There is no necessary relation between code quality and mass appeal
True enough.
What you don't seem to comprehend is that it's the "mass appeal" that matters, code quality means jack shit.
When was the last time you talked to a secretary and heard her complain the the source to MS Word was poorly comented? Oh, never?
The part that matters is the end result. Carmack DELIVERS the end result. His code may not be the prettiest (not sure, haven't looked at it), but the code doesn't matter in the long run.
Do you have enough cash in the bank to fund an X-Prize team? Carmack does. So if you don't, I'd say you just might be focusing on pretty source code at the expense of a funtional executable.
This is not the New York Times, he is not a reporter, and you are not his editor.
The post was Grade A Fucking Hilarious.
If you didn't enjoy it, that's fine, but if you're such an insecure little fuckin' wuss that you need to pick people apart in order to make yourself feel like a man, at least do it to somebody face to face.
However, I didn't download it until I had already purchased a copy at Best Buy.
I downloaded it because the legit version refused to run, giving me some bullshit error message about having CD emulation installed. The warezed version, however, installed and ran just fine (even though I used daemon tools to install it from the.iso images....).
id and/or Activision need to seriously reevaluate their anti-piracy plans. When I'm sitting here with a legit copy in my hands, but still have to download the warez version to get it to work, something's seriously fucked up.
If they think I'm going to remove useful software from my computer just to run their game, they can lick my sweaty nutsack.
Both two organizations full of people smart enough to "get it there", but too fuckin' stupid to realize that once it gets there, it should actually be able to do something.
I say they should go with the fast, cheap and outta control method. a ton of little RC cars wandering around gathering up bits of info, transmitting it to a central beacon, then shutting down.
What ya wanna bet they'd forget to put wheels on those RC cars?:-)
Seriously, these guys are accomplishing some pretty difficult, complicated shit. If they're capable of getting it there, there's no excuse for fucking up on the simple stuff like they have been lately.
A single mission like this costs more than the annual net income of the residents of an entire small city. When you're spending that amount of money, you get it right the first time. You don't just say "Oops, let's try again".
OK, fair enough, that's actually a damn good question.
The answer is rarely. I actually never do plug headphones in, but once or twice a year when I have a long road trip to make I'll plug in a cassette adapter and listen to it over the car stereo.
Other than that, though, I just use it as a convenient way to carry music and data from place to place. Maybe I'm just getting old, but these days I just don't seem to find myself in many situations where headphones would make sense.
Bud, I'm a long, long ways away from being a mac zealout. I happen to think they're damn fine machines, at least since OS X, but except for the past few weeks, it was nothing but Windows and Linux machines that my iPod was getting plugged into.
Fer cryin' out fuckin' loud, my expertise in this particular area consists of having read a bunch of articles on the Internet, and these guys are omitting things that would have been obvious even to me.
How hard would it be to write a little routine that says:
if (voltage 3) { open_the_panels_and_charge_batteries(or_els e_we'll _look_like_morons); }
Gimme a break, they can launch this thing into space and land it on another planet, but automatically opening the solar panels when the batteries get low is beyond their capability?
The real entertainment is going to come in a week or so when they have to publically give up hope, and we all get to have a good chuckle over the bullshit excuses they try to offer.
If you'd step up to firewire, you'd find that it acually GAINS charge while communicating with a computer.
The only time my iPod is EVER connected to ANYTHING is when I plug it into one of my computers. In the two years that I've had it, the battery has never been dead. Not even once.
Yep, exactly. And on a server, I'd be a little leery of turning those checks off. If the server really can't be down for an hour, then this is where words like "redundant", "hot swappable", and "generator" start finding there way into your hardware spec. Possibly even mirrored servers with automatic failover.
If someone's idea of maintaining high uptime is simply "build a machine that boots back up really fast when it crashes", then they're not ready to work on enterprise class stuff yet.
Plus, if he goes with an external Firewire tuner, he can use one of the spare ports on his Firewire card to import from the camcorder (zero quality loss).
If he's careful, he'll end up with a solution that not only works under Windows and Linux, but would be moveable to a Mac if he ever decided to make that switch.
Since cross platform compatibility was a major concern for the OP, I'd say PCI cards should be ruled out from the start.
Here's the thing, though, if a machine is taking anywhere in the 30+ minute range to boot, that's probably due to hardware (disks spinning up, etc...), not the OS. Chances are you chose that harware for a good reason, and changing it isn't much of an option.
I'm not saying you shouldn't investigate ways to decrease the boot time, I'm just saying that switching to a different OS is not likely, in that scenario, to give you the significant boost you're looking for.
