Last I heard, Apple was still planning to include some sort of command line interface for "Advanced Users" if they wanted to install it. How hard would it be to set up an option in the installer for "command line only"?
This is so completely pointless. Even hardcore loons can see the advantage to having a bunch of shell windows open at once as opposed to virtual terminals in a "text" mode. To answer your question, fullscreen apps are fine under Aqua, so there's no reason somone couldn't whip together a fullscreen shell interface.
To all the wannabe hacker types who hate Aqua: Stop acting like it is going to cramp your style. You can live in a terminal window if you want; just maximize the window. Then, as a bonus, if you really need to do something graphical, like browse the web with something other than Lynx, you can do it, no fuss. Please stop acting like simply having Aqua on your machine is going to make you unproductive. Even Linus doesn't work in a text-only mode any more. And you *will* need graphical applications now and then, even if just to look ar pr0n.
But the huge gap is gone, and I wonder why people spend so much time doing mac ports of software instead of *bsd and linux ports.
Funny comparison, really.
The Mac market is huge. It isn't as big as the PC market, yes, but that's like saying that ten million dollars is chump change because someone else has a billion dollars. There's a much different user make-up, too. Linux and bsd people tend to be fiddlers and tinkerers and idealists. Macs tend to get bought by people who don't obsess about operating systems and don't mind paying for software.
One of these links has already been posted above, but if anyone wants a well-written, easy-to-understand-but-plenty-technical introduction to why the Emotion Engine is cheap to produce and a terrible general-purpose chip, but an amazing design for high-quality low-latency 3D graphics, assuming programers can figure out how to take advantage of it...
This is wrong. The consumer level version of the chip is poor (not terrible) for general purpose use, but this is because it needs to be in a $299 device. So, for example, there's only 8K of data cache and 16K of instruction cache, and the clock speed is a "slow" 300MHz. There's no reason that both of these have to be true in high-end device. In fact, Sony has said that they plan to pushing for higher speed chips.
Hmmm...re-reading the above I find it humorous that a 300MHz chip isn't treated with reverence. Heck, that was top of the line in 1998. And when you look at the amazing PlayStation games that have been done with a 30MHz processor...
If anyone else tried this, without the name recognition, the total sum earned with be three dollars. That's always been the case with shareware. People like to think that the little guy can stick it to the man, but in fact people tend to buy what they see in stores and hear about through media outlets. They don't poke around trying to find unknowns to support.
And yet, there are still quite a few people who absolutely loathe and detest KDE. Those of you who hate KDE, could you share for us why? I'm not doubting that you have compelling reasons; I'm instead looking for some valid criticisms of KDE instead of the tired and lame "KDE looks like Windows."
I don't loathe it, I just find it...unremarkable. Years of work, effectively starting from scratch, has gone into a GUI that doesn't begin to address the views on human/computer interaction that have come out of the last ten years. There are even excellent books by Jef Raskin and Alan Cooper on the market that cover the attitude changes. 1996's Anti-Mac article, mentioned recently on Slashdot, is another. These are in addition to dozens of more scholarly papers, of course.
KDE and Gnome are solutions to the problem of "we don't have a slick desktop environment." Typically, a more reasonable approach is to figure out what it is that users are trying to accomplish and design an interface to assist with it. More and more, the real purpose of KDE seems to be as a way to configure and fiddle with KDE.
AMD's Athlon has a 200/266MHz FSB and can use DDR bandwidth. PIII has a 100/133MHz FSB and will get very little (maybe zero) gain from DDR.
We'll see. Typically, 80% or more of memory accesses are in cache. That's maybe a low number, but we'll work with it. Let's assume the DDR really doubles the bandwith. So now 20% of your application is going to be twice as fast. That's a whopping 10% speedup, which is hardly the same as doubling.
I have seen how Microsoft works from the inside. It is on par with the way any other large, corporate developer works. Some things of note:
1. Internal teams are always one or two generations ahead of what's on the market. They're focusing on "what will be" rather than "what's out there." So when somebody moans about a certain feature on Usenet, those team members know it is being worked on and will show up in a future product. This leads to a complete disassociation with the users.
