work) making some software, how is it impossible to believe that you shouldn't be compensated for that time. Would you pay a janitor for that amount of time cleaning? or a doctor for that amount of time treating your illness?
It's still 2000 hours that the person spent giving life to the software for you to use. If they want to give that part of their life away, then that is up to that person, but unless that person makes some money somehow, they will not be able to buy the electricity to power their computer to write the software in the first place.
Software is a wierd combination of service and product. I believe my work output is a product. It isn't made of some material like an automobile tire or a wooden cabinet, but I occur expenses making it, just not as much material expense as time and effort. People equate software as being simply a CD or something and therefore the software should be equal to only the material cost. If this were the case, houses would costs $20k, even in Los Angeles. Automobiles would cost $5k at most because of the materials used to make them regardless of manufacturer or brand. A new sofa would cost $75. Computers would cost $50. It's about paying people for their time, effort, and ideas to make the product.
Do you think the USA textile industry is having problems because of the cost of materials? Not hardly. They are having problems because workers in the USA have a high price for their time compared to people in other countries.
I'd pay just as much for my Open Source software, more even, than I would for my Mac OSX or Windows software... which I also have and paid for.
"Would" implies that you haven't done so, yet... or have you? Then say "I've paid just as much..."
Otherwise, put your money where your mouth is or you are just riding the wave of free (as in beer) software like everybody else, despite your grand words.
Plenty of people have made lots of money "customizing" things using closed source software. Lots of work on top of MS Office using VBA, using Access/SQLServer, web "applications" such as intranets, etc.
...and you buy support in with the hardware. I haven't purchased any IBM hardware lately but I doubt there is a checkbox on the invoice that lets you opt-out of the support cost so in effect, you *are* paying for the OS. Whether you call it "support costs" or "licensing fee" or whatever you want, you are paying for it. If this is the case, then they just up the price on the hardware a little and/or shift the "support costs" to "hardware support costs" and you will pay it right along.
How many times have you called Microsoft to find out how to use a feature in Office? Most help is built-in, or web-based at this point, making it a function of easily replicable software. Incremental improvement at exhorbitant prices.
Someone had to make/develop the help at one point and put it in there, just as someone else had to write the code and such.