Obviously you didn't read one of my other posts. I agree Itanium2 is a fine enough chip. I just think it is expensive. I don't think it is a good value & I am used to seeing government-sponsored research pick a lower cost product over the top-of-the-line every time. In the US, many of the research institutes I know of are consciously choosing to make AMD or Apple clusters because of how far they can stretch their research dollar.
I'm an idiot who didn't read your post. sorry i didn't realize you were talking about acroread. I've seen a program to force the wheel to send events to different apps. So you could have it send a down arrow as an ugly hack.
However, xpdf's bookmarks work for me. What problems are you having with them?
It most definitely supports wheelmice. I just loaded xpdf-3.00-r5 and tested to be sure. You can even wheel to another page (you can't middle-click or use the scrollbar to do this).
If it doesn't work for you, update to the latest version your distro offers. If it still doesn't work,./configure && make && make install the source. Still no luck: Try the front-ends (gpdf, kpdf, etc.)
I don't dispute that. So are the other chips. And they are otherwise outselling the Itaniums by an order of magnitude. Intel has been quite sheepish about their 64-bit line & the performance/price value you get isn't that spectacular. I'm just wondering why Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute bucked the trend--not saying the Itaniums are actually bad.
Last time I checked, preventing a person from copy/pasting, printing, converting, or extracting images from a document is DRM. XPDF honors these restrictions on encrypted files.
I was only vaguely aware that Adobe released some new protections which they choose to call "Adobe DRM" which is distinct to their previous form of DRM.
Anyway, acroread 5 (the latest release for older versions of Win 9X, MacOS 8-9, Linux, and Unix) can't read these files either. You're stuck with OS X or Windows, where acroread is actually decent.
Sure xpdf supports DRM. In fact, the author enables it & doesn't share how to disable it. Certain users have shared howand some linux distros ship xdf with a "nodrm" option so that you can not only view DRM content (as you can with vanilla xpdf), but you can print/copy/etc. what acroread or vanilla xpdf won't let you.
A single PDF or ALL PDFs opened sideways? In any case, it lets you rotate the document, so this is a nuisance of clicking a single option at worst. I agree that not all PDFs render perfectly...I do keep acroread around "just in case." 99.9% do display as expected (including all of those I make using pdflatex and other open source software). But even for that.1%, acroread doesn't always have more luck.
Yup. I also find acroread to be slow and bloaty. I am happy with xpdf.
It'd be nice if Adobe ported the full verion of Acrobat over. It doesn't work well in Wine (even in commercial products like Crossover Office) & some of the features for editing/marking up PDFs are useful.
A lot of people have been quick to respond that it hasn't affected them. Howthe hell do you knowthat? Many provisions of the PATRIOT Act prevent you from learning that it has been used against you. Just because you haven't had US Marshals knocking on your door doesn't mean you haven't had your library record analyzed. Just because you haven't been detained without charges doesn't mean that more of your tax money isn't going to extra surveilance that is ethically questionable and wouldn't be legal without the PATRIOT Act.
It does almost make me feel like a barbarian for using beamer under LaTeX. Many alternative LaTeX styles/classes exist (prosper, HA-prosper, seminar, slide, etc. They are mature and elegant. The resulting PDFs are attractive because they are single-file-per-presentation solutions that are cross-platform and adhere to an open standard (xpdf is a great viewer!). S5 would need additional files for images, style sheets, etc.
Those who use LaTeX should check out beamer--the table of contents is quite intelligent & they are easily theamable & have already solved many things that S5 is only planning to include.
Mornelithe and others already responded on the cost issue. I won't belabor that point. I will say that DVDs are a lot easier to use as removable storage. Not all people who need to use large amounts of data are computer literate enough to add a new hard drive. External HDs are OK, but that enclosure will only worsen the price, size, and weight difference 8.5 GB. DVDs also ship better--they have no moving parts which can give you a bad day if the boxes are beat around too much in shipping. And I'd much rather ship a couple DVDs I bought to someone than a hard drive: DVDs are more granular. Any HD between 80 and 250 GB will weigh the same (you can certainly get smaller drives, but I dont see the point--the price per GB gets outrageous). But each 8 GB DVD weighs the same--which isn't much. If you are transferring 10s or fewer GBs instead of 100s, optical media is the way to go.
