> Cache latency is basically doubled, as two VCPUs now fight over access to the cache
I'm pretty sure this is wrong -- cache latency isn't doubled; the SIZE is HALVED. The two threads access two different virtual caches. Trying to get them to contend for a single cache would be an architectural nightmare.
Though I believe it's still one physical cache -- which means that the latency is going to be higher than what you'd expect for a cache of its apparent size.
> Pipeline depth is shortened for either given VCPU, which hurts code that was optimized for the longer pipelines (lots of matrix math, MMX stuff).
I don't actually know about the pipeline, but I suspect this is wrong too: shortening the pipeline (reducing the number of stages) is a fundamental change in the architecture; a pipeline isn't something you can cut in half and give the front end to one process and the back end to another. Each stage is quite unique.
Now if you mean that the latest Pentiums have a shorter pipeline than previous incarnations, then maybe that's right (though I'd doubt it -- they're always *lengthening* the pipeline to get those higher GHz numbers). But that would have nothing to do with Hyperthreading.
Mostly, the cache size per "virtual cpu" is cut in half. So no individual thread of execution (including all non-threaded programs) is ever going to be able to use the entire cache.
> Is AMD doing anything similar?
I haven't heard of anything yet. I don't know how flexible the spec for the K9 architecture still is, but perhaps it might be slipped in if there's sufficient market demand. If it's not in there already.
Though here's another angle: if Hammer/Opteron processors are sufficiently cheaper than equivalent-performance Intel cpu's, then you might be able to have an *actual* dual-processor machine for not a lot more money than a systems with a single HT'ing pentium.
> Do we know that the dinosaurs didn't breathe CO2? Or rather, do we know what they breathed?
I think it's a pretty safe assumption that they were O2-breathers, like all other animals on the planet. Molecular oxygen is a source of energy; if animals didn't use O2, they'd have to do photosynthesis directly, and I've never heard of animals doing *that*. "Breathing CO2" doesn't make sense, because there's no more chemical energy to get from that molecule; plants "breathe" it because they are actually adding energy to it thru photosynthesis, to build sugars.
Also, if dinosaurs breathed something other than oxygen, that'd be a pretty radical departure from the way ecosystems work today; but the fossil record shows an ecosystem that's really pretty similar.
Actually, I doub't we'd even be calling them "animals" if they didn't breathe O2.
> we've seen a correlation, causation has not been proved.
Yes, strictly scientifically speaking, we haven't proven it.
But then, this is an awfully complex system. The only way to prove something about it may very well be to see what actually happens. e.g. has any meterologist *proven* that it's going to rain in 3 days? How would they do that?
The answer is, of course, they don't. Instead, they give a probability value. And in general, that's how you have to look at the real world, if you want to make *practical* decisions about what you should/shouldn't be doing next.
If you were to do a survey of all the atmospheric experts out there -- the actual scientists who have their noses in the data -- and asked them to give a probability assessment that humans are causing the global warming trend, you certainly wouldn't get them all saying 100%. But I'd wager the average response would be well above 50%.
> There are many gasses that have a greater effect on the greenhouse effect than CO2, and water vapor is one of them, granted CO2 is by far the greenhouse gas that is produced the most.
Yes, CO2 is the one that's *increasing* the most significantly. Of course, if the ave. temps are push up a few degrees by CO2, more H2O will vaporize on average.
But I think there's something else about water too -- when it makes the big, fluffy, low-altitude clouds, it has a net cooling effect, since those clouds reflect so much sunlight. Wispy, high-altitude clouds have a net warming effect, since they still let a lot of light through.
>...at the current time tempartures are dropping at the poles, contrary to what the models predict.
I believe that's incorrect -- the northernmost parts of Antarctica (some peninsula; don't remember the name), are experiencing higher average temperatures. It's just that the raised temperatures haven't penetrated all the way south yet.
You may be thinking of the fact that global warming may possibly increase *snowfall* at the poles, due to higher moisture content of the air, and the fact that the poles will still be below freezing, even if they warm up a few degrees.
> Remember, plants really enjoy the fact that the CO2 level increases.
That's true, in the very-short and very-long term. But the problem is that it's still a disruption to the ecosystem. I remember a study done to look at the impact on plant-feeding insects when the plants they eat are exposed to a CO2-enriched atmosphere. Basically, the insects' food ended up having a higher starch content and a lower nutritional value because the plants could suck up CO2 faster than normal, while their intake of in minerals, etc remained the same. This made for problems for the insects.
