If you will give 66 cents for every 49 cents I give you, then I will agree, until then 49% is not near 66%.
Besides, that 49% is not on every dollar earned. the SS/FICA stop just after $100,000. The Fed and State Taxes are incremental, so it may be true that Connecticut has a maximum tax rate of 14% which would be added to the maximum federal tax rate of 35% to get to 49%. However, even if that is true, it is still not on gross income, but instead on adjusted gross income, which is always lower, which means the effective tax rate compared to gross income is less, too.
As for property and sales/use tax, they don't apply as the original poster was referring to 2/3 of every dollar earned being paid in taxes. That would be an income tax.
What does stronger than steel actually mean? A spider web is stronger than steel, but I walk through them all the time. A diamond is stronger than steel, but I can hit it with a hammer and it smashes. Stronger than steel sounds good, but just like foods that say they are all natural, doesn't mean anything.
You've jumped from rich individuals to corporations. So now, besides personal ethics - tax evasion vs tax avoidance the issue has expanded to business ethics.
Currently, businesses, whether in the US or abroad, pay income tax either here or abroad. If you have been following the news lately, you will have seen that many countries, particularly poorer ones have a tax rate much higher than in the US. Companies don't move overseas to save on taxes. They move there to save on labor and to have reduced regulations. Contrary to popular belief, businesses don't really care about taxes -- why? Because they pass that cost on to you the consumer. Taxes are just another cost of doing business. It's easy to figure the amount per unit produced and it gets figured into the markup. The only time that it becomes a real issue is when the tax rate is changing, as the new rate will affect the cost of goods sold, but not for the items already in the chain and will therefore cut into profits.
Case in point, although not really tax related, Ford could have spent $1 per Pinto to put a shield between the gas tank and exhaust that would have eliminated or at least greatly reduced the risk of explosion. They didn't do that, for one, that extra $1 would have equated tens of dollars, if not $100+ dollars by the time the final markups were made and that would have made the Pinto non-competitive price wise with the Vega (that is from the perspective of the Ford executives at the time). Another reason, is that there were already millions of Pinto's out there, the cost to retrofit them would have been millions just for the shield, let alone the labor to install. Ford using their business ethics decided the cost was too great. The courts decided otherwise for them.
Taxes work in a similar fashion. When taxes are stable, regardless of the rate, business price their products accordingly. To increase profits, to keep shareholders happy, that's when they move offshore to reap the benefits of cheap labor and little to no regulation.
That decision has nothing to do with tax evasion or avoidance.
The wealthy individuals on the otherhand, make decisions to shelter their personal wealth offshore, strictly because of taxes. Yes, it is illegal to evade taxes, but the reasons it is illegal come back to that same sense of fairness, which is a subjective value statement.
I don't know what country you are in, but in the United States, there is no combination of state and federal taxes along with FICA/Medicare that would get you anywhere close to 2/3rds of your paycheck.
The problem is that the system is set up that only the rich can evade taxes. Factory line worker Joe Blow doesn't make enough to go put it all away in a secret swiss bank account, nor does he have enough to hire an accountant to manage some holding companies abroad, etc etc.
Most people on Slashdot think evading taxes is immoral based on the fact that it's an exploit in the tax laws that only the rich can afford to do. If it were possible for anyone and everyone to avoid paying taxes, I don't think anyone would mind. We're all just pissed off that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and taxation is supposed to help balance that out.
Most people, slashdot or otherwise, think that evading taxes is immoral based on you are not paying something you actually owe -- that is why tax evasion is a crime. Avoiding taxes, it alright by most people, because nobody is morally or ethically required to pay more taxes than they legally owe.
While it is true that the wealthy have more opportunity to avoid paying taxes, than the poor due, the actual avoidance is not the issue. In those cases, the discussion usually turns to what is a fair policy on taxes (rich vs poor). When it comes to actual tax evasion, then there tends to be no sympathy by the rich or the poor.
Most people, at least in the United States, are not really upset about paying taxes. They understand that taxes to pay for government is a necessary evil. Most people, again, in the United States, get upset by either a) how the tax money is spent or b) the perceived fairness or lack of fairness in the tax code. The spending issue is not really a taxation issue, as the government has demonstrated that it can borrow all it wants to spend (of course that creates other consequences that must be dealt with).
The fairness issue, really revolves around the notion that people should just have to pay their fair share. And that's were the problem arises. Almost everybody agrees with that statement. However, when it comes to determining what exactly one's fair share is and how do we measure it, then we get into problems. Why, because one's fair share is not an objective thing, but is subjective as it involves one's values.
But, back to the original point. Tax evasion is morally and legally wrong. Tax avoidance on the other hand is quite alright.
Re:Making it just as heavy as Gnome and KDE now?
