It's overused because everything's in beta
on
Mo' Beta Testing Blues
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· Score: 2, Interesting
When it comes to software, everything's beta in a sence. It's always under development. Since when does a company release software and then just stop development but still consider it active? Operating systems are always being updated and do so automatically. Windows has been in beta since version 1. Linux is in beta and is updated constantly. When I buy a car, it's not beta. It's complete and I don't expect Toyota so fedex me a better steering wheel every month. Software is intangible so by nature it can be updated constantly.
To me, beta always signified that a company was to release the software soon and I could get a "preview" for free. However, as the article points out, marketting departments are trying to alter the definition of the word to suit them. I don't know if this is good or bad, it's just more marketting.
I installed FC2 on my laptop with the setup for a dual boot with windows xp. I was really trying to make the switch over to linux. I feel it was rushed because bugs (I mean that loosely as to not start a flame war and to prevent the "well you're just stupid!" replies) were not fixed. On one machine, alright it's old but no other distro has a problem with it, it wouldn't even install where as FCrc2 would. I don't know why it wouldn't, the installer simply said it couldn't be installed. I'm making an assumption here but maybe it was because something was broken from FCrc2 and instead of fixing it, they just removed the hardware support entirely.
Anyway, on my laptop I didn't have the boot problem, but it did mess up my partitions and I had to fix that with other tools which was a little nerve racking because I thought I might lose data. Firewire didn't work and required loading the kernel module and I didn't know how to do that and I think most newbies wouldn't either. The interface was pretty ugly as they make kde and gnome look the same with the ugly gnome theme they gave it. But that's a small thing and not really a complaint, just an annoyance. Also, the 4k stack issue with nvidia was a pain, but I think nvidia is to blame on that one. All these hiccups I wish I knew about before I installed it. I guess I didn't read the release notes as well as I should have, but I think those are big issues and shouldn't have been buried in the long release notes.
So what did I do? I switched over to mandrake 10 and the past couple of days have been better. For reasons that were my fault the first time, but unknown to me the second time, I have reinstalled it twice in a span of about a week or so, but I'm determined to get it going so I don't care. I've only gone into windows to get an email address these past few days. I've never been this comfortable with linux this much on any other distro, so I think that says something good about mandrake.
To me, it seemed they rushed fedora. I've always felt that a strong point with linux has been they don't rush things like microsoft does. However, with respect to fedora, I think they were more focused on the release date than releasing a stable and robust product even after two release canidates.
On a side note, I've taken that old machine that wouldn't run FC2, loaded mandrake on it, and now I'm installing gentoo from a stage 1 on it. It's still bootstrapping and I'll know in..oh..a few days if it goes well.
This post isn't meant to start a flame war or entice fedora advocates to tell me what an idiot I am because I couldn't get it to work. At this point in the history of linux and especially red hat, I expect a little more. Thankfully, I've recieved that from other distros including mandrake, knoppix, and suse (and hopefully gentoo:) ).
Yes! Now I can hack into the police station and have the screens all say "Napster" or "Nurv is evil" just like in the movies. All I need is the video of Gates using and praising KDE running on Linux 2.6.7-rc2 while his henchmen rough up Linus. Best part is, I can do it through telnet. God hacking is so easy and gui based!
Media photographers are going digital. When you're posting photos to a news paper or news website from the field it becomes a lot cheaper. The news photographers in Iraq use satellites to send the photos back. But 12gb? I don't know that's a lot. I'd shy away from it because then you can get lazy and not upload the pictures as often as you normally would and run the chance of losing them all.
Keep in mind though, a few years ago 40gb of computer storage space seemed like too much. Storage has always had that. When new drives come out people say "who needs that?" but then later on it becomes "I need more!"
Remember how ugly those gui's looked? I remember running windows 3.11 and netscape on 4 megs back in the day. It actually had this problem where it would saturate the system and completely reboot in the middle of browsing.
Where does the ram go? Well in windows, I don't know. It always seems to disappear with each new version. However, you can see how some applications are really wasteful. I've seen AOL instant messenger take about 25 mb of ram. Photoshop opening large files will take well over a hundred. Explorer, you're talking 20-30. Basically that's 150 without even considering windows, which needs a minimum of 128 to get started. I think developers are taking it for granted because ram is getting cheaper. There is no reason AIM should require so much ram though, that's crazy.