Burning optical media is still often faster and sometimes cheaper than transferring it over the network & storing it on hard drives, especially if several countries separate your gigs of data from where they need to be. They are and will continue to be highly utilized by scientists and others whose needs match this.
Most SATA drives that do exist are still just the PATA drives with a SATA interface. To a first approximation, the PATA results apply to the SATA drives too. With a few exceptions, the only reasons to buy SATA optical drives are if you're triying to abandon ATA drives completely and/or want the cute thin, LONG cables. My upgrades have actually remained SCSI, but it is becoming harder and harder to find SCSI drives that are excellent and reasonably priced.
Normally I'd agree but in this case it is offtopic for one reason: The review has nothing to do with VectorLinux marketing... at all.
Fair enough. My comment was on the/. story, not TFA. I consider comments on the submitted story to be fair game, but it is fine that some don't feel this way.
On the topic of marketing I honestly don't think VL markets their software at all, at least not that I've seen anyway. So why pick on them?
This is somewhat fair, but all distros (and especially community-based distros) are marketed by the users. It isn't the gentoo core team who goes around sharing their l33t CFLAGS. Perhaps my blame was misdirected--it is meant to apply to some (very vocal) users of the distro.
Oh, and regarding your comments about the author (at least I think that's who you were commenting on. If not, then kindly disregard)
Nope--talking about that (minority of?) users who leave me withafoul taste again.
I think the benefits of compiling from source on everything are varied at best, and only sometimes outweighed by the time necessary to do it.
I don't know why some gentoo users and nearly all critics of gentoo or gentoo users make such a big deal about speed. Binary distros are fine for receiving binaries optimized for a specific architecture (LunarLinux and VectorLinux show this).
The primary advantage of a source-based distro is how current the installed software can be. As soon as a tar.gz is released, source-based distros can write a short, quick wrapper for it & release ASAP. Oftentimes, only the version number of the wrapper needs to be changed & it is even more trivial. Binary-based distros must use more resources making a package (at the very least by compiling it (often by getting their hands dirty: getting it to build and run on the current distro--this testing can take a while). Source-based distros release packages to be tested by their users sooner & the amount of testing often allows the newer releases to be found in the stable branch sooner as well.
They also provide one of the easiest methods to prevent multiple versions of the same library screwing up the system. Each package can easily list what range of versions of the libraries they need. Packages that depend on a library can be rebuilt if needed, but usually all packages will be built with the same version of a library.
This lower barrier of testing by users also improves cross-platform support & fixes problems sooner. Users do notice bugs & are able to report it to both the distro and the package authors that much sooner.
Custom binaries are, as the parent mentioned, often nice. My personal experience is that most packages aren't that customizable or that other distros offer a sane choice in the binary packages too. Sometimes saner.
Source-based does have a number of obvious disadvantages. ccache, distcc, faster processors, etc. will solve the biggest one (if they haven't already). They also have a number of "advantages" which cause controversy at best & usually cause ignorant rants and raves (and apparently namecalling). But the bottom line is that there are tangible benefits in testing & the improvement of packages, which we all benefit from.
Whenever I hear about some new performance-tuned distro (this, Lunar Linux, Gentoo (which I do actually run), etc.), I feel like I'm stuck in Spinal Tap with some braindedad rocker telling me "It goes to 11." Only this time beloved Nigel Tumfel is a pale, skinny nerd who can't blame the drugs and STDs for brainrot, and is only able to stammer an apology for sounding like a (bad) marketing weenie. Do phrases like "rocket powered" really sound good to anyone out there?
