The hardware issue is the main thing. If you have an ATI card, you're kind of out of luck, at least for the moment. If you want to run an amd64 system, the amd64 fbsd is in pretty good shape, but software that can be run on it is a bit more limiting than linux for amd64. Printing is fine, but configuration is a bit more clumsy as I recall. Unless they've fixed it with 6.0, and I don't think they have, the USB support is, for some things, like a Palm, essentially broken--hope you don't need to sync one! For almost any kind of "exotic" hardware that you might have, if its supported, you will need to create a custom kernel (or find out what modules to load), which isn't overtly complex, but also not quite as cut-and-dry as make menuconfig either. Overall, just be aware that almost nothing will work right out of the box--you probably won't boot up with even your network connection or sound card detected, and these you will need to configure the support for yourself. So, in other words, if you enjoy a challenge, and you like to think of your OS as a hobby in itself, as I do, then its perfect:).
I've used FreeBSD as a desktop OS since version 4.0, in like 99. I just recently started using Linux (gentoo) and I like it. The documentation is great and I don't have to jump through hoops to get certain things working. I haven't noticed any stability issues, but I will tell you this, and this is just my opinion based on my own experience, and that is: FreeBSD is faster. It just is. Its the fastest OS I've ever used, and unlike Linux, doesn't ever seem sluggish under heavy load (I believe that this is due to the dramatically different process scheduling algorithms in place on each). Also, aside from possibly the Gentoo package management system, there really isn't anything on par with the ports collection. If you have an extra machine and some extra time, do consider playing around with it--if nothing else its an education.
Yet, but at the same time, it is extremely important that 911 will work on VoIP if the technology is going to have any chance at all of becoming mainstream.
> In Morrowind once, I had a weekend off and nothing else to do, so I set about > stealing every last spoon in the game (I think - I may have missed a few, but I > had a good couple hundred of them), and then writing "I AM THE KING OF SPOONS" > with them on the roof of the Underskar... Just because I could.
Oh please. I have used FreeBSD for about 6 years now, and I can recall numerous times where ports broke after a portupgrade. It happens--you just have to know to contact the port's maintainer.
Having said that, my first linux system was redhat 6.0. I didn't use linux for a number of years, and just started using gentoo a few months ago, so I don't know too much about it yet. But I do know this: FreeBSD doesn't buckle under load. During a port install, I/O is essentially unaffected. From what I have seen, this is nowhere near the case with Linux. The only reason that I switched to linux is that FreeBSD amd64 support has been lacking. If something has changed and this DesktopBSD thing is really nice, I might consider switching back.
I'm not so sure that death camps and gas chambers are the equivalent of censoring web content, as your comment implies. The fact is, this is an entirely different situation, an entirely different set of circumstances, and certainly not anything involving death.
The fact is, Google had to make a choice, and the alternative to what they decided was to have no Google in China at all.
Now, using your example, I guess instead of building death camps, they should have just killed everyone on earth.
I think he meant it as a joke. There's no need to expose your insecurities here--many people might find their apparent knee-jerk manifestations to be more offensive than the original comment.
Actually, I think that its a really good idea to do exactly the study that they've proposed... KDE and Gnome are the two most popular WMs for Linux and a usability study should be able to find strengths and weaknesses in both. Its really not fair to jump to the conclusion that KDE is better for power users and Gnome better for beginners--the study hasn't even been done yet.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 1
Its really not a mistaken connection. There is an intimate relationship between the language (which involves both syntax and semantics) and its implementation. If Sun were to, for example, make Java a compiled language in the same way that C++ is, there are likely a large number of design decisions that would have to be changed. Even without a virtual machine, Java programs as is still require that runtime system to function properly, so simply hacking out the virtual machine doesn't really completely address the problem, and may even create new problems.
Well, you don't have it right. Today we're talking about the iPod "ripping off" Creative's patented interface, which they ripped off the iPod. Is that more clear?