So if insects have a problem, this could harm the plants longer-term due to decreased pollination. Likewise, there could be other problems with the loss of the other types of animals that interact with plants in various ways.
But -- I actually agree that raised C02 levels will be a good thing for the environment. But that's over the LONG TERM. We're talking thousands, more likely hundreds of thousands, of years needed for the transition if we don't want to cause major extinctions. Life needs time to adapt.
Actually, it's interesting that this planet has likely been in high-CO2 states before -- just think about the dinosaurs. What kind of enviromnent could support 30-foot-tall carniverous beasts? Well, one with an awful lot of large herbiverous beasts. And what kind of environment would support that? One with *lots* and *lots* of plant life -- obviously, much more than we have today. You'd probably need a lot of CO2, and probably higher ave. temperatures and humidity, for plants to be doing that well. Also, if that "Walking with Dinosaurs" series was accurate, Antarctica of that time was frozen only in winter; and was quite balmy in summertime.
> Yes except that people will start writing code to those C libraries and build a mountain of code that has no consistency.... > D should try to stay out of the limelight as long as possible so that these design issues can be worked out. Otherwise you'll end up seeing ad hoc implementations of every major feature with no consistency.
--ding!--
Ahh, now I get it.;)
Yes, it would probably be in D's best long-term interests to *remove* the C-library accessibility, at least until it has a substantial code base already.
It serves it in the short term, allowing one to write fully-functional programs easily, but perhaps there's a sort of unwritten idea -- in the minds of D's creators --- that any such programs you write now will be rather temporary. The danger being that a lot of users might not get that.
I guess they try to warn people a bit by declaring D as being in Alpha stage, but maybe they should probably make these aspects more clear in their documentation, instead of trumpeting the C-compatability stuff.
> I hope to god that no one actually adopts D for real work in the near future. If they do, they will run into the limitations I mentioned above and figure out some hack to get it to work. Hack begets hack begets hack and you are left with another bloated language lacking uniformity that people will bitch about on tech discussion boards.
Er, it looked like the vast majority of the limitations you mentioned have to do with the fact that one must resort to using a C library to get to various standard functionalities, since D doesn't have all those libs fleshed out.
I don't see how this will cause the language *itself* to be subjected to hacks upon hacks, etc. Rather, as each major function is implemented in a native-D library, you simply won't have to "do market research on libraries" for it anymore. Isn't that natural for a language? Isn't it better to provide for this kind of legacy-code-reuse than not allowing for *any* of those available functionalities until it's native-written?
> I realize the business of business is to make profit, but that statement make it sound as if the law is a secondary concern...
But copyright law is made expressly *for* the benefit of business. So, like the right of an assault victim to choose whether or not to press charges, a business that owns a copyright has the right to decline enforcement of these laws.
> Anyone else think laws should be open-sourced so that we all, as a community of Americans, can view, revise, and change things as need be?
Fundamentally, that's what a Democracy is supposed to be doing, isn't it? Though with the idea that everyone has to verify it before it's "released" (passed). We of course live in a Representative Democracy, wherein we appoint "experts" to do this job for us.
Your suggestion sounds like something you might call a "Contributor Democracy", where anyone who wants to participates in the process of formulating the laws.
Only problem is, how does the "release" mechanism work? In open-source, you just release a program when you want to, and people use it if they choose to. That won't quite work with a law: someone says "people shouldn't be allowed to do such and such", and then those who want to follow it do so. Or cops/judges choose which ones they want to enforce. Doesn't seem like that would be too effective.:)
> With not much effort, by not a huge percent of the population, California was able to fairly significantly reduce its energy needs during the whole Enron-initiated "power crisis."
Actually, I strongly suspect that the mild summer we had that year was a much bigger factor than people actually conserving power.
> He'd marvel at our stupidity, inventing a machine that can churn out books faster than you can read them, and then Not Allowing ourselves to use it.
More like Not Allowing Each Other to use it.
Yes, we're going to have some tough issues to face: how much can we trust each other; how much can we trust human nature? Open Source is showing us how the Law of Large Numbers can help make such an economy work, even when common sense (or what is currently regarded as common sense) says it shouldn't.
Though there's an even bigger question: can so many billions of people really have that much power without going into self-destruct mode?
Somehow, I do actually think the answer will be yes. But I don't know how, really. Something to do with the fact that people will knuckle down and do the thing needed for survival when the situation requires it. I think people can be surpisingly intelligent when they are staring Death in the face.
