Yes, 100Mb is nothing. Just like $100 is nothing. But that doesn't mean you waste it. 100Mb for Acroread is as stupid as $100 for a hamburger and fries.
For pete's sake, OpenOffice in all of its bloatedness is only 198Mb on my system!
I personally two multimillionaires. While both are indeed fiscally conservative, that's was only one small part of the equation. They got their money through hard work and smart investments.
p.s. My examples are multimillionaries, but becoming a (uni)millionaire by the time you retire isn't that hard anymore. A decent IRA will do it for you if you start one early.
Well if you want to wait for any other program to accurately handle a proprietary file format for a proprietary program produced by a monopolist, then you're going to be using MSOffice for a *VERY* long time.
Everyone has their anecdotes. I have a personal physician, and a diagnostics, surgery and week long hospital stay two years ago cost me $20 out of pocket. And I live in the US...
Corporate types wanna know silly things like why do I use something called xpdf and my colleagues at xyz company have the newest adobe.
How the heck do they even know about xpdf? Are you walking around with an xpdf teeshirt or something? Doing stealth installs of xpdf on their systems? I used FreeBSD on my corporate desktop for three years and not one person ever asked me a silly question like that.
I spoke too fast. The Slashdot reputation for inaccurate information holds true. The files in Optional are not loaded on demand (at least not in the Linux version).
It's only bloated if you have a problem with sacrificing ~100 MB of hard drive space. I just bought to 160 GB drives the other day for US$ 80 each. Drive space is not a problem.
Translation for those of you on a budget: "That restaurant is only expensive if you have a problem sacrificing ~100$ of currency for a dinner. I just cashed a $160,000 payroll check the other day. Dinner expense is not a problem."
You counter argument is that Canada spends less per capita? Raw spending between two cultures and two systems is a comparison fraught with error. Did those Canadian figures include the private dollars spent by those going over the border for healthcare? Does it include equivalent quality care? If it does, then why are there more physicians per capita in the US? Why are there more MRI installations?
Does the government bean counting justify waiting in lines so long that people die waiting for treatment? What's the difference between a US citizen filing bankruptcy because they needed medical treatment, and a Canadian citizen filing bankruptcy because they had to cross the border to receive the same medical treatment?
we don't get called unpatriotic and/or labelled a terrorist (and thus have almost all personal rights revoked) for saying that our political leader is a dickhead.
News flash, it doesn't happen here either. No one has *EVER* had "almost all personal rights revoked" for calling Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton or Bush a dickhead. Never. Don't believe me, here let me prove it: "Bush is a dickhead!" See, I still have now all the same personal rights that I had before I wrote that.
TANSTAAFL. There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Canadians have traded the costs of private insurance for the costs of increased taxation, waiting lists, and overall poorer medical care. In the US I may be one cancer diagnosis away from bankruptcy, but at least I won't have to wait weeks or months to start my chemotherapy. If Canada's health care system is so superior, then why are so many Canadians coming to the US for health care?
It's not just the US government, it's EVERY government. Some government are more intrusive into the social aspects of our lives, others into the economic aspects of our lives, but I have yet to encounter any government that was content to simply mind its own business.
Apropos the article, while the DMCA is pretty intrusive all by itself, EVERY industrialized nation has copyright laws that intrude heavily into the informational aspects of our lives. No exceptions. I don't care if it's an inch or a foot, I don't want that camel's nose in my tent at all!
This news should be cause to praise Canada, and not to bash the US. Canada might now have a tiny shiny spot on its pot, but that pot is still pretty damned black to be pointing out kettles with.
And a videocard which has no usable DRI support, namely a Savage8 DDR.
It's your fault for not using the Free Software Community's (tm) approved proprietary video driver vendor.
Seriously, I'm with you. I've got a Radeon with good open source DRI support, but the new compositing stuff makes my 2.8Ghz P4 with 1Gb RAM come to a slow crawl.
So, they're going to throw away their proprietary code...
Qt is no more proprietary than Cairo is.
...and use Cairo (the standard)
Cairo isn't a standard. There are very very few standards on freedesktop.org. Very few. And Cairo isn't one of them. Hell, it ain't even a proposed standard. Sheesh.
Having written a few widget themes, I feel the need to interject...
By writing algorithmic renders rather than fixed pixbuf based widgets, we can increase how dramatic the visual effects are without driving people nuts.
