Instead, we've got javascript, CSS, XHTML, and other buzzwords. Which in the end, take control of how a web page looks from the user's hand.... I would like to format a web page the way I want to see it.
You should love CSS, XHTML, and Javascript, then.
With CSS, you can change the entire look of a webpage without changing the markup. Most browsers will let you load your own custom CSS. Without CSS, people would be using FONT tags, which you have significantly less control over.
And Javascript allows for things like bookmarklets, or better, GreaseMonkey. You can write or download a script which does, well, whatever you want to a given page, as you view it. One I've been playing with recently adds a "download MP4" link right into the middle of every YouTube page. Off the top of my head, if you really hate my post, and don't want to see any more comments from me -- I'm not sure if Slashdot itself allows this, but you could write a Greasemonkey script to do it.
The vast majority of the web is simple formatted text. There is no reason for this to constantly evolve onwards and onwards.
Simple formatted text can look better.
And, like it or not, the Web is an application platform now. What you're saying is kind of like wishing computers never evolved beyond calculators.
Well, yes. Unless you think the Internet isn't important, or that it wouldn't make a difference if the web was controlled by a single person. I think that certainly puts it above "what costume will I wear" kind of serious.
And your sig betrays you -- you seem to take yourself just as seriously as the rest of us take things that actually matter.
I mean, when I go to the bank to cash a check, I don't worry they won't give me money unless I can prove I'm using Firefox at home.
Well, when you go to cash a check, you shouldn't really have to prove anything, other than that you can sign for it.
But I've seen banks that only work on IE. I haven't seen banks that only work on Firefox.
Even if your app is 100% standard compliant, it may not be cross browser. Not even if you pull IE out of the equation.
However, the working subset that you can use is much larger, and the browser-specific hacks are almost nonexistent.
Add that the standard evolves extremely slowly, and if you want to get the job done, you need to bypass it.
Erm, it's not the standard that moves slowly. It's adoption.
Consider, again, how much better life is when you take IE out of the equation.
Same with XHTML and CSS. Even fully implemented, its vague, poorly designed (hellllooo.... versioning anyone? API 101?)
Erm, XHTML 1.0? And 1.1?
You sound like you know what you're talking about, and then you forget about the fscking doctype.
The faster we get rid of it, the better. Either by a proprietary spec (Flash may not be open source, but at least it freagin work
Except when it doesn't.
And since it is proprietary, there's little to no chance of third-party developers adding support for basic stuff, like, I don't know, 64-bit browsers, or video playback that doesn't suck.
mostly cross platform if you don't care to use the latest version at all time...better than XHTML/CSS anyway...
I think you'll find that if you stick to exactly one browser, and don't care about the latest version all the time, XHTML/CSS is at least as compatible as Flash.
by a new standard body that doesn't suck at -everything- they do. XQuery, XHTML, CSS, SOAP, XSD, XML... can they do ANYTHING right?
Any SPECIFIC complaints?
For what it's worth, I don't use XQuery. I let jQuery worry about the browser quirks involved -- and I write my queries as CSS selectors, anyway, rarely XQuery-like.
All things considered, it's actually not all that difficult to build a site that's standards-compliant, and works everywhere except IE. It's certainly easier to do so than to get Flash to perform well, or do anything Adobe didn't think of. (Can you imagine Greasemonkey for Flash? Neither can I.)
To complicate the issue, over the last few years there has been an explosion in the number of browsers on the market. It is really no fun navigating this modern tower of Babel.
To simplify the issue, maybe every few months, I have to fix an issue where our site works on Firefox, but not Safari.
Every few days, I have to fix an issue where our site works everywhere else except IE.
If we didn't have to deal with IE, the problem would be a complete non-issue. Any page I build that I'm not being paid to make usable in IE, I don't.
Of course you can hack it in with Javascript which is something I refused to do, what's the point of striving to be standards compliant when you break it a minute later with Javascript?
Well, Javascript is a standard.
I prefer progressive enhancement -- make the link a plain old link, and useful on its own, then override onClick to do whatever you want. Browsers that support middle-click-open-in-new-tab don't seem to count that as an onClick event.