2. Teams are working on project cycles that have relevance within the company, but not necessarily outside it. For example, Microsoft has a manufacturing division that , in effect, has other parts of the company as customers. You need to set up a pressing date with manufacturing, and they give you a window that you need to hit. If you miss the window, then another pre-scheduled product needs to be produced. There is pressure to push back bugs and cut features in order to make the arranged date. This is just one example. More commonly bugs and features are booted in order to make internal project milestones. Making milestones is more important than delivering a good product.
3. Developers tend to be isolated from the users. They live in an abstract world, in which they focus on what they're working on and don't really see the big picture or how certain features will be promoted. When I worked at a large company, we used to laugh at the promotional videos and commercials that they put out when we saw them at company meetings. They always made the company seem goofy and clueless. Yet that's all the public ever saw from us. They had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.
All of these items are not specific to Microsoft. They're standard practice at any medium to large company.
Congrats AMD, you guys are kicking some Intel ass!
Depends on your definition of kicking ass, I suppose. Athlons are cheaper, yes, and just a hair faster, but we're not seeing any big breakthroughs here, like x86 compatibles running in the power range of the PowerPC chips, or a major, major price drop.
In some ways, we're just seeing a pissing contest at the high end and not much to get excited about. (People who buy new video cards every three months and overclock CPUs like crazy will of course be offended.)
I hadn't heard of the anti-mac paper before, so I read the new article, then I went and read the original. Is is just me, or does the newer article come across as a strange skewing of the information in the first one? I get the impression that the author of the newer article is trying to use the anti-mac paper to support his own interface ideas, ideas which don't really seem to fit the anti-mac model at all. They sorta do, but overal there's no new information there worth reading.
The original is a classic. Definitely read it, when you find the time.
And the very worst part is that the game is now so old and outdated (I got the full windows version for free with my video card over a year ago) that nobody will buy it
Rubbish to the "old and outdated part." It looks fine, just like any other 3D game out there. 3D gaming hasn't changed all that much in the last year. Descent 3 has snazzier rendering and overall effects than games released after it, including Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament.
Visuals and bulletproof networking aside, D3 punches my "mediocre" button. The setting and theme are too generic, too tired. Descent was a game from a simpler time, when a weak concept could be carried along by anything with texture mapping. Not so any more.
If it's linux based, I can hack the crap out of it.
That's completely wrong. Linux is a kernel. The Palm could be running Linux, for all most people know (it isn't, but bear with me). All we see is the supplied interface.
When many Slashdotters hear "Linux," they immediately think about distributions and command line access and hacking up configuration files. In the case of a webpad, game console, or other similar application, Linux exists simply to provide services for the software sitting on top of it. A webpad running Linux is not some sort of portable hacker toy with Perl and gcc right there in front of you, unless the designers specifically decide to create that kind of access.
The talk about rewriting Perl in C++ is misguided. C++ is not necessarily better for all projects than C. C++ helps with large systems, yes, but can also provide more portability problems and many more traps for programmers. "Rewrite system X in pet language Y" is the standard hacker move, though it may not have any point whatsoever.
Just coming off of a large project written in C++, I'm not sure I would do it again. C++ used lightly (variable declarations in for statements), or used with full Object Oriented Design can be a boon, but is just so much rope for you to hang yourself if just look at C++ as a language with lots more features.
This is irrelevant, of course, and I see myself starting a C vs. C++ battle, so I'll shut up. The bottom line is that rewriting an existing, working, and reliable program in another language--for no real reason--doesn't make sense.
Who really cares what's under the hood? "Operating System" is an irrelevant concept for web pads, PDAs, etc. When you're administering systems, doing software development, etc., then you care. But you just don't care otherwise.
Stability? It's not like a Palm crashes all the time...
Most of us use linux not because of technical or moral reasons but because we like the interface better.