The post that I was replying to was comparing the boot times of OSs. In every case that I've seen where a PC class machine had a long boot time (30 minutes or more) most of that time was spent before the boot partition was ever accessed, and the boot time of the OS itself was a trivial figure.
I've always hated Macs. I've acknowledged that the hardware was superior to most PCs, but what good does that do you when it's running the "OS for Dummies"? No command line at all? Gimme a break...
As of a month ago, my main computer at home is a Mac. OS X is what Linux wishes it was. (at least on the desktop) All of the unix-ish goodness, plus a polished GUI, and decent availability of commercial apps. I have yet to find a Linux app that has not either already been ported, or couldn't be ported with minimal effort.
I now have all of the benefits that I used to get from Linux, and using apps like Excel and Quicken is no longer a hassle.
I'm still running Linux in the back room, but for a desktop unix, OS X is a thing of beauty.
If your server can't afford to be down for an hour while it boots (hell, I've worked with NetWare servers that took 30 minutes just to spin up all the SCSI disks, one by one), then you need to design it in such a way that it never needs to BE rebooted, except during pre-scheduled maintenance windows.
Which resources? All of the media stuff, for one. I don't see much of a reason for a database server to have a copy of Media Player on it.
And, as you hinted at, I find the notion of a server OS that can't be run without the GUI to be downright stupid. In my mind, a server OS should be able to be administered through nothing but an SSH session, or maybe a simple web interface, making the entire GUI itself a significant and unnecessary drain on resources.
And, yes, the presence of an app like Freecell on the disk is pretty much irrelevant. It's not the presence of the app that I object to, it's the fact that nobody took 5 minutes to remove it from the default install.
I'll also concede that Linux isn't perfect in this area, either. However, my recent experiences (which happen to be with RedHat, for no particular reason) have been that when you choose the "server install", you do get a much more reasonable set of apps and services installed than with Windows. But my point wasn't to say that Linux is perfect, I'd switch my servers over to Solaris in a heartbeat if Sun would make a believable commitment to the x86 platform (I work for a small company, the boss doesn't want to pony up for Sparc hardware).
Windows, even the server versions, are not the enterprise class OSs that they are marketed as. This should come as no surprise, because they were not even designed that way in the first place.
All you have to do to realize this is boot up W2K AS and use it as a desktop machine for awhile. All of the desktop crap is still there sucking up resources. Even Freecell is there, fer cryin' out loud! Try as I might, I can't come up with a good reason for a headless server sitting in a data center to have a copy of Freecell on it.
I can understand why, with a desktop OS, you would just go ahead and install everything by default, just to make sure that everything works. But why would you do that with an enterprise class server OS? At some level of the chain here, shouldn't MS acknowledge that the intended user of the product actually knows what he's doing?
At some point in the design process, shouldn't someone have said "Hey, this is going to run on servers in the back room, we could probably ditch Freecell and Solitaire, couldn't we?"
The fact that they didn't, well... It makes me wonder.
I can't speak for everybody, but personally I've never owned an S3 card that I was unhappy with. nVida has been hit or miss, and ATI has been a nightmare.
The sad part is that I suspect that ATI's hardware is (and always has been) absolutely top notch. They just don't seem to put much focus on debugging the drivers.
ATI video cards have been banned from my workplace for several years now, and I've not seen a reason to change my mind on that. (Yes, I get to make decisions like that)
Lack of visits is no problem at all. What basis is there to assume that a space faring race would choose Earth as a destination? There are a variety of reasons why they may not be interested in coming here. For example, if their reason for venturing into space was colonisation, don't you suppose they'd look for EMPTY planets?
As for probes and space stations... You're joking, right? Only recently have we even been able to detect Earth sized planets around other stars, and we still can't observe them visually. How are we supposed to be detecting probes and space stations at equal distances?
Slashdot Mirror
There is no necessary relation between code quality and mass appeal
True enough.
What you don't seem to comprehend is that it's the "mass appeal" that matters, code quality means jack shit.
When was the last time you talked to a secretary and heard her complain the the source to MS Word was poorly comented? Oh, never?
The part that matters is the end result. Carmack DELIVERS the end result. His code may not be the prettiest (not sure, haven't looked at it), but the code doesn't matter in the long run.
Do you have enough cash in the bank to fund an X-Prize team? Carmack does. So if you don't, I'd say you just might be focusing on pretty source code at the expense of a funtional executable.
To make a long story short, Shut The Fuck Up.
You, sir, are a fucking asshole.