I'm curious how windows does it
on
Is Swap Necessary?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This may be slightly off topic...
Running KDE 3.2.1 now, I notice it takes longer to open apps than it does in windows. Mozilla for example takes literally a few seconds longer to open each window than it did in windows. Another thing windows does is make it faster when you run an app right after you ran it then closed it. Say for example in windows I run mozilla, then close it, then open it. When it opens it the second time, it's almost instant. However in linux, it seems to take the same original amount of time to load it completely. I'm sure it has to do with an entirely different process of loading programs, but apps always seemed to open faster in windows than in linux, in my view.
Then again, graphics used to be in the NT kernel and that's what made it appear fast, but lead to a lot of problems and crashes, so maybe the longer load time is worth the wait when compared to a reboot.
Jesus christ! Their market was kids who want to spend a few hundred bucks on a console system to play video games with their friends. No one is going to spend $600. Why? Because kids usually aren't the ones who buy these! These come as christmas or birthday presents. Parents aren't going to shell out $600 for a hybrid computer when they've already shelled out money for the computer. College kids who buy these don't have that kind of cash to burn. They need to make these systems impulse buys. Their price now at $150 makes them an impulse buy for kids with cash to burn. At $600 it's a major purchase.
I hate to join the anti-microsoft bandwagon, but if sony or nintendo were doing this, I'd feel the same way.
This just shows how they've completely lost sight of their market.
Nope, tomorrow they'll come out with a report saying that IT spending has gone up 50 times due to migration over to linux. However, this is hedged by microsoft's TCO being -$88,000 per server. Yes people, it actually generates money on the fly!
People see this as bloat, but it's always been an issue. As computers get faster, we can remove ourselves from the nitty gritty of computer programming and back to computer science. Sixty years ago computer scientists probabably would have thought the same thing about the most efficient methods we make applications today. "IDE? What the hell is that for? Use punch cards!" My point is that as cpu and memory increase in speed and size, we take advantage of that in ways other than making the final result run faster. In twenty years, this idea will probably seem something like "wait, they used to type the source code?" I think this is just evolution of computer science.
I'm going to start my own music service selling songs downloaded off napster. I'll switch back and forth buying them from the US and Canada depending on the exchange rates. Here's how it will go:
1. Buy songs from canada or us 2. Sell to american's or canadians for a penny less 3. Profit!
I have "slow broadband" from my cable company. It's the best I can get in my area so I'm happy, but one way cable modem that maxes up at 600kbps and down at 33.6kbps isn't exactly lightning. I know it sounds odd when I said two days cause it's quicker than modem and not nearly as fast as my comcast at school.
I just spent two days downloading each file from FTP!
Actually, I think the ftp install is more efficient. It allows you do skip the source RPMs and the contrib directory if you don't want it. You can also do a more unattended install because you don't have to keep switching out the cds. And...I'm pretty sure there was a script that made the ISOs for you. Damn, I just invalidated this whole story. Sorry slashdot.
Yeah, Fox News will really chew them up over this.
I recommend this guy send the fan in if he can. Maybe demand intel pays for shipping since it's not in the warrenty. I don't see how this is a big deal really.
We went there, okay we more than likely fucked up. But to leave now with Iraq the way it is would be really irresponsible. Even if you think the whole war was horrible and evil, you don't think that just bailing out now is the best thing to do, do you? We still have to clean up the mess. Remember, our goal was to remove sadamm and we did that. We now are trying to make it a peaceful democracy so war lords just won't take it over. If that happened, the country would be worse off than before.
Good call on Canon. I have the i850 and individual color ink tanks are about $13. It's a great deal and I'm a student who prints a lot and needs (beer) money. However, the linux support for this specific printer is shit. I guess there are tradeoffs for printers. You either buy one that will cost you $60 for a few months worth of ink and get good linux support, or you buy a cheap product and get cheap service. Oh well, same as everything else.
"Because it will be bloated DRM'ed closed proprietary standard breaking winblowz crap"
That's if microsoft came out with a can opener. However, it wouldn't open all cans, they'd have to be registered. RFID would ensure this. Not surprisingly, these are tin cans.