You know, regardless of whether or not thats true, maybe try finding an actual source to backup your claims, and perhaps even LINK to it. Wikipedia does not count.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember reading that the music industry actually makes more money on each 99 cent download than it does through physical cd sales, simply because there is virtually no overhead involved (for record companies) in online music distribution.
Well perhaps you should start your own company then? Its not Google's responsibility to ensure that someone is effetively competing with them. They aren't doing anything anti-competitive here. They never have. They're just doing a damn good job with just about everything.
I'm sorry, but I don't think "editorial" is the terminology I would use here. The correct phrase is "random blog post." Who is this person? Nowhere on the page are the credentials of the author, and nowhere in the post does he/she address anything directly related to HCI. Interfaces of popular OS's and windowing systems represent a very, very small subset of HCI, and attacking these with 8 poorly researched, poorly thought out, hardly substantiated claims is a laughable way to go about showing that HCI is in its "stone age." Human Computer Interaction is a very new thing, much newer even than computer science, which is also in its infancy, and mostly everyone that knows anything about HCI knows this. I realize that sensationaliziing common knowledge with irrelevant bullshit is amusing to some people, but Slashdot is supposed to be about news.
Nice analysis. Of course a multibutton mouse is more efficient. Apple knows this, we know this, everyone knows this. Of course, not using a mouse at all is more efficient still. Yes, I'm one of those guys who still uses vi for all his coding, and yes, I type code in circles around just about anybody that doesn't. But this isn't about efficiency--its about simplicity. Ever try to teach children or elderly how to "right-click?" The cognitive gap is larger than you'd think. With a one button mouse, the use is obvious. Its a device with ONE button. That button affords clicking, which is the only thing you need the mouse to do: click on things. A multibutton mouse, on the other hand, has two buttons. Let me ask you this: What is so special about that left mouse button? Does it afford clicking in a more primary way than the right button? No, its just one more button, immediately raising the question to anyone who has never used a mouse, "Which one do I click?" That's the beauty of the one-button mouse. With only one-button, all those UI inconsistencies and blunders that come along with having two or more buttons are immediately avoided, at the cost of some efficiency.
Please refrain from making comments about topics you know nothing about. OS X is not FreeBSD; it simply contains a large amount of FreeBSD code. It does not use the FreeBSD kernel, nor does it use any of the shitty graphical interfaces or applications that FreeBSD shares with Linux. It is an entirely different system. And frankly, many of us that use FreeBSD have paid for at least one release anyway--why haven't you?
It was only ahead of its time because it was rushed to market and consequently didn't do what its target customer base needed it to do (or more specifically, it did, but made it 1000x more complex than needed). Maybe the Palm, which came out three years later, was not as Technologically Advanced as the Newton, but it was smaller and actually did what it needed to do. Hence why Palm is still in the market and Newton isn't.
>> but OSX hasn't gained market share in years.
Until very recently this was true. But actually, Apple gained 1% in the last quarter and is projected by Morgan Stanley to have 6% of the market by year's end.
It may be hypocritical, but that doesn't mean its not effective. If Linux and OS X suddenly have better software than Windows, and people see this, might they be more obliged to make the switch?
> It is not funny. It is true. Every time I have
> mentioned that Windows OS is actually quite
> functional and stable nowdays that post was
> moderated down.
That's because its not true. I find it extremely sad that just because windows no longer crashes several times a day, and that this number has been reduced to say, once every few months or so (at least for me), that people find this acceptable. It is not acceptable. It is no longer ridiculous, but it is still relatively unstable. Look at this. How many Windows machines do you see on this list? Now, how many BSD machines? The difference is staggering.
Naked statistics. If system A has 10,000 unpatched vulnerabilities and system B only has one, is system B necessarily better? NO. Of course not, because that one vulnerability in system B is system critical, and all 10,000 of those in A are not.
Slashdot Mirror
Too bad. It almost looked like a good deal.