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 3, Funny
tom@muon:~$ hammer
hammer: command not found
tom@muon:~$ wrench
wrench: command not found
tom@muon:~$ screwdriver
screwdriver: command not found
tom@muon:~$ tweezers
tweezers: command not found
Obviously your system administrator doesn't trust you using such powerful tools and has removed access to them for your account.:)
Re:Making it just as heavy as Gnome and KDE now?
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 2
And Ubuntu packs so much extra stuff, that unless you do a minimal install and then add what you want, it is virtually impossible to have a lightweight system. This isn't a slam against Ubuntu. They are trying to be all things to all people. As such they have a lot of services running and such to handle just about any situation. Need a hammer, it's in a default install Ubuntu, need a wrench it's in a default install Ubuntu, need a screwdriver, it's in a default install Ubuntu. However, if all you needed was a pair of tweezers, well, you get that too, with the default install, but you still get all the other tools in the toolbox, too.
It's been regularly reported that Gnome, KDE, Xfce, etc, all run faster and with a smaller footprint on things like debian, arch, fedora, and many others. However, with those systems, the user is expected to add what services and software that are specific to their needs. That is how they stay lean.
This is not to say that Ubunut is bad, or wrong in what it does. On the contrary, they are trying to produce a distro that "just works" without having to do a lot of tinkering. They pretty much have succeeded, but just like clothing, their one size fits all approach really means that it fits no one, well.
Re:Making it just as heavy as Gnome and KDE now?
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 1
That was my immediate reaction. I use XFCE, but I still use Konqueror and Kwrite for browsing remote files systems and editing files on them because they work much better.
KDE is not as much of a memory hog as it is reputed to be. It depends on what you install and how you configure it.
So what you are saying is that by using Konqueror and Kwrite, you aren't concerned with the memory footprint and Xfce being lighter (or not) is irrelevant since you are loading most of the kdelibs anyway. Is that correct?
I do agree with the last part of your last statement about it depending on what is installed. It never ceases to amaze me that people will say they want a low resource desktop environment like Xfce or even LXDE and then install, say OpenOffice.org on it. While obviously, we want any desktop environment to not use any more resources than necessary, if you are running heavy apps, like OO or Evolution, etc, you really can't complain about how lightweight or not the environment is as the environment is not the limiting factor. (I've seen users install nautilus in Xfce to get dropbox access, which is not longer needed, btw, and then complain about how sluggish Xfce is!)
Re:Making it just as heavy as Gnome and KDE now?
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 1
I've done a lot of GTK programming and never programmed anything that hit frameworks like HAL as part of GTK. GTK deals with the screen and widgets and window managers. It doesn't care about HAL or VFS, etc. While GTK may not be as complete as QT, if any of these subsystems were causing a problem, it wouldn't matter whether QT or GTK were the toolkit used.
Re:Making it just as heavy as Gnome and KDE now?
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 1
The big thing is that many of the distros are shifting to these "new-fangled frameworks and technologies" and Xfce needs to change to support them, regardless of the impact. If the major distro's drop HAL, for instance, and Xfce would still require it, then Xfce could rightly be called bloated as it would load additional frameworks that nothing else used and possibly would conflict with what was already installed.
Re:Cold hard facts about resource usage?
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 4, Informative
I am guessing from your post that you run Ubuntu or one of it's derivatives. Xfce on Ubuntu is not much better than Gnome, becaue Ubuntu packs a lot of stuff in to their Xfec impleimenation besides Xfce. Ubuntu, is not a distribution you want to use for a memory constrained or slow CPU system.
However, if you run Xfce on Debian, Fedora, Arch, etc. it simply flies and uses fewer resources than gnome.
Re:Xfce seems to be a pretty good compromise...
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 2
The problem with LXDE is that by the time you add all of the features that it does not provide, it gets pretty heavy, too. You could install openbox and add just XFCE's panel and pretty much recreate LXDE's footprint.
Don't get me wrong, LXDE is very good, very fast. It's just that it doesn't provide a lot of the services that people have come to expect in a full desktop environment.
However, if I were installing a server and wanted to have a GUI, LXDE would certainly be a consideration.
Re:Xfce has been fast and light since when?
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 1
Fluxbox is a window manager. XFCE does ship with it's own window manager (but you can use whatever window manager you want). A desktop environment is significantly more than just a window manger.
Enlightenment is very good, however, there is very little software that does things in an enlightenment way. Slapping gtk or qt apps on top of enlightenment ruins the beauty that enlightenment presents.
People who think xfce is heavy, are mainly Ubuntu users, where a lot of extra stuff from Ubuntu has been thrown in. Debian, Redhat, Gentoo, Arch, etc. all show a lean and fast XFCE implementation.