Not really a lot of point to it, though -- savvy users will simply middle-click on the link if they want it in a new tab/window. If they don't, that generally implies they want it right where it is, and your attempt to open a new tab/window is going to be annoying.
But hey, at least using a target for that is better than linking to a javascript: URL. A lot of sites are even worse -- they add an onClick event, and they set the link href to #, or to javascript:void(), meaning that middle-clicking on it inevitably does something unexpected.
My preferred method (if I ever need to force a new window) is to use a plain old link, and progressively enhance it with Javascript to open a new window. That way, if people middle-click, it does exactly what they want.
I wouldn't mind it -- have you seen some of the better API doc sites?
What's more, "no frames" doesn't have to imply "no frame-like behavior" -- CSS can give you a little box whose contents scroll independently of the parent, and Javascript can give you links that don't refresh the entire page.
Do you understand why XHTML exists? How much more work it is to parse straight HTML, and less work it is for a browser to simply fire up an XML parser instead?
Might be solved with a lot of benchmarks and what not, but not really worth the effort.
No, not really, but I don't need benchmarks.
I would guess part of why I perceive Flash as slow is that it's abused, probably more than any other Web technology. A bigger part would be that I'm on 64-bit Linux, which is probably the worst platform I could be running for Flash and still have it work.
But I've just had both Flash and Java applets load in half a second or less, in a casual test. That's good enough that I'd file it under "non-issue" -- as in, not really worth the effort for anyone to benchmark, when choosing a technology.
There are no plans for an enormous database which will contain the content of your emails, the texts that you send or the chats you have on the phone or online.
Translation: We might build one now, we might build one later. We might already be building one, just without a plan.
See? No lies, just no plans!
Nor are we going to give local authorities the power to trawl through such a database in the interest of investigating lower level criminality under the spurious cover of counter terrorist legislation.
In other words: There's going to be a database, but only available to those sufficiently high up in the government. Not to local authorities. What a relief!
If you think I'm being too harsh, read again. If there's not going to be such a database, why would she go on to talk about who should have or not have access to such a database?
Some of the commentary on the speech is at least as disturbing as the speech itself:
The raw idea of simply handing over all this information to any government, however benign, and sticking it in an electronic warehouse is an awful idea if there are not very strict controls about it.
How'd you fall this far, Britain?
So, to translate: It's actually a fine idea, so long as there are sufficiently strict controls. I wonder who gets to decide how strict those controls should be.
And who controls the controllers, so to speak?
More of the same:
The government must present convincing justification for such an exponential increase in the powers of the state.
Again: A giant database of every email ever sent, from now till forever, in Britain, is alright so long as there's sufficient justification.
At least someone has the balls to take a stand:
These proposals are incompatible with a free country and a free people.
No, I don't think you can just load a source code file of Java into a running java Application without Groovy.
There's no technical reason why not -- just hasn't been done.
I understand the temptation to use Java in the browser, believe me I do, but the slow start up time and resource usage makes it a bloated whale.
Have you seen Flash lately?
My hand to $deity, Java applets load faster than Flash widgets for me.
I'm guessing you don't remember the bad old days of java applets in the mid to late 90's.
I do.
And you don't think anything's changed in ten years?
There is a reason why developers have even preferred kludgy AJAX over revising Java applets.
Oh, right now, I prefer AJAX over any of the above. Javascript isn't a bad language -- there are things from it that I miss in Ruby. And it's a lot easier to do progressive enhancement of an otherwise HTML page -- even a nice, semantic-HTML page (especially so, with jQuery) -- than it is with a plugin.
Also, all agile, no titles, no managers, no leaders, etc - everyone was a resource!
Not quite the case here -- there are titles. Not really "seniority", but titles based on skills people have, and who to go to when you have a problem, or a question. I think it helps.
But "everyone a resource" is absolutely true. A few days ago, I set up a dev environment for the CEO -- I suppose he has a bit more time, or it's just that more urgent to get it done, but he's actually doing some coding now.