Since GTK+ themes are predominantly pixmap based and Seth is primarily a GTK+ user, he might not realize that programatically themed widgets are old hat. GTK+ 1.x had them (though they really didn't catch on for some reason), and Qt 2.x had them. The theming in Qt 3.x is so good that pixmap based themes are all but dead in KDE.
As a theme writer, I can say without hesitation that we aren't even close to the potential of what we can do on the software side. Hardware rendering will give us new tools and palettes, but that's no reason to discount the software toolbox we have now.
However, any single rendering of a tiger stripe button would get old very quickly when repeated all over the screen ad nauseum.
Looking at his screenshots, I see that Seth is reinventing the wheel. Unless he wants animated widgets (which would quickly become a true nauseum), the same tiger strip effect can be done by offsetting the widget background on a large pixmap. A few "marble" themes I have run across do this. As for his planet and sketch examples, a traditional software rendering would be hardpressed to reproduce it, but it doesn't matter because the results are too annoying. Do we *really* want that much variation in widgets?
On the positive side, his sketch example does illustrate a huge benefit of hardware rendering: the ability to get some nice subtle curves on the fly.
I don't want to sound like I'm knocking hardware rendering. I'm not. But that doesn't mean that software rendering is ready for the death bed. Until Linux and BSD get ubiquitous high quality open source video drivers for all hardware, software rendering is going to remain.
The problem isn't the market, the problem is government. Government created the cable and telephone monopolies to begin with, government is keeping them around where they still exist, and government regulation is encouraging the reduction of competition where the monopolies don't exist.
For the longest time I had no *legal* choice between telephone or cable providers. For decades I could have gone to jail for the crime of competing against the government-chartered monopolist. Today with supposedly "open" market I still don't have a choice because the government regulations are discouraging competition. The companies in question may have whined or begged for this state of non-competition, but it was ultimately the government who gave it to them.
Removing one regulation while shuffling about the remaining thousands does not count as "deregulation". The word has been Orwellized out of any meaning. For example, "deregulation" is still being blamed for California's recent energy woes, despite the *increase* of regulations at that time. The more regulations that face an industry, the more it keeps out new competition. Economies of scale apply to government bureaucracies as well, so large bureaucratic corporations with battalions of lawyers can survive in a regulation sea while tiny startups cannot.
We need to stop fighting deregulation and free markets, and start fighting the real drains on the marketplace: the government.
given that an interpreter manages memory decently, why reinvent the wheel?
I don't want to dispute your point, as it does make sense. But it suddenly dawned on me that this particular memory management argument is being brought up so much that it's becoming sterile. To take your car analogy one step further, imagine that certain transmission advocates had been continually arguing for two decades that "given that automatic transmissions prevent the grinding of gears, why use a stick shift?"
Or let's use are slightly more relevant analogy. Imagine that for two decades some people had been saying "given that calculators avoid arithmetic mistakes, why bother learning how to do long division?" This is more relevant because I KNOW people who can't do long division because of calculators. If a programmer doesn't know how to do memory managment because they've never had to, how do I know they can't do other forms of resource management?
During the Napoleonic Wars there was a fear of a French invasion of Britain and much public concern about the possibility of French infiltrators and spies.
The fishermen of Hartlepool fearing an invasion kept a close watch on the French vessel as it struggled against the storm but when the vessel was severely battered and sunk they turned their attention to the wreckage washed ashore. Among the wreckage lay one wet and sorrowful looking survivor, the ship's pet monkey dressed to amuse in a military style uniform.
The fishermen apparently questioned the monkey and held a beach-based trial. Unfamiliar with what a Frenchman looked like they came to the conclusion that this monkey was a French spy and should be sentenced to death. The unfortunate creature was to die by hanging, with the mast of a fishing boat (a coble) providing a convenient gallows.
Is it illegal to breast feed in public in the USA...
Absolutely not! This is such a stupid statement I feel stupid just having to answer it. But then this is Slashdot where you're expected to believe ten stupid things before breakfast....a restriction like that would be the sign of a society that is to far gone with christianity lite that they can only think with their fundament.
Breast feeding is quite popular among Christians, of every variety. Why in the world would you think otherwise? Prudery was common with the Puritan denomination, but is at "normal" levels for most others, and almost absent in others. What you see as prudishness does not come from Christianity, but from the general American conservative (not in the political sense) mindset.
p.s. Why I'm bothering to react against a self-righteous Australian talking shit out his ass about a country he knows nothing about is beyond me. I must be bored or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine RMS and AC spooning, and after you've scrubbed that image out of your brain with lye soap, you'll understand the gravity of the problem.