This is not the New York Times, he is not a reporter, and you are not his editor.
The post was Grade A Fucking Hilarious.
If you didn't enjoy it, that's fine, but if you're such an insecure little fuckin' wuss that you need to pick people apart in order to make yourself feel like a man, at least do it to somebody face to face.
I'll also confess that I downloaded it.
.iso images....).
However, I didn't download it until I had already purchased a copy at Best Buy.
I downloaded it because the legit version refused to run, giving me some bullshit error message about having CD emulation installed. The warezed version, however, installed and ran just fine (even though I used daemon tools to install it from the
id and/or Activision need to seriously reevaluate their anti-piracy plans. When I'm sitting here with a legit copy in my hands, but still have to download the warez version to get it to work, something's seriously fucked up.
If they think I'm going to remove useful software from my computer just to run their game, they can lick my sweaty nutsack.
NASA, ESA, same thing...
Both two organizations full of people smart enough to "get it there", but too fuckin' stupid to realize that once it gets there, it should actually be able to do something.
When did I claim to be an expert? I thought I made it clear that I don't even consider myself to be qualified enough to call myself an amateur.
In fact, that was my whole point.
(and, for the record, in the future if you want to fuck with me, at least have the balls to attach some sort of username to your post.)
I say they should go with the fast, cheap and outta control method. a ton of little RC cars wandering around gathering up bits of info, transmitting it to a central beacon, then shutting down.
:-)
What ya wanna bet they'd forget to put wheels on those RC cars?
Seriously, these guys are accomplishing some pretty difficult, complicated shit. If they're capable of getting it there, there's no excuse for fucking up on the simple stuff like they have been lately.
A single mission like this costs more than the annual net income of the residents of an entire small city. When you're spending that amount of money, you get it right the first time. You don't just say "Oops, let's try again".
I'm a dumbass?
You're the fuckwit that can't figure out how to connect an iPod to a computer without draining its battery.
Is your daddy also your brother?
Dude, stop by my office someday. These are not women that you bother trying to impress.
OK, fair enough, that's actually a damn good question.
The answer is rarely. I actually never do plug headphones in, but once or twice a year when I have a long road trip to make I'll plug in a cassette adapter and listen to it over the car stereo.
Other than that, though, I just use it as a convenient way to carry music and data from place to place. Maybe I'm just getting old, but these days I just don't seem to find myself in many situations where headphones would make sense.
Bud, I'm a long, long ways away from being a mac zealout. I happen to think they're damn fine machines, at least since OS X, but except for the past few weeks, it was nothing but Windows and Linux machines that my iPod was getting plugged into.
It should do this automatically.
s e_we'll _look_like_morons);
True. It should. You know that. I know that.
Fuckin' shame it never occured to the NASA guys.
Fer cryin' out fuckin' loud, my expertise in this particular area consists of having read a bunch of articles on the Internet, and these guys are omitting things that would have been obvious even to me.
How hard would it be to write a little routine that says:
if (voltage 3)
{
open_the_panels_and_charge_batteries(or_el
}
Gimme a break, they can launch this thing into space and land it on another planet, but automatically opening the solar panels when the batteries get low is beyond their capability?
The real entertainment is going to come in a week or so when they have to publically give up hope, and we all get to have a good chuckle over the bullshit excuses they try to offer.
Must be using USB, huh?
If you'd step up to firewire, you'd find that it acually GAINS charge while communicating with a computer.
The only time my iPod is EVER connected to ANYTHING is when I plug it into one of my computers. In the two years that I've had it, the battery has never been dead. Not even once.
Let me guess, still a virgin, right?
Yep, exactly. And on a server, I'd be a little leery of turning those checks off. If the server really can't be down for an hour, then this is where words like "redundant", "hot swappable", and "generator" start finding there way into your hardware spec. Possibly even mirrored servers with automatic failover.
If someone's idea of maintaining high uptime is simply "build a machine that boots back up really fast when it crashes", then they're not ready to work on enterprise class stuff yet.
Plus, if he goes with an external Firewire tuner, he can use one of the spare ports on his Firewire card to import from the camcorder (zero quality loss).
If he's careful, he'll end up with a solution that not only works under Windows and Linux, but would be moveable to a Mac if he ever decided to make that switch.
Since cross platform compatibility was a major concern for the OP, I'd say PCI cards should be ruled out from the start.
Here's the thing, though, if a machine is taking anywhere in the 30+ minute range to boot, that's probably due to hardware (disks spinning up, etc...), not the OS. Chances are you chose that harware for a good reason, and changing it isn't much of an option.