I understand what you are saying, but I don't think it is quite right, at least not from the article.
The article states that the developer can't undersell Amazon, so if the developer wants to lower the MSRP to another store, it has to lower it to Amazon, too.
Also, the article points out that this is the model that Amazon already uses for books and other merchandise, except for e-books.
According to the article, Amazon is free to price the app however it can to maximize sales. But, since the developer is guarantee a minimum per sale of what they asked for, they still are maximizing their profit (the developer's).
Using your example, the developer becomes like the publisher and gets the $4.50 per sale regardless of the price Amazon sells it for. However, if the developer/publisher sets a lower price elsewhere, say 10% lower, then they will also get 10% less from Amazon.
I still don't see this as being a monopoly or bully forcing their way on the poor developer. The developer is free to forgo Amazon's app store. They can go directly through Google's store or self-publish.
Guaranteeing that you will not undersell Amazon in other app stores seems to be a small price to pay for the exposure that Amazon will give your app. Actually, it's not even about underselling, but manipulating the MSRP.
90% correct would do fine but you can't be sure if any article really is 10% or 100% correct without doing a whole load of research.
It's the same for everything else.
If I'm doing that kind of research anyway what use is wikipedia?
A place where other people can benefit from your research.
As for the rest of your post, I admit that I'm not sure how often such things happen, so I can't really comment on that.
The problem is that we are not discussing "everything else" but only Wikipedia. And if the poster actually put his/her research on Wikipedia or updated an inaccurate page, it wouldn't matter, there still is no way of knowing if it is accurate or not (although citations help tremendously).
Wikipedia is to legitimate research what blogging is to legitimate journalism. Both provide interesting reads, but where one requires accountability, the other only suggests it.
I've seen plenty of articles that contained correct information. That said, it would be absurdly difficult for you to find a book/website that is 100% correct in every way.
Yes, but even Star Trek contains correct information on plenty of things. That doesn't make it authoritative.
Historically, encyclopaedias relied on experts for their information (yes, I know, they were put together by editors, not the experts themself). With Wikipedia, just about anybody can contribute and the information stays there and incorrect information stays there until somebody who knows the correct information a) stumbles upon the incorrect information, b) cares enough to correct the incorrect information, and c) actually takes the time to correct it.
I'm not saying that Wikipedia is bad or unusable, but most research papers exclude it from being a valid source, at least directly. Where it really shines, though is if the article has real footnotes (not just links to other Wikipedia pages). Then the actual sources can be reviewed.
Wikipedia needs two types of articles. The current "it may be accurate, it may not, so use at your own risk" and one that has some sort of impramtur authenticating its accuracy.
I remember when astronomers spent their time unravelling the mystery of the universe instead of things like downgrading the status of planets and dabbling with astrology and stuff. Sure, there is a lighter side to science, but with tight budgets (most astronomers are publicly funded), I think I would spend more time on real research.
That sounds disturbingly like illegal monopoly price-fixing to me. Didn't we settle the issue a long time ago that retailers can't tell their suppliers what price to charge for their goods?
How about I name a price which Amazon will pay me for each copy they sell, then let Amazon decide what to charge to retail buyers? You know, like regular goods, the maker sells it for a profit, the retailer tacks on a their profit margin, and the Holy Free Market decides if it's worth it, and both creator and seller can adjust prices for demand.
Yes, I'm fully aware Wal*Mart uses its dominant position to manipulate suppliers into setting the price to Wal*Mart's like -- in a different enforcement regime (pre-Reagan) they'd be in trouble. I doubt in this 21st world that Amazon will ever get taken to task for it, though. The acolytes of the Holy Free Market will use the argument that if the Free Market doesn't like price-fixing, it will go elsewhere to sell.
Actually, you are giving your MSRP to Amazon and they are guaranteeing that you will at least get your profit share based off of that price. However, if they discount your product and sell more copies, you stand to get more, even though the selling price is lower (lower share per unit sold, but many more units sold). Again, they have stated that at a minimum, you would get the share you asked for.
This seems a much better deal than a traditional retail setup, where you get a fixed cost for the units purchased by the vendor regardless of what they sell them for. Of course, the difference is in the traditional setup, your goods are being purchased ahead of time and you get what you agree to at that time. With Amazon's model, they are acting like a broker for your goods. The more units they can sell the more money you stand to make, but you are guaranteed a minimum amount per unit sold.
Isn't this what Amazon does with the book market? There is a MSRP that has included in it what the publisher wants as their cut. Amazon can sell at that price, a higher price or a lower price. The publisher is guaranteed their minimum cut.
If Amazon can sell twice as many books by lowering the price by 1/3, then everybody wins. If the book is popular and copies of that edition are rare, the price goes up (regular supply and demand at work), again, everybody wins.
