Looks like I need to go and get some snacks and pull up a recliner.
Don't bother. Flames will not last long.
To me personally the whole thing is senseless: benchmarking feature-full browser versus some puny, prototypical, essentially useless thing? Try again next time.
I understand Opera v. FireFox flames. Both are feature-full and useful. Both have their merits. That can be flamed about.
But Chrome?? They do not even have usable bookmark!? Who in their right mind would call it a browser? Even Mosaic 10+ years ago was more useful than Chrome is now. It would be forgivable if Google called it "beta" and version number was like "0.2" - but 2.0???? That's hypocritical at best.
You are completely right saying that people do not understand TCP well when they jump on UDP.
I have seen couple of homegrown protocols based on UDP and on average their performance was higher than that of TCP. But that was mostly because people were using (insane) defaults suitable for their particular needs. (E.g. "window size" covering whole file, regardless of size + selective retransmission + ability to feed results of binary diff to minimize overhead of sending updates (a-la rsync)).
In that respect, there are two problems in TCP: it is stream based (while many higher-level protocols are message based and do not care about ordering of their own messages) and it has quite average defaults (to work well on wide range of networks and application).
Another thing I see quite often is that people wrongly pick TCP because they want something reliable (e.g. to make their own software look or feel more reliable: "oh! it uses TCP!! it must be reliable software!!!") while the information they actually send can be easily sent over UDP and minor packet losses can be tolerated or even recovered from. For few things I did personally, UDP over switched LAN did a great job. In fact so good - that I have seen packet loss only when LAN itself had a problem (e.g. switch power supply failed).
"Endorsing" is generally quite hard to translate to pretty much any other language I know (German, Russian and some French). I presume same goes for translation to English.
Especially in legal context, even slight change of wording might change the meaning drastically.
The point is that type-safe constructs do not help when you exchange information. For exchange, information has to be serialized into binary stream, essentially stripping all type information.
And trying to add types to serialization is a road to hell. In my experience after couple of release/maintenance cycles, type ids (required to correctly identify what precisely is in binary stream) become major PITA, because for plain user software nobody bothers maintaining type id lists. And even if type ids are properly maintained, it is still quite easy to make e.g. file formats forward-incompatible.
The conversion on output is trivial. The conversion on input is trickier. Whatever you choose as internal presentation (I used SI), since information comes from many sources, one has to be extremely careful.
My mistake was that some UI configurable defaults were not properly saved on disk, leading to the bug that information was converted twice from microns to mils. That (double conversion) wasn't immediately reflected in UI, but was first sent to hardware (converted again to microns), read back from hardware (as microns) and then displayed on screen (converted to mils). So it was "microns to mils to mils to microns to mils" instead of proper "microns to mils to microns to mils".
P.S. As semi moved to nanometers, I wonder what is now used by US engineers. Mils were already quite small numbers compared to microns - now compared to nanometers, they would surely look puny: 1nm = 0.00003937 mils.
after several years it becomes difficult if not impossible to find the original file...We also use a fairly vigorous quality control system
How do you keep quality on your products, but not even keep your original documentation files? What happens if there is a change?
I presume that 20 years ago everything was on paper. You can't patch sheet of paper with a shell script.
Now all is done digital, meaning that to patch old drawings you have to recreate them anew in digital.
And even if it was digital 20 years ago, chances are that silent error during import might creep in.
I once was writing software for semiconductor industry and had the requirement to allow for both SI and English units (microns v. mils). Believe me, number of bugs related purely to the unit conversions eclipsed number of bugs in the rest of software. One wrong double conversion for example required two weeks of debugging.
That wasn't conjecture. This is my experience of making hard drive sleeping when I work under Linux.
Also, it doesn't matter what mode is used to open a swap file - its syncing is regulated by:help 'swapsync' option. It is set to 'fsync' by default on *nix systems, meaning that fsync() would be called when something new is written to swap file.
You should have applied some really disrupting tuning to your I/O subsystem - for it to delay write out of synced data. This breaks all application's expectations regarding file I/O integrity. A trouble in making.
Avoid buying new, just-released model - buy models which are on market for 6+ month. They are generally bug-free.