I'm not saying you shouldn't investigate ways to decrease the boot time, I'm just saying that switching to a different OS is not likely, in that scenario, to give you the significant boost you're looking for.
The post that I was replying to was comparing the boot times of OSs. In every case that I've seen where a PC class machine had a long boot time (30 minutes or more) most of that time was spent before the boot partition was ever accessed, and the boot time of the OS itself was a trivial figure.
(until OS X which I think is great).
OK, now we're venturing WAY off topic, but...
I've always hated Macs. I've acknowledged that the hardware was superior to most PCs, but what good does that do you when it's running the "OS for Dummies"? No command line at all? Gimme a break...
As of a month ago, my main computer at home is a Mac. OS X is what Linux wishes it was. (at least on the desktop) All of the unix-ish goodness, plus a polished GUI, and decent availability of commercial apps. I have yet to find a Linux app that has not either already been ported, or couldn't be ported with minimal effort.
I now have all of the benefits that I used to get from Linux, and using apps like Excel and Quicken is no longer a hassle.
I'm still running Linux in the back room, but for a desktop unix, OS X is a thing of beauty.
On a server, who cares how fast it boots?
If your server can't afford to be down for an hour while it boots (hell, I've worked with NetWare servers that took 30 minutes just to spin up all the SCSI disks, one by one), then you need to design it in such a way that it never needs to BE rebooted, except during pre-scheduled maintenance windows.
Which resources? All of the media stuff, for one. I don't see much of a reason for a database server to have a copy of Media Player on it.
And, as you hinted at, I find the notion of a server OS that can't be run without the GUI to be downright stupid. In my mind, a server OS should be able to be administered through nothing but an SSH session, or maybe a simple web interface, making the entire GUI itself a significant and unnecessary drain on resources.
And, yes, the presence of an app like Freecell on the disk is pretty much irrelevant. It's not the presence of the app that I object to, it's the fact that nobody took 5 minutes to remove it from the default install.
I'll also concede that Linux isn't perfect in this area, either. However, my recent experiences (which happen to be with RedHat, for no particular reason) have been that when you choose the "server install", you do get a much more reasonable set of apps and services installed than with Windows. But my point wasn't to say that Linux is perfect, I'd switch my servers over to Solaris in a heartbeat if Sun would make a believable commitment to the x86 platform (I work for a small company, the boss doesn't want to pony up for Sparc hardware).
He actually makes some very good points.
Windows, even the server versions, are not the enterprise class OSs that they are marketed as. This should come as no surprise, because they were not even designed that way in the first place.
All you have to do to realize this is boot up W2K AS and use it as a desktop machine for awhile. All of the desktop crap is still there sucking up resources. Even Freecell is there, fer cryin' out loud! Try as I might, I can't come up with a good reason for a headless server sitting in a data center to have a copy of Freecell on it.
I can understand why, with a desktop OS, you would just go ahead and install everything by default, just to make sure that everything works. But why would you do that with an enterprise class server OS? At some level of the chain here, shouldn't MS acknowledge that the intended user of the product actually knows what he's doing?
At some point in the design process, shouldn't someone have said "Hey, this is going to run on servers in the back room, we could probably ditch Freecell and Solitaire, couldn't we?"
The fact that they didn't, well... It makes me wonder.
I don't see it, either. I see all of the same LEDs that you mentioned, but nothing labelled "Temp".
$200 to me seems like WAY to much to pay for a graphics card
Especially in a day and age where a hundred bucks more can buy you an entire PC.
Unless you play cutting edge games, a $75 video card will do everything you want.
Perhaps if somebody released a "cutting edge game" that had the same enjoyment value as Quake 2, I'd consider upgrading from my TNT2 card.
I can't speak for everybody, but personally I've never owned an S3 card that I was unhappy with. nVida has been hit or miss, and ATI has been a nightmare.
The sad part is that I suspect that ATI's hardware is (and always has been) absolutely top notch. They just don't seem to put much focus on debugging the drivers.
ATI video cards have been banned from my workplace for several years now, and I've not seen a reason to change my mind on that. (Yes, I get to make decisions like that)
Lack of visits is no problem at all. What basis is there to assume that a space faring race would choose Earth as a destination? There are a variety of reasons why they may not be interested in coming here. For example, if their reason for venturing into space was colonisation, don't you suppose they'd look for EMPTY planets?
As for probes and space stations... You're joking, right? Only recently have we even been able to detect Earth sized planets around other stars, and we still can't observe them visually. How are we supposed to be detecting probes and space stations at equal distances?