Yes for users that are using a computer as a desktop and have no clue nor desire to understand what needs to be done (like restarting firefox... restarting X.org... what have you. Something that a power user can do at free will (yum/apt/pup should know what to restart after an update phase and ask if that is desired rather than a complete reboot... this though is a wish.) rather than being forced into a reboot for each and every single little update that may need to get on the system before another update can be put on the disk correctly (Various incarnations of Windows.) Dependency locks notwithstanding.)
From a server point of view where one has a lot more at stake regarding downtime and such (luckily mirror staging can be done IF your pockets are deep) file locks are more than just inconvenient. It effects a lot of users. Say on a real time system with a couple of thousand users m-n connected. Yes a filesystem that is locking by default is not good and I will forever defend my position on this subject (not talking about remote files with multiple access points.) File locks should only be used sparingly and on files that need it and can be done appropriately by using inter-process semaphores. This is NOT rocket science. Locking files by default is IMHO premature optimization of the problemset that causes more pain than gain. Think about it... how much time have every user spent rebooting a machine? How many man years is that? That's a lot of LIFE going wasted.
The reason why the registry exist is that the filesystems on Windows OS' have historically been lock on read (more than one program using the same file at the same time is a no-no.) Meaning that having a place where this was not the case was VERY meaningful to lessen access bottlenecks, thus enter the registry.
Having hundereds of conf files in/etc or having them in a registry "hive" is "same same but different" that's ALL. Gnome has a form of registry hive as well... organizing data whether being direct in the filesystem or special filesystem (DB or what have you) is the same.
I have to say that it is easier to edit a config file with vi/edit/ed/sed IF one knows where to go. Regedit command line tools sure... GUI... not efficient... Gnome registry either conf-editor or command line... I personally stick to CLI.
I agree that Windows should "drop the registry..." but only because they should drop the ancient approach of their locking behavior on the filesystem... this would also cure the reboot till you drop at update times. Later OS-X versions have started to reboot machinery after updates just to be more like Windows because that's what users EXPECT. It is painful!
Or why not let the viewer choose who plays that part... Angelina Jolie with those perky ones from the Tomb Raider movies for instance. How about watching Cassablanca as yourself as Bogart? Now how about being Dekkard in Blade Runner? The only thing that is needed is the motion capture of believable performances that's all.
Yeah I too got a bit "pissy" when I discovered that XEmacs was not included in the Red Hat releases by default anymore... 10 years ago or something close to that.... but with yum/apt et.al. its easy to get... I have over 1 GB of packages that aren't in the default Fedora install... big deal... booohooo... its so simple that I've completely forgot about what a default install is and I don't care.
A big non-story but that is my side of the view. YMMV.
I am more inclined to think that the simulation of such a system with a fluid and non homogeneous core and what it does to center of mass is quite heavy and they would simply use a very good approximation. Electrostatic effects especially in vacuum is also an interesting venue, coupled with solar wind maybe? Either way the math involved in this is definitely more than what regular geologists and cosmologists usually have to deal with.
The more I think about this the more I believe that "we do know" what is causing it but it is cheaper to empirically getting about it.
People may laugh at this (it is funny don't get me wrong).... however it is not funny when you get this source dumped on your desktop to find a bug in the project and make a delivery later the same day.
Natural language in code tend to distract at best and mislead at worst. Also when coding is done with users writing comments in their preferred natural language (and character set) it just goes to hell.
If the code is not clear to understand then it should be re-written so that it is much clearer. Spending time writing clear code is far more superior than writing bibles of comments because no matter what you write in the comment there will be bugs in the code.
If I get unknown code from anyone I ALWAYS strip out the comments... the comments mean nothing to me... the code does mean everything... also one gets to understand how the original author was thinking... thus knowing where they most likely would have coded wrong and where there is a problem with the data structure.
Comments were useful back in the day when the code base was very small and a manager could potentially feel good by reading pages and pages of commented source code... this however is mere self gratification for the managers and has nothing to do with how good code really is. I'd rather have good code than code that is commented well so that a lay person can "read the code."
