``Linux distros need to strive to be better than Windows. They shouldn't be attempting to duplicate the Windows desktop (something early versions of both KDE and Gnome were, IMO, quite guilty of); they shouldn't be attempting to simply improve upon Windows; they should be attempting to create a unique, best-of-breed solution that users will actually be excited about running (like what Apple is doing with OS X).''
I think it does that, and I think _that_ is the real strength of Linux (and, actually, other free *nixes). As far as duplicating the commercial vendors goes, of course the open source world will always be behind. This is necessarily true. Still, people will be looking for the same functionality in the same places, and will complain when they don't find it. What they are missing is that the Linux world has so much *more* to offer besides duplicating the functionality of proprietary software in Free software.
Forget about MS Office for a second. Forget about the latest edition of your favorite Windows-only game for a second. What do you really want to do with your computer? Do you want to run these programs, or do you want to obtain the results that these programs allow you to obtain (i.e. getting your work done, or having fun, or both)? If it is the former, your _only_ option is to actually use these exact programs. But I think that isn't actually what you want. What you want is not actually using specific software, but the results of using the software. And this, Linux can give you in so many more ways than Windows can.
Want to write a paper? You can do that in MS Word (even on Linux). Or you could use OpenOffice.org Writer. And that's where most people will stop. But there is so much more! For example, you could write your paper in LaTeX using a text editor. This is a completely different approach, and, if you only know MS Word, it will require a significant effort to master it. However, that doesn't mean it's not a good idea. I use LaTeX, and I always get complimented on how good my papers look. And I didn't have to do anything to make it that way: I just typed the text, LaTeX made it beautiful. And got all the numbering and references right (something MS Word still gets wrong...wtf?) I use LaTeX because it makes my work _easier_.
Want to install software? You could download the source code and compile it. Or you could go to RPMSeek or whatever and search until you find the right package for your distribution, all its dependencies, and install them all. Or you could use a distro like Debian where you just use apt-get (or Synaptic, if you like GUIs) and it will fetch the package and all its dependencies _and_ provide you with upgrades together with the rest of your system. Ever update _all_ the software on your Windows machine with a single click or command?
Wonder why Linux users always seem to use the command line? Perhaps it is because there aren't any GUIs on Linux. Or perhaps there are GUIs, but not for what these users happen to be doing. Or it could just be that they use the command line because they find it convenient. Ever renamed a whole bunch of files? Thrown out old files, but not new ones, from a directory? Looked up the IP address associated with a certain hostname? Explained to someone how to navigate, through several screens, to a certain field where they had to make a change to some setting? Sometimes, the command line actually is quicker, more powerful, or simply easier.
Ever had the same operating system you work with on your desktop run on an embedded device (say, a wireless router)? Ever upgraded from one Windows release to another, updating all your installed applications in the process, with a single command? Ever experimented with different windowing systems, for example, ones that start up in a blink of the eye, that can be controlled solely using the keyboard, or that didn't have any overlapping windows? Ever trimmed down the options a program gave you to just the ones you used, by commenting them out in the source code and recompiling? Ever ad
It does not surprise me at all. In fact, I think the situation with North Korea was resolved diplomatically exactly _because_ there was real, legitimate concern they might actually be able to do serious damage.
1. Security. Security is probably the largest actualy _problem_ facing the IT industry. Where in the past security issues could be ignored as chances were security breaches wouldn't happen to _you_, nowadays the situation is different. We've gotten to the point where everything that _can_ be exploited _will_ be exploited. If they're not after your sensitive information, they'll break into your computer to use it for spamming, hosting malware, staging attacks on other systems, or any number of other uses you don't want your computer to be put to.
Linux (and open source in general) has a reputation for being more secure than certain alternatives, but I feel this is largely undeserved. Security is not getting the attention it demands, development continues to be done largely in unsafe languages, and plenty of vulnerabilities are published on a regular basis. If you watch your log files, you will see that attacks (and I'm not just talking mindless attacks aimed at MS software) are also performed on a regular basis, too. It's only a matter of time before the detractors of Linux and open source will be all over the media proclaiming the failures of the open source model, with high-profile compromises of Linux systems for ammo.
2. Modularity. If you've ever tried your hand at developing kernel modules, or even if you have enough experience compiling kernels, you will know that Linux is a mess. Lots of modules link against symbols in other modules, APIs keep changing, and, generally, what works today might work tomorrow, but the only thing that is certain is that it will break at some point. And documentation? Well, it may be there, but if it is, it's often out of date and incorrect.