Or they'd say "what the fuck?" and go elsewhere for what they're looking for. Most people who use IE use it because it's on their computer by default. People hate having open source software forced on them. Requiring them to download would be seen as that. I use mozilla and I hate IE but I see where a lot of people consider it the standard. That is their ignorance, but then again if you want them to come to your website, you have to keep them in mind.
Yeah, it sucks microsoft screwed up the standards and people create websites that adhere to HTML (Hyper text microsoft language) but requiring them to download a web browser just to visit your site is pretty demanding.
Exactly. Bowling for Columbine was a lot of crap and manipulation. There's a whole group of people out there who got together because Moore completely distorted and took out of context of what they said in their interviews. This guy twists the truth to benefit himself and his bullshit message.
Why is this on slashdot? Well, he's kind of like SCO. He makes a claim, has no real evidence to back it up, and then twists facts to make it seem like he was right all along.
Why did he win? Europeans hate America politics at the moment so they loved this idea of Bush bashing.
"Here's a computer. It doesn't have windows or anything that will serve your purposes. But it has a command line. Here, I'll show you how to use Lynx..."
Ten minutes later the person at the charity makes a phone call...
"Hey, Jonny, do you still have that windows 95 cd? Some guy wearing a penguin shirt just dropped off a computer that is completely useless to us."
You can't just donate a computer without a GUI and expect people to use it. Even the simplest uses of a computer of browsing the web are nearly impossible. Lynx? Is this what you're recommending? This thread is talking about donating the pc to a charity, not for some beowulf cluster in your basement to compile gentoo on.
I don't think so. I've found that distros are a lot slower than windows 95. I know everyone says to put linux on an old computer and it'll run like lightning, but it's bullshit. Just using the KDE menu on these machines is a chore. Maybe a slimer window manager would help things out, but mandrake out of the box would be slow as hell.
Slashdot Mirror
When it comes to software, everything's beta in a sence. It's always under development. Since when does a company release software and then just stop development but still consider it active? Operating systems are always being updated and do so automatically. Windows has been in beta since version 1. Linux is in beta and is updated constantly. When I buy a car, it's not beta. It's complete and I don't expect Toyota so fedex me a better steering wheel every month. Software is intangible so by nature it can be updated constantly.
To me, beta always signified that a company was to release the software soon and I could get a "preview" for free. However, as the article points out, marketting departments are trying to alter the definition of the word to suit them. I don't know if this is good or bad, it's just more marketting.
I installed FC2 on my laptop with the setup for a dual boot with windows xp. I was really trying to make the switch over to linux. I feel it was rushed because bugs (I mean that loosely as to not start a flame war and to prevent the "well you're just stupid!" replies) were not fixed. On one machine, alright it's old but no other distro has a problem with it, it wouldn't even install where as FCrc2 would. I don't know why it wouldn't, the installer simply said it couldn't be installed. I'm making an assumption here but maybe it was because something was broken from FCrc2 and instead of fixing it, they just removed the hardware support entirely.
:) ).
Anyway, on my laptop I didn't have the boot problem, but it did mess up my partitions and I had to fix that with other tools which was a little nerve racking because I thought I might lose data. Firewire didn't work and required loading the kernel module and I didn't know how to do that and I think most newbies wouldn't either. The interface was pretty ugly as they make kde and gnome look the same with the ugly gnome theme they gave it. But that's a small thing and not really a complaint, just an annoyance. Also, the 4k stack issue with nvidia was a pain, but I think nvidia is to blame on that one. All these hiccups I wish I knew about before I installed it. I guess I didn't read the release notes as well as I should have, but I think those are big issues and shouldn't have been buried in the long release notes.
So what did I do? I switched over to mandrake 10 and the past couple of days have been better. For reasons that were my fault the first time, but unknown to me the second time, I have reinstalled it twice in a span of about a week or so, but I'm determined to get it going so I don't care. I've only gone into windows to get an email address these past few days. I've never been this comfortable with linux this much on any other distro, so I think that says something good about mandrake.
To me, it seemed they rushed fedora. I've always felt that a strong point with linux has been they don't rush things like microsoft does. However, with respect to fedora, I think they were more focused on the release date than releasing a stable and robust product even after two release canidates.