Though like with any OEM, "shit happens" in Apple's wonderland too: nVidia 8600m debacle, swollen batteries, etc. But their service is quite good - especially compared to what rest of industry provides to private buyers.
Low voltage AMD CPUs (EE, BE series) consume less power than comparable Intel CPUs. Intel produces LV/ULV CPUs, but they are treated generally as higher-end parts which are present in some truly high-end subnotebooks and rarely found in commonly sold notebooks.
But AMD is simply weak in laptop market - they can't compete now with Intel's grip on market.
... command-line only running a text editor for Vi.
Since I presume that you really mean "VIM", then I have an information which might be interesting to you.
VIM, in its default configuration creates and maintains the "..swp" file. By default it is stored in the same directory were file being edited is. Everything you do in VIM from:w to:w is constantly sent to the.swp file to allow for recover after crash. (File is deleted when you end editing session.) That obviously has an impact on battery life - if you edit file from hard drive. Hard drive will never sleep, because the updates sent to.swp file would keep it spinning.
":help swapfile" for tips how to change that.
In other words, what you do isn't light on battery. In default configuration, the operations are quite expensive.
Try "pidstat -d 10" for more fun and revelations. Some people also recommended "iotop", though I haven't used it yet.
P.S. But that of course doesn't change the fact that Mac OS X has superior power management compared to Linux or Windows. Apple shamelessly takes advantage of its vertical model: they control everything from hardware to firmware to OS to software. Optimizing for notebooks is natural for them as Apple seen for past three years surge in notebook demand now surpassing half of all Macs shipped. Linux on other side is still deep in always-on-so-do-not-care-about-power-consumption server/beige-box mode. Kernel and drivers are there, but it all make little difference since high-level desktop software doesn't care about it. I consistently get ~3.5-4 hours on my PB12 under Mac OS X 10.4 and measly 1.5 hours on default setup of Xubuntu. After two weeks of tinkering with the setup the time went up to 2.5 hours, what is still far from 4 hours I get with the same workload under Mac OS X.
... the 40+ hours one spends in experiencing the game...
Out of which:
- 20 hours of unskippable cinematic and dialogs
- 10 hours trying to figure out what the hell games wants from you now
- 9.5 hours struggling with UI
- 0.5 hours of actual game play.
I'd rather watch 2 hours movie. Because 40 hours of FF or similar those 40 hours are mixed with frustration and humiliation, leaving very little to unspoiled enjoyment.
For casual players (I consider myself being one too (at least in context of consoles)) it is important that game just flows, either guiding you or making you to explore the possibilities. It is bad game where you hit a bump - "demo" mode wouldn't solve it.
Only thing "demo" mode would achieve is to solve an ancient puzzle of hard core games when you buy an expensive game but get stuck in the middle. It is hard to justify the situation provided that you forked a pretty hefty money for the whole game, but can't enjoy it fully. Add here all the "lockable" crap and you have a case of potentially angry customer.
Hum?... You must have problems with your eyes if you consider Eclipse's "look and feel" even close to the native UI toolkits. On ANY platform. I have used it both on Linux and Windows, it everywhere it looks differently and (worse) it behaves differently compared to how native UI toolkits behave.
Eclipse's SWT is precisely example that it is impossible to make portable Java UI toolkit which would integrate 100% with platform it runs on. In essence, SWT is a emulation of Windows GUI for the Java and looks as "native" only on Windows.
P.S. Needless to mention that native UI toolkits also differ in provided functionality. What is another reason (actually first: but since it is obvious I always forget about it) why portable native UI toolkit is impossible.
Mac OS software takes special pride in its taste and aesthetics - something Java can never achieve.
Wrong. JVM's are implemented by the OS manufacturer. Any problem with the "look and feel" of a standard Java component rests squarely at the feet of the JVM implementor. Any problem with the "look and feel" of extra components that do not use the standard library are the fault of the programmer.
Do not want to even respond to that. What you say is load of stinking bull by incompetent and it simply tells that you never ever actually tried to make some good looking and smooth running UI application.
Remember, even famous Eclipse doesn't use Java UI - regardless of platform it runs on. One can replace the Java's AWT and Swing with something tapping into native UI of platform it runs on... not really. Because it will not work. Mac OS X, KDE and Gnome are mostly asynchronous while X Window system and Windows UI are mostly synchronous. That means that it is impossible to make a decent portable Java UI toolkit: different native UIs work completely differently internally, essentially requiring different top-level design of whole application.
