But that is looking from the problem from only one side. The other end of the problem is if I as a developer want to distribute a program. On Windows I am on an equal footing with everyone else (including Microsoft) whereas on Linux I have very little chance of providing a somewhat generally working binary of my application. I am left at the mercy of the distributors hoping that they will pick up my application some day in the future.
This is a huge problem with Linux, not being able to in any sane way deploy applications as a third patry is a huge limitation.
Or possibly it should be apparent to IE users that installing SP2 several months ago really was a good idea.
Sure one can argue that one should not use IE, but this is not a terribly good reason or interesting news. It should be quite apparent to IE users however that if they haven't yet installed SP2 you need to do so right away. Running without it is just stupid.
They don't let me in on the secret "Where we should aim Linux"-meetings anymore after I accidently spilled cola all over Alan Cox's beard, so I am not really up to date with the grand plan for where Linux has been decided to head.
One does not usually count microinstruction-based CPU's as having the microinstructions as the "real" instruction set, especially considering that one cannot actually get to the microinstructions of an x86 (on some older architectures the more complex instructions were microcoded in terms of simpler ones that were also usable, but it was still very much counted as part of the instruction set)
The EPIC on the other hand does have a completely different instruction set with x86 emulation being a fairly separate core. I don't feel that their is any comparison.
It is true though that strictly speaking all arguments about the x86 instruction set being something bad is kinda moot at this point, the exposed instruction set matters less and less with every day that passes. With the plentiful register renaming and out-of-order execution one does not even have to do an all that great job keeping the registers full and instructions well-scheduled to keep the CPU working with a decent level of efficiency.
So, in summary, I feel that the x86 instruction set should be pretty much seen as a historical abstraction, we won't die from having it kicking around, the instruction decoding is a tad expensive but with the proper optimizations and cahcing in place it is quite livable. Beyond that the instruction set does not matter to a great extent in this day and age. It could also be noted that perhaps EPIC's greatest problem is that the more typical ad-hoc multi-issue OoO CPU has gotten so much better at its work that expecting to win all that much by betting on the compiler doing an excellent job at generating explicitly parallell instructions is looking like a bad idea considering that it locks the way the hardware handles things down completely (whereas the ad-hoc multi-issue OoO is completely abstracted).
Well if your app has the Luna L&F and the desktop is configured to look like W2000 (my configuration I don't like the "fisher price" look), it looks weird too, is-it the case with Swing?
No, it actually matches the classic setting too. It even matches the color-scheme. Very neat.
One of the new features of Java 1.5 that has not been mentioned much yet is the OpenGL acceleration of Java2D (which underlies Swing and AWT). Adding the flag
-Dsun.java2d.opengl=true
(or by setting the system property in the program) makes pretty much all Java2D calls go directly into OpenGL.
This does indeed work too, I have played around with it and graphically intensive Swing applications really fly with OpenGL activated (given that your graphics card and drivers are sufficiently bug-free and modern). Read about it here
And yes, it does work under Linux, and Windows and Solaris (and most likely will under OS X, though that is up to Apple to implement).
Even without OpenGL acceleration the Swing responsiveness improvements are very impressive, coupled with the much better both default theme and theme mimicking in 1.5 I'd say it is time to retire the Swing troll.
Wonderful journalistic number in the summary. Predicting storm paths now take only 1.5 days compared to 3 days before. As it happens I can predict where a storm will go in 24 hours in less time than 1.5 days (in fact, I might be able to tell several minutes before it even gets there!). Without any context that number is completely and in every way useless.
True true, while the slashdot crowd is careful to point out that the average person should be careful not to install Firefox since the inherent difficulty might prove too much for them. Not to mention pointing out that people should not expect the quality of commercial software when using OSS, very important.
Come on, the Firefox issue is no big deal (shit happens and all that), but this defense is so hypocritical that it makes me sick.