Some efforts are being made to modularize Linux and provide stable APIs (see, for example, FUSE). This is good. We need more of that.
Ideally, I'd like there to be a single, small and stable interface that modules can use to get all their work done. By using this interface (instead of directly linking to kernel symbols, as is currently common), modules can truly isolate themselves from the rest of Linux and not have to be rewritten and recompiled quite as often. It would also open the door to modules being implemented in userspace and in different (safe!) programming languages. Perhaps, one day, we can apt-get install the new wireless driver, and know that it doesn't contain any buffer overrun vulnerabilities...
3. Parallelism. I believe we are at the brink of a wave of innovation in the realm of parallel computing. A lot of research has been done already, but most programming is still stuck in the sequential imperative paradigm. As far as I know, Linux does a pretty decent job, compared to the competition, when it comes to parallelism, but there is still a lot of room for improvement, too. I expect most of the gain to actually come from applications and not from the kernel, but the kernel can help, too...by better exploiting parallelism itself, and also by providing some necessary support and information to userland. Computers with multiple cores will soon be everywhere...let's take advantage of this to the maximum extent feasible!
Hahahahaha! That sounds so sensible I'm sure it's not going to happen.
Besides, by all appearances, it seems that the Bush administration actually wants to be at war. And they have good reasons for it, too. After all, war provides excuses for many things, including funneling money into your favored companies (Haliburton, anyone?), grabbing more power (Bush is now Commander in Chief, also see signing statements), and cutting funding for programs that don't benefit your friends (after all, war is _expensive_). "Mission accomplished", indeed.
Re:Does it run on (Net||Open)BSD or Solaris yet?
on
Wine 0.9.44 Released
·
· Score: 1
``Btw, I'm aware that OpenBSD's port of WINE dates from 1999, just another sign that BSD is dying, I guess!''
Or it could just mean that the demographic that runs OpenBSD (security conscious people, I'd imagine) isn't interested in running Windows apps.
``My instinct is that we should welcome everyone, everywhere, but I'm sure some in Washington worry that this looks like helping an 'Axis of Evil' country make advanced weapons.''
Is anyone still taking these guys seriously? I mean, the "Axis of Evil" was coined at the time when the whole cast was performing a play where they convinced the USAmerican public that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and posed a great threat to the USA. Now that has been exposed for the load of bollocks many of us already saw it for at the time. The whole "Axis of Evil" concept was invented to scare the American public into thinking there was a conspiracy against them, but, in all the time since then, none of the countries on this supposed axis have actually attacked the USA. The only aggressor in this whole stage play has been the USA itself, with the demagogues leading the violence somehow escaping scrutiny. Sure, Iraqis are killing US soldiers _now_, but, well, can you blame them, after said soldiers plunged their country into an anarchy where it's news if there is a day _without_ bombings? And the same guys who came up with the "Axis of Evil" told you that the US soldiers would be received as heroes and bring peace and stability to Iraq.
And now you are saying that X is a good idea, but we'd better not do it because the "Axis of Evil" guys may not like it? I'm not saying the idea is good and you should do it, but _not_ doing it because of those demagogues seems about as bad an idea as they get. They've done enough damage already!
It makes me happy that someone is still catering to those who realize they don't need more CPU power and would rather, say, save money, or save the environment.
``The next question is, of course, (1) is there any power-efficient hard disk, and (2) is there any way to make sure the disk will not be spinned up more then once a few hours.''
(1) Yes. Take a look at 2.5" drives used in laptops, for example. You could also use flash instead of an actual disk. Having done that myself, I must give you a word of warning: don't do flash+usb on Linux. It will hang because of I/O errors every few days. I believe this is due to there being a hardcoded limit on the number of writes somewhere in the Linux drivers involved in this, but it could also be the flaky hardware (VIA SP8000E, never buy that one).
(2) Yes. Run off a ramdisk, and just write changes to your real disk every few hours. Puppy Linux does something like this.
Another thing you will want to look at are efficient power supplies (particularly, ones that are efficient at the low power draw of your machine).
Finally, this being about VIA, you will have to be careful with enabling CPU frequency scaling. The board I have is known to crash when the frequency is changed too often.
``Via says its chip draws a minimum of 0.1 Watts, when idle, and a maximum of 1 Watt, making it a great candidate for consumer electronics devices such as UMPCs, PVRs, and such."''
