But what you're paying for is the FRIDGE at the store that keep it cold
Considering that, like most soft drinks, water does not go bad when it's warm, I think it's safe to say refridgeration costs are in the same ballpack as material costs. The fridge is only the icing on the cake at the very end of a bottle's lifespan.
I don't understand how Linux is related to communism. Maybe it's that I'm not the only Linux user who starts to wonder, with corporations like SCO and Microsoft alive and well, if communism wouldn't be all that bad?
It's still a practical application, despite the trivialness of it.
Yes, maybe a travelling salesperson problem with something on the order of a million possible answers would be solvable using DNA. Right now, it's probably 100 times more capable (speed- and memory-wise) than our conventional computers.
However, DNA doesn't get any smaller or more efficient. It simply cannot advance. As problems get more complex the margin of error gets too large to ignore, and reactions take too long. In the long run (10-20+ years), DNA will not be as fast or accurate as other solutions.
If I had 10 years to collaborate with other scientists to produce the best travelling-salesperson-solving computer, I'd look long and hard at Quantum computing; it's the opposite: it solves more complex problems just as easily as simple ones.
one even has a computer per 3 students, try and find that anywhere else.
The Canadian school board my (ex) high school is a part of is outfitting every student from grades 3 to 11 with an Apple laptop, with Mac OS X.
Wouldn't it be funny if students actually ended up learning English and Biology instead of How to Hack an Administrator-Free School and A Thousand and One Ways to Talk with Friends in Class?
...Microsoft does not have the access to the Macintosh operating system that it would need to compete.
Does anybody else see the double irony in this? Not only is a large chunk of the source code freely available, but Microsoft has had a long history of hiding its own operating system from everyone. Serves it right.
I've never been a big fan of Red Hat. We replaced our Red Hat 6.2/7.0/7.1 servers here with Debian (some stable, some testing) and haven't looked back. There's something so comforting about never having to worry about versions and upgrades -- it's as if we've got infinite support.
Plus, I've found IRC people (what I refer to as "REAL tech support") most helpful on debian-related channels. How many times have you called up Red Hat because you needed support? Google and mailing lists are probably a more effective method anyway.
If you know your Linux, Debian is probably what you want. If not, there are several options besides Red Hat. Don't be afraid just because the name is different!
I remember the good ol' days of reinstalls every 6 months to keep my computer running...
Now I use Linux, and since I don't have the privs to install stuff to / (except when I su), I can't put junk in/, and so no cruft builds up in/. As a worst-case scenario (which I haven't had any motivation to resort to), I can just rename my home directory and make a new one with permissions 700 belonging to me, and presto! All cruft gone. Bring in files (i.e.,.gaimrc, gconf data) as needed.
Speaking of which, here's where the real advantages of gconf over the Windows registry come in....
The author is completely wrong about the Red Hat Linux folks, his steps are not at all necessary.
Use OpenZaurus and while crashes still appear (I assume 3.2 will eventually, though I haven't had a full crash since it first came out), crashes will not lose all your data, since it's written to flash.
Also, my Linux box hasn't crashed this year, and I can't recall any crashes last ye-- no, wait, there was one slew, but it was an icky driver which I got rid of. I'd say a pretty good track record for a system built almost entirely from CVS.
Can't remember any crashes this year or last on any other Linux boxes I manage that I can think of (8 boxes off the top of my head).
It's a very good thing they didn't try to make an IDE, because one already exists: Anjuta. And best of all, Anjuta not only offers all the usual editor/compiler mumbo-jumbo, but it also calls Glade for GUI creation.
If you're trying to start out GNOME/GTK development, Anjuta's the IDE of choice (as far as I can see). Of course, all I did in it was make a little "Hello, world!" app that would hide the message when you click a button. But it was very simple to make and had full i18n support -- for 5 minutes from start to finish, that's not half-bad:).
Is it just me who was under the impression that it'd run on Linux out-of-the-box? Or at least, downloadable about a week after release, like with RTCW.
John Carmack is cool; he can afford it and people love him for it, so he'll do it.
Re:What does it mean?
on
GCC 3.3 Released
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· Score: 5, Informative
Not many visible changes. Developers have better profiling, which means eventually if they care they can make software faster. Also, you're going to find a lot more compiler warnings, and perhaps the odd piece of software which doesn't compile at all. In the short run, nothing changes. In the long run, programs become better as they stick to better programming guidelines (since gcc doesn't support "bad" programming as well as the previous version).
I've been using gcc 3.3 for months from CVS, and have had no problems with it (except for compiling with -Werror).
From the letter: Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights.
"All actions necessary?" Just tell us what code has been copied and it'll be fixed in under a week. The violation will cease to continue. Fast, simple, zero effort.