And this isn't him trying to show that he's "part of the team", or micromanaging -- there's nothing fake about it. He's actually getting stuff done.
IMHO - the problem today, be it Scrum, agile, whatever is trying to make it too formal!
There's a reason for that.
Language changes how you think about things -- it even gives you a frame in which to think about things. It was one thing to identify some best practices about test-driven development -- but it becomes much easier to learn when you change the language, and start calling it behavior-driven development.
And, please, don't get me started about certificates,
Never saw one here. I didn't finish college -- the guy across from me didn't finish high school.
First: No, it won't. See my replies below -- there's still plenty of stuff that works well on Linux, and poorly or not at all on OS X.
Second: good package management. Maybe it's more of an opinion, but I much prefer Linux packages.
Third: I prefer the KDE GUI to the OS X GUI. And if I ever have a problem with it, I can always swap it out for another window manager, or write my own (which is on my list of things to do before I die).
Can't really do that with OS X -- or at least, if I actually just run X, with an X window manager, what's the point of running OS X at all? None of the OS X apps would work (unless I was doing this in the X11-compatibility-layer-on-top-of-OSX bastardization, which I doubt would work well with a third-party window manager), and some core Linux stuff would also be missing (package management). That's assuming I didn't tear my hair out setting it up in the first place.
I still recommend OS X as a target for people migrating away from Windows, as a second choice to Linux. But no way is it going to be my primary OS again, anytime soon.
There's plenty of Linux software that won't run on OS X and vice versa.
Oh really? Care to name some?
Off the top of my head, solid support for any filesystem other than HFS+ or FAT32. Maybe NTFS has been ported? Contrast this with, on Linux, ext2/3/4, XFS, JFS, cramfs, romfs, ocfs2, gfs2, jffs2, befs, minix, reiserfs (and reiser4)... Need I go on?
I haven't checked lately, but it looks like OS X supports SMB. What about CIFS? (Needed for files > 4 gigs.)
There's also KDE3, and all that implies, but I'm not sure about that. KDE4 is ported, but I'm not sure KDE4 is quite done.
Oh, and a proper package manager. Macports is a start, but it's far from the only option, and it feels very much grafted on. And it seems to only support the Unix stuff -- when can I update all my random freeware Mac apps with one command?
The other way around is, of course, too easy -- Photoshop, for one.
there is plenty of hardware, such as scanners and printers that will not work with Linux.
Oh really? Care to name some?
OS X actually uses CUPS for printing -- the same system modern Linux distros use.
The last major thing I heard about was more power-management related -- fans and such being too loud. And on the Powerbook I tried myself, last time, I don't remember exactly what it was -- I think it was wireless, maybe it was X -- but I ended up using OS X on it for pretty much its entire lifetime, because of that.
Basically, I'm at the point where I can afford to spend a premium to let someone else make sure all my shit works. Then I get to spend time customizing my OS -- picking out wallpapers, setting KDE shortcuts, etc -- rather than, say, dicking around in a VT trying to get X working.
I'm not saying such things are necessarily going to happen on Linux, but there always seems to be one little thing. On my last laptop, everything worked except sound, so I bought a USB sound device.
This time, it paid off. The only thing that doesn't work on this laptop is the webcam -- it claims to be 2 megapixels, and I can only pull 640x480 -- but I did reformat, and I don't really care. If I want a high-quality photo, I'll take one. Otherwise, there's not great odds that I'll be able to send much better quality when using it as a webcam.
Mostly, right now, that's looking better than what I've got.
Better video card, nicer case, same options if I spend enough money.
Plus, the possibility of legitimately dual-booting OS X, or triple-booting with Windows. I much prefer Linux, as a primary OS, but if I have to boot something else, there's always the chance I get to boot OS X instead of Windows, which can only be a good thing.
Which is slow and buggy. Flash itself is slow and buggy, so flash + nspluginwrapper sucks even more.
Actually if Firefox would support 32 bit plug ins under Linux that would also solve the issue.
That's pretty difficult, considering that plugins are actually linked into the binary. As far as I know, modern architectures don't support running 32-bit and 64-bit code in the same application.