Of course, in consumer electronics devices, you could just use any kind of MIPS or ARM or whatever other CPU you want, and have even lower power usage and/or better performance. It's not like you're gonna be running Windows on these devices, anyway, which is pretty much the only reason you would need an x86 in my book.
``It means that this void is caused by some factor not previously observed or taken into account in simulations, i.e. "If these simulations were 100% correct, something like this couldn't occur."''
Yes, exactly. And the conclusion that follows from that is that your model is not correct, not that what you observe is not normal.
``I've worked in multiple extremely super-scaled applications (including ones sustaining 70,000 connections at any one time, 10,000 new connections each minute, and 15,000 concurrent throttled file transfers at any one time - all in one application instance on one machine).''
I'm interested in what software (OS, programming language, etc.) you used. Would you tell me?
``However, there are valid reasons why very dangerous things are illegal.''
Most drugs aren't actually very dangerous.
That is, unless you obtain them from people with unknown reputations who care more about making as much money as possible without getting caught then about delivering a quality product.
Same for being a danger to society. Most drugs don't actually turn people into raving, murdering madmen.
However, making drugs illegal means that (A) suppliers (and, possibly, users) will be criminals and (B) the drugs will be more expensive, which makes users take more money out of the legal circulation and funnel it into crime, and also raises profits for suppliers to levels where violence and even murder become more likely.
I wasn't alive during the Prohibition, but I have been told that it caused crime, violence, and alcohol abuse to skyrocket. Now, there are two important differences between alcohol and most illicit drugs. First, alcohol is and was widely used. Secondly, alcohol actually causes more problems just by itself (without society-imposed extras) than most drugs. So lifting the ban on many drugs is not exactly comparable to lifting the ban on alcohol. However, the Prohibition is a good example of how making drugs illegal _could_ amplify the problem. We should look seriously at whether it wouldn't be beneficial to lift some bans. Most importantly, we should get some real information, instead of the misinformation we have now (drug research is regulated pretty much in such a way that only research that shows currently illegal drugs as very dangerous can be performed...sure, there's research, but it will never show us our policy is wrong, because we set the rules to bring about the desired outcome).
``That's great but my Pentium 1 - 133Mhz CPU could play MP3s. The tiny 'couple mW' CPU in the ipod shuffle can play MP3s. You expect me to believe that a modern computer is having CPU contention issues over the processing power to play a MP3?''
Yes, actually. See, the thing is, desktop CPUs may be ridiculously fast, but they only run at full speed under ideal conditions. If the conditions are not ideal, their performance can be reduced by orders of magnitude. Ideal conditions are that instructions are in the cache and branches are predicted correctly, and data is either in registers or in cache. Context switches, particularly those due to hardware interrupts, are fatal to performance, because they cause unpredictable control flow and are likely to also cause cache misses. This will cause the CPU to throw away a lot of work it had already done, and probably causes it to wait for data from main meomry for several cycles until it can continue its work.
Now, I don't know how Windows handles sound and networking, but I'm willing to bet it involves context switches. Enough of these and the system basically spends all it's time telling the CPU "that work you've just done, throw it away, and wait until we give you some new work". In particular, if interrupts are generated to notify the system of incoming network packets, a fast link can be used to bring the system to its knees (which is why modern *nix systems are often configured to use polling instead of interrupts for networking).
As some other posters have remarked, the reason the network performance slows down is probably that audio playback is given higher priority. Imagine that the system is being interrupted all the time to handle network packets. Now you start playing audio, and the audio is of such a high priority that it is allowed to interrupt the network packet handling. Suddenly, there isn't _one_ agent telling the poor CPU to throw away what it had done and wait for further instructions, there are two!
I'm also willing to bet that Windows interrupt handling is slow, and so is its scheduler.
With all this, your system starts to look an awful lot like a Vogon bureaucracy, where everything the system does has to be signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
``Even with the bloatware that is know as Vista...playing a MP3 can't need more power than opening Excel or Word.''
The reason Excel and Word take so long to open has little to do with the CPU and everything with the memory hierachy. There is lots of slow I/O involved, and probably numerous context switches, as well. In a sense, it's not so different from the reason playing sound or handling network packets is slow. However, there is one important difference: once your office app is up and running, it should generate few interrupts and context switches and little I/O. The same is not true for audio and networking.