Or does he mean, "similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we've decided to avoid the main issue and try to make money on the technicalities, while in the long run benefiting nobody and harming ourselves as well as our users."
Mozilla 1.4a is "alpha" (hence the "a"). Likewise, Mozilla 1.4b, the version being mentioned in this article, is "beta" (hence the "b"). Once Mozilla 1.4 is finished, it will be released as simply "Mozilla 1.4" and that'll mean it's stable.
Then a few months later some minor bugs will be ironed out (or in a few minutes some major bug will be) and that'll be Mozilla 1.4.1. By that time, Mozilla 1.5 may very well be starting its own release cycle.
Let's take two typical software bugs -- one with Windows, one with Mozilla.
Mozilla bug: Submitted bug report, got a preliminary reply via email in under two hours. Bug was solved in two days and pushed back into CVS, ready for compiling. Took under one hour to reproduce the bug, write down all steps in bugzilla, read all the email traffic, and recompile.
Microsoft bug: (registry key not closed on logoff) After waiting 5 hours on hold, I got in touch with somebody asking all the dumbest questions ("Tried rebooting?" etc). The person wasn't even going to give me a phone number if I hadn't asked. I had to be sure to be available at hours when this person would call; I was transferred to three phone support people, and three technicians. I was asked to build two debugging computers and waste a hundred megs of download bandwidth to get certain "debug" patches, only to find that just when I got the computers built and set up, they had managed to solve the problem. Total time spent I working on the problem: at least 40 hours, spread over 6 months. About 10 of these hours were spent answering the same question to new support staff (or sometimes the same staff). Oh, and I was told that I'd have to pay additional support costs if this wasn't a bug in Windows (which it was).
The lesson: "support" is a broad term, and just sticking it on a list of features doesn't mean anything. I'll take the free support from volunteers over Microsoft's any day of the week. Though I have no direct experience with paid support from Linux vendors, I'm confident its quality is higher.
Yeah, we've set up about a dozen Linux servers -- Red Hat and Debian. And there are simply no problems. So the second edge of the "support" buzzword: for the same amount of money, would you rather have support you don't need, or need support you don't have?
These arguments are based on personal experience and not ideals, though I've got plenty based on ideals, too!
... get rid of about 99.99999% of the third party applications on the market, start making their own hardware and nuke all of the big name and beige-box builders, have really expensive peripherals, and charge an arm and a leg for it.
Now if you move the video driver into the Linux kernel, replacing say the experimental framebuffer drivers, we would (1) have a great platform for console games with really good driver support, (2)make the X leaner and more general.
I'm just curious: Where does the video driver get loaded when you "modprobe" it? Hrm, lemme check man pages: oh, right. "insmod (8) - install loadable kernel module." And in case you hadn't noticed, Linux is a great gaming platform - the games are missing, not the technology.
Though not as uninformed, illogical and haphazardly destructive as the topic article which spawned it, your comment is wrong. Do some research, find out what's what, and make an informed argument; it sounds like you are reusing other people's assertions which are either outdated, wrong, narrow-minded or misunderstood.
However, despite this there are small nuggets of logic which you didn't quite manage to cover up; maybe you should look up some of the projects on directfb.org and see if they tickle your fancy.
Nah, Crossover costs $70 and Windows Pro costs like $200.
Of course, OpenOffice.org, the Gimp, etc cost $0. I find it so ironic that people are so adamant about paying money for simple computational needs when free alternatives exist.
A failed OpenZaurus flash cannot break your Zaurus. It's impossible. So there's no need to be "brave" -- it will work. Or if it doesn't, well, you're safe. The downside is the need for a CF card to flash, and a common problem is that copying the file to the CF card on your Zaurus results in a corrupt file (since the usbdnet driver sucks so much) -- make sure to md5sum it before flashing.
A problem mentioned in the review is the horribleness of the usbdnet drivers. These work in OpenZaurus.
Not to mention, we've got a cooler website. Oh, there are other advantages too. And the feed has zillions of cool software packages.
its hard to get users to upgrade from a good or engrained product...
Try the upgrade before saying that. Unlike Apache2, the upgrade is painless. Though you MAY have to recompile your user-defined functions (which 99.9% of people don't use anyway), I'm not sure.
Slashdot Mirror
SP4 does nothing else but fix bugs.
Yup. We fixed a bug by applying it on our SQL server at work. It rebooted randomly 4 times the next day.
Really.
Kernel is as stable as the rocky mountains. Been compiling Mozilla non-stop in gcc for the last 3 hours with no problems.
A whole 3 hours? Wow, must be ready for release!