> I... tend to take more than give back to Open Source. >... > Everybody is using Open Source to their advantage, but who is actually developing?
Think about how it works out: say you give 1% (however that is to be measured) to the community, and consume 99%. If you just look at it at that level, it looks like you're leeching off the goodwill of others. But then bring the numbers into it: what if there are 10,000 individuals doing the same thing? Since the those 1%'s are information and can be copied infinitely (unlike, say, Xmas presents or poker chips), then you end up with 10,000% available for you to download.
Re:Flavor- Who gives a F-ck. This is sick
on
Lab-Grown Steak
·
· Score: 1
>... yet so many people react in very stereotypical ways when one suggests that removing beef, chicken and cheese (90% of the non-vegetarian diet) is a thing to do.
Er, I don't think anyone eats 90% meat/cheese -- well, not for long, anyways ("what's that funny pain in my chest?").:)
Personally, I think you can have a very healthy diet that includes *some* meat/etc. Just keep everything in moderation. I think there's little difference between that and *no* meat, health-wise. Vegitarianism could even be worse, if you don't do it right. Meat is a convenient source of some good stuff, and you have to really know what you're doing (or live in a well-evolved, largely-vegetarian culter, e.g. India) to get enough non-meat sources of these components.
The real problem that a lot of Americans have is just too many calories overall -- well, too much of *everything*, actually. But an under-appreciated danger is that of having too carbohydrates. They translate into the same bad (and some good) fats in your body as meat will give you, if you don't exercise it off promptly. And that's where some misguided vegetarians could go wrong, I think. I mean, if someone goes to McDonald's and just gets french fries and a soda, and thinks they're being healthy because they're avoiding meat, they're sadly mistaken!
This relates somewhat to a recent
Scientific American article
, about how the absolute "no fat" emphasis has been misguided. Here's
a zoom-up on what the authors feel is a better design for the Food Pyramid.
Personally, I lost nearly 20lbs (low 170's --> mid 150's) about 1.5 yrs ago, over a period of 6 months. This wasn't by doing anything drastic with my diet, I just stopped eating so *damn* much! Probably due to being laid off from my company, where we had free dinners every night, and where I went out to lunch with buddies every day. Now if I could just get out of my computer chair and *exercise*...
> > I wonder if it would be a good sub-project for Mozilla, to make a general-purpose hardware/software-installer wizard. > > That's not necessary although the Mozilla installer is quite slick. Take a look at...
Thanks for the reference!
My point about Mozilla, though, is that even if another program can make an installation easy, *that* program needs to be readily accessible from something the user knows already. A browser would fit the bill nicely. Perhaps it'd even better than going to a pulldown menu from the desktop, if done correctly: hit the "download" button on the web site, and the browser automatically goes into the installation sequence. Actually, I think that's the approach that Lindows is taking?
Oh, another thing I'd like to see would be to allow for easy installs in *user* space -- i.e. you should never *have* to become root to install something. That's one of the weakness of windows, isn't it, that you have to be root to do most everything.
>... Linux developers should concentrate, at least in the short term, on recreating the look and feel of the MS Windows desktop.
Actually, I'd say there are more fundamental issues than just the "look and feel":
1. Users want it to be easy to install new programs, and also to de-install them. I'm talking about pushing a single button on your browswer (along with walking through a wizard) or some equivalent.
2. Users want the applications they desire to be *available* for the platform.
3. Users want to be able to plug in a piece of hardware, and have it *work* without going to any more effort than doing step #1 above.
Of these, it looks like #2 is making a lot of headway, but #1 and #3 are still stumbling blocks. Your average joe doesn't want to have to go read a bunch of HOWTO docs and edit a bunch of files to get something to work. Even a lot of programmers such as myself don't want to have to learn so many damn details just to get something like that to work.
I wonder if it would be a good sub-project for Mozilla, to make a general-purpose hardware/software-installer wizard.
But anyways, once these stumbling blocks are removed (to a sufficient degree), I don't see any reason why Linux wouldn't take off like wildfire for home-use.
Slashdot Mirror
> Cache latency is basically doubled, as two VCPUs now fight over access to the cache
I'm pretty sure this is wrong -- cache latency isn't doubled; the SIZE is HALVED. The two threads access two different virtual caches. Trying to get them to contend for a single cache would be an architectural nightmare.
Though I believe it's still one physical cache -- which means that the latency is going to be higher than what you'd expect for a cache of its apparent size.
> Pipeline depth is shortened for either given VCPU, which hurts code that was optimized for the longer pipelines (lots of matrix math, MMX stuff).