This is simply not true. Linux interfaces have been awful, oh so unimaginably awful, until recently. Now they've moved up to mediocre:) I don't mean this in a flaming way at all; I just didn't think I'd ever see someone stand up and proclaim Linux to be wonderful based on the user interfaces available for it.
Windows standardized their interface and thus restricts the user.
This is a myth, or at least we have yet to see any evidence to the contrary. Linux provides a broad, empty canvas for interface designers, yet we haven't seen anything innovative or especially slick from a usability standpoint.
I am very afraid that this flexability which linux posseses will be deystroyed by gnome/KDE. As these projects progress more and more programs which could have been implemented on the command line are implemented in gtk. Soon I won't be able to access my settings except by dialog boxes and I will once again be trapped in windows hell.
This is a classic overreaction. If you have access to a terminal window--heck, even OS X on the Mac will have this, though it won't be advertised to the general public--then you can do whatever you want.
I agree, though, in that KDE and Gnome are generally poor interfaces to standardize upon. It's not at all clear why one would choose a Linux/X/Gnome combination over, say, Windows 2000 or NT. The Linux kernel is cleaner and more stable, yes, but that doesn't matter when you put millions of lines of code on top of it. Instead of the kernel crashing, part of Gnome crashes. Better? Yes, but not something to get excited about. Perhaps what is needed here is a simpler GUI that would be a better base standard than X and a minimalist window manager.
A standardized interface means several things. It means no competition which stagnates development.
Linux GUI development is already stagnant. Years and years are spent in an effort to get the same functionality as crusty old Windows. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Microsoft, who can certainly afford to pay respected experts what they deserve, manage to move GUIs to the next level before any open source project does.
UNIX does suck. Everyone from Jamie Zawinski to Rob Pike has said this. The only way you can think it doesn't suck is if your experience is too limited. If, for example, you've only used Linux and Windows, then that classifies as limited experience, just as a programmer who's only familiar with C and C++ has limited experience.
"Suck" in this case, needs clarification. In general, no one says the Linux kernel sucks or classic terminal window mode Linux sucks. The problems have come from trying to use this as a foundation for something more all-encompassing and modern. Is this possible? Sure, but it is difficult. Microsoft and Apple had had the advantage of only trying to support one graphics subsystem, one (admittedly huge) API, and one GUI. Linux developers have to build these layers themselves, and it is hard to keep from stepping on one anothers toes. Gnome and KDE have the same DLL hell as Windows, only they're called "shared libraries" under UNIX:)
Admitting there's a problem is much better than blind zealotry.
Finally, Intel is breaking away from 33 mhz increments for its chips. It was ok when the 133 was followed by 166, with about a 20% mhz difference. But later we were seeing 833, 866, 900, etc., with differences of less than 4%. Factor in Amdahl's law, and that was a fairly useless distinction.
Still useless, unfortunately, like saying that a Corvette with 400 horsepower is a big improvement over 350. The extra 50 HP is for bragging rights and faster times on the test track, for the handful of people who really care.
Everyone is losing in these CPU speed pissing contests except Intel and AMD.
As far as things like this are concerned, I'm not really a big fan of Credit Card Companies... I would much prefer to use something like PayByCheck.com, much as Tom Smith does. They charge you less, and more people can buy your product. Sounds like a good deal to me.
That's not a smart business decision, at least not right now. The majority of people are comfortable using credit cards and would prefer them over a service they aren't familiar with. A business owner can't afford to say "I hate credit cards; I'm not going to let my customers use them."
Re:Big enough that nobody cares any more
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Maxtor's 80GB Drive
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· Score: 2
We've got 100 gigs on our video system and it's not close to being enough.
This is like saying that everyone needs a dual Alpha system because "I need to solve systems of thousands of equations." There's a difference between someone working at, say, Pixar, are Joe Linux Tinkerer (as much as Joe hates to admit it).
