The canvas is W3C compliant. Read this. It works in Safari, Firefox 1.5+ , and I heard Opera 9.1 beta or something like that. Its better than forcing users to use a plugin, an FPS in javascript is really cool (in a geek kind of way). I've done some work with the canvas too here in case anyone is interested. Regards, Steve
There have been a few ray casting engines for the canvas that have been written and improved upon over each other. Here is the first known ray caster written with the canvas, it is grainy, but can get around 24 FPS on the right system, you can also adjust the amount of jaggedness for a loss of some framerate. I've developed a few things with the canvas. Most recently this, but am currently working on Conway's Game of Life, and then an optimized ray caster to try and get more FPS out of it. Interesting thing to note is that the canvas widget currently only has a 2d context, but is supposed to get a 3d context as well sometime in the future. That would be really cool to have native 3D rendering support in a browser, until then though writing a 3d engine using the 2d canvas is a fun experiment. I'm curremtly testing AJAX to see if it can hold its own in real time communication with the server so that a multiplayer FPS can be made, its looking like something is plausible so I urge anyone who can to try and make it a reality. I'll give it a shot if I get some spare time. Regards, Steve
No compression is necessary, only decompression, which is fast. The image comes compressed, no computation on your part, you decompress it when it needs to be viewed, keep the compressed version in memory and simply delete the uncompressed version when no longer needed. Regards, Steve
Many open source projects become more stable as a result of the testing done in Fedora. The fixes are pushed upstream. I should have worded it as it having the latest stable technology and innovations. Fedora was the first distro with SELinux, Xen virtualization, the newest versions of Gnome and KDE (at the time), GCJ (Eclipse and OpenOffice.Org are both natively compiled, i.e. there is no java virtual machine), now they are leading the pack with Stateless Linux and more technologies. These are all stable yet reletively young technologies, the reason they are not in many distros is simply because Red Hat engineers have done most of the grunt work in getting those features integrated (in particular, Red Hat worked very close with the NSA in getting SELinux working uder the kernel). Red Hat maintains GCC, glibc, and many other open source projects that many other distros rely on. Red Hat usually has the tech first cause they are the ones who developed it, it takes the other distros time to catch up. New software does not necessarily mean unstable, nor does old software imply stable (look at the bugs still being found in various jpeg and compression libraries). When you spend 6 months developing and then 3 months making sure what you developed is quality then it is still new software but probably pretty stable too. Regards, Steve
On Fedora, both yum and up2date are completely free. Up2date is for a GUI, yum is for command line, yum is alot like apt for debian. Up2date sits in your icon task tray and flashes when updates are available, you double click it, click install, and away it goes. No accounts, no money required. Regards, Steve
I'm not arguing the merits of one distro over another, but the data was probably corrupt from a bad transfer to CD, not because of a lack of quality. There are over a half million servers on the net running Fedora Core, not even taking into account desktop machines, and they all used the same disk images you did. The data wasn't corrupt, your CD was. Regards, Steve
One thing that also really slows down OpenOffice.Org is loading java. Red Hat has developed GCJ (Gnu Compiler for Java) over the past few years (2 years I think) and now natively compiles Eclipse and OpenOffice.Org so that no JVM is needed to be loaded. OpenOffice opens pretty well under Fedora. Regards, Steve
Well Fedora is already pretty stable, but figure they've been developing code for this release now for 6 months. They are spending 3 months on testing and stability requirements. That is a damn good ratio for any piece of software and is plenty of time to do regression checks too. Regards, Steve
The Fedora devs are pretty involved with OpenOffice. When Core 4 was released it was shipped with OpenOffice.Org 1.979 or something like that. Obviously Core4 has since been update to 2.0, but they are either referring to 2.0 or maybe 2.1x which is still in development but will be more stable by release time (and Fedora will be undergoing a ton of testing and stability checks over the next 3 months now that the test releases are out). Fedora was the first distribution to have OpenOffice.org use a native interface, they tend to have the coolest stuff first, mainly because the Fedora developers code large portions of the code themselves (in contrast to many other distributions which simply package up other people's programs and call it a distro without really contributing any code back). Regards, Steve
It is *very* mature and very stable. That is why many hosting companies use it now as well. It has all the greatest tech before everyone else, but it all integrates really well and is really stable. They are releasing their first test release now, and the final product isn't expected to be released for at least 3 more months. That means they've spent about 6 months developing code for the release, and now they are spending 3 months testing and working out bugs, that is a damn good ratio of development time to bug stomping. Better than any distro I can think of. Regards, Steve