Or the Distros could include 32bit Firefox be default.
And thus guarantee incompatibility with various other things that might be browser plugins. Media players, the Flash plugin, Java, countless other libraries, even extensions delivered as packages.
That, or install dual versions of everything. So, twice as much disk space, twice as much RAM...
Hmm, looking more and more attractive to just go 32-bit and save yourself the pain.
And if you need Firefox to be 64bit you are surfing the wrong sites.
If you can't imagine anyone would ever be able to use a 64-bit Firefox, or a 64-bit Flash, you lack imagination.
What does everyone use Flash for these days? One answer: YouTube.
What's one of the best candidates for running faster on 64-bit? Video decoding.
Flash needs every bit of help it can get. Flash, fullscreen, lags horribly, looks ugly, and uses half my CPU or more. Contrast that to any native player -- mplayer, xine, totem, vlc, anything -- and it's 1% CPU or less, on the same video. (Yes, ripped the flv and everything.)
Now, it's clearly not as bad on Windows or OS X, but Flash on Linux sucks, and nspluginwrapper makes it worse. But hey, at least that way it's not making my whole browser and half my apps/libraries worse just for Flash -- which is, by the way, pretty much what's happening on Windows and OS X; 64-bit OSes, 32-bit browsers, almost entirely because of Flash.
Keep in mind, if the Flash client was open source, or if there was a decent open source flash client, none of these would be a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Instead, we've got javascript, CSS, XHTML, and other buzzwords. Which in the end, take control of how a web page looks from the user's hand.... I would like to format a web page the way I want to see it.
You should love CSS, XHTML, and Javascript, then.
With CSS, you can change the entire look of a webpage without changing the markup. Most browsers will let you load your own custom CSS. Without CSS, people would be using FONT tags, which you have significantly less control over.
And Javascript allows for things like bookmarklets, or better, GreaseMonkey. You can write or download a script which does, well, whatever you want to a given page, as you view it. One I've been playing with recently adds a "download MP4" link right into the middle of every YouTube page. Off the top of my head, if you really hate my post, and don't want to see any more comments from me -- I'm not sure if Slashdot itself allows this, but you could write a Greasemonkey script to do it.
The vast majority of the web is simple formatted text. There is no reason for this to constantly evolve onwards and onwards.
Simple formatted text can look better.
And, like it or not, the Web is an application platform now. What you're saying is kind of like wishing computers never evolved beyond calculators.
Serious issue?
Well, yes. Unless you think the Internet isn't important, or that it wouldn't make a difference if the web was controlled by a single person. I think that certainly puts it above "what costume will I wear" kind of serious.
And your sig betrays you -- you seem to take yourself just as seriously as the rest of us take things that actually matter.
I mean, when I go to the bank to cash a check, I don't worry they won't give me money unless I can prove I'm using Firefox at home.
Well, when you go to cash a check, you shouldn't really have to prove anything, other than that you can sign for it.
But I've seen banks that only work on IE. I haven't seen banks that only work on Firefox.
Even if your app is 100% standard compliant, it may not be cross browser. Not even if you pull IE out of the equation.
However, the working subset that you can use is much larger, and the browser-specific hacks are almost nonexistent.
Add that the standard evolves extremely slowly, and if you want to get the job done, you need to bypass it.
Erm, it's not the standard that moves slowly. It's adoption.
Consider, again, how much better life is when you take IE out of the equation.
Same with XHTML and CSS. Even fully implemented, its vague, poorly designed (hellllooo.... versioning anyone? API 101?)
Erm, XHTML 1.0? And 1.1?
You sound like you know what you're talking about, and then you forget about the fscking doctype.
The faster we get rid of it, the better. Either by a proprietary spec (Flash may not be open source, but at least it freagin work
Except when it doesn't.
And since it is proprietary, there's little to no chance of third-party developers adding support for basic stuff, like, I don't know, 64-bit browsers, or video playback that doesn't suck.
mostly cross platform if you don't care to use the latest version at all time...better than XHTML/CSS anyway...