``Q: India is one of the major producers of software engineers, yet we don't contribute much to the Linux domain. What do you think is keeping Indians from becoming proactive on that front? How do you feel we could encourage Indians to get involved and contribute heavily? You have a fan following in India; could your iconic image be used to inspire enthusiasts? -- Bhuvaneswaran Arumugam.
Linus: This is actually a very hard question for me to answer. Getting into open source is such a complicated combination of both infrastructure (Internet access, education, you name it), flow of information and simply culture that I can't even begin to guess what the biggest stumbling block could be.''
My guess is it's because the _bulk_ of Indian software engineers are being raised on Microsoft technology (the fact that it's Microsoft is irrelevant here; what matters is that it isn't Linux and doesn't resemble Linux). I don't actually know that this is the case, but I suspect it. I've spoken to a number of people from various parts of the world that aren't Europe or North America, and the picture I get is mostly the same: virtually everybody who uses a computer uses (cheap or pirated) Windows, if you take classes in CS you are taught Microsoft tools, and, at work, you use Windows. It's like nothing else exists. Why would you contribute to Linux, coming from such an environment?
Also, I know for a fact that a lot of people in India get trained on Java. That's yet another platform that isn't Linux and, even if it's more like Linux than Microsoft's platform is, it's still different in important ways. Besides, Java can run under Linux...but that's not what usually happens.
It's actually worse than you describe. Outlook not only defaults to top-posting, there is no way to change it and it's virtually impossible to bottom post using it, because it will quote everything belowe the "Original message" line, including your reply.
If I sound angry, it's because I am. Really, really angry. They are FORCING people to do things the wrong way. #@-%]@-*#&$#--%&%#EOAto@*$*$]#&
Slashdot Mirror
``Linux distros need to strive to be better than Windows. They shouldn't be attempting to duplicate the Windows desktop (something early versions of both KDE and Gnome were, IMO, quite guilty of); they shouldn't be attempting to simply improve upon Windows; they should be attempting to create a unique, best-of-breed solution that users will actually be excited about running (like what Apple is doing with OS X).''
I think it does that, and I think _that_ is the real strength of Linux (and, actually, other free *nixes). As far as duplicating the commercial vendors goes, of course the open source world will always be behind. This is necessarily true. Still, people will be looking for the same functionality in the same places, and will complain when they don't find it. What they are missing is that the Linux world has so much *more* to offer besides duplicating the functionality of proprietary software in Free software.
Forget about MS Office for a second. Forget about the latest edition of your favorite Windows-only game for a second. What do you really want to do with your computer? Do you want to run these programs, or do you want to obtain the results that these programs allow you to obtain (i.e. getting your work done, or having fun, or both)? If it is the former, your _only_ option is to actually use these exact programs. But I think that isn't actually what you want. What you want is not actually using specific software, but the results of using the software. And this, Linux can give you in so many more ways than Windows can.
Want to write a paper? You can do that in MS Word (even on Linux). Or you could use OpenOffice.org Writer. And that's where most people will stop. But there is so much more! For example, you could write your paper in LaTeX using a text editor. This is a completely different approach, and, if you only know MS Word, it will require a significant effort to master it. However, that doesn't mean it's not a good idea. I use LaTeX, and I always get complimented on how good my papers look. And I didn't have to do anything to make it that way: I just typed the text, LaTeX made it beautiful. And got all the numbering and references right (something MS Word still gets wrong...wtf?) I use LaTeX because it makes my work _easier_.
Want to install software? You could download the source code and compile it. Or you could go to RPMSeek or whatever and search until you find the right package for your distribution, all its dependencies, and install them all. Or you could use a distro like Debian where you just use apt-get (or Synaptic, if you like GUIs) and it will fetch the package and all its dependencies _and_ provide you with upgrades together with the rest of your system. Ever update _all_ the software on your Windows machine with a single click or command?
Wonder why Linux users always seem to use the command line? Perhaps it is because there aren't any GUIs on Linux. Or perhaps there are GUIs, but not for what these users happen to be doing. Or it could just be that they use the command line because they find it convenient. Ever renamed a whole bunch of files? Thrown out old files, but not new ones, from a directory? Looked up the IP address associated with a certain hostname? Explained to someone how to navigate, through several screens, to a certain field where they had to make a change to some setting? Sometimes, the command line actually is quicker, more powerful, or simply easier.