The simple truth is that for Apple, Java was always and is a secondary/tertiary technology.
This is true, and is the root of the problem. Apple has failed to recognize that if they include Java, then (just like any other 3rd party app) they need to address any security issues as well. If they want to keep touting the Mac OS as "virus free" and "secure" then they had better change that attitude, and fast.
So you accept the fact that there would be more gained by simply removing Java from Mac OS X?
It'd definitely would save some space on my SSD;)
And now as more users and developers focus on notebooks, resource hungry Java applications are again bad fit. Spinning cycles for nothing is forgivable on desktops and servers - not on notebooks.
That is true for any application. Most of the problem is the fault of the programmer, in any language. True, some tend to be more wasteful, but you shouldn't be running intensive tasks in a Java application in the first place, that's not what it was meant for.
OMG. I "shouldn't be running intensive tasks in a Java applications"?? What should I be using cool-all-around Java then for?... Oh sorry, I for the moment mistook you for Java-fanboi. What makes your murky point even harder to get across.
Just checked my Opera 9.50 settings - and there is precisely ZERO mentioned of auto-updates. More than that, searching on-line help for "auto update" gave as first result article about e-mail address completion.
You must have been smoking something... FireFox probably;)
P.S. As was pointed above, Opera 10.x beta - yes - have auto-updates. But you know, it took them so frigging long time to implement it...
No, I want it like in FireFox: "Help" > "Restart and install updates." (Or whatever it is called.)
Opera 9.x pretty much always tells "Oh! Update X.XX is available! Click here to download!!!". After clicking it sends you to generic download page where you have to download newer Opera version manually and install it manually. That sucks.
"Mac OS software takes special pride in its taste and aesthetics - something Java can never achieve."
Nonsense, it just hasn't achieved it to date.
"To date"??? I was working with Java 1.0.x - and there were lots of promises made by Sun. None of which came to fruition. AWT was awful. Swing was a major fluke, only to be forgotten few point releases later. Yeah, they have very cool internal API, but no, they do not allow to develop nice looking and fast UI.
Apple had in fact made Java libraries to allow to access Cocoa, but very few applications are using them. (None known to me actually.) Several applications use Java libraries in background, but for that purpose start Java in background: native UI is nice and snappy, but most of the actual work is done by background process.
"And now as more users and developers focus on notebooks, resource hungry Java applications are again bad fit."
Tell that to Android.
Android doesn't do Java per se. Those are special Google libraries for development of "managed code". IOW, Android is hardly Java compatible, what was actually already criticized by Sun and its followers.
"Spinning cycles for nothing is forgivable on desktops and servers - not on notebooks."
I think you got that backwards, fanboy.
I might well be a fanboi, but it seems that you read too much news (green servers, etc) but have too little of real life: anybody who uses regularly notebooks would always avoid anything that eats into battery life. I know I do.
I do not know what precisely GP meant. I would answer from my personal experience.
We get weekly updates on some software with bug fixes, but my company has to push this onto our computers.
I don't see the problem.
Some updates forced by IT also force PC to restart.
We also have virus updates very often (separate from the software updates)
I don't see a problem with that either.
Windows updates have the nagging screen "Please restart" which normal user can't disable or tell it "F*** off" or "I will restart when I'm finished with my work".
Last month they were searching a campus of 10K units looking for one computer, not issued by IT that someone was bringing into our network randomly, but infecting the network each time they connected.
Sounds like they don't have a very nicely setup network. For the £5 difference in the cost to get a switch with hardware location identification verses a regular switch, that is kind of ridiculous.
Sounds like you haven't worked in large companies.
The problem is real: IT can't tell hundreds people (whole company or department) arbitrarily to stop working because some idiot attached private notebook with an infected OS.
infecting the network each time they connected.
Infecting? So the machines aren't up to date on the business network then? Doesn't that conflict with what you said earlier? o.O
No. It doesn't. All updates, before pushed onto users, are vetted by IT to make sure that corporate crapware wouldn't break after the update installation. Dysfunctional corporate crapware is literally same thing as arbitrarily telling whole company to stop working.