The hardware issue is the main thing. If you have an ATI card, you're kind of out of luck, at least for the moment. If you want to run an amd64 system, the amd64 fbsd is in pretty good shape, but software that can be run on it is a bit more limiting than linux for amd64. Printing is fine, but configuration is a bit more clumsy as I recall. Unless they've fixed it with 6.0, and I don't think they have, the USB support is, for some things, like a Palm, essentially broken--hope you don't need to sync one! For almost any kind of "exotic" hardware that you might have, if its supported, you will need to create a custom kernel (or find out what modules to load), which isn't overtly complex, but also not quite as cut-and-dry as make menuconfig either. Overall, just be aware that almost nothing will work right out of the box--you probably won't boot up with even your network connection or sound card detected, and these you will need to configure the support for yourself. So, in other words, if you enjoy a challenge, and you like to think of your OS as a hobby in itself, as I do, then its perfect :).
I've used FreeBSD as a desktop OS since version 4.0, in like 99. I just recently started using Linux (gentoo) and I like it. The documentation is great and I don't have to jump through hoops to get certain things working. I haven't noticed any stability issues, but I will tell you this, and this is just my opinion based on my own experience, and that is: FreeBSD is faster. It just is. Its the fastest OS I've ever used, and unlike Linux, doesn't ever seem sluggish under heavy load (I believe that this is due to the dramatically different process scheduling algorithms in place on each). Also, aside from possibly the Gentoo package management system, there really isn't anything on par with the ports collection. If you have an extra machine and some extra time, do consider playing around with it--if nothing else its an education.
Yet, but at the same time, it is extremely important that 911 will work on VoIP if the technology is going to have any chance at all of becoming mainstream.
> In Morrowind once, I had a weekend off and nothing else to do, so I set about
> stealing every last spoon in the game (I think - I may have missed a few, but I
> had a good couple hundred of them), and then writing "I AM THE KING OF SPOONS"
> with them on the roof of the Underskar... Just because I could.
Wow. You are the coolest person I've ever met.
Oh please. I have used FreeBSD for about 6 years now, and I can recall numerous times where ports broke after a portupgrade. It happens--you just have to know to contact the port's maintainer.
Having said that, my first linux system was redhat 6.0. I didn't use linux for a number of years, and just started using gentoo a few months ago, so I don't know too much about it yet. But I do know this: FreeBSD doesn't buckle under load. During a port install, I/O is essentially unaffected. From what I have seen, this is nowhere near the case with Linux. The only reason that I switched to linux is that FreeBSD amd64 support has been lacking. If something has changed and this DesktopBSD thing is really nice, I might consider switching back.
At Virginia Tech, we're required to take the highest-level statistics course offered by the University as part of the requirements for a CS degree.
I'm not so sure that death camps and gas chambers are the equivalent of censoring web content, as your comment implies. The fact is, this is an entirely different situation, an entirely different set of circumstances, and certainly not anything involving death.
The fact is, Google had to make a choice, and the alternative to what they decided was to have no Google in China at all.
Now, using your example, I guess instead of building death camps, they should have just killed everyone on earth.
Did it ever occur to you that having no Google at all in China is much worse?
I think he meant it as a joke. There's no need to expose your insecurities here--many people might find their apparent knee-jerk manifestations to be more offensive than the original comment.
Actually, I think that its a really good idea to do exactly the study that they've proposed... KDE and Gnome are the two most popular WMs for Linux and a usability study should be able to find strengths and weaknesses in both. Its really not fair to jump to the conclusion that KDE is better for power users and Gnome better for beginners--the study hasn't even been done yet.
Its really not a mistaken connection. There is an intimate relationship between the language (which involves both syntax and semantics) and its implementation. If Sun were to, for example, make Java a compiled language in the same way that C++ is, there are likely a large number of design decisions that would have to be changed. Even without a virtual machine, Java programs as is still require that runtime system to function properly, so simply hacking out the virtual machine doesn't really completely address the problem, and may even create new problems.
Well, you don't have it right. Today we're talking about the iPod "ripping off" Creative's patented interface, which they ripped off the iPod. Is that more clear?