I think you'll find that if you stick to exactly one browser, and don't care about the latest version all the time, XHTML/CSS is at least as compatible as Flash.
by a new standard body that doesn't suck at -everything- they do. XQuery, XHTML, CSS, SOAP, XSD, XML... can they do ANYTHING right?
Any SPECIFIC complaints?
For what it's worth, I don't use XQuery. I let jQuery worry about the browser quirks involved -- and I write my queries as CSS selectors, anyway, rarely XQuery-like.
All things considered, it's actually not all that difficult to build a site that's standards-compliant, and works everywhere except IE. It's certainly easier to do so than to get Flash to perform well, or do anything Adobe didn't think of. (Can you imagine Greasemonkey for Flash? Neither can I.)
To complicate the issue, over the last few years there has been an explosion in the number of browsers on the market. It is really no fun navigating this modern tower of Babel.
To simplify the issue, maybe every few months, I have to fix an issue where our site works on Firefox, but not Safari.
Every few days, I have to fix an issue where our site works everywhere else except IE.
If we didn't have to deal with IE, the problem would be a complete non-issue. Any page I build that I'm not being paid to make usable in IE, I don't.
Of course you can hack it in with Javascript which is something I refused to do, what's the point of striving to be standards compliant when you break it a minute later with Javascript?
Well, Javascript is a standard.
I prefer progressive enhancement -- make the link a plain old link, and useful on its own, then override onClick to do whatever you want. Browsers that support middle-click-open-in-new-tab don't seem to count that as an onClick event.
Not really a lot of point to it, though -- savvy users will simply middle-click on the link if they want it in a new tab/window. If they don't, that generally implies they want it right where it is, and your attempt to open a new tab/window is going to be annoying.
But hey, at least using a target for that is better than linking to a javascript: URL. A lot of sites are even worse -- they add an onClick event, and they set the link href to #, or to javascript:void(), meaning that middle-clicking on it inevitably does something unexpected.
My preferred method (if I ever need to force a new window) is to use a plain old link, and progressively enhance it with Javascript to open a new window. That way, if people middle-click, it does exactly what they want.
I wouldn't mind it -- have you seen some of the better API doc sites?
What's more, "no frames" doesn't have to imply "no frame-like behavior" -- CSS can give you a little box whose contents scroll independently of the parent, and Javascript can give you links that don't refresh the entire page.
In fact, this is pretty much entirely due to IE.
Do you suppose, if Google started blocking IE from their homepage by user-agent, that the situation would improve?
Is there a particular reason you don't?
Do you understand why XHTML exists? How much more work it is to parse straight HTML, and less work it is for a browser to simply fire up an XML parser instead?
<br /> isn't that difficult.
Might be solved with a lot of benchmarks and what not, but not really worth the effort.
No, not really, but I don't need benchmarks.
I would guess part of why I perceive Flash as slow is that it's abused, probably more than any other Web technology. A bigger part would be that I'm on 64-bit Linux, which is probably the worst platform I could be running for Flash and still have it work.
But I've just had both Flash and Java applets load in half a second or less, in a casual test. That's good enough that I'd file it under "non-issue" -- as in, not really worth the effort for anyone to benchmark, when choosing a technology.
Apparently they're only logging origin and recipient. So PGP isn't going to help you.
They claim that's all they're logging. Even if that were the case, it sets a dangerous precedent.
My kingdom for a mod point!
Does Britain actually have problems with terrorism?
Or is this just a power grab?
So where are you two going? ...can I come?
Orwellian down to the doublespeak:
There are no plans for an enormous database which will contain the content of your emails, the texts that you send or the chats you have on the phone or online.
Translation: We might build one now, we might build one later. We might already be building one, just without a plan.
See? No lies, just no plans!
Nor are we going to give local authorities the power to trawl through such a database in the interest of investigating lower level criminality under the spurious cover of counter terrorist legislation.
In other words: There's going to be a database, but only available to those sufficiently high up in the government. Not to local authorities. What a relief!