My work computer takes 15 minutes to boot up and about 5 minutes to shut down - I understand from others this is not the XP standard times, but due to all the stuff to prevent virus infiltration.
And my 7 year old Windows XP machine takes less than a minute to start or shut down, and it's using roaming profiles with avast anti-virus for the anti-virus software (centrally managed from the domain server too). It's beginning to sound like your company doesn't have the right people to me.
This is quite complicated topic. Be you anyway related to IT, you wouldn't be making such silly suggestions.
Corporate PCs are slow because IT schedules piles of checks during start-up and piles of back-ups during shutdown. AV updates on my corporate PC always take at least 1.5 minute during start-up. Plus 2-5 minutes check for 3rd party software updates. YMMV.
I suspect there are some on slashdot using Linux for similar reasons.
Nah, I just use Linux because I find it superior to most operating systems out there. Viruses have never been a real concern for me (I take enough safe guards), Windows or otherwise.
True. But on Windows side, where you have sloppy IT and even sloppier users (or worse: managers insisting to have admin rights) picture isn't that rosy.
and put out an OS X java that doesn't suck more dick than barney frank.
Well, Sun fixed this vulnerability many, many months ago on every other java platform except the Mac, because Apple won't let Sun fix it for the Mac.
IIRC, Sun doesn't do any porting except few platforms they support themselves: Solaris and Windows. (Now I also see Linux.)
IOW, depending how f***ed up Java interfaces are and how intrusive the fix is, it might well take some long time for 3rd party (Apple) to implement and release it in their port of JDK/JRE.
I'd say Apple does its users a great service by even bothering to support Java.
If you want to piss on somebody - better piss on Sun, who historically refused to port/allow porting of Java to platforms Sun itself wasn't interested in.
Even more: there are piles of 3rd party software on Mac OS and I do not see why Apple themselves should support the particular 3rd party software.
Slashdot Mirror
The only things Chrome don't have that other browsers do are bookmarks, adblock/noscript and flash.
Which are essential tools to make about 99% of Web palatable.
And this is on the linux alpha version.
On Windows flash works.
[...] I would say having the option of starting up with multiple home pages open beats all of those weaknesses.
You are aware that FireFox does that for past 3 or 4 years now? Out-of-box. Without extensions.
But Chrome?? They do not even have usable bookmark!?
I use bookmarks on Chromium just fine. How are they not "usable"?
Yes, because bookmarks are such an exotic feature that I have to install something extra to get them.
Until I have in Chrome the same functionality I have in vanilla FireFox + Google Toolbar, for me it is in deep "alpha", least 2.0 release.
Looks like I need to go and get some snacks and pull up a recliner.
Don't bother. Flames will not last long.
To me personally the whole thing is senseless: benchmarking feature-full browser versus some puny, prototypical, essentially useless thing? Try again next time.
I understand Opera v. FireFox flames. Both are feature-full and useful. Both have their merits. That can be flamed about.
But Chrome?? They do not even have usable bookmark!? Who in their right mind would call it a browser? Even Mosaic 10+ years ago was more useful than Chrome is now. It would be forgivable if Google called it "beta" and version number was like "0.2" - but 2.0???? That's hypocritical at best.
You are completely right saying that people do not understand TCP well when they jump on UDP.
I have seen couple of homegrown protocols based on UDP and on average their performance was higher than that of TCP. But that was mostly because people were using (insane) defaults suitable for their particular needs. (E.g. "window size" covering whole file, regardless of size + selective retransmission + ability to feed results of binary diff to minimize overhead of sending updates (a-la rsync)).
In that respect, there are two problems in TCP: it is stream based (while many higher-level protocols are message based and do not care about ordering of their own messages) and it has quite average defaults (to work well on wide range of networks and application).
Another thing I see quite often is that people wrongly pick TCP because they want something reliable (e.g. to make their own software look or feel more reliable: "oh! it uses TCP!! it must be reliable software!!!") while the information they actually send can be easily sent over UDP and minor packet losses can be tolerated or even recovered from. For few things I did personally, UDP over switched LAN did a great job. In fact so good - that I have seen packet loss only when LAN itself had a problem (e.g. switch power supply failed).
IANAL nor I have any clue what actually happening there - can't read Swedish.