It seems like Amazon is basically wanting to take an already established model and use it for their app store.
But you are comparing apples and oranges. A cortexA9 is not the same as an A8. The comment is based on all things being equal. Since they are different internally (more than how many cores)all things are not equal.
Before you state that all dual cores will be different internally than single cores, that is not the point I am making. I am saying that the power saving features added to a dual core, if used in a single core would still make the single core use less power.
In your example, I would posit that even the single core is sitting idle most the time as would be both cores of the dual core.
But this is an easy argument to determine. We just need to wait a few months and see what the current draw is on the new phones. That will tell whether there is increased battery life from switching to dual core.
Your argument essentially boils down to "a pinto would use less gas than a Ferrari". Well no shit."
That is my argument exactly, but not in the way you envision it. If you live in New York City, other than a cool factor, what exactly is all of that extra horsepower in a Ferrari going to get you? There is no place to use the extra HP. So, it may be super efficient at 100mph compared to the pinto, but there is nowhere to use it (legally) as such. So, how is it's efficiency at the 25mph to 40mph (or less) that is common in the big city.
Likewise, a dual core is more efficient in raw computing power than a single core. That's not my argument. My argument is that with a smart phone as a platform, where are you going to use that extra power?
Take the EVO, for example. Will a dual core give me 4G speeds? No. Things like video are constrained by bandwidth not the processor that is in the phone. Will it allow for better multitasking, maybe, depending on what you are multitasking. If what is being multitasked is constrained by bandwidth or memory, then a faster processor won't help.
Even if bandwith isn't an issue, if memory is constrained, then the faster processor won't help. Look at all the discussion in Linux forums about adding RAM instead of faster processors for performance.
The real question is not about which is more efficient overall, but only for the task at hand.
The point I am trying to make is that just about any power saving measure you take with a dual core can also be implemented on a single core.
If you lower the voltage to a single core and it will use less power. Now, at some point, you get to the point were the single processor can't get any real work done (becomes less responsive from the user perspective) running at lower voltage, whereas two cores running at such low voltage still could (of course chances are they'd both be "on" most the time if the voltage was low enough).
Then the question becomes does the single core running at reduced voltage use more/less than the dual core at reduced voltage when both cores have to be active? Assuming both cores are "on" and the chip design is the same, then the transistor count does come back into play.
The other thing that gets lost in all of these discussions, is what exactly are the processors doing in the smartphone? We already know, because they already exist, that it is possible to have low spec processors running smart phones. These phones play video and music, surf the web, etc. What exactly would we be adding to a smart phone that would need the extra computing power of multiple cores? It's not like many people are going to be doing cad/cam on them.
We've already seen this in the netbook market. While desktops and high end laptops kept getting faster and faster processors, the processor in most netbooks is lower voltage and frequency to a) extend battery life and b) their intended use does not warrant higher processing power.
Using the car analogy, again, you can make an eight cylinder engine which is pretty fuel efficient by doing things that turn off cylinders, change compression, etc. But, no manufacture would do so and stick one in, something like a prius or even a smart car. Instead, they use a smaller, less powerful engine that is optimized for the task at hand.
ARM is notorious for power management. Let's wait for the benchmarks, on real devices, before concluding that multi-core is a significant drain on battery life.
Further, the CortexA9 is a revision ahead of the A8. So potentially it brings improved architectural efficiencies.
Mathematically, all things being equal, multi-core must use more energy, because it has more transistors and each transistor requires some discreet amount of power.
Think of it as the difference between a four cylinder vehicle and an eight cylinder. An eight cylinder, by having a larger displacement uses more fuel.
All sorts of things can be done to make an eight cylinder engine more fuel efficient, however if these same things are applied to the four cylinder, then it becomes more efficient, too (thus the all things being equal statement).
You can improve the power consumption numbers for a dual core processor quite dramatically, by shutting off one of the cores (almost 50%). However, then you lose the efficiency of having multiple cores. You can only turn the core on, when it's really needed, but then at those times, it will use more power. Plus, the circuit that needs to be running to determine whether the second core is really needed or not will use additional cpu cycles on the first core, causing it to use more power than if it didn't have to be wasting cpu cycles trying to determine if it needs to turn the other core on or not.
For the record, I agree that ARM is great at power management. However, unless they have figured out how to power transistors without using power, adding additional cores will always use more power - again, all things being equal.
Battery life, however, would seem to suffer with dual core.
My desktop system has a three-core processor that uses less power than many single core processors which do less work than one of its cores, all of which (AFAIK) are older than it is. These are new processors. Why do you imagine they will necessarily consume more power?