100 MB of space is nothing today
Yes, 100Mb is nothing. Just like $100 is nothing. But that doesn't mean you waste it. 100Mb for Acroread is as stupid as $100 for a hamburger and fries.
For pete's sake, OpenOffice in all of its bloatedness is only 198Mb on my system!
I personally two multimillionaires. While both are indeed fiscally conservative, that's was only one small part of the equation. They got their money through hard work and smart investments.
p.s. My examples are multimillionaries, but becoming a (uni)millionaire by the time you retire isn't that hard anymore. A decent IRA will do it for you if you start one early.
Well if you want to wait for any other program to accurately handle a proprietary file format for a proprietary program produced by a monopolist, then you're going to be using MSOffice for a *VERY* long time.
Everyone has their anecdotes. I have a personal physician, and a diagnostics, surgery and week long hospital stay two years ago cost me $20 out of pocket. And I live in the US...
Corporate types wanna know silly things like why do I use something called xpdf and my colleagues at xyz company have the newest adobe.
How the heck do they even know about xpdf? Are you walking around with an xpdf teeshirt or something? Doing stealth installs of xpdf on their systems? I used FreeBSD on my corporate desktop for three years and not one person ever asked me a silly question like that.
I spoke too fast. The Slashdot reputation for inaccurate information holds true. The files in Optional are not loaded on demand (at least not in the Linux version).
Holy crap, it works! A Slashdot first!
It's only bloated if you have a problem with sacrificing ~100 MB of hard drive space. I just bought to 160 GB drives the other day for US$ 80 each. Drive space is not a problem.
Translation for those of you on a budget: "That restaurant is only expensive if you have a problem sacrificing ~100$ of currency for a dinner. I just cashed a $160,000 payroll check the other day. Dinner expense is not a problem."
On the other hand, OpenOffice saves in OpenOffice format very well!
I saw the title and thought to myself, "Gee those Linux guys are slow, I've been using it on FreeBSD for over a week!"
You counter argument is that Canada spends less per capita? Raw spending between two cultures and two systems is a comparison fraught with error. Did those Canadian figures include the private dollars spent by those going over the border for healthcare? Does it include equivalent quality care? If it does, then why are there more physicians per capita in the US? Why are there more MRI installations?
Does the government bean counting justify waiting in lines so long that people die waiting for treatment? What's the difference between a US citizen filing bankruptcy because they needed medical treatment, and a Canadian citizen filing bankruptcy because they had to cross the border to receive the same medical treatment?
we don't get called unpatriotic and/or labelled a terrorist (and thus have almost all personal rights revoked) for saying that our political leader is a dickhead.
News flash, it doesn't happen here either. No one has *EVER* had "almost all personal rights revoked" for calling Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton or Bush a dickhead. Never. Don't believe me, here let me prove it: "Bush is a dickhead!" See, I still have now all the same personal rights that I had before I wrote that.
TANSTAAFL. There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Canadians have traded the costs of private insurance for the costs of increased taxation, waiting lists, and overall poorer medical care. In the US I may be one cancer diagnosis away from bankruptcy, but at least I won't have to wait weeks or months to start my chemotherapy. If Canada's health care system is so superior, then why are so many Canadians coming to the US for health care?
Don't listen to me, though. Read a recent Canadian article on the subject: Canadian Health Care In Crisis.
It's not just the US government, it's EVERY government. Some government are more intrusive into the social aspects of our lives, others into the economic aspects of our lives, but I have yet to encounter any government that was content to simply mind its own business.
Apropos the article, while the DMCA is pretty intrusive all by itself, EVERY industrialized nation has copyright laws that intrude heavily into the informational aspects of our lives. No exceptions. I don't care if it's an inch or a foot, I don't want that camel's nose in my tent at all!
This news should be cause to praise Canada, and not to bash the US. Canada might now have a tiny shiny spot on its pot, but that pot is still pretty damned black to be pointing out kettles with.
Scientists Find Soft Tissue in T-Rex Fossil
Rub id in why don ou! I've had dis cold for dree days now an I cand find a sov dissue anywhere in de ouse!
I just wrote a... I wrote a... I ported the... I pay for all... I think I contribute...
Gee Ditto, your shit don't stink!
(...sorry, couldn't help myself)
And a videocard which has no usable DRI support, namely a Savage8 DDR.
It's your fault for not using the Free Software Community's (tm) approved proprietary video driver vendor.