There are actually already several beers brewed with chocolate malt on the market. Some of them are quite good.
You know, regardless of whether or not thats true, maybe try finding an actual source to backup your claims, and perhaps even LINK to it. Wikipedia does not count.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember reading that the music industry actually makes more money on each 99 cent download than it does through physical cd sales, simply because there is virtually no overhead involved (for record companies) in online music distribution.
Well perhaps you should start your own company then? Its not Google's responsibility to ensure that someone is effetively competing with them. They aren't doing anything anti-competitive here. They never have. They're just doing a damn good job with just about everything.
I'm sorry, but I don't think "editorial" is the terminology I would use here. The correct phrase is "random blog post." Who is this person? Nowhere on the page are the credentials of the author, and nowhere in the post does he/she address anything directly related to HCI. Interfaces of popular OS's and windowing systems represent a very, very small subset of HCI, and attacking these with 8 poorly researched, poorly thought out, hardly substantiated claims is a laughable way to go about showing that HCI is in its "stone age." Human Computer Interaction is a very new thing, much newer even than computer science, which is also in its infancy, and mostly everyone that knows anything about HCI knows this. I realize that sensationaliziing common knowledge with irrelevant bullshit is amusing to some people, but Slashdot is supposed to be about news.
Nice analysis. Of course a multibutton mouse is more efficient. Apple knows this, we know this, everyone knows this. Of course, not using a mouse at all is more efficient still. Yes, I'm one of those guys who still uses vi for all his coding, and yes, I type code in circles around just about anybody that doesn't. But this isn't about efficiency--its about simplicity. Ever try to teach children or elderly how to "right-click?" The cognitive gap is larger than you'd think. With a one button mouse, the use is obvious. Its a device with ONE button. That button affords clicking, which is the only thing you need the mouse to do: click on things. A multibutton mouse, on the other hand, has two buttons. Let me ask you this: What is so special about that left mouse button? Does it afford clicking in a more primary way than the right button? No, its just one more button, immediately raising the question to anyone who has never used a mouse, "Which one do I click?" That's the beauty of the one-button mouse. With only one-button, all those UI inconsistencies and blunders that come along with having two or more buttons are immediately avoided, at the cost of some efficiency.
Please refrain from making comments about topics you know nothing about. OS X is not FreeBSD; it simply contains a large amount of FreeBSD code. It does not use the FreeBSD kernel, nor does it use any of the shitty graphical interfaces or applications that FreeBSD shares with Linux. It is an entirely different system. And frankly, many of us that use FreeBSD have paid for at least one release anyway--why haven't you?
It was only ahead of its time because it was rushed to market and consequently didn't do what its target customer base needed it to do (or more specifically, it did, but made it 1000x more complex than needed). Maybe the Palm, which came out three years later, was not as Technologically Advanced as the Newton, but it was smaller and actually did what it needed to do. Hence why Palm is still in the market and Newton isn't.
>> but OSX hasn't gained market share in years. Until very recently this was true. But actually, Apple gained 1% in the last quarter and is projected by Morgan Stanley to have 6% of the market by year's end.
It may be hypocritical, but that doesn't mean its not effective. If Linux and OS X suddenly have better software than Windows, and people see this, might they be more obliged to make the switch?
> It is not funny. It is true. Every time I have
> mentioned that Windows OS is actually quite
> functional and stable nowdays that post was
> moderated down.
That's because its not true. I find it extremely sad that just because windows no longer crashes several times a day, and that this number has been reduced to say, once every few months or so (at least for me), that people find this acceptable. It is not acceptable. It is no longer ridiculous, but it is still relatively unstable. Look at this. How many Windows machines do you see on this list? Now, how many BSD machines? The difference is staggering.
Naked statistics. If system A has 10,000 unpatched vulnerabilities and system B only has one, is system B necessarily better? NO. Of course not, because that one vulnerability in system B is system critical, and all 10,000 of those in A are not.