On a side note, I've taken that old machine that wouldn't run FC2, loaded mandrake on it, and now I'm installing gentoo from a stage 1 on it. It's still bootstrapping and I'll know in..oh..a few days if it goes well.
This post isn't meant to start a flame war or entice fedora advocates to tell me what an idiot I am because I couldn't get it to work. At this point in the history of linux and especially red hat, I expect a little more. Thankfully, I've recieved that from other distros including mandrake, knoppix, and suse (and hopefully gentoo
Yes! Now I can hack into the police station and have the screens all say "Napster" or "Nurv is evil" just like in the movies. All I need is the video of Gates using and praising KDE running on Linux 2.6.7-rc2 while his henchmen rough up Linus. Best part is, I can do it through telnet. God hacking is so easy and gui based!
Media photographers are going digital. When you're posting photos to a news paper or news website from the field it becomes a lot cheaper. The news photographers in Iraq use satellites to send the photos back. But 12gb? I don't know that's a lot. I'd shy away from it because then you can get lazy and not upload the pictures as often as you normally would and run the chance of losing them all.
Keep in mind though, a few years ago 40gb of computer storage space seemed like too much. Storage has always had that. When new drives come out people say "who needs that?" but then later on it becomes "I need more!"
Remember how ugly those gui's looked? I remember running windows 3.11 and netscape on 4 megs back in the day. It actually had this problem where it would saturate the system and completely reboot in the middle of browsing.
Where does the ram go? Well in windows, I don't know. It always seems to disappear with each new version. However, you can see how some applications are really wasteful. I've seen AOL instant messenger take about 25 mb of ram. Photoshop opening large files will take well over a hundred. Explorer, you're talking 20-30. Basically that's 150 without even considering windows, which needs a minimum of 128 to get started. I think developers are taking it for granted because ram is getting cheaper. There is no reason AIM should require so much ram though, that's crazy.
This may be slightly off topic...
Running KDE 3.2.1 now, I notice it takes longer to open apps than it does in windows. Mozilla for example takes literally a few seconds longer to open each window than it did in windows. Another thing windows does is make it faster when you run an app right after you ran it then closed it. Say for example in windows I run mozilla, then close it, then open it. When it opens it the second time, it's almost instant. However in linux, it seems to take the same original amount of time to load it completely. I'm sure it has to do with an entirely different process of loading programs, but apps always seemed to open faster in windows than in linux, in my view.
Then again, graphics used to be in the NT kernel and that's what made it appear fast, but lead to a lot of problems and crashes, so maybe the longer load time is worth the wait when compared to a reboot.
Jesus christ! Their market was kids who want to spend a few hundred bucks on a console system to play video games with their friends. No one is going to spend $600. Why? Because kids usually aren't the ones who buy these! These come as christmas or birthday presents. Parents aren't going to shell out $600 for a hybrid computer when they've already shelled out money for the computer. College kids who buy these don't have that kind of cash to burn. They need to make these systems impulse buys. Their price now at $150 makes them an impulse buy for kids with cash to burn. At $600 it's a major purchase.
I hate to join the anti-microsoft bandwagon, but if sony or nintendo were doing this, I'd feel the same way.
This just shows how they've completely lost sight of their market.
Nope, tomorrow they'll come out with a report saying that IT spending has gone up 50 times due to migration over to linux. However, this is hedged by microsoft's TCO being -$88,000 per server. Yes people, it actually generates money on the fly!
I agree, how many people really care about this story enough to see it on the main page? Don't they know it's dying?
People see this as bloat, but it's always been an issue. As computers get faster, we can remove ourselves from the nitty gritty of computer programming and back to computer science. Sixty years ago computer scientists probabably would have thought the same thing about the most efficient methods we make applications today. "IDE? What the hell is that for? Use punch cards!" My point is that as cpu and memory increase in speed and size, we take advantage of that in ways other than making the final result run faster. In twenty years, this idea will probably seem something like "wait, they used to type the source code?" I think this is just evolution of computer science.