Seriously, I'm with you. I've got a Radeon with good open source DRI support, but the new compositing stuff makes my 2.8Ghz P4 with 1Gb RAM come to a slow crawl.
So, they're going to throw away their proprietary code...
...and use Cairo (the standard)
Qt is no more proprietary than Cairo is.
Cairo isn't a standard. There are very very few standards on freedesktop.org. Very few. And Cairo isn't one of them. Hell, it ain't even a proposed standard. Sheesh.
Having written a few widget themes, I feel the need to interject...
By writing algorithmic renders rather than fixed pixbuf based widgets, we can increase how dramatic the visual effects are without driving people nuts.
Since GTK+ themes are predominantly pixmap based and Seth is primarily a GTK+ user, he might not realize that programatically themed widgets are old hat. GTK+ 1.x had them (though they really didn't catch on for some reason), and Qt 2.x had them. The theming in Qt 3.x is so good that pixmap based themes are all but dead in KDE.
As a theme writer, I can say without hesitation that we aren't even close to the potential of what we can do on the software side. Hardware rendering will give us new tools and palettes, but that's no reason to discount the software toolbox we have now.
However, any single rendering of a tiger stripe button would get old very quickly when repeated all over the screen ad nauseum.
Looking at his screenshots, I see that Seth is reinventing the wheel. Unless he wants animated widgets (which would quickly become a true nauseum), the same tiger strip effect can be done by offsetting the widget background on a large pixmap. A few "marble" themes I have run across do this. As for his planet and sketch examples, a traditional software rendering would be hardpressed to reproduce it, but it doesn't matter because the results are too annoying. Do we *really* want that much variation in widgets?
On the positive side, his sketch example does illustrate a huge benefit of hardware rendering: the ability to get some nice subtle curves on the fly.
I don't want to sound like I'm knocking hardware rendering. I'm not. But that doesn't mean that software rendering is ready for the death bed. Until Linux and BSD get ubiquitous high quality open source video drivers for all hardware, software rendering is going to remain.
The problem isn't the market, the problem is government. Government created the cable and telephone monopolies to begin with, government is keeping them around where they still exist, and government regulation is encouraging the reduction of competition where the monopolies don't exist.
For the longest time I had no *legal* choice between telephone or cable providers. For decades I could have gone to jail for the crime of competing against the government-chartered monopolist. Today with supposedly "open" market I still don't have a choice because the government regulations are discouraging competition. The companies in question may have whined or begged for this state of non-competition, but it was ultimately the government who gave it to them.
Removing one regulation while shuffling about the remaining thousands does not count as "deregulation". The word has been Orwellized out of any meaning. For example, "deregulation" is still being blamed for California's recent energy woes, despite the *increase* of regulations at that time. The more regulations that face an industry, the more it keeps out new competition. Economies of scale apply to government bureaucracies as well, so large bureaucratic corporations with battalions of lawyers can survive in a regulation sea while tiny startups cannot.
We need to stop fighting deregulation and free markets, and start fighting the real drains on the marketplace: the government.
This level of translation is what Thomas is talking about.
But this such a low level, and has been going on for so long, that's it's completely pointless to the topic of programming languages.
given that an interpreter manages memory decently, why reinvent the wheel?
I don't want to dispute your point, as it does make sense. But it suddenly dawned on me that this particular memory management argument is being brought up so much that it's becoming sterile. To take your car analogy one step further, imagine that certain transmission advocates had been continually arguing for two decades that "given that automatic transmissions prevent the grinding of gears, why use a stick shift?"
Or let's use are slightly more relevant analogy. Imagine that for two decades some people had been saying "given that calculators avoid arithmetic mistakes, why bother learning how to do long division?" This is more relevant because I KNOW people who can't do long division because of calculators. If a programmer doesn't know how to do memory managment because they've never had to, how do I know they can't do other forms of resource management?
Is it illegal to breast feed in public in the USA...
...a restriction like that would be the sign of a society that is to far gone with christianity lite that they can only think with their fundament.
Absolutely not! This is such a stupid statement I feel stupid just having to answer it. But then this is Slashdot where you're expected to believe ten stupid things before breakfast.
Breast feeding is quite popular among Christians, of every variety. Why in the world would you think otherwise? Prudery was common with the Puritan denomination, but is at "normal" levels for most others, and almost absent in others. What you see as prudishness does not come from Christianity, but from the general American conservative (not in the political sense) mindset.
p.s. Why I'm bothering to react against a self-righteous Australian talking shit out his ass about a country he knows nothing about is beyond me. I must be bored or something.