I bought a 6 gigabyte HD in 1998. I have a 2MB linux partition and a 4MB Windows partition. I have some big Windows apps installed, like Delphi and the Corel Draw suite, plus some kids multimedia software, and that machine gets used for both software development and graphics arts. Even so, I'm using only about a third of the space, maybe a bit more. Most of that is for operating systems and software; I'm using less than 50 MB for data files (mostly Photo Paint images).
Heck, I still have a Power Macintosh with a 350MB hard drive. It'ss used for software development, web design, email, and a maintaining a database. There's still about 160MB free.
I tend to think that most hard drives are filled with junk, like application suites of which only a few parts get used, or preinstalled software, or MP3 collections. As such, I don't see much point in them getting bigger, or at least in headlines about them getting bigger.
Arguably, Slashdot is not the useful news source it once was. It is no longer News for Nerds, but a Weblog with a Repetitive Agenda. Every time Microsoft does *anything* it gets a Slashdot headline. I'm not sure what the intention is. To show how big and dumb Microsoft is? To make Linux zealots even more full infuriated? Maybe it's true after all that the best thing about Linux is that it's not from Microsoft...
The other Slashdot favorite is "Misinterpreted Licenses and Other Knee-Jerk Responses to Corporate Moves." Lets see, we've had a mininterpretation of the Borland C++ license. Then there was the recent report of Corel selling off it's graphics assets, which turned out to be clip art libraries. Must I continue?
Then there are the attempts to rile the masses by telling them their freedom of speech has been taken away, though we're almost always talking about dumb trivia: "Hustler will be placed on a rack behind the counter instead on the bottom shelf between Pokemon World and Ranger Rick.
Umm. How are these games aimed at YOUNG MALES specifically? Also, these games are rated. Both Xatrix's "Kingpin" and Raven's "Soldier of Fortune" are rated by the ESRB.
Young male, in the game industry sense, is up to 25.
As much as I hate to admit this, some companies in the game industry have seemingly been working toward making regulations like this occur. Some notables in this regard include Xatrix (Kingpin), Raven (Soldier of Fortune), and Virgin (Thrill Kill, which was cancelled). With all of the anti-game press swirling about, releasing games that use *extreme* violence as entertainment for younger males is completely irresponsible. Note that I'm not referring to Quake-style frags here, but games that go to great lengths to make horrible, realistic deaths a reward for the player. Did the developers really expect these games to go unnoticed in the current video game crackdown? It's like an artist, protesting the objection to public funding of weird fetish art, taking a crap on the steps of the white house and claiming to be artistically inspirred.
Yes, freedom of speech, blah, blah, blah, but repeatedly trying to push your luck is just plain stupid. I don't know if the developers of the aforementioned games were trying to profit from controversy, or if it was just an example of the juvenile attitude that the game biz is getting to be known for, but it showed poor judgement.
Misguided anti-Aqua sentiment
on
MacOSX and X11
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· Score: 4
The main reason that people run X is not because it is great or beautiful or a wonderful piece of engineering, because it is none of those. It is because it is the only real standard for accessing bitmapped displays under UNIX/Linux. Apple has finally been able to break away from X, and I am thankful. You can put down Aqua all you want, and it seems many people get off on this, but all those people really need is (1) a terminal window, (2) maybe a different file browser. Just because you don't like the idea of icons and pretty pictures and such is no reason to argue for ugly Tk applications and slower video performance.
I see many post along the lines of "Everything causes cancer so who cares!" I realize that's the expected viewpoint from students, but there are different types of risk. Monitor and house wiring EMF has been an on and off issue; studies aren't clear one way or the other. Other so-called risks, like peanut butter causing cancer, are also peculiar, because how much peanut butter does one really eat in a lifetime? Occasionally, though, something really bad gets out into the mainstream. For a long time it was standard medical practice to X-ray pregnant mothers to check on the state of the fetus (this was before sonograms). This went on for ten or more years before anyone questioned it. Now we're horrified. How could we have done that?
There is a possibility that the risk of cell phones is more than just background noise. We should wait and see. We we shouldn't just ignore it if the results are bad.