Most likely due to the center of earth wobbling a bit that makes things in a slingshot have increased velocity... AFAIK the earth center would be slushing around a bit and due to rotational inertia most likely have some wobbling... if that wobbling coincides with the slingshot frequency it will have a positive effect if it is in-tune with it.
But then again IANAGNC (I am not a geoligist nor cosmolog)
but I do have to say that Pulse Audio... well I have nothing good to say about it. OSS worked for me back in the day and I rarely had any issues. ALSA worked for me after some fidgeting but things got stable quite fast. Pulse Audio.... nothing but trouble since Fedora 9 and onward. Is it getting better? Possibly it is, but on all machines that I have used it on it always becomes excruciatingly painful with its odd volumes and.... ok I feel a rant coming along here and I don't want to really diss anything that I didn't actually pay for. But daym... I do have to say that if the rest of GNU/Linux was done this way we would not be here today PERIOD.
It's considered bad only because people who do not have it are afraid of it because they know that funky moods are contagious... believing it to be as fast acting agents as happy moods (which luckily it is not.) To call it stigma is definitely wrong IMHO... it is a safety latch in our minds.
Any professional dealing with patients like these should get flowers because they are doing a very difficult job.
"Maybe the answer is to just go with it until it passes?"
Definitely not, it needs professional attention. One needs to be led out of the loop by someone who sees.
As with any sophisticated computer program it can not ask itself if it is correct or make it so that it can correct itself. I am stretching this to include our human brains as well, there needs to be an agent from outside... This is fundamentally why religion and politics are such contentious issues... loop calibrating agents (no I am not going to say brain washing but its on a good way into that realm.)
Or what he is actually saying is that they (nVidia) will have more than 9 generations (~9.15) within 6 years... 1.5 generations/year... which I believe is fairly doable and actually slightly slower than the 6 month release cycle we have been accustomed to since 1998.
I am speaking from direct personal brushes with depression (not that/. is a friggin place to disclose shit like this), and believe me it is not an inherited value-judgement. It's freaking real, it's a steep wall in a bottom less pit.
What I am saying is that making our head-loop too tight is not good unless you know how to get out of it (much like doing TM (Transcendental Meditation) and that stuff without having a "drivers license")... you will end up catatonic otherwise. Yes this is one of the darker sides of programming... if you are any good at it you will get extremely immersed in it and to that extent you will end up prone to depression because you will be so close to the "metal" in most and maybe all of your dealings in other life situations.
This is why coffee (caffeine) is important... it creates chaos... certain music does it too.
Wound up too tight. Depth first focus. Not a surprising finding IMHO.
Coffee helps to make sure that the depth of focus is not too deep where one hits the bottom (depression, with extremely single minded and obsessive thinking.) A little chaos is actually a good thing (tm).
I don't know about you but I am quite happy with the plethora of RSS feeds from all corners of the earth and ether where I directly choose what I want to see with extremely minimal fluff.
Sage-too for instance in Firefox. There are other and quite possibly better aggregators out there.
Now I know that with google wave this aggregation of information will become like second nature in no time... most likely short stanzas of news bullets in the filtered view and so on.
Any news outlet can federate their own stuff, for a fee or not.
It is quite telling that Microsoft hasn't done their Bing! offering more News centric but rather the good old Search centric way... I believe they are trying to keep a lid on things and to confuse google and everybody else by going into economical marriage with Yahoo!
In any event: paper news should die... it is a complete and utter waste.
Having a couple of friends working as journalists for a "newspaper" for the blind (it is a real newspaper but its odd calling it that due it it not having a real paper copy at all) have done these so called pod casts since the "dawning of computer time." On normal Compact Cassettes.
The CC have been known to be played not only for the direct audience but also as a convenience for the people on the go.... also all those language courses on tape spring to mind... ney I am revising my "epitome of BS" to "the mother of all BS statements."
Well... I would say that it really mushroomed when the Sinclair ZX 80 was made and later on ZX 81 (Timex here in North America.) 99% of my computer literate friends started on these (yes this be Europe.) Note also that these were not running MS Basic.