I don't actually know about the pipeline, but I suspect this is wrong too: shortening the pipeline (reducing the number of stages) is a fundamental change in the architecture; a pipeline isn't something you can cut in half and give the front end to one process and the back end to another. Each stage is quite unique.
Now if you mean that the latest Pentiums have a shorter pipeline than previous incarnations, then maybe that's right (though I'd doubt it -- they're always *lengthening* the pipeline to get those higher GHz numbers). But that would have nothing to do with Hyperthreading.
> My questions: What's the downside?
Mostly, the cache size per "virtual cpu" is cut in half. So no individual thread of execution (including all non-threaded programs) is ever going to be able to use the entire cache.
> Is AMD doing anything similar?
I haven't heard of anything yet. I don't know how flexible the spec for the K9 architecture still is, but perhaps it might be slipped in if there's sufficient market demand. If it's not in there already.
Though here's another angle: if Hammer/Opteron processors are sufficiently cheaper than equivalent-performance Intel cpu's, then you might be able to have an *actual* dual-processor machine for not a lot more money than a systems with a single HT'ing pentium.
> Step aside Sony, Disney, and Adobe...make rook for one more.
Naa, making pawn will do.
(ducks)
> Do we know that the dinosaurs didn't breathe CO2? Or rather, do we know what they breathed?
I think it's a pretty safe assumption that they were O2-breathers, like all other animals on the planet. Molecular oxygen is a source of energy; if animals didn't use O2, they'd have to do photosynthesis directly, and I've never heard of animals doing *that*. "Breathing CO2" doesn't make sense, because there's no more chemical energy to get from that molecule; plants "breathe" it because they are actually adding energy to it thru photosynthesis, to build sugars.
Also, if dinosaurs breathed something other than oxygen, that'd be a pretty radical departure from the way ecosystems work today; but the fossil record shows an ecosystem that's really pretty similar.
Actually, I doub't we'd even be calling them "animals" if they didn't breathe O2.
> we've seen a correlation, causation has not been proved.
Yes, strictly scientifically speaking, we haven't proven it.
But then, this is an awfully complex system. The only way to prove something about it may very well be to see what actually happens. e.g. has any meterologist *proven* that it's going to rain in 3 days? How would they do that?
The answer is, of course, they don't. Instead, they give a probability value. And in general, that's how you have to look at the real world, if you want to make *practical* decisions about what you should/shouldn't be doing next.
If you were to do a survey of all the atmospheric experts out there -- the actual scientists who have their noses in the data -- and asked them to give a probability assessment that humans are causing the global warming trend, you certainly wouldn't get them all saying 100%. But I'd wager the average response would be well above 50%.
> There are many gasses that have a greater effect on the greenhouse effect than CO2, and water vapor is one of them, granted CO2 is by far the greenhouse gas that is produced the most.
:)
Yes, CO2 is the one that's *increasing* the most significantly. Of course, if the ave. temps are push up a few degrees by CO2, more H2O will vaporize on average.
But I think there's something else about water too -- when it makes the big, fluffy, low-altitude clouds, it has a net cooling effect, since those clouds reflect so much sunlight. Wispy, high-altitude clouds have a net warming effect, since they still let a lot of light through.
So -- it's complicated.
> ...at the current time tempartures are dropping at the poles, contrary to what the models predict.
I believe that's incorrect -- the northernmost parts of Antarctica (some peninsula; don't remember the name), are experiencing higher average temperatures. It's just that the raised temperatures haven't penetrated all the way south yet.
You may be thinking of the fact that global warming may possibly increase *snowfall* at the poles, due to higher moisture content of the air, and the fact that the poles will still be below freezing, even if they warm up a few degrees.
> Remember, plants really enjoy the fact that the CO2 level increases.
That's true, in the very-short and very-long term. But the problem is that it's still a disruption to the ecosystem. I remember a study done to look at the impact on plant-feeding insects when the plants they eat are exposed to a CO2-enriched atmosphere. Basically, the insects' food ended up having a higher starch content and a lower nutritional value because the plants could suck up CO2 faster than normal, while their intake of in minerals, etc remained the same. This made for problems for the insects.
So if insects have a problem, this could harm the plants longer-term due to decreased pollination. Likewise, there could be other problems with the loss of the other types of animals that interact with plants in various ways.
But -- I actually agree that raised C02 levels will be a good thing for the environment. But that's over the LONG TERM. We're talking thousands, more likely hundreds of thousands, of years needed for the transition if we don't want to cause major extinctions. Life needs time to adapt.