Slashdot Mirror
Last I heard, Apple was still planning to include some sort of command line interface for "Advanced Users" if they wanted to install it. How hard would it be to set up an option in the installer for "command line only"?
This is so completely pointless. Even hardcore loons can see the advantage to having a bunch of shell windows open at once as opposed to virtual terminals in a "text" mode. To answer your question, fullscreen apps are fine under Aqua, so there's no reason somone couldn't whip together a fullscreen shell interface.
To all the wannabe hacker types who hate Aqua: Stop acting like it is going to cramp your style. You can live in a terminal window if you want; just maximize the window. Then, as a bonus, if you really need to do something graphical, like browse the web with something other than Lynx, you can do it, no fuss. Please stop acting like simply having Aqua on your machine is going to make you unproductive. Even Linus doesn't work in a text-only mode any more. And you *will* need graphical applications now and then, even if just to look ar pr0n.
But the huge gap is gone, and I wonder why people spend so much time doing mac ports of software instead of *bsd and linux ports.
Funny comparison, really.
The Mac market is huge. It isn't as big as the PC market, yes, but that's like saying that ten million dollars is chump change because someone else has a billion dollars. There's a much different user make-up, too. Linux and bsd people tend to be fiddlers and tinkerers and idealists. Macs tend to get bought by people who don't obsess about operating systems and don't mind paying for software.
One of these links has already been posted above, but if anyone wants a well-written, easy-to-understand-but-plenty-technical introduction to why the Emotion Engine is cheap to produce and a terrible general-purpose chip, but an amazing design for high-quality low-latency 3D graphics, assuming programers can figure out how to take advantage of it...
This is wrong. The consumer level version of the chip is poor (not terrible) for general purpose use, but this is because it needs to be in a $299 device. So, for example, there's only 8K of data cache and 16K of instruction cache, and the clock speed is a "slow" 300MHz. There's no reason that both of these have to be true in high-end device. In fact, Sony has said that they plan to pushing for higher speed chips.
Hmmm...re-reading the above I find it humorous that a 300MHz chip isn't treated with reverence. Heck, that was top of the line in 1998. And when you look at the amazing PlayStation games that have been done with a 30MHz processor...
If anyone else tried this, without the name recognition, the total sum earned with be three dollars. That's always been the case with shareware. People like to think that the little guy can stick it to the man, but in fact people tend to buy what they see in stores and hear about through media outlets. They don't poke around trying to find unknowns to support.
I have to disagree with this. In general the interfaces you're talking about belong to applications, not the desktop.
If you've read the references I cited, you'll discover a few things:
1. the separation of a GUI into dekstop and applications is generally considered to be a mistake
2. the entire desktop metaphor was off the mark is outdated
And yet, there are still quite a few people who absolutely loathe and detest KDE. Those of you who hate KDE, could you share for us why? I'm not doubting that you have compelling reasons; I'm instead looking for some valid criticisms of KDE instead of the tired and lame "KDE looks like Windows."
I don't loathe it, I just find it...unremarkable. Years of work, effectively starting from scratch, has gone into a GUI that doesn't begin to address the views on human/computer interaction that have come out of the last ten years. There are even excellent books by Jef Raskin and Alan Cooper on the market that cover the attitude changes. 1996's Anti-Mac article, mentioned recently on Slashdot, is another. These are in addition to dozens of more scholarly papers, of course.
KDE and Gnome are solutions to the problem of "we don't have a slick desktop environment." Typically, a more reasonable approach is to figure out what it is that users are trying to accomplish and design an interface to assist with it. More and more, the real purpose of KDE seems to be as a way to configure and fiddle with KDE.
DDR doubles potential memory bandwidth.
AMD's Athlon has a 200/266MHz FSB and can use DDR bandwidth. PIII has a 100/133MHz FSB and will get very little (maybe zero) gain from DDR.
We'll see. Typically, 80% or more of memory accesses are in cache. That's maybe a low number, but we'll work with it. Let's assume the DDR really doubles the bandwith. So now 20% of your application is going to be twice as fast. That's a whopping 10% speedup, which is hardly the same as doubling.