I can't believe how businesses have been hoodwinked into believing that "TOTAL Cost" has a horizon of 1-3 years (whatever the frequency of windows updates is these days). If they intend to be around for decades more, than they should have some vision of those decades to come. Of course switching is expensive! But upgrades to Windows are generally more expensive than upgrades to even commercially-supported versions of Linux.
This gap could potentially change if MS suddenly moved to a subscription model--presumably they'd see that by keeping subscription costs low "enough" people would stay locked in. But it is also easier to justify the insignificant monthly or anual costs of a subscription than large expenditutres every few years for upgrades.
The Community needs a study of annually amortized UPGRADE costs for different platforms. Then businesses could make a more informed decision--Is the switch worth it if it pays for itself in 3 years?
Yeah--.edu sites really see a lot more non-IE browsers!
From KNOWN browser types of this months hits: IE 63.8% Opera 24.9% Firefox 4.3% Safari 3.5% Mozilla 1.8% Netscape.1% Konqueror.1% LibWWW.1% WebCollage.1%
Please note the Opera figure is inflated due to a very popular configuration page that was brand new on the server this month. Last month, the relative percentage of IE and firefox users was roughly the same: 1 Firefox user in every 15-20 IE users.
Debian GNU/Linux is quite ideological. The best writeup on it I've seen is Why Linux? Why Debian?
I wouldn't call it conservative: Debian comes with over 8000 precompiled packages, many of which are fairly recent (see distrowatch or others for version info).
Debian is a user-supported (noncommercial) distro that appeals to people with some experience with Linux or which believe in the GNU philosophy. The package manager (apt) is quite good. It is a well thought out distro & (arguably) has had the most succesful branches: Knoppix, Ubuntu, etc.
Because they won't listen until you can convince them that any marketshare they'll gain on linux boxes makes up for the possible loss of users on other OSs because ATI and others will be able to learn their secrets & make better cards.
Hotline is actually a great example. It started out in the Mac community, but win32 clients did start to gain a lot of ground. In high profile busts of some hotline peers, a majority of the terabytes of software that the press reported was windows based!
I admit that my single experience is limited. However, I didn't see any arguments from Ballmer which even considered anecdotal evidence. If he could make a case for more Mac (or other more expensive computer hardware) piracy than Wintel (or other cheaper hardware) piracy, he might have a case. He doesn't try & I bet it is because if there WAS statistics on this, they wouldn't support his premise.
I was not trying to say that my limited experience is representative. It is just a line of reasoning that MS didn't even attempt to pursue.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously you didn't read one of my other posts. I agree Itanium2 is a fine enough chip. I just think it is expensive. I don't think it is a good value & I am used to seeing government-sponsored research pick a lower cost product over the top-of-the-line every time. In the US, many of the research institutes I know of are consciously choosing to make AMD or Apple clusters because of how far they can stretch their research dollar.
I'm an idiot who didn't read your post. sorry i didn't realize you were talking about acroread. I've seen a program to force the wheel to send events to different apps. So you could have it send a down arrow as an ugly hack.
However, xpdf's bookmarks work for me. What problems are you having with them?
You can if you use a wheel mouse.
It most definitely supports wheelmice. I just loaded xpdf-3.00-r5 and tested to be sure. You can even wheel to another page (you can't middle-click or use the scrollbar to do this).
./configure && make && make install the source. Still no luck: Try the front-ends (gpdf, kpdf, etc.)
If it doesn't work for you, update to the latest version your distro offers. If it still doesn't work,
I don't dispute that. So are the other chips. And they are otherwise outselling the Itaniums by an order of magnitude. Intel has been quite sheepish about their 64-bit line & the performance/price value you get isn't that spectacular. I'm just wondering why Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute bucked the trend--not saying the Itaniums are actually bad.
I do wonder why they went with the Itaniums. Perhaps Intel is having an "All 64-bit chips must GO!!" clearance or something.
Last time I checked, preventing a person from copy/pasting, printing, converting, or extracting images from a document is DRM. XPDF honors these restrictions on encrypted files.
I was only vaguely aware that Adobe released some new protections which they choose to call "Adobe DRM" which is distinct to their previous form of DRM.