More transistors = more power use. Obviously, there are many things that impact power usage of a CPU and low power variants are readily available. However, if those same techniques that are used to make dual core processors use less power are applied to single core processors, then the single core processor will use less power. It's simple math. Each transistor requires x amount of power. Dual cores, while having less transistors than two separate processors, still have more than the equivalent single core using the same technology.
Slashdot Mirror
If you will give 66 cents for every 49 cents I give you, then I will agree, until then 49% is not near 66%.
Besides, that 49% is not on every dollar earned. the SS/FICA stop just after $100,000. The Fed and State Taxes are incremental, so it may be true that Connecticut has a maximum tax rate of 14% which would be added to the maximum federal tax rate of 35% to get to 49%. However, even if that is true, it is still not on gross income, but instead on adjusted gross income, which is always lower, which means the effective tax rate compared to gross income is less, too.
As for property and sales/use tax, they don't apply as the original poster was referring to 2/3 of every dollar earned being paid in taxes. That would be an income tax.
What does stronger than steel actually mean? A spider web is stronger than steel, but I walk through them all the time. A diamond is stronger than steel, but I can hit it with a hammer and it smashes. Stronger than steel sounds good, but just like foods that say they are all natural, doesn't mean anything.
You've jumped from rich individuals to corporations. So now, besides personal ethics - tax evasion vs tax avoidance the issue has expanded to business ethics.
Currently, businesses, whether in the US or abroad, pay income tax either here or abroad. If you have been following the news lately, you will have seen that many countries, particularly poorer ones have a tax rate much higher than in the US. Companies don't move overseas to save on taxes. They move there to save on labor and to have reduced regulations. Contrary to popular belief, businesses don't really care about taxes -- why? Because they pass that cost on to you the consumer. Taxes are just another cost of doing business. It's easy to figure the amount per unit produced and it gets figured into the markup. The only time that it becomes a real issue is when the tax rate is changing, as the new rate will affect the cost of goods sold, but not for the items already in the chain and will therefore cut into profits.
Case in point, although not really tax related, Ford could have spent $1 per Pinto to put a shield between the gas tank and exhaust that would have eliminated or at least greatly reduced the risk of explosion. They didn't do that, for one, that extra $1 would have equated tens of dollars, if not $100+ dollars by the time the final markups were made and that would have made the Pinto non-competitive price wise with the Vega (that is from the perspective of the Ford executives at the time). Another reason, is that there were already millions of Pinto's out there, the cost to retrofit them would have been millions just for the shield, let alone the labor to install. Ford using their business ethics decided the cost was too great. The courts decided otherwise for them.
Taxes work in a similar fashion. When taxes are stable, regardless of the rate, business price their products accordingly. To increase profits, to keep shareholders happy, that's when they move offshore to reap the benefits of cheap labor and little to no regulation.
That decision has nothing to do with tax evasion or avoidance.
The wealthy individuals on the otherhand, make decisions to shelter their personal wealth offshore, strictly because of taxes. Yes, it is illegal to evade taxes, but the reasons it is illegal come back to that same sense of fairness, which is a subjective value statement.
I don't know what country you are in, but in the United States, there is no combination of state and federal taxes along with FICA/Medicare that would get you anywhere close to 2/3rds of your paycheck.
The problem is that the system is set up that only the rich can evade taxes. Factory line worker Joe Blow doesn't make enough to go put it all away in a secret swiss bank account, nor does he have enough to hire an accountant to manage some holding companies abroad, etc etc.
Most people on Slashdot think evading taxes is immoral based on the fact that it's an exploit in the tax laws that only the rich can afford to do. If it were possible for anyone and everyone to avoid paying taxes, I don't think anyone would mind. We're all just pissed off that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and taxation is supposed to help balance that out.
Most people, slashdot or otherwise, think that evading taxes is immoral based on you are not paying something you actually owe -- that is why tax evasion is a crime. Avoiding taxes, it alright by most people, because nobody is morally or ethically required to pay more taxes than they legally owe.
While it is true that the wealthy have more opportunity to avoid paying taxes, than the poor due, the actual avoidance is not the issue. In those cases, the discussion usually turns to what is a fair policy on taxes (rich vs poor). When it comes to actual tax evasion, then there tends to be no sympathy by the rich or the poor.
Most people, at least in the United States, are not really upset about paying taxes. They understand that taxes to pay for government is a necessary evil. Most people, again, in the United States, get upset by either a) how the tax money is spent or b) the perceived fairness or lack of fairness in the tax code. The spending issue is not really a taxation issue, as the government has demonstrated that it can borrow all it wants to spend (of course that creates other consequences that must be dealt with).
The fairness issue, really revolves around the notion that people should just have to pay their fair share. And that's were the problem arises. Almost everybody agrees with that statement. However, when it comes to determining what exactly one's fair share is and how do we measure it, then we get into problems. Why, because one's fair share is not an objective thing, but is subjective as it involves one's values.