I have seen how Microsoft works from the inside. It is on par with the way any other large, corporate developer works. Some things of note:
1. Internal teams are always one or two generations ahead of what's on the market. They're focusing on "what will be" rather than "what's out there." So when somebody moans about a certain feature on Usenet, those team members know it is being worked on and will show up in a future product. This leads to a complete disassociation with the users.
2. Teams are working on project cycles that have relevance within the company, but not necessarily outside it. For example, Microsoft has a manufacturing division that , in effect, has other parts of the company as customers. You need to set up a pressing date with manufacturing, and they give you a window that you need to hit. If you miss the window, then another pre-scheduled product needs to be produced. There is pressure to push back bugs and cut features in order to make the arranged date. This is just one example. More commonly bugs and features are booted in order to make internal project milestones. Making milestones is more important than delivering a good product.
3. Developers tend to be isolated from the users. They live in an abstract world, in which they focus on what they're working on and don't really see the big picture or how certain features will be promoted. When I worked at a large company, we used to laugh at the promotional videos and commercials that they put out when we saw them at company meetings. They always made the company seem goofy and clueless. Yet that's all the public ever saw from us. They had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.
All of these items are not specific to Microsoft. They're standard practice at any medium to large company.
Congrats AMD, you guys are kicking some Intel ass!
Depends on your definition of kicking ass, I suppose. Athlons are cheaper, yes, and just a hair faster, but we're not seeing any big breakthroughs here, like x86 compatibles running in the power range of the PowerPC chips, or a major, major price drop.
In some ways, we're just seeing a pissing contest at the high end and not much to get excited about. (People who buy new video cards every three months and overclock CPUs like crazy will of course be offended.)
I hadn't heard of the anti-mac paper before, so I read the new article, then I went and read the original. Is is just me, or does the newer article come across as a strange skewing of the information in the first one? I get the impression that the author of the newer article is trying to use the anti-mac paper to support his own interface ideas, ideas which don't really seem to fit the anti-mac model at all. They sorta do, but overal there's no new information there worth reading.
The original is a classic. Definitely read it, when you find the time.
And the very worst part is that the game is now so old and outdated (I got the full windows version for free with my video card over a year ago) that nobody will buy it
Rubbish to the "old and outdated part." It looks fine, just like any other 3D game out there. 3D gaming hasn't changed all that much in the last year. Descent 3 has snazzier rendering and overall effects than games released after it, including Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament.
Visuals and bulletproof networking aside, D3 punches my "mediocre" button. The setting and theme are too generic, too tired. Descent was a game from a simpler time, when a weak concept could be carried along by anything with texture mapping. Not so any more.
If it's linux based, I can hack the crap out of it.
That's completely wrong. Linux is a kernel. The Palm could be running Linux, for all most people know (it isn't, but bear with me). All we see is the supplied interface.
When many Slashdotters hear "Linux," they immediately think about distributions and command line access and hacking up configuration files. In the case of a webpad, game console, or other similar application, Linux exists simply to provide services for the software sitting on top of it. A webpad running Linux is not some sort of portable hacker toy with Perl and gcc right there in front of you, unless the designers specifically decide to create that kind of access.
The talk about rewriting Perl in C++ is misguided. C++ is not necessarily better for all projects than C. C++ helps with large systems, yes, but can also provide more portability problems and many more traps for programmers. "Rewrite system X in pet language Y" is the standard hacker move, though it may not have any point whatsoever.
Just coming off of a large project written in C++, I'm not sure I would do it again. C++ used lightly (variable declarations in for statements), or used with full Object Oriented Design can be a boon, but is just so much rope for you to hang yourself if just look at C++ as a language with lots more features.
This is irrelevant, of course, and I see myself starting a C vs. C++ battle, so I'll shut up. The bottom line is that rewriting an existing, working, and reliable program in another language--for no real reason--doesn't make sense.
Who really cares what's under the hood? "Operating System" is an irrelevant concept for web pads, PDAs, etc. When you're administering systems, doing software development, etc., then you care. But you just don't care otherwise.
