I will start by saying I have not personally used Vista for more than 30 minutes... but I have not seen or heard about this "ripple" effect that you're talking about, can you describe it to me or tell me where it is used in Vista? I'm curious to see it.
I previously used Compiz on Ubuntu with on a laptop that had a very low-range NVidia card. Compiz at that time had a "water" effect which caused your desktop to look as if it was a pool of water with drops of rain falling on it. It performed *terribly* on the Nvidia chip. Most of the other Compiz functions did quite alright, however. If this is the sort of thing you're talking about at with the "ripple" effect, then I can understand why it takes a bit of processing/GPU power.
Regarding software emulation on Compiz/MacOS, as I understand it, Compiz doesn't do much rendering at all in software - it relies totally on OpenGL and the GPU to do most of the work. MacOS also uses OpenGL for much of its effects.
Vista's problem perhaps lies in its use of the additional DirectX layer, rather than directly addressing the video hardware with OpenGL as Compiz and MacOS do.
A switched-mode power supply (like those used in PCs for as long as I can remember - at least since the 386 days, anyway) shouldn't waste more than a watt or so of its excess capacity in heat - it generally only draws as much power as is needed (fluctuating dynamically with the load)
People supply zombie PCs with electricity and an internet connection because the infection is generally done surreptitiously.
So do the same with the robot boats... hijack them in a way that will go undetected, so whoever owns them will continue to fuel and maintain them for you. Once you've taken over a good number of them, and they're all fueled up, you're ready to strike!
I built my own white-box PC when I was only 11 using parts I ordered myself.
The only thing any adult provided me with was the money for the parts and a good amount of faith in my ability (thanks, Dad).
Kids can actually do quite a lot. The only instruction I had was from a book. If these kids can't read, they can probably get enough instruction from a video.
Actually, it's the Menu Bar that is shared by all apps - not the toolbar. Apps tend to put their toolbars into their own windows.
I actually like the shared Menu Bar. It frees up screen space so that the app/document windows don't take up so much space. I find it more comfortable to work with multiple, non-maximised windows on the Mac at the same time than on Windows. On Windows, it feels like the "natural" way to work is to have everything maximised. On the Mac, it feels more appropriate to have more windows visible at the same time, and this is made possible because the available screen space seems to be better utilised. It gives you some "context" about what's going on... yes, I have this document here, but also behind it there's my Desktop and there's my programs on my Dock... but also it lets you work with multiple programs / documents at once. On my Windows machine, I rarely work without everything maximised, so switching between programs, comparing documents, and copying from one program to another usually involves a tonne of alt-tabbing and it's just less efficient.
I can't work with two programs' menu bars at once, so why display more than one? Seems logical to me.
I don't know why they didn't continue the idea with toolbars by making a single on-screen toolbar area... I presume that at that stage of the GUI evolution, some programs were doing palletes, some were doing toolbars, and Apple didn't end up adding a particular sanctioned "system" to their GUI.
Another exciting aspect covered is the ability to coordinate DTC transactions with KTM transactions. Meaning, you can coordinate your SQL Server (or Oracle) updates with your file-system updates. This is cool! No longer do you have to worry about finding orphan-files in workflow applications or other applications that manage both files and relational data.
If this is a problem for MS SQL Server, then it is poorly designed; UNIX RDBMs do not have this problem.
I think he was talking about this:
Step 1. Program writes a file to a directory.
Step 2. Program updates database to say "file X written to location Y"
I think he's saying single transaction can surround both of those actions... so, if the DB update or insert fails inside the transaction, then the file write or move or whatever will also be rolled-back.
I don't think electricity costs enough for it to be a big factor in people's behavior.
Other things that work against CFLs:
1) People still remember the earlier generation - nasty-coloured light, flickering, slow start, physically big and ugly
2) Most are still a larger size than the equivalent incandescent - I've got several light fittings at home which won't fit CFLs
3) Decision factor - if an incandescent blows, it's a no-brainer to go and buy the same type again. You know it works, you know it fits, you know what it looks like. If I want a CFL, I need to determine if it will fit, find the correct equivalent wattage for the light output that I want, worry about whether the colour temperature will be right, etc etc. And I only save $30 over 3 years, so perhaps I think it's not worth the hassle.