They are advancing fine, every major release deserves a major number. These aren't minor releases, Core 4 was the first distribution using the new GCC 4.0 at the time, it also has default Xen support and a new yum manager that is much faster than the old one. Also Fedora Extras was establsihed with Core 4 and a bunch of other stuff. There have been similar milestones with the other Cores (such as integrating SELinux). Each core is a significant advancement over the previous core and deserves a major number change, not a minor number. I'm understating the improvements here. They aren't doing this to inflate their version number, it just so happens that enough people are helping out that they can get kick ass releases out pretty fast, not to mention Red Hat pays many engineers to work on it 5 days a week. They have however recently cut back their release schedule from every 6 months, to every 9 months to allow them to spend more time fully developing certain functionalities that can't be coded in a 6 month timeframe. Also for the curious minded, the Fedora community just finished up a fairly long community discussion about its new logo. The way that the winning logo was designed I thought was neat, you can read about it here. Regards, Steve
Red Hat is designed with this kind of stuff in mind. In addition to just being dead simple with setting up a directory server and other typcal business oriented services, you have a great utility called Red Hat Network. If you need to install a fresh OS on 10,000 machines, no problem just attach them to the network, PXE boot and kickstart takes care of everything else (no more interaction is needed from you). If you need specific installation requirements for various sectors in your network, not a problem either. Are you curious to see how your systems are performing? Want to see everyone's runtime? Bandwidth uages? Applications? Uptime? Just about anything? It is a click away from seeing this information for all systems, or do it for an individual system, and it is all displayed in a nice graphical way. Do you need to install a certain kind of updates on the HR department but only for management? One click and you're done. Did you realize that over the past week you've been installing things on the accounting department's computers that you didn't need to? No problem, just roll back with a few clicks of the mouse. How about when you need to change a configuration file on the 10,000 machines, but you need specific changes for each department. Not a problem at all with Red Hat Network. Do you want to delegate administrating abilities to a few other guys, but want to limit what updates or the type they can install, no problem. Want to be notified if someone's bandwidth usage gets too high? Easy as pie, and you can set it up to alarm you about many different possible probes. You move a computer out of the accounting department and give it to a secretary, you want this system to be exactly like the other secretaries' systems (which is different from accounting's setup), this isn't a problem, Red Hat Network has exisiting state provisioning, you tell it you want it exactly like some box and it does it all for you.
I'm really only beginning to touch the surface with this stuff, even their site is modest, but when you get the software in your hands and start using it you realize how powerful it is and how much time and pain it saves you. Even crazier is that it can all be done through a really well designed web interface, administering computers has honestly never been easier. Some tasks it might only speed up by a minute or two, others by days. All of the things I mentioned above are done from one machine, your machine, on the network or actually if your using satellite RHN, you can administer your corporate network from anywhere in the world just the same. It saves you time by making you not have to write a bunch of custom scripts and hack together solutions, it gives you capabilities that you just won't be able to script up yourself, its flexible and easy as hell to use. One administrator can seriously administer 10,000 machines just as easily as 10. There is a reason that people pay for Red Hat, in addition to support, its easy to use, works on the largest array of hardware, has a great track record for security, but also is great for any kind of corporate environment. Regards, Steve
They didn't take into account having to administer a couple hundred or thousand of those desktops, which is a whole different ball game. Ubuntu is great for one personal desktop, but from a corporate point of view its not on par with Red Hat or Novell. Regards, Steve
Unlike most companies, Google came right out and said yea your number will obviously be stored on their servers for a little, but they will be removed and never given out or used in anyother way (without you wanting it to). Google says they'll remove it though, they need it on their systems a) to call you, and b) to make sure the system is working right. Regards, Steve
The idea is that they set a dead line and meet it... like many other companies who actually care about quality do. Apple is a stellar example, and its not just because they are going head to head with MS. For example, Apple's products quality is exellent, and I'm sure their intel line will bejust as good. Even better, rumor has it that they'll be releasing their new hardware 6 months before schedule, MS needs to take notes. MS rushed this to market not because of demand, but because they wanted money and because of the holiday season. There was no critical reason for this to be released now, Sony and Nintendo have both studied the market and found that releasing next year would be fine. MS is manipulating its customers and selling "lemon" X-Boxes, there is no excuse for this. They need to set deadlines and meet them with quality products, or stop announcing the damn deadline and release it when its ready. Regards, Steve
Well then perhaps you should know that intelligence is more than just a raw score in one kind of test that is targetted towards very specific types of problems in very narrow fields. Also, what separates the truly bright kids from those who are lazy and simply sit back on a number are those who are *motivated* and go the extra mile to go out of their way and learn something new on their own. If you've got all the intelligence in the world, but can't do anything with it, or don't know how to, then it is worthless. My IQ is higher (very slightly), but this isn't a pissing contest and I realize the many flaws in that test, it is nothing but an amusement as far as I'm concerned. I would easily have my ass handed to me in any competition about history, and although I consider myself well read, I know plenty who would hand me my ass in literature, or many other fields associated with language.