Stability? It's not like a Palm crashes all the time...
Most of us use linux not because of technical or moral reasons but because we like the interface better.
:) I don't mean this in a flaming way at all; I just didn't think I'd ever see someone stand up and proclaim Linux to be wonderful based on the user interfaces available for it.
This is simply not true. Linux interfaces have been awful, oh so unimaginably awful, until recently. Now they've moved up to mediocre
Windows standardized their interface and thus restricts the user.
This is a myth, or at least we have yet to see any evidence to the contrary. Linux provides a broad, empty canvas for interface designers, yet we haven't seen anything innovative or especially slick from a usability standpoint.
I am very afraid that this flexability which linux posseses will be deystroyed by gnome/KDE. As these projects progress more and more programs which could have been implemented on the command line are implemented in gtk. Soon I won't be able to access my settings except by dialog boxes and I will once again be trapped in windows hell.
This is a classic overreaction. If you have access to a terminal window--heck, even OS X on the Mac will have this, though it won't be advertised to the general public--then you can do whatever you want.
I agree, though, in that KDE and Gnome are generally poor interfaces to standardize upon. It's not at all clear why one would choose a Linux/X/Gnome combination over, say, Windows 2000 or NT. The Linux kernel is cleaner and more stable, yes, but that doesn't matter when you put millions of lines of code on top of it. Instead of the kernel crashing, part of Gnome crashes. Better? Yes, but not something to get excited about. Perhaps what is needed here is a simpler GUI that would be a better base standard than X and a minimalist window manager.
A standardized interface means several things. It means no competition which stagnates development.
Linux GUI development is already stagnant. Years and years are spent in an effort to get the same functionality as crusty old Windows. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Microsoft, who can certainly afford to pay respected experts what they deserve, manage to move GUIs to the next level before any open source project does.
UNIX does suck. Everyone from Jamie Zawinski to Rob Pike has said this. The only way you can think it doesn't suck is if your experience is too limited. If, for example, you've only used Linux and Windows, then that classifies as limited experience, just as a programmer who's only familiar with C and C++ has limited experience.
:)
"Suck" in this case, needs clarification. In general, no one says the Linux kernel sucks or classic terminal window mode Linux sucks. The problems have come from trying to use this as a foundation for something more all-encompassing and modern. Is this possible? Sure, but it is difficult. Microsoft and Apple had had the advantage of only trying to support one graphics subsystem, one (admittedly huge) API, and one GUI. Linux developers have to build these layers themselves, and it is hard to keep from stepping on one anothers toes. Gnome and KDE have the same DLL hell as Windows, only they're called "shared libraries" under UNIX
Admitting there's a problem is much better than blind zealotry.
Finally, Intel is breaking away from 33 mhz increments for its chips. It was ok when the 133 was followed by 166, with about a 20% mhz difference. But later we were seeing 833, 866, 900, etc., with differences of less than 4%. Factor in Amdahl's law, and that was a fairly useless distinction.
Still useless, unfortunately, like saying that a Corvette with 400 horsepower is a big improvement over 350. The extra 50 HP is for bragging rights and faster times on the test track, for the handful of people who really care.
Everyone is losing in these CPU speed pissing contests except Intel and AMD.
As far as things like this are concerned, I'm not really a big fan of Credit Card Companies... I would much prefer to use something like PayByCheck.com, much as Tom Smith does. They charge you less, and more people can buy your product. Sounds like a good deal to me.
That's not a smart business decision, at least not right now. The majority of people are comfortable using credit cards and would prefer them over a service they aren't familiar with. A business owner can't afford to say "I hate credit cards; I'm not going to let my customers use them."
We've got 100 gigs on our video system and it's not close to being enough.
This is like saying that everyone needs a dual Alpha system because "I need to solve systems of thousands of equations." There's a difference between someone working at, say, Pixar, are Joe Linux Tinkerer (as much as Joe hates to admit it).