All of that said, I'm still trying to change my whole place over to CFLs. I've been measuring fittings, and in some cases, moving them from room to room so that I can fit CFLs into the ones I want to fit them in. I've found some nice reflective spotlight-style CFLs for the spotlight fittings in my bathroom, and we're pretty much there.
The walls in my apartment (I rent) are all painted in a weird off-white creamy yellow kinda colour (was this popular in the 80s or something?). Having some cool light from my CFLs actually lightens things up and makes things *nicer*.
There's a nice picture on Wikipedia which shows several types/brands of CFL lights next to an incandescent. For two of the CFLs, it's subjectively very difficult to tell them apart from the incandescent. The colour looks almost the same.
Oh there's plenty of other companies selling compact fluros in Australia. At my supermarket yesterday I saw Phillips, GE, Mirabella and there are a couple of generic brands too.
Electricity companies have been giving them away in some states under government subsidy schemes.
People who claim linux is ready for the desktop need to figure out how many grandmas want to type "sudo apt-get install beagle python-beagle" in a fricking terminal window to get search working.
Actually, I seriously don't think grandmas are going to care that much. You're not considering how much you've already invested in the whole GUI metaphor as it exists at the moment. When she starts out, Grandma hasn't used a mouse before, hasn't used a GUI before, and she hasn't used a CLI before. Whatever she does at this point is probably just following instructions, and whether it's GUI or CLI, it makes no particular sense to her. Whether it's "click here, read this, click there, press next" (and all of the investment in mouse skills that learning that goes along with that) or just "type this", to her it's still some strange stuff that she does on a box she doesn't (yet) understand.
That said, if you want Grandma to use a GUI, there's a perfectly good solution for her - click Applications, click Add/Remove, type what she wants, tick the box, press OK. In the context of Slashdot, however, I think it's perfectly OK for original post to give the (nice and concise) CLI example.
Sure, the FCC rumour mill would have released product details, but that just builds hype and anticipation.
Not just that, but as I've seen it in the past, the FCC submissions usually include (have to include?) the full user manual for the device, and the whole submission generally becomes publicly available on the FCC website. You can't write a user manual for the iPhone without writing about some of the more significant features, particularly multi-touch and some of the other cool UI stuff.
I think that giving it to the FCC first would have left Apple with nothing to announce.
Windows 2003 denial-of-service "feature"
on
Inside MySpace.com
·
· Score: 3, Funny
From TFA:
Last summer, MySpace's Windows 2003 servers shut down unexpectedly on multiple occasions. The culprit turned out to be a built-in feature of the operating system designed to prevent distributed denial of service attacks--a hacker tactic in which a Web site is subjected to so many connection requests from so many client computers that it crashes. MySpace is subject to those attacks just like many other top Web sites, but it defends against them at the network level rather than relying on this feature of Windows--which in this case was being triggered by hordes of legitimate connections from MySpace users.
"We were scratching our heads for about a month trying to figure out why our Windows 2003 servers kept shutting themselves off," Benedetto says. Finally, with help from Microsoft, his team figured out how to tell the server to "ignore distributed denial of service; this is friendly fire."
WHAT?!
So, Windows 2003 has a "feature" that deals with denial-of-service attacks - it shuts down! Brilliant!
According to information linked from the the blurb which accompanied the YouTube video I watched, this is how the disagreement started. Mostafa objected to showing his ID to a 'Community Service Officer' because he thought he was being racially discriminated against. The CSO called the campus cops who arrived as he was leaving. Presumably he didn't leave straight away because he wanted to make his objections known, but after the police apprehended him (on his way out) and in-between Taserings, you can hear him yell "I said I would leave!".