I'm going to start my own music service selling songs downloaded off napster. I'll switch back and forth buying them from the US and Canada depending on the exchange rates. Here's how it will go:
1. Buy songs from canada or us
2. Sell to american's or canadians for a penny less
3. Profit!
I have "slow broadband" from my cable company. It's the best I can get in my area so I'm happy, but one way cable modem that maxes up at 600kbps and down at 33.6kbps isn't exactly lightning. I know it sounds odd when I said two days cause it's quicker than modem and not nearly as fast as my comcast at school.
I just spent two days downloading each file from FTP!
Actually, I think the ftp install is more efficient. It allows you do skip the source RPMs and the contrib directory if you don't want it. You can also do a more unattended install because you don't have to keep switching out the cds. And...I'm pretty sure there was a script that made the ISOs for you. Damn, I just invalidated this whole story. Sorry slashdot.
And people thought solar power was useless.
(I'm not saying this is useless, I'm saying it's a form of solar power that is cheaper and more efficient than huge metal arrays)
That's like saying "Don't look down"
It was in an ad for Starbucks. I didn't believe it then either.
Once computers become easy to use and fast, we won't need to resort to java.
By that I mean coffee.
Yeah, Fox News will really chew them up over this.
I recommend this guy send the fan in if he can. Maybe demand intel pays for shipping since it's not in the warrenty. I don't see how this is a big deal really.
Here's why:
We went there, okay we more than likely fucked up. But to leave now with Iraq the way it is would be really irresponsible. Even if you think the whole war was horrible and evil, you don't think that just bailing out now is the best thing to do, do you? We still have to clean up the mess. Remember, our goal was to remove sadamm and we did that. We now are trying to make it a peaceful democracy so war lords just won't take it over. If that happened, the country would be worse off than before.
Good call on Canon. I have the i850 and individual color ink tanks are about $13. It's a great deal and I'm a student who prints a lot and needs (beer) money. However, the linux support for this specific printer is shit. I guess there are tradeoffs for printers. You either buy one that will cost you $60 for a few months worth of ink and get good linux support, or you buy a cheap product and get cheap service. Oh well, same as everything else.
I've heard these guys are very talkative, fidgety, and always have nose bleeds. I wouldn't trust any business with them.
"Because it will be bloated DRM'ed closed proprietary standard breaking winblowz crap"
That's if microsoft came out with a can opener. However, it wouldn't open all cans, they'd have to be registered. RFID would ensure this. Not surprisingly, these are tin cans.
Or they'd say "what the fuck?" and go elsewhere for what they're looking for. Most people who use IE use it because it's on their computer by default. People hate having open source software forced on them. Requiring them to download would be seen as that. I use mozilla and I hate IE but I see where a lot of people consider it the standard. That is their ignorance, but then again if you want them to come to your website, you have to keep them in mind.
Yeah, it sucks microsoft screwed up the standards and people create websites that adhere to HTML (Hyper text microsoft language) but requiring them to download a web browser just to visit your site is pretty demanding.
Exactly. Bowling for Columbine was a lot of crap and manipulation. There's a whole group of people out there who got together because Moore completely distorted and took out of context of what they said in their interviews. This guy twists the truth to benefit himself and his bullshit message.
Why is this on slashdot? Well, he's kind of like SCO. He makes a claim, has no real evidence to back it up, and then twists facts to make it seem like he was right all along.
Why did he win? Europeans hate America politics at the moment so they loved this idea of Bush bashing.
Yeah the charity will love that.
"Here's a computer. It doesn't have windows or anything that will serve your purposes. But it has a command line. Here, I'll show you how to use Lynx..."
Ten minutes later the person at the charity makes a phone call...
"Hey, Jonny, do you still have that windows 95 cd? Some guy wearing a penguin shirt just dropped off a computer that is completely useless to us."
You can't just donate a computer without a GUI and expect people to use it. Even the simplest uses of a computer of browsing the web are nearly impossible. Lynx? Is this what you're recommending? This thread is talking about donating the pc to a charity, not for some beowulf cluster in your basement to compile gentoo on.
I don't think so. I've found that distros are a lot slower than windows 95. I know everyone says to put linux on an old computer and it'll run like lightning, but it's bullshit. Just using the KDE menu on these machines is a chore. Maybe a slimer window manager would help things out, but mandrake out of the box would be slow as hell.