Actually, it's interesting that this planet has likely been in high-CO2 states before -- just think about the dinosaurs. What kind of enviromnent could support 30-foot-tall carniverous beasts? Well, one with an awful lot of large herbiverous beasts. And what kind of environment would support that? One with *lots* and *lots* of plant life -- obviously, much more than we have today. You'd probably need a lot of CO2, and probably higher ave. temperatures and humidity, for plants to be doing that well. Also, if that "Walking with Dinosaurs" series was accurate, Antarctica of that time was frozen only in winter; and was quite balmy in summertime.
> Yes except that people will start writing code to those C libraries and build a mountain of code that has no consistency. ...
;)
> D should try to stay out of the limelight as long as possible so that these design issues can be worked out. Otherwise you'll end up seeing ad hoc implementations of every major feature with no consistency.
--ding!--
Ahh, now I get it.
Yes, it would probably be in D's best long-term interests to *remove* the C-library accessibility, at least until it has a substantial code base already.
It serves it in the short term, allowing one to write fully-functional programs easily, but perhaps there's a sort of unwritten idea -- in the minds of D's creators --- that any such programs you write now will be rather temporary. The danger being that a lot of users might not get that.
I guess they try to warn people a bit by declaring D as being in Alpha stage, but maybe they should probably make these aspects more clear in their documentation, instead of trumpeting the C-compatability stuff.
> I hope to god that no one actually adopts D for real work in the near future. If they do, they will run into the limitations I mentioned above and figure out some hack to get it to work. Hack begets hack begets hack and you are left with another bloated language lacking uniformity that people will bitch about on tech discussion boards.
Er, it looked like the vast majority of the limitations you mentioned have to do with the fact that one must resort to using a C library to get to various standard functionalities, since D doesn't have all those libs fleshed out.
I don't see how this will cause the language *itself* to be subjected to hacks upon hacks, etc. Rather, as each major function is implemented in a native-D library, you simply won't have to "do market research on libraries" for it anymore. Isn't that natural for a language? Isn't it better to provide for this kind of legacy-code-reuse than not allowing for *any* of those available functionalities until it's native-written?
> It might have been a countermeasure to allow 'starving artists' and 'betrayed scientist' to benefit from their life's work.
:)
Yes, and that'd be a business, no?
An individual can conduct business.
I didn't say corporations.
> I realize the business of business is to make profit, but that statement make it sound as if the law is a secondary concern...
But copyright law is made expressly *for* the benefit of business. So, like the right of an assault victim to choose whether or not to press charges, a business that owns a copyright has the right to decline enforcement of these laws.
> Anyone else think laws should be open-sourced so that we all, as a community of Americans, can view, revise, and change things as need be?
:)
Fundamentally, that's what a Democracy is supposed to be doing, isn't it? Though with the idea that everyone has to verify it before it's "released" (passed). We of course live in a Representative Democracy, wherein we appoint "experts" to do this job for us.
Your suggestion sounds like something you might call a "Contributor Democracy", where anyone who wants to participates in the process of formulating the laws.
Only problem is, how does the "release" mechanism work? In open-source, you just release a program when you want to, and people use it if they choose to. That won't quite work with a law: someone says "people shouldn't be allowed to do such and such", and then those who want to follow it do so. Or cops/judges choose which ones they want to enforce. Doesn't seem like that would be too effective.
But it's an interesting idea!
> With not much effort, by not a huge percent of the population, California was able to fairly significantly reduce its energy needs during the whole Enron-initiated "power crisis."
Actually, I strongly suspect that the mild summer we had that year was a much bigger factor than people actually conserving power.
> He'd marvel at our stupidity, inventing a machine that can churn out books faster than you can read them, and then Not Allowing ourselves to use it.
More like Not Allowing Each Other to use it.
Yes, we're going to have some tough issues to face: how much can we trust each other; how much can we trust human nature? Open Source is showing us how the Law of Large Numbers can help make such an economy work, even when common sense (or what is currently regarded as common sense) says it shouldn't.
Though there's an even bigger question: can so many billions of people really have that much power without going into self-destruct mode?
Somehow, I do actually think the answer will be yes. But I don't know how, really. Something to do with the fact that people will knuckle down and do the thing needed for survival when the situation requires it. I think people can be surpisingly intelligent when they are staring Death in the face.
> it could be nice to make the parts printed interchangable...