So the crimes here seem to be: 1) Verbal altercation re. to not wanting to show a Student ID 2) Not leaving *immediately* 3) Non-violent resistance to being touched/grabbed/"assulted" by Police whilst in the process of complying with the request.
For this you get an electric shock, put into handcuffs, and 4 more electric shocks while restrained and helpless. Totally non-proportional response.
There is an addendum on this blog post entitled "Account from eyewitness UCLA student Mher" which I found very informative. But I also urge you to watch the full video if you haven't done so already.
Slashdot Mirror
It's been tried before. The Tiananmen thing wasn't just limited to a pedestrian square in Beijing.
Well, you *could* set up a proxy server that filters out Slashdot stories that you don't like, and run your web access through that!
Er, Adium doesn't do video.
an app to graph or diagram SQL statements... Now, that's innovation
Are you joking, or just trolling?
I will start by saying I have not personally used Vista for more than 30 minutes... but I have not seen or heard about this "ripple" effect that you're talking about, can you describe it to me or tell me where it is used in Vista? I'm curious to see it.
I previously used Compiz on Ubuntu with on a laptop that had a very low-range NVidia card. Compiz at that time had a "water" effect which caused your desktop to look as if it was a pool of water with drops of rain falling on it. It performed *terribly* on the Nvidia chip. Most of the other Compiz functions did quite alright, however. If this is the sort of thing you're talking about at with the "ripple" effect, then I can understand why it takes a bit of processing/GPU power.
Regarding software emulation on Compiz/MacOS, as I understand it, Compiz doesn't do much rendering at all in software - it relies totally on OpenGL and the GPU to do most of the work. MacOS also uses OpenGL for much of its effects.
Vista's problem perhaps lies in its use of the additional DirectX layer, rather than directly addressing the video hardware with OpenGL as Compiz and MacOS do.
A switched-mode power supply (like those used in PCs for as long as I can remember - at least since the 386 days, anyway) shouldn't waste more than a watt or so of its excess capacity in heat - it generally only draws as much power as is needed (fluctuating dynamically with the load)
People supply zombie PCs with electricity and an internet connection because the infection is generally done surreptitiously.
So do the same with the robot boats... hijack them in a way that will go undetected, so whoever owns them will continue to fuel and maintain them for you. Once you've taken over a good number of them, and they're all fueled up, you're ready to strike!
I built my own white-box PC when I was only 11 using parts I ordered myself.
The only thing any adult provided me with was the money for the parts and a good amount of faith in my ability (thanks, Dad).
Kids can actually do quite a lot. The only instruction I had was from a book. If these kids can't read, they can probably get enough instruction from a video.
that this all comes down to RMS and some printer drivers... again? :)
hmm... I notice that in that demo, it's running on Gnome. But now, Microsoft Photosynth "runs only on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista".
Hold on... is it the sticker that's illegal... or the spelling test?
Actually, it's the Menu Bar that is shared by all apps - not the toolbar. Apps tend to put their toolbars into their own windows.
I actually like the shared Menu Bar. It frees up screen space so that the app/document windows don't take up so much space. I find it more comfortable to work with multiple, non-maximised windows on the Mac at the same time than on Windows. On Windows, it feels like the "natural" way to work is to have everything maximised. On the Mac, it feels more appropriate to have more windows visible at the same time, and this is made possible because the available screen space seems to be better utilised. It gives you some "context" about what's going on... yes, I have this document here, but also behind it there's my Desktop and there's my programs on my Dock... but also it lets you work with multiple programs / documents at once. On my Windows machine, I rarely work without everything maximised, so switching between programs, comparing documents, and copying from one program to another usually involves a tonne of alt-tabbing and it's just less efficient.
I can't work with two programs' menu bars at once, so why display more than one? Seems logical to me.
I don't know why they didn't continue the idea with toolbars by making a single on-screen toolbar area... I presume that at that stage of the GUI evolution, some programs were doing palletes, some were doing toolbars, and Apple didn't end up adding a particular sanctioned "system" to their GUI.
yes, and you can't hijack the train and steer it into the pentagon, either.
