First impressions
on
VLC Reaches 2.1
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· Score: 5, Informative
I installed it last night and really the only thing I can say about it so far is that it seems to work the same as I'm used to. That is high praise for a new release with many new features, I think. We'll see what happens when I try to play more exotic files with multiple languages and subtitles, but so far so good.
What is really exciting to me is the claimed support for mobile platforms. That kind of support for video is something I've really missed on Android.
KDE does so many interesting things. I love modular, general purpose, and cross-platform tools that combine into a greater whole. This news item and also their work on a common desktop framework for mobile and desktop fall into that category. QT also has so much going for it.
But why then is the KDE user experience so awful?? I just can't use it. Coming from Windows for Office, web, and gaming, and GNOME2 on my servers and workstations, trying KDE is like a huge regression. It looks bad, it feels clunky, it is always broken somehow. I just don't understand why they can't get it together. Does anyone actually use it?
The symptom is "hysteria", the root cause is fear.
Social media (actually the WWW) is the communication medium. It makes the world smaller, this we know. It isn't special in it's ability to spread the "disease".
I think the problem is drivers. Not until the standard gets more use will the GPU makers add support for the new format.
Other than that, I'm sure the actual decoding work could be implemented on their hardware. Really, as long as the work is massively parallel, they can get the job done with a quickness.
The decoder is open source, with the open source encoder to follow afterwards. That doesn't mean that there isn't a proprietary encoder already available.
Okay from the summary I get that Yahoo Groups was reformatted and users don't like it. One question: WHY?
How was it changed? What about it don't they like? etc.
From TFA: "it was immediately inundated with unhappy netizens who grumbled that the overhaul was glitchy, difficult to navigate and "severely degraded".
Okay that helps a little bit. But more detail would be more helpful.
"[They changed the old] interface to one dubbed "neo" that appeared to have been quickly spewed on to the interwebs with little testing before going live"
Okay so it is glitchy. At least that will probably be worked out in a few weeks.
The first link is better, where the user lists every gripe with every feature and explains why their existing workflow was destroyed by the update. None of that made it into the summary, though. Just outrage.
These companies need the newest iPhones, Galaxies (Galaxys?), and whatever else from Moto/HTC in order to be taken seriously. No one wants to pick up a new phone that came straight out of last year.
Also stop charging for text messages. Everyone knows it's bullcrap.
Create a 2D array, like you would do in C? That's not pythonic. If you want C, then use C.
In Python you don't have to define memory before you can fill it with stuff. You plan your data structures and the interpreter manages memory. If you need default data then just go straight to writing the initializer function. Otherwise use higher level functions like append() or extend() while creating your data.
Did you read what he said? He wasn't dissing functional programming. His point was that FP features require powerful compilers. Python doesn't have that kind of compiler. Therefore the features don't have much use to Python.
By the way, I don't believe they made the print function to be intuitive. They made it because print had no reason to be a statement. Also who said that tuples are more important than arrays? Arrays are really a concept for lower-level languages. Tuples, lists, and dictionaries are higher-level concepts that might be implemented with arrays behind the scenes. Lists function similarly to how many people visualize arrays. The beauty of tuples is that they are immutable, which means that they never change and can be thought of as a single, meaningful package with its contents. In contrast, lists have to be thought of as containers that can contain unknown things that may change at any moment.
Is python really that slow? I never do anything with Python that has made me notice a slowdown.
One of the nice things about Python is the really well supported interface for C. If you have a problem that requires a computationally intensive solution, then you can put the worker code in C and wrap it in Python for the I/O and UI and glue logic.
I asked the Python 3 question and to answer Guido's question of me; I work at a large conglomerate that does a lot of defense contracting. In my area we deal with aerospace applications and so our linux systems are not Internet-facing. They are real-time systems that run simulations and data-acquisition. As you might expect, they only get upgraded when they really need it. We had a PDP-11 down in the lab until 2010.
I'm not sure why I mentioned my workplace other to demonstrate how distant Py3k can seem to be. My main concern was the apparent lack of 3.x support in the big libraries out there. PIL is a great example. Also PyPy. It seems to me that there are many users that will only upgrade when the 3rd party libraries require it.
Honestly this matters so little it seems like a forced story trying to find something to smear Zuckerberg and his buddies. The organization bought the domain from a weirdo? That's important for such a short period of time that it's already meaningless. Must be a slow news day.
Look, I don't want an Amazon monopoly of all of retail any more than the next guy, but maybe these brick-and-mortar chains deserve it. So much of the retail space has been taken over by large corporations that offer better prices than mom-and-pop stores but lack any semblance of customer service. Their employees aren't trained, and the products are exactly the same junk you find everywhere else. They just aren't a good experience.
I especially hate how they have resisted integrating with the online world. It drives me nuts when a company has both a large online presence and a brick-and-mortar presence. Even though they share the same branding and (usually) the same product selection, they function as if they are separate companies. If you have a problem and try to talk to a person at your local store, they say "we don't deal with the online stuff, they are independent from us." Well great, way to give up your ONE advantage over Amazon.
Give the customer what they want. They want the convenience of online shopping. They also want face-to-face sometimes. They blew it. Amazon's same day deliver will be close enough to bury them.
I disagree. I think the one-liners keep it easy to read. If you need more lines just make a limited-scope function. Is there some shortage on function names to choose from?
Slashdot Mirror
Suse, actually.
I installed it last night and really the only thing I can say about it so far is that it seems to work the same as I'm used to. That is high praise for a new release with many new features, I think. We'll see what happens when I try to play more exotic files with multiple languages and subtitles, but so far so good.
What is really exciting to me is the claimed support for mobile platforms. That kind of support for video is something I've really missed on Android.