I was not dissing Billy not knowing about PET... he definitely knows (how could he not?) I was just referring to the blatant and consistent laps of showing "credit where credit is due." If it wasn't for inexpensive computers like Commodore and Sinclair we might have still worn lab coats at work to operate the monsters (AS/400 et.al) regardless of Billy and his associates. Now Jobs et.al. is an other matter... more in the veins of expensive jewelery more than anything else... iPhone being the epitome of this.
Note: I am happy that current "jewelery" is running Unix quite well:-D
"VPN works okay for these, but it's kind of a hack."
What is the difference of having a stand alone VPN client vs a built in VPN'ish OS solution? It is only more integrated into the "enterprise" and makes it easier to administer in the long run. This is definitely good for the poor Windows admins out there that need to keep that OS secure in a work environment.
Semi tangent ahead:
Seriously I would rather admin 1000 linux machines (including desktop ones not just servers) than 100 Windows ones. It is good that Microsoft is trying to keep the amount of baby sitting to a minimum no question about it.
But to say that the feature would be a boon for the end user is IMHO still a non existing one. It's not even an incremental change... its a "side change." More and more of these administrative "fixes" makes the OS more and more proprietary (in this case.) Mac OSX is the same way. One could say that Linux whether using apt/yum or other (added to say that it isn't dist dependent) are more and more getting into the same dilemma. Administration vs. Usage vs. Freedom vs. Speed of Operation... one can't have it all. I always set Freedom first... and sometimes the other parts are excruciatingly painful BUT I remind myself that it is MY choice and start smiling because there is a VERY good reason why some things are painful... painful because I can handle it... the power of instant positive feedback.
Now on proprietary systems one is left mostly helpless when something seriously is wrong... and that kind of pain is more than anyone should suffer.
Slashdot Mirror
"It also prevents some VERY problematic issues."
Yes for users that are using a computer as a desktop and have no clue nor desire to understand what needs to be done (like restarting firefox... restarting X.org... what have you. Something that a power user can do at free will (yum/apt/pup should know what to restart after an update phase and ask if that is desired rather than a complete reboot... this though is a wish.) rather than being forced into a reboot for each and every single little update that may need to get on the system before another update can be put on the disk correctly (Various incarnations of Windows.) Dependency locks notwithstanding.)
From a server point of view where one has a lot more at stake regarding downtime and such (luckily mirror staging can be done IF your pockets are deep) file locks are more than just inconvenient. It effects a lot of users. Say on a real time system with a couple of thousand users m-n connected. Yes a filesystem that is locking by default is not good and I will forever defend my position on this subject (not talking about remote files with multiple access points.) File locks should only be used sparingly and on files that need it and can be done appropriately by using inter-process semaphores. This is NOT rocket science. Locking files by default is IMHO premature optimization of the problemset that causes more pain than gain. Think about it... how much time have every user spent rebooting a machine? How many man years is that? That's a lot of LIFE going wasted.
The reason why the registry exist is that the filesystems on Windows OS' have historically been lock on read (more than one program using the same file at the same time is a no-no.) Meaning that having a place where this was not the case was VERY meaningful to lessen access bottlenecks, thus enter the registry.
Having hundereds of conf files in /etc or having them in a registry "hive" is "same same but different" that's ALL. Gnome has a form of registry hive as well... organizing data whether being direct in the filesystem or special filesystem (DB or what have you) is the same.
I have to say that it is easier to edit a config file with vi/edit/ed/sed IF one knows where to go. Regedit command line tools sure... GUI... not efficient... Gnome registry either conf-editor or command line... I personally stick to CLI.
I agree that Windows should "drop the registry..." but only because they should drop the ancient approach of their locking behavior on the filesystem... this would also cure the reboot till you drop at update times. Later OS-X versions have started to reboot machinery after updates just to be more like Windows because that's what users EXPECT. It is painful!
Or why not let the viewer choose who plays that part... Angelina Jolie with those perky ones from the Tomb Raider movies for instance. How about watching Cassablanca as yourself as Bogart? Now how about being Dekkard in Blade Runner? The only thing that is needed is the motion capture of believable performances that's all.