Ever had the same operating system you work with on your desktop run on an embedded device (say, a wireless router)? Ever upgraded from one Windows release to another, updating all your installed applications in the process, with a single command? Ever experimented with different windowing systems, for example, ones that start up in a blink of the eye, that can be controlled solely using the keyboard, or that didn't have any overlapping windows? Ever trimmed down the options a program gave you to just the ones you used, by commenting them out in the source code and recompiling? Ever ad
It does not surprise me at all. In fact, I think the situation with North Korea was resolved diplomatically exactly _because_ there was real, legitimate concern they might actually be able to do serious damage.
Three things, in the order I thought of them:
1. Security. Security is probably the largest actualy _problem_ facing the IT industry. Where in the past security issues could be ignored as chances were security breaches wouldn't happen to _you_, nowadays the situation is different. We've gotten to the point where everything that _can_ be exploited _will_ be exploited. If they're not after your sensitive information, they'll break into your computer to use it for spamming, hosting malware, staging attacks on other systems, or any number of other uses you don't want your computer to be put to.
Linux (and open source in general) has a reputation for being more secure than certain alternatives, but I feel this is largely undeserved. Security is not getting the attention it demands, development continues to be done largely in unsafe languages, and plenty of vulnerabilities are published on a regular basis. If you watch your log files, you will see that attacks (and I'm not just talking mindless attacks aimed at MS software) are also performed on a regular basis, too. It's only a matter of time before the detractors of Linux and open source will be all over the media proclaiming the failures of the open source model, with high-profile compromises of Linux systems for ammo.
2. Modularity. If you've ever tried your hand at developing kernel modules, or even if you have enough experience compiling kernels, you will know that Linux is a mess. Lots of modules link against symbols in other modules, APIs keep changing, and, generally, what works today might work tomorrow, but the only thing that is certain is that it will break at some point. And documentation? Well, it may be there, but if it is, it's often out of date and incorrect.
Some efforts are being made to modularize Linux and provide stable APIs (see, for example, FUSE). This is good. We need more of that.
Ideally, I'd like there to be a single, small and stable interface that modules can use to get all their work done. By using this interface (instead of directly linking to kernel symbols, as is currently common), modules can truly isolate themselves from the rest of Linux and not have to be rewritten and recompiled quite as often. It would also open the door to modules being implemented in userspace and in different (safe!) programming languages. Perhaps, one day, we can apt-get install the new wireless driver, and know that it doesn't contain any buffer overrun vulnerabilities...
3. Parallelism. I believe we are at the brink of a wave of innovation in the realm of parallel computing. A lot of research has been done already, but most programming is still stuck in the sequential imperative paradigm. As far as I know, Linux does a pretty decent job, compared to the competition, when it comes to parallelism, but there is still a lot of room for improvement, too. I expect most of the gain to actually come from applications and not from the kernel, but the kernel can help, too...by better exploiting parallelism itself, and also by providing some necessary support and information to userland. Computers with multiple cores will soon be everywhere...let's take advantage of this to the maximum extent feasible!
Hahahahaha! That sounds so sensible I'm sure it's not going to happen.
Besides, by all appearances, it seems that the Bush administration actually wants to be at war. And they have good reasons for it, too. After all, war provides excuses for many things, including funneling money into your favored companies (Haliburton, anyone?), grabbing more power (Bush is now Commander in Chief, also see signing statements), and cutting funding for programs that don't benefit your friends (after all, war is _expensive_). "Mission accomplished", indeed.
``Btw, I'm aware that OpenBSD's port of WINE dates from 1999, just another sign that BSD is dying, I guess!''
Or it could just mean that the demographic that runs OpenBSD (security conscious people, I'd imagine) isn't interested in running Windows apps.
``My instinct is that we should welcome everyone, everywhere, but I'm sure some in Washington worry that this looks like helping an 'Axis of Evil' country make advanced weapons.''
Is anyone still taking these guys seriously? I mean, the "Axis of Evil" was coined at the time when the whole cast was performing a play where they convinced the USAmerican public that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and posed a great threat to the USA. Now that has been exposed for the load of bollocks many of us already saw it for at the time. The whole "Axis of Evil" concept was invented to scare the American public into thinking there was a conspiracy against them, but, in all the time since then, none of the countries on this supposed axis have actually attacked the USA. The only aggressor in this whole stage play has been the USA itself, with the demagogues leading the violence somehow escaping scrutiny. Sure, Iraqis are killing US soldiers _now_, but, well, can you blame them, after said soldiers plunged their country into an anarchy where it's news if there is a day _without_ bombings? And the same guys who came up with the "Axis of Evil" told you that the US soldiers would be received as heroes and bring peace and stability to Iraq.