Anyway, my point is a) the IQ test is more or less pointless, and b) intelligence in and of itself is worthless, you need motivation and without that, any "gifts" you think you have aren't gifts at all but simply benefits that could have probably been better utuilized by another individual. You're probably the same type of person who would bitch about not being highered for a job and you wouldn't even realize that it is because noone wants to work with someone who shouts out their IQ within the first 5 sentences when something related to intelligence is discussed and then have the balls to claim that 125-135 students "aren't too bright" (which is just absurd), those types of people can't be worked with. If you have failed to put in the extra effort or failed to find a way to keep "simple facts" interesting then it is you who have failed, don't blame it on anyone else, it is all your fault. So please don't complain that you are ever so smart and have nothing to do with it, you obviously aren't smart enough to figure it out. Regards, Steve
I believe this article is more of a "Here is more evidence to back that theory of grass grazing" type of thing. The duck billed dinosaurs (Ornithopods in general) are considered the cows of of the past... it has been known for sometime that they graze. Regards, Steve
Gnome stops windows from stealing focus, when they want focus they just start glowing very lightly in the window bar. I would think OS X has a similar feature. Regards, Steve
Slashdot Mirror
I am wrong, that link was not for the canvas. You are right, it is only WHATWG. Sorry, I was confused for a moment.
Regards,
Steve
The canvas is W3C compliant. Read this. It works in Safari, Firefox 1.5+ , and I heard Opera 9.1 beta or something like that. Its better than forcing users to use a plugin, an FPS in javascript is really cool (in a geek kind of way). I've done some work with the canvas too here in case anyone is interested.
Regards,
Steve
There have been a few ray casting engines for the canvas that have been written and improved upon over each other. Here is the first known ray caster written with the canvas, it is grainy, but can get around 24 FPS on the right system, you can also adjust the amount of jaggedness for a loss of some framerate. I've developed a few things with the canvas. Most recently this, but am currently working on Conway's Game of Life, and then an optimized ray caster to try and get more FPS out of it. Interesting thing to note is that the canvas widget currently only has a 2d context, but is supposed to get a 3d context as well sometime in the future. That would be really cool to have native 3D rendering support in a browser, until then though writing a 3d engine using the 2d canvas is a fun experiment. I'm curremtly testing AJAX to see if it can hold its own in real time communication with the server so that a multiplayer FPS can be made, its looking like something is plausible so I urge anyone who can to try and make it a reality. I'll give it a shot if I get some spare time.
Regards,
Steve
No compression is necessary, only decompression, which is fast. The image comes compressed, no computation on your part, you decompress it when it needs to be viewed, keep the compressed version in memory and simply delete the uncompressed version when no longer needed.
Regards,
Steve
Many open source projects become more stable as a result of the testing done in Fedora. The fixes are pushed upstream. I should have worded it as it having the latest stable technology and innovations. Fedora was the first distro with SELinux, Xen virtualization, the newest versions of Gnome and KDE (at the time), GCJ (Eclipse and OpenOffice.Org are both natively compiled, i.e. there is no java virtual machine), now they are leading the pack with Stateless Linux and more technologies. These are all stable yet reletively young technologies, the reason they are not in many distros is simply because Red Hat engineers have done most of the grunt work in getting those features integrated (in particular, Red Hat worked very close with the NSA in getting SELinux working uder the kernel). Red Hat maintains GCC, glibc, and many other open source projects that many other distros rely on. Red Hat usually has the tech first cause they are the ones who developed it, it takes the other distros time to catch up. New software does not necessarily mean unstable, nor does old software imply stable (look at the bugs still being found in various jpeg and compression libraries). When you spend 6 months developing and then 3 months making sure what you developed is quality then it is still new software but probably pretty stable too.