Yeah I too got a bit "pissy" when I discovered that XEmacs was not included in the Red Hat releases by default anymore... 10 years ago or something close to that.... but with yum/apt et.al. its easy to get... I have over 1 GB of packages that aren't in the default Fedora install... big deal... booohooo... its so simple that I've completely forgot about what a default install is and I don't care.
A big non-story but that is my side of the view. YMMV.
Thankfully its only Iranium and not Urassium.
I am more inclined to think that the simulation of such a system with a fluid and non homogeneous core and what it does to center of mass is quite heavy and they would simply use a very good approximation. Electrostatic effects especially in vacuum is also an interesting venue, coupled with solar wind maybe? Either way the math involved in this is definitely more than what regular geologists and cosmologists usually have to deal with.
The more I think about this the more I believe that "we do know" what is causing it but it is cheaper to empirically getting about it.
People may laugh at this (it is funny don't get me wrong) .... however it is not funny when you get this source dumped on your desktop to find a bug in the project and make a delivery later the same day.
Function names... sed!
Natural language in code tend to distract at best and mislead at worst. Also when coding is done with users writing comments in their preferred natural language (and character set) it just goes to hell.
If the code is not clear to understand then it should be re-written so that it is much clearer. Spending time writing clear code is far more superior than writing bibles of comments because no matter what you write in the comment there will be bugs in the code.
If I get unknown code from anyone I ALWAYS strip out the comments... the comments mean nothing to me... the code does mean everything... also one gets to understand how the original author was thinking... thus knowing where they most likely would have coded wrong and where there is a problem with the data structure.
Comments were useful back in the day when the code base was very small and a manager could potentially feel good by reading pages and pages of commented source code... this however is mere self gratification for the managers and has nothing to do with how good code really is. I'd rather have good code than code that is commented well so that a lay person can "read the code."
Most likely due to the center of earth wobbling a bit that makes things in a slingshot have increased velocity... AFAIK the earth center would be slushing around a bit and due to rotational inertia most likely have some wobbling... if that wobbling coincides with the slingshot frequency it will have a positive effect if it is in-tune with it.
But then again IANAGNC (I am not a geoligist nor cosmolog)
Kids, this is what happens when sniffing ether.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice's_theorem
Can I get my star now?
People this is what we get when people grow up with Windows.
word!
but I do have to say that Pulse Audio... well I have nothing good to say about it. OSS worked for me back in the day and I rarely had any issues. ALSA worked for me after some fidgeting but things got stable quite fast. Pulse Audio.... nothing but trouble since Fedora 9 and onward. Is it getting better? Possibly it is, but on all machines that I have used it on it always becomes excruciatingly painful with its odd volumes and.... ok I feel a rant coming along here and I don't want to really diss anything that I didn't actually pay for. But daym... I do have to say that if the rest of GNU/Linux was done this way we would not be here today PERIOD.
"to consider depression 'bad'"
It's considered bad only because people who do not have it are afraid of it because they know that funky moods are contagious... believing it to be as fast acting agents as happy moods (which luckily it is not.) To call it stigma is definitely wrong IMHO... it is a safety latch in our minds.
Any professional dealing with patients like these should get flowers because they are doing a very difficult job.
"Maybe the answer is to just go with it until it passes?"
Definitely not, it needs professional attention. One needs to be led out of the loop by someone who sees.
As with any sophisticated computer program it can not ask itself if it is correct or make it so that it can correct itself. I am stretching this to include our human brains as well, there needs to be an agent from outside... This is fundamentally why religion and politics are such contentious issues... loop calibrating agents (no I am not going to say brain washing but its on a good way into that realm.)
Or what he is actually saying is that they (nVidia) will have more than 9 generations (~9.15) within 6 years... 1.5 generations/year... which I believe is fairly doable and actually slightly slower than the 6 month release cycle we have been accustomed to since 1998.
In other words "business as usual"
"inherited value-judgement"
I am speaking from direct personal brushes with depression (not that /. is a friggin place to disclose shit like this), and believe me it is not an inherited value-judgement. It's freaking real, it's a steep wall in a bottom less pit.