KDE does so many interesting things. I love modular, general purpose, and cross-platform tools that combine into a greater whole. This news item and also their work on a common desktop framework for mobile and desktop fall into that category. QT also has so much going for it.
But why then is the KDE user experience so awful?? I just can't use it. Coming from Windows for Office, web, and gaming, and GNOME2 on my servers and workstations, trying KDE is like a huge regression. It looks bad, it feels clunky, it is always broken somehow. I just don't understand why they can't get it together. Does anyone actually use it?
No one seems to care
"Defense"
Glad I could help.
The plan isn't scary. The 2 million deaths from a rapidly spreading flu is scary. Seriously dude, do you have to be so pedantic?
That is a property tax, just like homeowners tax. It isn't taxing driving. THAT tax is on the gas.
The symptom is "hysteria", the root cause is fear.
Social media (actually the WWW) is the communication medium. It makes the world smaller, this we know. It isn't special in it's ability to spread the "disease".
I think the problem is drivers. Not until the standard gets more use will the GPU makers add support for the new format.
Other than that, I'm sure the actual decoding work could be implemented on their hardware. Really, as long as the work is massively parallel, they can get the job done with a quickness.
The decoder is open source, with the open source encoder to follow afterwards. That doesn't mean that there isn't a proprietary encoder already available.
Okay from the summary I get that Yahoo Groups was reformatted and users don't like it. One question: WHY?
How was it changed? What about it don't they like? etc.
From TFA: "it was immediately inundated with unhappy netizens who grumbled that the overhaul was glitchy, difficult to navigate and "severely degraded".
Okay that helps a little bit. But more detail would be more helpful.
"[They changed the old] interface to one dubbed "neo" that appeared to have been quickly spewed on to the interwebs with little testing before going live"
Okay so it is glitchy. At least that will probably be worked out in a few weeks.
The first link is better, where the user lists every gripe with every feature and explains why their existing workflow was destroyed by the update. None of that made it into the summary, though. Just outrage.
TL;DR - summary is bad and you should feel bad
The result in question tested the Python project's code, which is commonly known as CPython, which is the Python interpreter written in C.
I just struggle to see a situation that wouldn't be better served by a laptop in the field or a workstation back at the studio.
These companies need the newest iPhones, Galaxies (Galaxys?), and whatever else from Moto/HTC in order to be taken seriously. No one wants to pick up a new phone that came straight out of last year.
Also stop charging for text messages. Everyone knows it's bullcrap.
Those countries aren't the worlds biggest economy. Those countries didn't pioneer the Internet.
Okay, that may be so, but can we get list of highest telco/cableco profit cities? I bet USA totally rocks that list.
Create a 2D array, like you would do in C? That's not pythonic. If you want C, then use C.
In Python you don't have to define memory before you can fill it with stuff. You plan your data structures and the interpreter manages memory. If you need default data then just go straight to writing the initializer function. Otherwise use higher level functions like append() or extend() while creating your data.
Did you read what he said? He wasn't dissing functional programming. His point was that FP features require powerful compilers. Python doesn't have that kind of compiler. Therefore the features don't have much use to Python.
By the way, I don't believe they made the print function to be intuitive. They made it because print had no reason to be a statement. Also who said that tuples are more important than arrays? Arrays are really a concept for lower-level languages. Tuples, lists, and dictionaries are higher-level concepts that might be implemented with arrays behind the scenes. Lists function similarly to how many people visualize arrays. The beauty of tuples is that they are immutable, which means that they never change and can be thought of as a single, meaningful package with its contents. In contrast, lists have to be thought of as containers that can contain unknown things that may change at any moment.
With the broken indentation, would braces really have made it any easier to read? Barely.
Whether it was C code, bash, or Lisp, the editors should have used CODE blocks. That's the problem, not Python.
Is python really that slow? I never do anything with Python that has made me notice a slowdown.
One of the nice things about Python is the really well supported interface for C. If you have a problem that requires a computationally intensive solution, then you can put the worker code in C and wrap it in Python for the I/O and UI and glue logic.
I asked the Python 3 question and to answer Guido's question of me; I work at a large conglomerate that does a lot of defense contracting. In my area we deal with aerospace applications and so our linux systems are not Internet-facing. They are real-time systems that run simulations and data-acquisition. As you might expect, they only get upgraded when they really need it. We had a PDP-11 down in the lab until 2010.
I'm not sure why I mentioned my workplace other to demonstrate how distant Py3k can seem to be. My main concern was the apparent lack of 3.x support in the big libraries out there. PIL is a great example. Also PyPy. It seems to me that there are many users that will only upgrade when the 3rd party libraries require it.
Honestly this matters so little it seems like a forced story trying to find something to smear Zuckerberg and his buddies. The organization bought the domain from a weirdo? That's important for such a short period of time that it's already meaningless. Must be a slow news day.
Look, I don't want an Amazon monopoly of all of retail any more than the next guy, but maybe these brick-and-mortar chains deserve it. So much of the retail space has been taken over by large corporations that offer better prices than mom-and-pop stores but lack any semblance of customer service. Their employees aren't trained, and the products are exactly the same junk you find everywhere else. They just aren't a good experience.
I especially hate how they have resisted integrating with the online world. It drives me nuts when a company has both a large online presence and a brick-and-mortar presence. Even though they share the same branding and (usually) the same product selection, they function as if they are separate companies. If you have a problem and try to talk to a person at your local store, they say "we don't deal with the online stuff, they are independent from us." Well great, way to give up your ONE advantage over Amazon.
Give the customer what they want. They want the convenience of online shopping. They also want face-to-face sometimes. They blew it. Amazon's same day deliver will be close enough to bury them.
Agreed.
I disagree. I think the one-liners keep it easy to read. If you need more lines just make a limited-scope function. Is there some shortage on function names to choose from?