Being in the same memory space as the kernel hardly implies that it is integrated into the kernel. No matter what any application expects of you. If the kernel-space residents actually did calls into the kernels own code then it'd be one thing, but they don't, they use the regular syscalls, they just save the context-switch doing it.
Yes, when libraries change name it is an obvious reason to go to another library. Not to mention logotypes, I can never feel comfortable with foundation technologies changing logos, you never know where you stand then.
Indeed this is correct, Ericsson, a company that makes neither handsets nor bluetooth peripherals are dropping their division for the Bluetooth standard.
Ericsson, and note that while Ericsson does own half of SonyEricsson it does not itself make phones anymore, were a big initiative-taker in the Bluetooth standard, which is why the division was kicking around for so long after the company really lost all reason to deal with Bluetooth itself. This is a huge non-event. It will affect Bluetooth in no way.
I am strictly for anything that makes life harder for web developers who obsess over having the exact right pixel effect everywhere. With any luck the excessive pixel editing in photoshop will wear out their wrists and we will be rid of them before they hit 40.
But with the network bandwidth of today a simple compressed bitmap scheme along the lines of VNC is plenty for most uses, since the manager handles the clip-rects it can correctly send root-less windows as well, making it close enough to the functionality X11 provides.
Network latency is the killer, and since X11 does nothing better when it comes to latency than VNC when VNC is given sufficient bandwidth I don't really think it is worth it having an abstraction of this level of complexity kicking around for the relativly niche use of network transparent GUI's.
Re:News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
on
Latest SP2 News
·
· Score: 1
At least I have not seen anything terribly wrong with SP2 as of yet. This particular flaw is unfortunate, but the security feature it is a flaw in is still very much useful in my humble opinion.
For those who have missed it, the flaw is this;
When a file is downloaded from the internet or received in mail Windows will tag the file (with aregistry entry I'd imagine) so that when the user executes it the first time a warning dialog will pop up and inform the users about the potential harm of executing untrusted programs. The flaw is that it is the shell that checks for the tag, cmd.exe has not been updated to check for such tags and thus if the program is executed in cmd.exe the warning dialog will not show.
While this surely is an unfortunate flaw I must say that I feel that the basic feature is useful, even despite the flaw allowing you to avoid the dialog. For all practical purposes the mail could just as well say "Just click 'OK' in the dialog that pops up to run", far more likely to catch the careless user than the complex walkthrough of running cmd.exe ("What? I have no cmd on my start menu?!").
Kudos to MS on a nice feature that I hope we see in Linux distributions some day.
It is bad that SHA is not secure, just like the earth-killing comet would be a bad thing. Knowing about it however means one can do something about it, which is clearly a good things.
Never forget that one does not really have to be a conspiracy theorist to suspect that the NSA could have known about this for a decade or so already:)
Slashdot Mirror
This is a huge problem with Linux, not being able to in any sane way deploy applications as a third patry is a huge limitation.
You thought wrong.
Not unlike how it is actually not that hard to drive safely while intoxicated.
Sure one can argue that one should not use IE, but this is not a terribly good reason or interesting news. It should be quite apparent to IE users however that if they haven't yet installed SP2 you need to do so right away. Running without it is just stupid.
While these machines are low-end for Sun, they are way above the high-end of Walmart.
You seem to have gotten it backwards, a quick google says the opposite.
Sun probably hopes it changes at least, with the Niagara coming out the current Oracle licensing would look kinda... bad :)
So thanks for the inside scoop.
The EPIC on the other hand does have a completely different instruction set with x86 emulation being a fairly separate core. I don't feel that their is any comparison.
It is true though that strictly speaking all arguments about the x86 instruction set being something bad is kinda moot at this point, the exposed instruction set matters less and less with every day that passes. With the plentiful register renaming and out-of-order execution one does not even have to do an all that great job keeping the registers full and instructions well-scheduled to keep the CPU working with a decent level of efficiency.