I bought a 6 gigabyte HD in 1998. I have a 2MB linux partition and a 4MB Windows partition. I have some big Windows apps installed, like Delphi and the Corel Draw suite, plus some kids multimedia software, and that machine gets used for both software development and graphics arts. Even so, I'm using only about a third of the space, maybe a bit more. Most of that is for operating systems and software; I'm using less than 50 MB for data files (mostly Photo Paint images).
Heck, I still have a Power Macintosh with a 350MB hard drive. It'ss used for software development, web design, email, and a maintaining a database. There's still about 160MB free.
I tend to think that most hard drives are filled with junk, like application suites of which only a few parts get used, or preinstalled software, or MP3 collections. As such, I don't see much point in them getting bigger, or at least in headlines about them getting bigger.
Arguably, Slashdot is not the useful news source it once was. It is no longer News for Nerds, but a Weblog with a Repetitive Agenda. Every time Microsoft does *anything* it gets a Slashdot headline. I'm not sure what the intention is. To show how big and dumb Microsoft is? To make Linux zealots even more full infuriated? Maybe it's true after all that the best thing about Linux is that it's not from Microsoft...
The other Slashdot favorite is "Misinterpreted Licenses and Other Knee-Jerk Responses to Corporate Moves." Lets see, we've had a mininterpretation of the Borland C++ license. Then there was the recent report of Corel selling off it's graphics assets, which turned out to be clip art libraries. Must I continue?
Then there are the attempts to rile the masses by telling them their freedom of speech has been taken away, though we're almost always talking about dumb trivia: "Hustler will be placed on a rack behind the counter instead on the bottom shelf between Pokemon World and Ranger Rick.
All in all, it's kind of silly.
Umm. How are these games aimed at YOUNG MALES specifically? Also, these games are rated. Both Xatrix's "Kingpin" and Raven's "Soldier of Fortune" are rated by the ESRB.
Young male, in the game industry sense, is up to 25.
As much as I hate to admit this, some companies in the game industry have seemingly been working toward making regulations like this occur. Some notables in this regard include Xatrix (Kingpin), Raven (Soldier of Fortune), and Virgin (Thrill Kill, which was cancelled). With all of the anti-game press swirling about, releasing games that use *extreme* violence as entertainment for younger males is completely irresponsible. Note that I'm not referring to Quake-style frags here, but games that go to great lengths to make horrible, realistic deaths a reward for the player. Did the developers really expect these games to go unnoticed in the current video game crackdown? It's like an artist, protesting the objection to public funding of weird fetish art, taking a crap on the steps of the white house and claiming to be artistically inspirred.
Yes, freedom of speech, blah, blah, blah, but repeatedly trying to push your luck is just plain stupid. I don't know if the developers of the aforementioned games were trying to profit from controversy, or if it was just an example of the juvenile attitude that the game biz is getting to be known for, but it showed poor judgement.
The main reason that people run X is not because it is great or beautiful or a wonderful piece of engineering, because it is none of those. It is because it is the only real standard for accessing bitmapped displays under UNIX/Linux. Apple has finally been able to break away from X, and I am thankful. You can put down Aqua all you want, and it seems many people get off on this, but all those people really need is (1) a terminal window, (2) maybe a different file browser. Just because you don't like the idea of icons and pretty pictures and such is no reason to argue for ugly Tk applications and slower video performance.
I see many post along the lines of "Everything causes cancer so who cares!" I realize that's the expected viewpoint from students, but there are different types of risk. Monitor and house wiring EMF has been an on and off issue; studies aren't clear one way or the other. Other so-called risks, like peanut butter causing cancer, are also peculiar, because how much peanut butter does one really eat in a lifetime? Occasionally, though, something really bad gets out into the mainstream. For a long time it was standard medical practice to X-ray pregnant mothers to check on the state of the fetus (this was before sonograms). This went on for ten or more years before anyone questioned it. Now we're horrified. How could we have done that?
There is a possibility that the risk of cell phones is more than just background noise. We should wait and see. We we shouldn't just ignore it if the results are bad.