Anyway, acroread 5 (the latest release for older versions of Win 9X, MacOS 8-9, Linux, and Unix) can't read these files either. You're stuck with OS X or Windows, where acroread is actually decent.
Sure xpdf supports DRM. In fact, the author enables it & doesn't share how to disable it. Certain users have shared howand some linux distros ship xdf with a "nodrm" option so that you can not only view DRM content (as you can with vanilla xpdf), but you can print/copy/etc. what acroread or vanilla xpdf won't let you.
A single PDF or ALL PDFs opened sideways? In any case, it lets you rotate the document, so this is a nuisance of clicking a single option at worst. I agree that not all PDFs render perfectly...I do keep acroread around "just in case." 99.9% do display as expected (including all of those I make using pdflatex and other open source software). But even for that .1%, acroread doesn't always have more luck.
Yup. I also find acroread to be slow and bloaty. I am happy with xpdf.
It'd be nice if Adobe ported the full verion of Acrobat over. It doesn't work well in Wine (even in commercial products like Crossover Office) & some of the features for editing/marking up PDFs are useful.
A lot of people have been quick to respond that it hasn't affected them. Howthe hell do you knowthat? Many provisions of the PATRIOT Act prevent you from learning that it has been used against you. Just because you haven't had US Marshals knocking on your door doesn't mean you haven't had your library record analyzed. Just because you haven't been detained without charges doesn't mean that more of your tax money isn't going to extra surveilance that is ethically questionable and wouldn't be legal without the PATRIOT Act.
It does almost make me feel like a barbarian for using beamer under LaTeX. Many alternative LaTeX styles/classes exist (prosper, HA-prosper, seminar, slide, etc. They are mature and elegant. The resulting PDFs are attractive because they are single-file-per-presentation solutions that are cross-platform and adhere to an open standard (xpdf is a great viewer!). S5 would need additional files for images, style sheets, etc.
Those who use LaTeX should check out beamer--the table of contents is quite intelligent & they are easily theamable & have already solved many things that S5 is only planning to include.
Mornelithe and others already responded on the cost issue. I won't belabor that point. I will say that DVDs are a lot easier to use as removable storage. Not all people who need to use large amounts of data are computer literate enough to add a new hard drive. External HDs are OK, but that enclosure will only worsen the price, size, and weight difference 8.5 GB. DVDs also ship better--they have no moving parts which can give you a bad day if the boxes are beat around too much in shipping. And I'd much rather ship a couple DVDs I bought to someone than a hard drive: DVDs are more granular. Any HD between 80 and 250 GB will weigh the same (you can certainly get smaller drives, but I dont see the point--the price per GB gets outrageous). But each 8 GB DVD weighs the same--which isn't much. If you are transferring 10s or fewer GBs instead of 100s, optical media is the way to go.
Burning optical media is still often faster and sometimes cheaper than transferring it over the network & storing it on hard drives, especially if several countries separate your gigs of data from where they need to be. They are and will continue to be highly utilized by scientists and others whose needs match this.
Most SATA drives that do exist are still just the PATA drives with a SATA interface. To a first approximation, the PATA results apply to the SATA drives too. With a few exceptions, the only reasons to buy SATA optical drives are if you're triying to abandon ATA drives completely and/or want the cute thin, LONG cables. My upgrades have actually remained SCSI, but it is becoming harder and harder to find SCSI drives that are excellent and reasonably priced.
The primary advantage of a source-based distro is how current the installed software can be. As soon as a tar.gz is released, source-based distros can write a short, quick wrapper for it & release ASAP. Oftentimes, only the version number of the wrapper needs to be changed & it is even more trivial. Binary-based distros must use more resources making a package (at the very least by compiling it (often by getting their hands dirty: getting it to build and run on the current distro--this testing can take a while). Source-based distros release packages to be tested by their users sooner & the amount of testing often allows the newer releases to be found in the stable branch sooner as well.