And now you are saying that X is a good idea, but we'd better not do it because the "Axis of Evil" guys may not like it? I'm not saying the idea is good and you should do it, but _not_ doing it because of those demagogues seems about as bad an idea as they get. They've done enough damage already!
``About 123 counties are participating in the vote.''
Get your own ISO standard! Easy as 1, 2, 3!
``That's like calling a Linux distribution SoftMicro Windows LX and saying you don't intend to confuse anyone.''
Did you mean: Lindows?
It makes me happy that someone is still catering to those who realize they don't need more CPU power and would rather, say, save money, or save the environment.
``The next question is, of course, (1) is there any power-efficient hard disk, and (2) is there any way to make sure the disk will not be spinned up more then once a few hours.''
(1) Yes. Take a look at 2.5" drives used in laptops, for example. You could also use flash instead of an actual disk. Having done that myself, I must give you a word of warning: don't do flash+usb on Linux. It will hang because of I/O errors every few days. I believe this is due to there being a hardcoded limit on the number of writes somewhere in the Linux drivers involved in this, but it could also be the flaky hardware (VIA SP8000E, never buy that one).
(2) Yes. Run off a ramdisk, and just write changes to your real disk every few hours. Puppy Linux does something like this.
Another thing you will want to look at are efficient power supplies (particularly, ones that are efficient at the low power draw of your machine).
Finally, this being about VIA, you will have to be careful with enabling CPU frequency scaling. The board I have is known to crash when the frequency is changed too often.
``Via says its chip draws a minimum of 0.1 Watts, when idle, and a maximum of 1 Watt, making it a great candidate for consumer electronics devices such as UMPCs, PVRs, and such."''
Of course, in consumer electronics devices, you could just use any kind of MIPS or ARM or whatever other CPU you want, and have even lower power usage and/or better performance. It's not like you're gonna be running Windows on these devices, anyway, which is pretty much the only reason you would need an x86 in my book.
``It means that this void is caused by some factor not previously observed or taken into account in simulations, i.e. "If these simulations were 100% correct, something like this couldn't occur."''
Yes, exactly. And the conclusion that follows from that is that your model is not correct, not that what you observe is not normal.
Oh no!!! The Nothing will eat the universe!! Quick, take me to the empress!
``More info here (with pictures..)''
Pictures?! Of nothing?!
How can it not be normal if it occurs in nature?
Declaring something is not normal because it doesn't agree with our imperfect idea about how things work seems to be the wrong way about it to me.
``I've worked in multiple extremely super-scaled applications (including ones sustaining 70,000 connections at any one time, 10,000 new connections each minute, and 15,000 concurrent throttled file transfers at any one time - all in one application instance on one machine).''
I'm interested in what software (OS, programming language, etc.) you used. Would you tell me?
``The government still has the nukes, helicopters, bombers, SWAT team, Navy Seals, media...''
No, that's in Soviet Russia.
In USA, media has government.
``However, there are valid reasons why very dangerous things are illegal.''
Most drugs aren't actually very dangerous.
That is, unless you obtain them from people with unknown reputations who care more about making as much money as possible without getting caught then about delivering a quality product.
Same for being a danger to society. Most drugs don't actually turn people into raving, murdering madmen.
However, making drugs illegal means that (A) suppliers (and, possibly, users) will be criminals and (B) the drugs will be more expensive, which makes users take more money out of the legal circulation and funnel it into crime, and also raises profits for suppliers to levels where violence and even murder become more likely.
I wasn't alive during the Prohibition, but I have been told that it caused crime, violence, and alcohol abuse to skyrocket. Now, there are two important differences between alcohol and most illicit drugs. First, alcohol is and was widely used. Secondly, alcohol actually causes more problems just by itself (without society-imposed extras) than most drugs. So lifting the ban on many drugs is not exactly comparable to lifting the ban on alcohol. However, the Prohibition is a good example of how making drugs illegal _could_ amplify the problem. We should look seriously at whether it wouldn't be beneficial to lift some bans. Most importantly, we should get some real information, instead of the misinformation we have now (drug research is regulated pretty much in such a way that only research that shows currently illegal drugs as very dangerous can be performed...sure, there's research, but it will never show us our policy is wrong, because we set the rules to bring about the desired outcome).