What I am saying is that making our head-loop too tight is not good unless you know how to get out of it (much like doing TM (Transcendental Meditation) and that stuff without having a "drivers license")... you will end up catatonic otherwise. Yes this is one of the darker sides of programming... if you are any good at it you will get extremely immersed in it and to that extent you will end up prone to depression because you will be so close to the "metal" in most and maybe all of your dealings in other life situations.
This is why coffee (caffeine) is important... it creates chaos... certain music does it too.
You mean:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz
Wound up too tight. Depth first focus. Not a surprising finding IMHO.
Coffee helps to make sure that the depth of focus is not too deep where one hits the bottom (depression, with extremely single minded and obsessive thinking.) A little chaos is actually a good thing (tm).
I don't know about you but I am quite happy with the plethora of RSS feeds from all corners of the earth and ether where I directly choose what I want to see with extremely minimal fluff.
Sage-too for instance in Firefox. There are other and quite possibly better aggregators out there.
Now I know that with google wave this aggregation of information will become like second nature in no time... most likely short stanzas of news bullets in the filtered view and so on.
Any news outlet can federate their own stuff, for a fee or not.
It is quite telling that Microsoft hasn't done their Bing! offering more News centric but rather the good old Search centric way... I believe they are trying to keep a lid on things and to confuse google and everybody else by going into economical marriage with Yahoo!
In any event: paper news should die... it is a complete and utter waste.
Not only is it BS... it is the epitome of BS...
Having a couple of friends working as journalists for a "newspaper" for the blind (it is a real newspaper but its odd calling it that due it it not having a real paper copy at all) have done these so called pod casts since the "dawning of computer time." On normal Compact Cassettes.
The CC have been known to be played not only for the direct audience but also as a convenience for the people on the go.... also all those language courses on tape spring to mind... ney I am revising my "epitome of BS" to "the mother of all BS statements."
Well... I would say that it really mushroomed when the Sinclair ZX 80 was made and later on ZX 81 (Timex here in North America.) 99% of my computer literate friends started on these (yes this be Europe.) Note also that these were not running MS Basic.
I was not dissing Billy not knowing about PET... he definitely knows (how could he not?) I was just referring to the blatant and consistent laps of showing "credit where credit is due." If it wasn't for inexpensive computers like Commodore and Sinclair we might have still worn lab coats at work to operate the monsters (AS/400 et.al) regardless of Billy and his associates. Now Jobs et.al. is an other matter... more in the veins of expensive jewelery more than anything else... iPhone being the epitome of this.
Note: I am happy that current "jewelery" is running Unix quite well :-D
It was more like 1977...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET
Just a friendly reminder Billy, don't diss the real start.
"VPN works okay for these, but it's kind of a hack."
What is the difference of having a stand alone VPN client vs a built in VPN'ish OS solution? It is only more integrated into the "enterprise" and makes it easier to administer in the long run. This is definitely good for the poor Windows admins out there that need to keep that OS secure in a work environment.
Semi tangent ahead:
Seriously I would rather admin 1000 linux machines (including desktop ones not just servers) than 100 Windows ones. It is good that Microsoft is trying to keep the amount of baby sitting to a minimum no question about it.
But to say that the feature would be a boon for the end user is IMHO still a non existing one. It's not even an incremental change... its a "side change." More and more of these administrative "fixes" makes the OS more and more proprietary (in this case.) Mac OSX is the same way. One could say that Linux whether using apt/yum or other (added to say that it isn't dist dependent) are more and more getting into the same dilemma. Administration vs. Usage vs. Freedom vs. Speed of Operation ... one can't have it all. I always set Freedom first... and sometimes the other parts are excruciatingly painful BUT I remind myself that it is MY choice and start smiling because there is a VERY good reason why some things are painful... painful because I can handle it... the power of instant positive feedback.
Now on proprietary systems one is left mostly helpless when something seriously is wrong... and that kind of pain is more than anyone should suffer.
"...and IT administrators can manage remote computers outside the office..."
Yeah right and I am going to let joe-admin on my home machine... think not... not in a million years.
And who doesn't have a home router with VPN in these kind of scenarios in any case?
IMHO This is a fluff feature.
don't forget the Belgian chocolates for the women too. Though I am 99.9999% sure that any woman reading slashdot would be a beer aficionado.