But, back to the original point. Tax evasion is morally and legally wrong. Tax avoidance on the other hand is quite alright.
tom@muon:~$ hammer
hammer: command not found
tom@muon:~$ wrench
wrench: command not found
tom@muon:~$ screwdriver
screwdriver: command not found
tom@muon:~$ tweezers
tweezers: command not found
Obviously your system administrator doesn't trust you using such powerful tools and has removed access to them for your account. :)
And Ubuntu packs so much extra stuff, that unless you do a minimal install and then add what you want, it is virtually impossible to have a lightweight system. This isn't a slam against Ubuntu. They are trying to be all things to all people. As such they have a lot of services running and such to handle just about any situation. Need a hammer, it's in a default install Ubuntu, need a wrench it's in a default install Ubuntu, need a screwdriver, it's in a default install Ubuntu. However, if all you needed was a pair of tweezers, well, you get that too, with the default install, but you still get all the other tools in the toolbox, too.
It's been regularly reported that Gnome, KDE, Xfce, etc, all run faster and with a smaller footprint on things like debian, arch, fedora, and many others. However, with those systems, the user is expected to add what services and software that are specific to their needs. That is how they stay lean.
This is not to say that Ubunut is bad, or wrong in what it does. On the contrary, they are trying to produce a distro that "just works" without having to do a lot of tinkering. They pretty much have succeeded, but just like clothing, their one size fits all approach really means that it fits no one, well.
That was my immediate reaction. I use XFCE, but I still use Konqueror and Kwrite for browsing remote files systems and editing files on them because they work much better.
KDE is not as much of a memory hog as it is reputed to be. It depends on what you install and how you configure it.
So what you are saying is that by using Konqueror and Kwrite, you aren't concerned with the memory footprint and Xfce being lighter (or not) is irrelevant since you are loading most of the kdelibs anyway. Is that correct?
I do agree with the last part of your last statement about it depending on what is installed. It never ceases to amaze me that people will say they want a low resource desktop environment like Xfce or even LXDE and then install, say OpenOffice.org on it. While obviously, we want any desktop environment to not use any more resources than necessary, if you are running heavy apps, like OO or Evolution, etc, you really can't complain about how lightweight or not the environment is as the environment is not the limiting factor. (I've seen users install nautilus in Xfce to get dropbox access, which is not longer needed, btw, and then complain about how sluggish Xfce is!)
I've done a lot of GTK programming and never programmed anything that hit frameworks like HAL as part of GTK. GTK deals with the screen and widgets and window managers. It doesn't care about HAL or VFS, etc. While GTK may not be as complete as QT, if any of these subsystems were causing a problem, it wouldn't matter whether QT or GTK were the toolkit used.
The big thing is that many of the distros are shifting to these "new-fangled frameworks and technologies" and Xfce needs to change to support them, regardless of the impact. If the major distro's drop HAL, for instance, and Xfce would still require it, then Xfce could rightly be called bloated as it would load additional frameworks that nothing else used and possibly would conflict with what was already installed.
I am guessing from your post that you run Ubuntu or one of it's derivatives. Xfce on Ubuntu is not much better than Gnome, becaue Ubuntu packs a lot of stuff in to their Xfec impleimenation besides Xfce. Ubuntu, is not a distribution you want to use for a memory constrained or slow CPU system.
However, if you run Xfce on Debian, Fedora, Arch, etc. it simply flies and uses fewer resources than gnome.
The problem with LXDE is that by the time you add all of the features that it does not provide, it gets pretty heavy, too. You could install openbox and add just XFCE's panel and pretty much recreate LXDE's footprint.
Don't get me wrong, LXDE is very good, very fast. It's just that it doesn't provide a lot of the services that people have come to expect in a full desktop environment.
However, if I were installing a server and wanted to have a GUI, LXDE would certainly be a consideration.
Fluxbox is a window manager. XFCE does ship with it's own window manager (but you can use whatever window manager you want). A desktop environment is significantly more than just a window manger.
Enlightenment is very good, however, there is very little software that does things in an enlightenment way. Slapping gtk or qt apps on top of enlightenment ruins the beauty that enlightenment presents.
People who think xfce is heavy, are mainly Ubuntu users, where a lot of extra stuff from Ubuntu has been thrown in. Debian, Redhat, Gentoo, Arch, etc. all show a lean and fast XFCE implementation.
I hadn't looked at it that way. That would be very bad.
I understand what you are saying, but I don't think it is quite right, at least not from the article.
The article states that the developer can't undersell Amazon, so if the developer wants to lower the MSRP to another store, it has to lower it to Amazon, too.
Also, the article points out that this is the model that Amazon already uses for books and other merchandise, except for e-books.