Judge might have been simply following the letter of law.
Or in other words, judge was "law-biased".
Unless some professional lawyer would translate the proceedings, like hell we know what's really going on there.
It might be a case of poor translation.
"Endorsing" is generally quite hard to translate to pretty much any other language I know (German, Russian and some French). I presume same goes for translation to English.
Especially in legal context, even slight change of wording might change the meaning drastically.
The point is that type-safe constructs do not help when you exchange information. For exchange, information has to be serialized into binary stream, essentially stripping all type information.
And trying to add types to serialization is a road to hell. In my experience after couple of release/maintenance cycles, type ids (required to correctly identify what precisely is in binary stream) become major PITA, because for plain user software nobody bothers maintaining type id lists. And even if type ids are properly maintained, it is still quite easy to make e.g. file formats forward-incompatible.
The conversion on output is trivial. The conversion on input is trickier. Whatever you choose as internal presentation (I used SI), since information comes from many sources, one has to be extremely careful.
My mistake was that some UI configurable defaults were not properly saved on disk, leading to the bug that information was converted twice from microns to mils. That (double conversion) wasn't immediately reflected in UI, but was first sent to hardware (converted again to microns), read back from hardware (as microns) and then displayed on screen (converted to mils). So it was "microns to mils to mils to microns to mils" instead of proper "microns to mils to microns to mils".
P.S. As semi moved to nanometers, I wonder what is now used by US engineers. Mils were already quite small numbers compared to microns - now compared to nanometers, they would surely look puny: 1nm = 0.00003937 mils.
after several years it becomes difficult if not impossible to find the original file...We also use a fairly vigorous quality control system
How do you keep quality on your products, but not even keep your original documentation files? What happens if there is a change?
I presume that 20 years ago everything was on paper. You can't patch sheet of paper with a shell script.
Now all is done digital, meaning that to patch old drawings you have to recreate them anew in digital.
And even if it was digital 20 years ago, chances are that silent error during import might creep in.
I once was writing software for semiconductor industry and had the requirement to allow for both SI and English units (microns v. mils). Believe me, number of bugs related purely to the unit conversions eclipsed number of bugs in the rest of software. One wrong double conversion for example required two weeks of debugging.
In other words, your conjecture is wrong.
That wasn't conjecture. This is my experience of making hard drive sleeping when I work under Linux.
Also, it doesn't matter what mode is used to open a swap file - its syncing is regulated by :help 'swapsync' option. It is set to 'fsync' by default on *nix systems, meaning that fsync() would be called when something new is written to swap file.
You should have applied some really disrupting tuning to your I/O subsystem - for it to delay write out of synced data. This breaks all application's expectations regarding file I/O integrity. A trouble in making.
If I'm not mistaken, AMD CPUs do just that for many years.
My old AMD Athlon 4200+ X2 normally running at 2.2GHz, quite often falls to 1.1GHz to 220MHz.
Apple.
Avoid buying new, just-released model - buy models which are on market for 6+ month. They are generally bug-free.
Though like with any OEM, "shit happens" in Apple's wonderland too: nVidia 8600m debacle, swollen batteries, etc. But their service is quite good - especially compared to what rest of industry provides to private buyers.
Low voltage AMD CPUs (EE, BE series) consume less power than comparable Intel CPUs. Intel produces LV/ULV CPUs, but they are treated generally as higher-end parts which are present in some truly high-end subnotebooks and rarely found in commonly sold notebooks.
But AMD is simply weak in laptop market - they can't compete now with Intel's grip on market.
Since I presume that you really mean "VIM", then I have an information which might be interesting to you.
VIM, in its default configuration creates and maintains the "..swp" file. By default it is stored in the same directory were file being edited is. Everything you do in VIM from :w to :w is constantly sent to the .swp file to allow for recover after crash. (File is deleted when you end editing session.) That obviously has an impact on battery life - if you edit file from hard drive. Hard drive will never sleep, because the updates sent to .swp file would keep it spinning.
":help swapfile" for tips how to change that.
In other words, what you do isn't light on battery. In default configuration, the operations are quite expensive.
Try "pidstat -d 10" for more fun and revelations. Some people also recommended "iotop", though I haven't used it yet.