Regards,
Steve
Heh, here is my insightful reason :-)
Regards,
Steve
RHN takes it a bit further. Read this. for some ideas.
Regards,
Steve
On Fedora, both yum and up2date are completely free. Up2date is for a GUI, yum is for command line, yum is alot like apt for debian. Up2date sits in your icon task tray and flashes when updates are available, you double click it, click install, and away it goes. No accounts, no money required.
Regards,
Steve
I'm not arguing the merits of one distro over another, but the data was probably corrupt from a bad transfer to CD, not because of a lack of quality. There are over a half million servers on the net running Fedora Core, not even taking into account desktop machines, and they all used the same disk images you did. The data wasn't corrupt, your CD was.
Regards,
Steve
There is more to it than that though. Read this for some more uses of RHN.
Regards,
Steve
One thing that also really slows down OpenOffice.Org is loading java. Red Hat has developed GCJ (Gnu Compiler for Java) over the past few years (2 years I think) and now natively compiles Eclipse and OpenOffice.Org so that no JVM is needed to be loaded. OpenOffice opens pretty well under Fedora.
Regards,
Steve
Well Fedora is already pretty stable, but figure they've been developing code for this release now for 6 months. They are spending 3 months on testing and stability requirements. That is a damn good ratio for any piece of software and is plenty of time to do regression checks too.
Regards,
Steve
The Fedora devs are pretty involved with OpenOffice. When Core 4 was released it was shipped with OpenOffice.Org 1.979 or something like that. Obviously Core4 has since been update to 2.0, but they are either referring to 2.0 or maybe 2.1x which is still in development but will be more stable by release time (and Fedora will be undergoing a ton of testing and stability checks over the next 3 months now that the test releases are out). Fedora was the first distribution to have OpenOffice.org use a native interface, they tend to have the coolest stuff first, mainly because the Fedora developers code large portions of the code themselves (in contrast to many other distributions which simply package up other people's programs and call it a distro without really contributing any code back).
Regards,
Steve
It is *very* mature and very stable. That is why many hosting companies use it now as well. It has all the greatest tech before everyone else, but it all integrates really well and is really stable. They are releasing their first test release now, and the final product isn't expected to be released for at least 3 more months. That means they've spent about 6 months developing code for the release, and now they are spending 3 months testing and working out bugs, that is a damn good ratio of development time to bug stomping. Better than any distro I can think of.
Regards,
Steve
They are advancing fine, every major release deserves a major number. These aren't minor releases, Core 4 was the first distribution using the new GCC 4.0 at the time, it also has default Xen support and a new yum manager that is much faster than the old one. Also Fedora Extras was establsihed with Core 4 and a bunch of other stuff. There have been similar milestones with the other Cores (such as integrating SELinux). Each core is a significant advancement over the previous core and deserves a major number change, not a minor number. I'm understating the improvements here. They aren't doing this to inflate their version number, it just so happens that enough people are helping out that they can get kick ass releases out pretty fast, not to mention Red Hat pays many engineers to work on it 5 days a week. They have however recently cut back their release schedule from every 6 months, to every 9 months to allow them to spend more time fully developing certain functionalities that can't be coded in a 6 month timeframe. Also for the curious minded, the Fedora community just finished up a fairly long community discussion about its new logo. The way that the winning logo was designed I thought was neat, you can read about it here.
Regards,
Steve
You might want to read my response here.
Regards,
Steve
They've slowed their release schedule to 9 months to give them more time developing certain capabilities.
Regards,
Steve
Here is my insight.
Regards,
Steve
Red Hat is designed with this kind of stuff in mind. In addition to just being dead simple with setting up a directory server and other typcal business oriented services, you have a great utility called Red Hat Network. If you need to install a fresh OS on 10,000 machines, no problem just attach them to the network, PXE boot and kickstart takes care of everything else (no more interaction is needed from you). If you need specific installation requirements for various sectors in your network, not a problem either. Are you curious to see how your systems are performing? Want to see everyone's runtime? Bandwidth uages? Applications? Uptime? Just about anything? It is a click away from seeing this information for all systems, or do it for an individual system, and it is all displayed in a nice graphical way. Do you need to install a certain kind of updates on the HR department but only for management? One click and you're done. Did you realize that over the past week you've been installing things on the accounting department's computers that you didn't need to? No problem, just roll back with a few clicks of the mouse. How about when you need to change a configuration file on the 10,000 machines, but you need specific changes for each department. Not a problem at all with Red Hat Network. Do you want to delegate administrating abilities to a few other guys, but want to limit what updates or the type they can install, no problem. Want to be notified if someone's bandwidth usage gets too high? Easy as pie, and you can set it up to alarm you about many different possible probes. You move a computer out of the accounting department and give it to a secretary, you want this system to be exactly like the other secretaries' systems (which is different from accounting's setup), this isn't a problem, Red Hat Network has exisiting state provisioning, you tell it you want it exactly like some box and it does it all for you.