Reminds me of Microsoft's crazy uptimes of "three, six months."
But what you're paying for is the FRIDGE at the store that keep it cold
Considering that, like most soft drinks, water does not go bad when it's warm, I think it's safe to say refridgeration costs are in the same ballpack as material costs. The fridge is only the icing on the cake at the very end of a bottle's lifespan.
I don't understand how Linux is related to communism. Maybe it's that I'm not the only Linux user who starts to wonder, with corporations like SCO and Microsoft alive and well, if communism wouldn't be all that bad?
However, the umpires association has filed a complaint about the system's unreliability and incapability to replace the human 3-D, real-time view.
... instead only giving an accurate 3-D, real-time view.
It's still a practical application, despite the trivialness of it.
Yes, maybe a travelling salesperson problem with something on the order of a million possible answers would be solvable using DNA. Right now, it's probably 100 times more capable (speed- and memory-wise) than our conventional computers.
However, DNA doesn't get any smaller or more efficient. It simply cannot advance. As problems get more complex the margin of error gets too large to ignore, and reactions take too long. In the long run (10-20+ years), DNA will not be as fast or accurate as other solutions.
If I had 10 years to collaborate with other scientists to produce the best travelling-salesperson-solving computer, I'd look long and hard at Quantum computing; it's the opposite: it solves more complex problems just as easily as simple ones.
one even has a computer per 3 students, try and find that anywhere else.
The Canadian school board my (ex) high school is a part of is outfitting every student from grades 3 to 11 with an Apple laptop, with Mac OS X.
Wouldn't it be funny if students actually ended up learning English and Biology instead of How to Hack an Administrator-Free School and A Thousand and One Ways to Talk with Friends in Class?
Does anybody else see the double irony in this? Not only is a large chunk of the source code freely available, but Microsoft has had a long history of hiding its own operating system from everyone. Serves it right.
I've never been a big fan of Red Hat. We replaced our Red Hat 6.2/7.0/7.1 servers here with Debian (some stable, some testing) and haven't looked back. There's something so comforting about never having to worry about versions and upgrades -- it's as if we've got infinite support.
Plus, I've found IRC people (what I refer to as "REAL tech support") most helpful on debian-related channels. How many times have you called up Red Hat because you needed support? Google and mailing lists are probably a more effective method anyway.
If you know your Linux, Debian is probably what you want. If not, there are several options besides Red Hat. Don't be afraid just because the name is different!
After extensively developing and testing in both Mozilla and IE, I think I can generalize this phenomenon:
If IE and Mozilla render a page differently, Mozilla is always right and IE is always wrong. Always.
I remember the good ol' days of reinstalls every 6 months to keep my computer running...
Now I use Linux, and since I don't have the privs to install stuff to / (except when I su), I can't put junk in /, and so no cruft builds up in /. As a worst-case scenario (which I haven't had any motivation to resort to), I can just rename my home directory and make a new one with permissions 700 belonging to me, and presto! All cruft gone. Bring in files (i.e., .gaimrc, gconf data) as needed.
Speaking of which, here's where the real advantages of gconf over the Windows registry come in....
The author is completely wrong about the Red Hat Linux folks, his steps are not at all necessary.
Use OpenZaurus and while crashes still appear (I assume 3.2 will eventually, though I haven't had a full crash since it first came out), crashes will not lose all your data, since it's written to flash.
Also, my Linux box hasn't crashed this year, and I can't recall any crashes last ye-- no, wait, there was one slew, but it was an icky driver which I got rid of. I'd say a pretty good track record for a system built almost entirely from CVS.
Can't remember any crashes this year or last on any other Linux boxes I manage that I can think of (8 boxes off the top of my head).
It's a very good thing they didn't try to make an IDE, because one already exists: Anjuta. And best of all, Anjuta not only offers all the usual editor/compiler mumbo-jumbo, but it also calls Glade for GUI creation.
If you're trying to start out GNOME/GTK development, Anjuta's the IDE of choice (as far as I can see). Of course, all I did in it was make a little "Hello, world!" app that would hide the message when you click a button. But it was very simple to make and had full i18n support -- for 5 minutes from start to finish, that's not half-bad :).
Is it just me who was under the impression that it'd run on Linux out-of-the-box? Or at least, downloadable about a week after release, like with RTCW.
John Carmack is cool; he can afford it and people love him for it, so he'll do it.
Not many visible changes. Developers have better profiling, which means eventually if they care they can make software faster. Also, you're going to find a lot more compiler warnings, and perhaps the odd piece of software which doesn't compile at all. In the short run, nothing changes. In the long run, programs become better as they stick to better programming guidelines (since gcc doesn't support "bad" programming as well as the previous version).