So, in summary, I feel that the x86 instruction set should be pretty much seen as a historical abstraction, we won't die from having it kicking around, the instruction decoding is a tad expensive but with the proper optimizations and cahcing in place it is quite livable. Beyond that the instruction set does not matter to a great extent in this day and age. It could also be noted that perhaps EPIC's greatest problem is that the more typical ad-hoc multi-issue OoO CPU has gotten so much better at its work that expecting to win all that much by betting on the compiler doing an excellent job at generating explicitly parallell instructions is looking like a bad idea considering that it locks the way the hardware handles things down completely (whereas the ad-hoc multi-issue OoO is completely abstracted).
No, it actually matches the classic setting too. It even matches the color-scheme. Very neat.
This does indeed work too, I have played around with it and graphically intensive Swing applications really fly with OpenGL activated (given that your graphics card and drivers are sufficiently bug-free and modern). Read about it here
And yes, it does work under Linux, and Windows and Solaris (and most likely will under OS X, though that is up to Apple to implement).
Even without OpenGL acceleration the Swing responsiveness improvements are very impressive, coupled with the much better both default theme and theme mimicking in 1.5 I'd say it is time to retire the Swing troll.
Yes, wonder wonder why camera manufacturers just don't throw in libpng rather than use some new format that is small and simple.
Yes. By most standards it probably is.
Well, or completely mornic trash which has somehow gotten moderated interesting anyway.
I guess what I am saying is that no matter how you look at it, that moderation is insane.
Wonderful journalistic number in the summary. Predicting storm paths now take only 1.5 days compared to 3 days before. As it happens I can predict where a storm will go in 24 hours in less time than 1.5 days (in fact, I might be able to tell several minutes before it even gets there!). Without any context that number is completely and in every way useless.
Come on, the Firefox issue is no big deal (shit happens and all that), but this defense is so hypocritical that it makes me sick.
Being in the same memory space as the kernel hardly implies that it is integrated into the kernel. No matter what any application expects of you. If the kernel-space residents actually did calls into the kernels own code then it'd be one thing, but they don't, they use the regular syscalls, they just save the context-switch doing it.
Yes, when libraries change name it is an obvious reason to go to another library. Not to mention logotypes, I can never feel comfortable with foundation technologies changing logos, you never know where you stand then.
Ericsson, and note that while Ericsson does own half of SonyEricsson it does not itself make phones anymore, were a big initiative-taker in the Bluetooth standard, which is why the division was kicking around for so long after the company really lost all reason to deal with Bluetooth itself. This is a huge non-event. It will affect Bluetooth in no way.
I am strictly for anything that makes life harder for web developers who obsess over having the exact right pixel effect everywhere. With any luck the excessive pixel editing in photoshop will wear out their wrists and we will be rid of them before they hit 40.
*giggle*
Network latency is the killer, and since X11 does nothing better when it comes to latency than VNC when VNC is given sufficient bandwidth I don't really think it is worth it having an abstraction of this level of complexity kicking around for the relativly niche use of network transparent GUI's.
For those who have missed it, the flaw is this;
When a file is downloaded from the internet or received in mail Windows will tag the file (with aregistry entry I'd imagine) so that when the user executes it the first time a warning dialog will pop up and inform the users about the potential harm of executing untrusted programs. The flaw is that it is the shell that checks for the tag, cmd.exe has not been updated to check for such tags and thus if the program is executed in cmd.exe the warning dialog will not show.
While this surely is an unfortunate flaw I must say that I feel that the basic feature is useful, even despite the flaw allowing you to avoid the dialog. For all practical purposes the mail could just as well say "Just click 'OK' in the dialog that pops up to run", far more likely to catch the careless user than the complex walkthrough of running cmd.exe ("What? I have no cmd on my start menu?!").
Kudos to MS on a nice feature that I hope we see in Linux distributions some day.
Never forget that one does not really have to be a conspiracy theorist to suspect that the NSA could have known about this for a decade or so already :)