I'm really only beginning to touch the surface with this stuff, even their site is modest, but when you get the software in your hands and start using it you realize how powerful it is and how much time and pain it saves you. Even crazier is that it can all be done through a really well designed web interface, administering computers has honestly never been easier. Some tasks it might only speed up by a minute or two, others by days. All of the things I mentioned above are done from one machine, your machine, on the network or actually if your using satellite RHN, you can administer your corporate network from anywhere in the world just the same. It saves you time by making you not have to write a bunch of custom scripts and hack together solutions, it gives you capabilities that you just won't be able to script up yourself, its flexible and easy as hell to use. One administrator can seriously administer 10,000 machines just as easily as 10. There is a reason that people pay for Red Hat, in addition to support, its easy to use, works on the largest array of hardware, has a great track record for security, but also is great for any kind of corporate environment.
Regards,
Steve
They didn't take into account having to administer a couple hundred or thousand of those desktops, which is a whole different ball game. Ubuntu is great for one personal desktop, but from a corporate point of view its not on par with Red Hat or Novell.
Regards,
Steve
Unlike most companies, Google came right out and said yea your number will obviously be stored on their servers for a little, but they will be removed and never given out or used in anyother way (without you wanting it to). Google says they'll remove it though, they need it on their systems a) to call you, and b) to make sure the system is working right.
Regards,
Steve
The idea is that they set a dead line and meet it... like many other companies who actually care about quality do. Apple is a stellar example, and its not just because they are going head to head with MS. For example, Apple's products quality is exellent, and I'm sure their intel line will bejust as good. Even better, rumor has it that they'll be releasing their new hardware 6 months before schedule, MS needs to take notes. MS rushed this to market not because of demand, but because they wanted money and because of the holiday season. There was no critical reason for this to be released now, Sony and Nintendo have both studied the market and found that releasing next year would be fine. MS is manipulating its customers and selling "lemon" X-Boxes, there is no excuse for this. They need to set deadlines and meet them with quality products, or stop announcing the damn deadline and release it when its ready.
Regards,
Steve
Well then perhaps you should know that intelligence is more than just a raw score in one kind of test that is targetted towards very specific types of problems in very narrow fields. Also, what separates the truly bright kids from those who are lazy and simply sit back on a number are those who are *motivated* and go the extra mile to go out of their way and learn something new on their own. If you've got all the intelligence in the world, but can't do anything with it, or don't know how to, then it is worthless. My IQ is higher (very slightly), but this isn't a pissing contest and I realize the many flaws in that test, it is nothing but an amusement as far as I'm concerned. I would easily have my ass handed to me in any competition about history, and although I consider myself well read, I know plenty who would hand me my ass in literature, or many other fields associated with language.
Anyway, my point is a) the IQ test is more or less pointless, and b) intelligence in and of itself is worthless, you need motivation and without that, any "gifts" you think you have aren't gifts at all but simply benefits that could have probably been better utuilized by another individual. You're probably the same type of person who would bitch about not being highered for a job and you wouldn't even realize that it is because noone wants to work with someone who shouts out their IQ within the first 5 sentences when something related to intelligence is discussed and then have the balls to claim that 125-135 students "aren't too bright" (which is just absurd), those types of people can't be worked with. If you have failed to put in the extra effort or failed to find a way to keep "simple facts" interesting then it is you who have failed, don't blame it on anyone else, it is all your fault. So please don't complain that you are ever so smart and have nothing to do with it, you obviously aren't smart enough to figure it out.
Regards,
Steve
I believe this article is more of a "Here is more evidence to back that theory of grass grazing" type of thing. The duck billed dinosaurs (Ornithopods in general) are considered the cows of of the past... it has been known for sometime that they graze.
Regards,
Steve
Gnome stops windows from stealing focus, when they want focus they just start glowing very lightly in the window bar. I would think OS X has a similar feature.
Regards,
Steve