According to the article, Amazon is free to price the app however it can to maximize sales. But, since the developer is guarantee a minimum per sale of what they asked for, they still are maximizing their profit (the developer's).
Using your example, the developer becomes like the publisher and gets the $4.50 per sale regardless of the price Amazon sells it for. However, if the developer/publisher sets a lower price elsewhere, say 10% lower, then they will also get 10% less from Amazon.
I still don't see this as being a monopoly or bully forcing their way on the poor developer. The developer is free to forgo Amazon's app store. They can go directly through Google's store or self-publish.
Guaranteeing that you will not undersell Amazon in other app stores seems to be a small price to pay for the exposure that Amazon will give your app. Actually, it's not even about underselling, but manipulating the MSRP.
90% correct would do fine but you can't be sure if any article really is 10% or 100% correct without doing a whole load of research.
It's the same for everything else.
If I'm doing that kind of research anyway what use is wikipedia?
A place where other people can benefit from your research.
As for the rest of your post, I admit that I'm not sure how often such things happen, so I can't really comment on that.
The problem is that we are not discussing "everything else" but only Wikipedia. And if the poster actually put his/her research on Wikipedia or updated an inaccurate page, it wouldn't matter, there still is no way of knowing if it is accurate or not (although citations help tremendously).
Wikipedia is to legitimate research what blogging is to legitimate journalism. Both provide interesting reads, but where one requires accountability, the other only suggests it.
I've seen plenty of articles that contained correct information. That said, it would be absurdly difficult for you to find a book/website that is 100% correct in every way.
Yes, but even Star Trek contains correct information on plenty of things. That doesn't make it authoritative.
Historically, encyclopaedias relied on experts for their information (yes, I know, they were put together by editors, not the experts themself). With Wikipedia, just about anybody can contribute and the information stays there and incorrect information stays there until somebody who knows the correct information a) stumbles upon the incorrect information, b) cares enough to correct the incorrect information, and c) actually takes the time to correct it.
I'm not saying that Wikipedia is bad or unusable, but most research papers exclude it from being a valid source, at least directly. Where it really shines, though is if the article has real footnotes (not just links to other Wikipedia pages). Then the actual sources can be reviewed.
Wikipedia needs two types of articles. The current "it may be accurate, it may not, so use at your own risk" and one that has some sort of impramtur authenticating its accuracy.
I remember when astronomers spent their time unravelling the mystery of the universe instead of things like downgrading the status of planets and dabbling with astrology and stuff. Sure, there is a lighter side to science, but with tight budgets (most astronomers are publicly funded), I think I would spend more time on real research.
That sounds disturbingly like illegal monopoly price-fixing to me. Didn't we settle the issue a long time ago that retailers can't tell their suppliers what price to charge for their goods?
How about I name a price which Amazon will pay me for each copy they sell, then let Amazon decide what to charge to retail buyers? You know, like regular goods, the maker sells it for a profit, the retailer tacks on a their profit margin, and the Holy Free Market decides if it's worth it, and both creator and seller can adjust prices for demand.
Yes, I'm fully aware Wal*Mart uses its dominant position to manipulate suppliers into setting the price to Wal*Mart's like -- in a different enforcement regime (pre-Reagan) they'd be in trouble. I doubt in this 21st world that Amazon will ever get taken to task for it, though. The acolytes of the Holy Free Market will use the argument that if the Free Market doesn't like price-fixing, it will go elsewhere to sell.
Actually, you are giving your MSRP to Amazon and they are guaranteeing that you will at least get your profit share based off of that price. However, if they discount your product and sell more copies, you stand to get more, even though the selling price is lower (lower share per unit sold, but many more units sold). Again, they have stated that at a minimum, you would get the share you asked for.
This seems a much better deal than a traditional retail setup, where you get a fixed cost for the units purchased by the vendor regardless of what they sell them for. Of course, the difference is in the traditional setup, your goods are being purchased ahead of time and you get what you agree to at that time. With Amazon's model, they are acting like a broker for your goods. The more units they can sell the more money you stand to make, but you are guaranteed a minimum amount per unit sold.
What's wrong with that?
Isn't this what Amazon does with the book market? There is a MSRP that has included in it what the publisher wants as their cut. Amazon can sell at that price, a higher price or a lower price. The publisher is guaranteed their minimum cut.
If Amazon can sell twice as many books by lowering the price by 1/3, then everybody wins. If the book is popular and copies of that edition are rare, the price goes up (regular supply and demand at work), again, everybody wins.
It seems like Amazon is basically wanting to take an already established model and use it for their app store.
But you are comparing apples and oranges. A cortexA9 is not the same as an A8. The comment is based on all things being equal. Since they are different internally (more than how many cores)all things are not equal.