I think he was talking about this:
Step 1. Program writes a file to a directory.
Step 2. Program updates database to say "file X written to location Y"
I think he's saying single transaction can surround both of those actions... so, if the DB update or insert fails inside the transaction, then the file write or move or whatever will also be rolled-back.
I don't think electricity costs enough for it to be a big factor in people's behavior.
Other things that work against CFLs:
1) People still remember the earlier generation - nasty-coloured light, flickering, slow start, physically big and ugly
2) Most are still a larger size than the equivalent incandescent - I've got several light fittings at home which won't fit CFLs
3) Decision factor - if an incandescent blows, it's a no-brainer to go and buy the same type again. You know it works, you know it fits, you know what it looks like. If I want a CFL, I need to determine if it will fit, find the correct equivalent wattage for the light output that I want, worry about whether the colour temperature will be right, etc etc. And I only save $30 over 3 years, so perhaps I think it's not worth the hassle.
All of that said, I'm still trying to change my whole place over to CFLs. I've been measuring fittings, and in some cases, moving them from room to room so that I can fit CFLs into the ones I want to fit them in. I've found some nice reflective spotlight-style CFLs for the spotlight fittings in my bathroom, and we're pretty much there.
The walls in my apartment (I rent) are all painted in a weird off-white creamy yellow kinda colour (was this popular in the 80s or something?). Having some cool light from my CFLs actually lightens things up and makes things *nicer*.
There's a nice picture on Wikipedia which shows several types/brands of CFL lights next to an incandescent. For two of the CFLs, it's subjectively very difficult to tell them apart from the incandescent. The colour looks almost the same.
Oh there's plenty of other companies selling compact fluros in Australia. At my supermarket yesterday I saw Phillips, GE, Mirabella and there are a couple of generic brands too.
Electricity companies have been giving them away in some states under government subsidy schemes.
I wanted to moderate that "Bizarre", but unfortunately such an option does not exist.
Actually, I seriously don't think grandmas are going to care that much. You're not considering how much you've already invested in the whole GUI metaphor as it exists at the moment. When she starts out, Grandma hasn't used a mouse before, hasn't used a GUI before, and she hasn't used a CLI before. Whatever she does at this point is probably just following instructions, and whether it's GUI or CLI, it makes no particular sense to her. Whether it's "click here, read this, click there, press next" (and all of the investment in mouse skills that learning that goes along with that) or just "type this", to her it's still some strange stuff that she does on a box she doesn't (yet) understand.
That said, if you want Grandma to use a GUI, there's a perfectly good solution for her - click Applications, click Add/Remove, type what she wants, tick the box, press OK. In the context of Slashdot, however, I think it's perfectly OK for original post to give the (nice and concise) CLI example.
Well there's the GUI way, too:
Applications Menu -> Add/Remove -> In the "Search" box, type "Beagle" -> Tick the tickbox in the search results -> Press OK.
I think that giving it to the FCC first would have left Apple with nothing to announce.
WHAT?!
So, Windows 2003 has a "feature" that deals with denial-of-service attacks - it shuts down! Brilliant!
According to information linked from the the blurb which accompanied the YouTube video I watched, this is how the disagreement started. Mostafa objected to showing his ID to a 'Community Service Officer' because he thought he was being racially discriminated against. The CSO called the campus cops who arrived as he was leaving. Presumably he didn't leave straight away because he wanted to make his objections known, but after the police apprehended him (on his way out) and in-between Taserings, you can hear him yell "I said I would leave!".
So the crimes here seem to be:
1) Verbal altercation re. to not wanting to show a Student ID
2) Not leaving *immediately*
3) Non-violent resistance to being touched/grabbed/"assulted" by Police whilst in the process of complying with the request.
For this you get an electric shock, put into handcuffs, and 4 more electric shocks while restrained and helpless. Totally non-proportional response.
There is an addendum on this blog post entitled "Account from eyewitness UCLA student Mher" which I found very informative. But I also urge you to watch the full video if you haven't done so already.
ROFL. how did this get modded "insightful"?