If you think I'm being too harsh, read again. If there's not going to be such a database, why would she go on to talk about who should have or not have access to such a database?
Some of the commentary on the speech is at least as disturbing as the speech itself:
The raw idea of simply handing over all this information to any government, however benign, and sticking it in an electronic warehouse is an awful idea if there are not very strict controls about it.
How'd you fall this far, Britain?
So, to translate: It's actually a fine idea, so long as there are sufficiently strict controls. I wonder who gets to decide how strict those controls should be.
And who controls the controllers, so to speak?
More of the same:
The government must present convincing justification for such an exponential increase in the powers of the state.
Again: A giant database of every email ever sent, from now till forever, in Britain, is alright so long as there's sufficient justification.
At least someone has the balls to take a stand:
These proposals are incompatible with a free country and a free people.
Amen.
I'd quote from the spam form, but really, look up PGP. It works, and it works just fine over SMTP.
No, I don't think you can just load a source code file of Java into a running java Application without Groovy.
There's no technical reason why not -- just hasn't been done.
I understand the temptation to use Java in the browser, believe me I do, but the slow start up time and resource usage makes it a bloated whale.
Have you seen Flash lately?
My hand to $deity, Java applets load faster than Flash widgets for me.
I'm guessing you don't remember the bad old days of java applets in the mid to late 90's.
I do.
And you don't think anything's changed in ten years?
There is a reason why developers have even preferred kludgy AJAX over revising Java applets.
Oh, right now, I prefer AJAX over any of the above. Javascript isn't a bad language -- there are things from it that I miss in Ruby. And it's a lot easier to do progressive enhancement of an otherwise HTML page -- even a nice, semantic-HTML page (especially so, with jQuery) -- than it is with a plugin.
Also, all agile, no titles, no managers, no leaders, etc - everyone was a resource!
Not quite the case here -- there are titles. Not really "seniority", but titles based on skills people have, and who to go to when you have a problem, or a question. I think it helps.
But "everyone a resource" is absolutely true. A few days ago, I set up a dev environment for the CEO -- I suppose he has a bit more time, or it's just that more urgent to get it done, but he's actually doing some coding now.
And this isn't him trying to show that he's "part of the team", or micromanaging -- there's nothing fake about it. He's actually getting stuff done.
IMHO - the problem today, be it Scrum, agile, whatever is trying to make it too formal!
There's a reason for that.
Language changes how you think about things -- it even gives you a frame in which to think about things. It was one thing to identify some best practices about test-driven development -- but it becomes much easier to learn when you change the language, and start calling it behavior-driven development.
And, please, don't get me started about certificates,
Never saw one here. I didn't finish college -- the guy across from me didn't finish high school.
It matters more what you can do.
Thanks, that answers my question.
As a counterargument, I'm not really sure if my shiny new monitor supports DisplayPort.
But it supports HDMI, and so does my laptop. And HDMI easily supports its max resolution and refresh rate.
And unlike DVI, there are no thumbscrews. Win!
First: No, it won't. See my replies below -- there's still plenty of stuff that works well on Linux, and poorly or not at all on OS X.
Second: good package management. Maybe it's more of an opinion, but I much prefer Linux packages.
Third: I prefer the KDE GUI to the OS X GUI. And if I ever have a problem with it, I can always swap it out for another window manager, or write my own (which is on my list of things to do before I die).
Can't really do that with OS X -- or at least, if I actually just run X, with an X window manager, what's the point of running OS X at all? None of the OS X apps would work (unless I was doing this in the X11-compatibility-layer-on-top-of-OSX bastardization, which I doubt would work well with a third-party window manager), and some core Linux stuff would also be missing (package management). That's assuming I didn't tear my hair out setting it up in the first place.
I still recommend OS X as a target for people migrating away from Windows, as a second choice to Linux. But no way is it going to be my primary OS again, anytime soon.
There's plenty of Linux software that won't run on OS X and vice versa.
Oh really? Care to name some?