I've been using gcc 3.3 for months from CVS, and have had no problems with it (except for compiling with -Werror).
From the letter: Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights.
"All actions necessary?" Just tell us what code has been copied and it'll be fixed in under a week. The violation will cease to continue. Fast, simple, zero effort.
Or does he mean, "similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we've decided to avoid the main issue and try to make money on the technicalities, while in the long run benefiting nobody and harming ourselves as well as our users."
Just how many photons they detected for the faintest star.
Obviously... 1. I'm sure they got loads of 1-photon sources, and though doubtless they don't do much to the final picture, they definitely happened.
Mozilla 1.4a is "alpha" (hence the "a"). Likewise, Mozilla 1.4b, the version being mentioned in this article, is "beta" (hence the "b"). Once Mozilla 1.4 is finished, it will be released as simply "Mozilla 1.4" and that'll mean it's stable.
Then a few months later some minor bugs will be ironed out (or in a few minutes some major bug will be) and that'll be Mozilla 1.4.1. By that time, Mozilla 1.5 may very well be starting its own release cycle.
Let's take two typical software bugs -- one with Windows, one with Mozilla.
Mozilla bug: Submitted bug report, got a preliminary reply via email in under two hours. Bug was solved in two days and pushed back into CVS, ready for compiling. Took under one hour to reproduce the bug, write down all steps in bugzilla, read all the email traffic, and recompile.
Microsoft bug: (registry key not closed on logoff) After waiting 5 hours on hold, I got in touch with somebody asking all the dumbest questions ("Tried rebooting?" etc). The person wasn't even going to give me a phone number if I hadn't asked. I had to be sure to be available at hours when this person would call; I was transferred to three phone support people, and three technicians. I was asked to build two debugging computers and waste a hundred megs of download bandwidth to get certain "debug" patches, only to find that just when I got the computers built and set up, they had managed to solve the problem. Total time spent I working on the problem: at least 40 hours, spread over 6 months. About 10 of these hours were spent answering the same question to new support staff (or sometimes the same staff). Oh, and I was told that I'd have to pay additional support costs if this wasn't a bug in Windows (which it was).
The lesson: "support" is a broad term, and just sticking it on a list of features doesn't mean anything. I'll take the free support from volunteers over Microsoft's any day of the week. Though I have no direct experience with paid support from Linux vendors, I'm confident its quality is higher.
Yeah, we've set up about a dozen Linux servers -- Red Hat and Debian. And there are simply no problems. So the second edge of the "support" buzzword: for the same amount of money, would you rather have support you don't need, or need support you don't have?
These arguments are based on personal experience and not ideals, though I've got plenty based on ideals, too!
Um... yeah. Hence the term, "monopoly."
Now if you move the video driver into the Linux kernel, replacing say the experimental framebuffer drivers, we would (1) have a great platform for console games with really good driver support, (2)make the X leaner and more general.
I'm just curious: Where does the video driver get loaded when you "modprobe" it? Hrm, lemme check man pages: oh, right. "insmod (8) - install loadable kernel module." And in case you hadn't noticed, Linux is a great gaming platform - the games are missing, not the technology.
Though not as uninformed, illogical and haphazardly destructive as the topic article which spawned it, your comment is wrong. Do some research, find out what's what, and make an informed argument; it sounds like you are reusing other people's assertions which are either outdated, wrong, narrow-minded or misunderstood.
However, despite this there are small nuggets of logic which you didn't quite manage to cover up; maybe you should look up some of the projects on directfb.org and see if they tickle your fancy.
Nah, Crossover costs $70 and Windows Pro costs like $200.
Of course, OpenOffice.org, the Gimp, etc cost $0. I find it so ironic that people are so adamant about paying money for simple computational needs when free alternatives exist.
So shut up and use KDE? Why are you trying to convince other people not to use their preferred desktop environment?
A failed OpenZaurus flash cannot break your Zaurus. It's impossible. So there's no need to be "brave" -- it will work. Or if it doesn't, well, you're safe. The downside is the need for a CF card to flash, and a common problem is that copying the file to the CF card on your Zaurus results in a corrupt file (since the usbdnet driver sucks so much) -- make sure to md5sum it before flashing.
A problem mentioned in the review is the horribleness of the usbdnet drivers. These work in OpenZaurus.
Not to mention, we've got a cooler website. Oh, there are other advantages too. And the feed has zillions of cool software packages.
its hard to get users to upgrade from a good or engrained product...
Try the upgrade before saying that. Unlike Apache2, the upgrade is painless. Though you MAY have to recompile your user-defined functions (which 99.9% of people don't use anyway), I'm not sure.