Yes, there's something universally fundamental about the usefulness of modularity. Even our genome has figured it out!
> Imagine the complexity of the information required to print a working gadget, like that.
Well, no more than any run-of-the-mill IC. But yes, it'd be serious IP, that a company will fight tooth-and-nail to protect.
> What would be cool is the open source community eventually embracing it.
Eventually???
The drool will be waist-deep by the time these suckers become available! My feet are damp already!
>What do they do with the old dead IC? They throw it away!
And also, an awful lot of waste occurs to produce the replacement IC!
> A printer could print itself, or, more accurately, a copy of itself, if its width, height, and depth are different from each other.
Oh, just give it legs.
Mmmmmm.....Polymer teaaaa....
> I ... tend to take more than give back to Open Source. ...
>
> Everybody is using Open Source to their advantage, but who is actually developing?
Think about how it works out: say you give 1% (however that is to be measured) to the community, and consume 99%. If you just look at it at that level, it looks like you're leeching off the goodwill of others. But then bring the numbers into it: what if there are 10,000 individuals doing the same thing? Since the those 1%'s are information and can be copied infinitely (unlike, say, Xmas presents or poker chips), then you end up with 10,000% available for you to download.
Well, maybe next year...
Er, I don't think anyone eats 90% meat/cheese -- well, not for long, anyways ("what's that funny pain in my chest?"). :)
Personally, I think you can have a very healthy diet that includes *some* meat/etc. Just keep everything in moderation. I think there's little difference between that and *no* meat, health-wise. Vegitarianism could even be worse, if you don't do it right. Meat is a convenient source of some good stuff, and you have to really know what you're doing (or live in a well-evolved, largely-vegetarian culter, e.g. India) to get enough non-meat sources of these components.
The real problem that a lot of Americans have is just too many calories overall -- well, too much of *everything*, actually. But an under-appreciated danger is that of having too carbohydrates. They translate into the same bad (and some good) fats in your body as meat will give you, if you don't exercise it off promptly. And that's where some misguided vegetarians could go wrong, I think. I mean, if someone goes to McDonald's and just gets french fries and a soda, and thinks they're being healthy because they're avoiding meat, they're sadly mistaken!
This relates somewhat to a recent Scientific American article , about how the absolute "no fat" emphasis has been misguided. Here's a zoom-up on what the authors feel is a better design for the Food Pyramid.
Personally, I lost nearly 20lbs (low 170's --> mid 150's) about 1.5 yrs ago, over a period of 6 months. This wasn't by doing anything drastic with my diet, I just stopped eating so *damn* much! Probably due to being laid off from my company, where we had free dinners every night, and where I went out to lunch with buddies every day. Now if I could just get out of my computer chair and *exercise*...
> > I wonder if it would be a good sub-project for Mozilla, to make a general-purpose hardware/software-installer wizard. ...
>
> That's not necessary although the Mozilla installer is quite slick. Take a look at
Thanks for the reference!
My point about Mozilla, though, is that even if another program can make an installation easy, *that* program needs to be readily accessible from something the user knows already. A browser would fit the bill nicely. Perhaps it'd even better than going to a pulldown menu from the desktop, if done correctly: hit the "download" button on the web site, and the browser automatically goes into the installation sequence. Actually, I think that's the approach that Lindows is taking?
Oh, another thing I'd like to see would be to allow for easy installs in *user* space -- i.e. you should never *have* to become root to install something. That's one of the weakness of windows, isn't it, that you have to be root to do most everything.
> ... Linux developers should concentrate, at least in the short term, on recreating the look and feel of the MS Windows desktop.
Actually, I'd say there are more fundamental issues than just the "look and feel":
1. Users want it to be easy to install new programs, and also to de-install them. I'm talking about pushing a single button on your browswer (along with walking through a wizard) or some equivalent.
2. Users want the applications they desire to be *available* for the platform.
3. Users want to be able to plug in a piece of hardware, and have it *work* without going to any more effort than doing step #1 above.
Of these, it looks like #2 is making a lot of headway, but #1 and #3 are still stumbling blocks. Your average joe doesn't want to have to go read a bunch of HOWTO docs and edit a bunch of files to get something to work. Even a lot of programmers such as myself don't want to have to learn so many damn details just to get something like that to work.
I wonder if it would be a good sub-project for Mozilla, to make a general-purpose hardware/software-installer wizard.
But anyways, once these stumbling blocks are removed (to a sufficient degree), I don't see any reason why Linux wouldn't take off like wildfire for home-use.