Before you state that all dual cores will be different internally than single cores, that is not the point I am making. I am saying that the power saving features added to a dual core, if used in a single core would still make the single core use less power.
In your example, I would posit that even the single core is sitting idle most the time as would be both cores of the dual core.
But this is an easy argument to determine. We just need to wait a few months and see what the current draw is on the new phones. That will tell whether there is increased battery life from switching to dual core.
Your argument essentially boils down to "a pinto would use less gas than a Ferrari". Well no shit."
That is my argument exactly, but not in the way you envision it. If you live in New York City, other than a cool factor, what exactly is all of that extra horsepower in a Ferrari going to get you? There is no place to use the extra HP. So, it may be super efficient at 100mph compared to the pinto, but there is nowhere to use it (legally) as such. So, how is it's efficiency at the 25mph to 40mph (or less) that is common in the big city.
Likewise, a dual core is more efficient in raw computing power than a single core. That's not my argument. My argument is that with a smart phone as a platform, where are you going to use that extra power?
Take the EVO, for example. Will a dual core give me 4G speeds? No. Things like video are constrained by bandwidth not the processor that is in the phone. Will it allow for better multitasking, maybe, depending on what you are multitasking. If what is being multitasked is constrained by bandwidth or memory, then a faster processor won't help.
Even if bandwith isn't an issue, if memory is constrained, then the faster processor won't help. Look at all the discussion in Linux forums about adding RAM instead of faster processors for performance.
The real question is not about which is more efficient overall, but only for the task at hand.
The point I am trying to make is that just about any power saving measure you take with a dual core can also be implemented on a single core.
If you lower the voltage to a single core and it will use less power. Now, at some point, you get to the point were the single processor can't get any real work done (becomes less responsive from the user perspective) running at lower voltage, whereas two cores running at such low voltage still could (of course chances are they'd both be "on" most the time if the voltage was low enough).
Then the question becomes does the single core running at reduced voltage use more/less than the dual core at reduced voltage when both cores have to be active? Assuming both cores are "on" and the chip design is the same, then the transistor count does come back into play.
The other thing that gets lost in all of these discussions, is what exactly are the processors doing in the smartphone? We already know, because they already exist, that it is possible to have low spec processors running smart phones. These phones play video and music, surf the web, etc. What exactly would we be adding to a smart phone that would need the extra computing power of multiple cores? It's not like many people are going to be doing cad/cam on them.
We've already seen this in the netbook market. While desktops and high end laptops kept getting faster and faster processors, the processor in most netbooks is lower voltage and frequency to a) extend battery life and b) their intended use does not warrant higher processing power.
Using the car analogy, again, you can make an eight cylinder engine which is pretty fuel efficient by doing things that turn off cylinders, change compression, etc. But, no manufacture would do so and stick one in, something like a prius or even a smart car. Instead, they use a smaller, less powerful engine that is optimized for the task at hand.
ARM is notorious for power management. Let's wait for the benchmarks, on real devices, before concluding that multi-core is a significant drain on battery life.
Further, the CortexA9 is a revision ahead of the A8. So potentially it brings improved architectural efficiencies.
Mathematically, all things being equal, multi-core must use more energy, because it has more transistors and each transistor requires some discreet amount of power.
Think of it as the difference between a four cylinder vehicle and an eight cylinder. An eight cylinder, by having a larger displacement uses more fuel.
All sorts of things can be done to make an eight cylinder engine more fuel efficient, however if these same things are applied to the four cylinder, then it becomes more efficient, too (thus the all things being equal statement).
You can improve the power consumption numbers for a dual core processor quite dramatically, by shutting off one of the cores (almost 50%). However, then you lose the efficiency of having multiple cores. You can only turn the core on, when it's really needed, but then at those times, it will use more power. Plus, the circuit that needs to be running to determine whether the second core is really needed or not will use additional cpu cycles on the first core, causing it to use more power than if it didn't have to be wasting cpu cycles trying to determine if it needs to turn the other core on or not.
For the record, I agree that ARM is great at power management. However, unless they have figured out how to power transistors without using power, adding additional cores will always use more power - again, all things being equal.
Battery life, however, would seem to suffer with dual core.
My desktop system has a three-core processor that uses less power than many single core processors which do less work than one of its cores, all of which (AFAIK) are older than it is. These are new processors. Why do you imagine they will necessarily consume more power?
More transistors = more power use. Obviously, there are many things that impact power usage of a CPU and low power variants are readily available. However, if those same techniques that are used to make dual core processors use less power are applied to single core processors, then the single core processor will use less power. It's simple math. Each transistor requires x amount of power. Dual cores, while having less transistors than two separate processors, still have more than the equivalent single core using the same technology.