``FWIW, i don't like their shared source licenses. ... they're not really very useful if all they allow you to do with the code is watch it.''
On the contrary, this is a godsend! Now I can easily find the vulnerabilities and exploit them, since nobody but Microsoft is allowed to fix them!
``You could implement something similar to this today with an X10 system or the like...''
Dude, we've been using X11 for some time now! X10 has been obsolete for almost exactly 20 years...
``That's great but my Pentium 1 - 133Mhz CPU could play MP3s. The tiny 'couple mW' CPU in the ipod shuffle can play MP3s. You expect me to believe that a modern computer is having CPU contention issues over the processing power to play a MP3?''
Yes, actually. See, the thing is, desktop CPUs may be ridiculously fast, but they only run at full speed under ideal conditions. If the conditions are not ideal, their performance can be reduced by orders of magnitude. Ideal conditions are that instructions are in the cache and branches are predicted correctly, and data is either in registers or in cache. Context switches, particularly those due to hardware interrupts, are fatal to performance, because they cause unpredictable control flow and are likely to also cause cache misses. This will cause the CPU to throw away a lot of work it had already done, and probably causes it to wait for data from main meomry for several cycles until it can continue its work.
Now, I don't know how Windows handles sound and networking, but I'm willing to bet it involves context switches. Enough of these and the system basically spends all it's time telling the CPU "that work you've just done, throw it away, and wait until we give you some new work". In particular, if interrupts are generated to notify the system of incoming network packets, a fast link can be used to bring the system to its knees (which is why modern *nix systems are often configured to use polling instead of interrupts for networking).
As some other posters have remarked, the reason the network performance slows down is probably that audio playback is given higher priority. Imagine that the system is being interrupted all the time to handle network packets. Now you start playing audio, and the audio is of such a high priority that it is allowed to interrupt the network packet handling. Suddenly, there isn't _one_ agent telling the poor CPU to throw away what it had done and wait for further instructions, there are two!
I'm also willing to bet that Windows interrupt handling is slow, and so is its scheduler.
With all this, your system starts to look an awful lot like a Vogon bureaucracy, where everything the system does has to be signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
``Even with the bloatware that is know as Vista...playing a MP3 can't need more power than opening Excel or Word.''
The reason Excel and Word take so long to open has little to do with the CPU and everything with the memory hierachy. There is lots of slow I/O involved, and probably numerous context switches, as well. In a sense, it's not so different from the reason playing sound or handling network packets is slow. However, there is one important difference: once your office app is up and running, it should generate few interrupts and context switches and little I/O. The same is not true for audio and networking.
``Q: India is one of the major producers of software engineers, yet we don't contribute much to the Linux domain. What do you think is keeping Indians from becoming proactive on that front? How do you feel we could encourage Indians to get involved and contribute heavily? You have a fan following in India; could your iconic image be used to inspire enthusiasts? -- Bhuvaneswaran Arumugam.
Linus: This is actually a very hard question for me to answer. Getting into open source is such a complicated combination of both infrastructure (Internet access, education, you name it), flow of information and simply culture that I can't even begin to guess what the biggest stumbling block could be.''
My guess is it's because the _bulk_ of Indian software engineers are being raised on Microsoft technology (the fact that it's Microsoft is irrelevant here; what matters is that it isn't Linux and doesn't resemble Linux). I don't actually know that this is the case, but I suspect it. I've spoken to a number of people from various parts of the world that aren't Europe or North America, and the picture I get is mostly the same: virtually everybody who uses a computer uses (cheap or pirated) Windows, if you take classes in CS you are taught Microsoft tools, and, at work, you use Windows. It's like nothing else exists. Why would you contribute to Linux, coming from such an environment?
Also, I know for a fact that a lot of people in India get trained on Java. That's yet another platform that isn't Linux and, even if it's more like Linux than Microsoft's platform is, it's still different in important ways. Besides, Java can run under Linux...but that's not what usually happens.
Speaking of Akamai, are there any others who do what Akamai does?
Man, you ever notice that return key on your keyboard? You should use it once in a while...
It's actually worse than you describe. Outlook not only defaults to top-posting, there is no way to change it and it's virtually impossible to bottom post using it, because it will quote everything belowe the "Original message" line, including your reply.
If I sound angry, it's because I am. Really, really angry. They are FORCING people to do things the wrong way. #@-%]@-*#&$#--%&%#EOAto@*$*$]#&
NO CARRIER