Off the top of my head, solid support for any filesystem other than HFS+ or FAT32. Maybe NTFS has been ported? Contrast this with, on Linux, ext2/3/4, XFS, JFS, cramfs, romfs, ocfs2, gfs2, jffs2, befs, minix, reiserfs (and reiser4)... Need I go on?
I haven't checked lately, but it looks like OS X supports SMB. What about CIFS? (Needed for files > 4 gigs.)
There's also KDE3, and all that implies, but I'm not sure about that. KDE4 is ported, but I'm not sure KDE4 is quite done.
Oh, and a proper package manager. Macports is a start, but it's far from the only option, and it feels very much grafted on. And it seems to only support the Unix stuff -- when can I update all my random freeware Mac apps with one command?
The other way around is, of course, too easy -- Photoshop, for one.
there is plenty of hardware, such as scanners and printers that will not work with Linux.
Oh really? Care to name some?
OS X actually uses CUPS for printing -- the same system modern Linux distros use.
The last major thing I heard about was more power-management related -- fans and such being too loud. And on the Powerbook I tried myself, last time, I don't remember exactly what it was -- I think it was wireless, maybe it was X -- but I ended up using OS X on it for pretty much its entire lifetime, because of that.
Basically, I'm at the point where I can afford to spend a premium to let someone else make sure all my shit works. Then I get to spend time customizing my OS -- picking out wallpapers, setting KDE shortcuts, etc -- rather than, say, dicking around in a VT trying to get X working.
I'm not saying such things are necessarily going to happen on Linux, but there always seems to be one little thing. On my last laptop, everything worked except sound, so I bought a USB sound device.
This time, it paid off. The only thing that doesn't work on this laptop is the webcam -- it claims to be 2 megapixels, and I can only pull 640x480 -- but I did reformat, and I don't really care. If I want a high-quality photo, I'll take one. Otherwise, there's not great odds that I'll be able to send much better quality when using it as a webcam.
Mostly, right now, that's looking better than what I've got.
Better video card, nicer case, same options if I spend enough money.
Plus, the possibility of legitimately dual-booting OS X, or triple-booting with Windows. I much prefer Linux, as a primary OS, but if I have to boot something else, there's always the chance I get to boot OS X instead of Windows, which can only be a good thing.
Us nspluginwrapper.
Which is slow and buggy. Flash itself is slow and buggy, so flash + nspluginwrapper sucks even more.
Actually if Firefox would support 32 bit plug ins under Linux that would also solve the issue.
That's pretty difficult, considering that plugins are actually linked into the binary. As far as I know, modern architectures don't support running 32-bit and 64-bit code in the same application.
Or the Distros could include 32bit Firefox be default.
And thus guarantee incompatibility with various other things that might be browser plugins. Media players, the Flash plugin, Java, countless other libraries, even extensions delivered as packages.
That, or install dual versions of everything. So, twice as much disk space, twice as much RAM...
Hmm, looking more and more attractive to just go 32-bit and save yourself the pain.
And if you need Firefox to be 64bit you are surfing the wrong sites.
If you can't imagine anyone would ever be able to use a 64-bit Firefox, or a 64-bit Flash, you lack imagination.
What does everyone use Flash for these days? One answer: YouTube.
What's one of the best candidates for running faster on 64-bit? Video decoding.
Flash needs every bit of help it can get. Flash, fullscreen, lags horribly, looks ugly, and uses half my CPU or more. Contrast that to any native player -- mplayer, xine, totem, vlc, anything -- and it's 1% CPU or less, on the same video. (Yes, ripped the flv and everything.)
Now, it's clearly not as bad on Windows or OS X, but Flash on Linux sucks, and nspluginwrapper makes it worse. But hey, at least that way it's not making my whole browser and half my apps/libraries worse just for Flash -- which is, by the way, pretty much what's happening on Windows and OS X; 64-bit OSes, 32-bit browsers, almost entirely because of Flash.
Keep in mind, if the Flash client was open source, or if there was a decent open source flash client, none of these would be a problem.
harddrives are very large so the extra libraries are not much of an issue.
Linux uses proper shared libraries, so extra libraries also mean extra RAM, and/or less cache coherency leading to disk thrashing.