They also provide one of the easiest methods to prevent multiple versions of the same library screwing up the system. Each package can easily list what range of versions of the libraries they need. Packages that depend on a library can be rebuilt if needed, but usually all packages will be built with the same version of a library.
This lower barrier of testing by users also improves cross-platform support & fixes problems sooner. Users do notice bugs & are able to report it to both the distro and the package authors that much sooner.
Custom binaries are, as the parent mentioned, often nice. My personal experience is that most packages aren't that customizable or that other distros offer a sane choice in the binary packages too. Sometimes saner.
Source-based does have a number of obvious disadvantages. ccache, distcc, faster processors, etc. will solve the biggest one (if they haven't already). They also have a number of "advantages" which cause controversy at best & usually cause ignorant rants and raves (and apparently namecalling). But the bottom line is that there are tangible benefits in testing & the improvement of packages, which we all benefit from.
Rocket Fueled Slackware
Whenever I hear about some new performance-tuned distro (this, Lunar Linux, Gentoo (which I do actually run), etc.), I feel like I'm stuck in Spinal Tap with some braindedad rocker telling me "It goes to 11." Only this time beloved Nigel Tumfel is a pale, skinny nerd who can't blame the drugs and STDs for brainrot, and is only able to stammer an apology for sounding like a (bad) marketing weenie. Do phrases like "rocket powered" really sound good to anyone out there?
I can't believe how businesses have been hoodwinked into believing that "TOTAL Cost" has a horizon of 1-3 years (whatever the frequency of windows updates is these days). If they intend to be around for decades more, than they should have some vision of those decades to come. Of course switching is expensive! But upgrades to Windows are generally more expensive than upgrades to even commercially-supported versions of Linux.
This gap could potentially change if MS suddenly moved to a subscription model--presumably they'd see that by keeping subscription costs low "enough" people would stay locked in. But it is also easier to justify the insignificant monthly or anual costs of a subscription than large expenditutres every few years for upgrades.
The Community needs a study of annually amortized UPGRADE costs for different platforms. Then businesses could make a more informed decision--Is the switch worth it if it pays for itself in 3 years?
libwww and web collage are less than .1% each. I submitted as plain old text and forgot the angle bracket was still stripped.
Yeah--.edu sites really see a lot more non-IE browsers!
.1% .1% .1% .1%
From KNOWN browser types of this months hits:
IE 63.8%
Opera 24.9%
Firefox 4.3%
Safari 3.5%
Mozilla 1.8%
Netscape
Konqueror
LibWWW
WebCollage
Please note the Opera figure is inflated due to a very popular configuration page that was brand new on the server this month. Last month, the relative percentage of IE and firefox users was roughly the same: 1 Firefox user in every 15-20 IE users.
Debian GNU/Linux is quite ideological. The best writeup on it I've seen is Why Linux? Why Debian?
I wouldn't call it conservative: Debian comes with over 8000 precompiled packages, many of which are fairly recent (see distrowatch or others for version info).
Debian is a user-supported (noncommercial) distro that appeals to people with some experience with Linux or which believe in the GNU philosophy. The package manager (apt) is quite good. It is a well thought out distro & (arguably) has had the most succesful branches: Knoppix, Ubuntu, etc.
Because they won't listen until you can convince them that any marketshare they'll gain on linux boxes makes up for the possible loss of users on other OSs because ATI and others will be able to learn their secrets & make better cards.
Hotline is actually a great example. It started out in the Mac community, but win32 clients did start to gain a lot of ground. In high profile busts of some hotline peers, a majority of the terabytes of software that the press reported was windows based!
I admit that my single experience is limited. However, I didn't see any arguments from Ballmer which even considered anecdotal evidence. If he could make a case for more Mac (or other more expensive computer hardware) piracy than Wintel (or other cheaper hardware) piracy, he might have a case. He doesn't try & I bet it is because if there WAS statistics on this, they wouldn't support his premise.
I was not trying to say that my limited experience is representative. It is just a line of reasoning that MS didn't even attempt to pursue.