P.S. But that of course doesn't change the fact that Mac OS X has superior power management compared to Linux or Windows. Apple shamelessly takes advantage of its vertical model: they control everything from hardware to firmware to OS to software. Optimizing for notebooks is natural for them as Apple seen for past three years surge in notebook demand now surpassing half of all Macs shipped. Linux on other side is still deep in always-on-so-do-not-care-about-power-consumption server/beige-box mode. Kernel and drivers are there, but it all make little difference since high-level desktop software doesn't care about it. I consistently get ~3.5-4 hours on my PB12 under Mac OS X 10.4 and measly 1.5 hours on default setup of Xubuntu. After two weeks of tinkering with the setup the time went up to 2.5 hours, what is still far from 4 hours I get with the same workload under Mac OS X.
I tried many FF games and still prefer movies.
Out of which:
- 20 hours of unskippable cinematic and dialogs
- 10 hours trying to figure out what the hell games wants from you now
- 9.5 hours struggling with UI
- 0.5 hours of actual game play.
I'd rather watch 2 hours movie. Because 40 hours of FF or similar those 40 hours are mixed with frustration and humiliation, leaving very little to unspoiled enjoyment.
I may catch on with the casual gamers, though.
I wouldn't count on that.
I have to agree.
For casual players (I consider myself being one too (at least in context of consoles)) it is important that game just flows, either guiding you or making you to explore the possibilities. It is bad game where you hit a bump - "demo" mode wouldn't solve it.
Only thing "demo" mode would achieve is to solve an ancient puzzle of hard core games when you buy an expensive game but get stuck in the middle. It is hard to justify the situation provided that you forked a pretty hefty money for the whole game, but can't enjoy it fully. Add here all the "lockable" crap and you have a case of potentially angry customer.
Hum?... You must have problems with your eyes if you consider Eclipse's "look and feel" even close to the native UI toolkits. On ANY platform. I have used it both on Linux and Windows, it everywhere it looks differently and (worse) it behaves differently compared to how native UI toolkits behave.
Eclipse's SWT is precisely example that it is impossible to make portable Java UI toolkit which would integrate 100% with platform it runs on. In essence, SWT is a emulation of Windows GUI for the Java and looks as "native" only on Windows.
P.S. Needless to mention that native UI toolkits also differ in provided functionality. What is another reason (actually first: but since it is obvious I always forget about it) why portable native UI toolkit is impossible.
Mac OS software takes special pride in its taste and aesthetics - something Java can never achieve.
Wrong. JVM's are implemented by the OS manufacturer. Any problem with the "look and feel" of a standard Java component rests squarely at the feet of the JVM implementor. Any problem with the "look and feel" of extra components that do not use the standard library are the fault of the programmer.
Do not want to even respond to that. What you say is load of stinking bull by incompetent and it simply tells that you never ever actually tried to make some good looking and smooth running UI application.
Remember, even famous Eclipse doesn't use Java UI - regardless of platform it runs on. One can replace the Java's AWT and Swing with something tapping into native UI of platform it runs on ... not really. Because it will not work. Mac OS X, KDE and Gnome are mostly asynchronous while X Window system and Windows UI are mostly synchronous. That means that it is impossible to make a decent portable Java UI toolkit: different native UIs work completely differently internally, essentially requiring different top-level design of whole application.
The simple truth is that for Apple, Java was always and is a secondary/tertiary technology.
This is true, and is the root of the problem. Apple has failed to recognize that if they include Java, then (just like any other 3rd party app) they need to address any security issues as well. If they want to keep touting the Mac OS as "virus free" and "secure" then they had better change that attitude, and fast.
So you accept the fact that there would be more gained by simply removing Java from Mac OS X?
It'd definitely would save some space on my SSD ;)
And now as more users and developers focus on notebooks, resource hungry Java applications are again bad fit. Spinning cycles for nothing is forgivable on desktops and servers - not on notebooks.
That is true for any application. Most of the problem is the fault of the programmer, in any language. True, some tend to be more wasteful, but you shouldn't be running intensive tasks in a Java application in the first place, that's not what it was meant for.
OMG. I "shouldn't be running intensive tasks in a Java applications"?? What should I be using cool-all-around Java then for?... Oh sorry, I for the moment mistook you for Java-fanboi. What makes your murky point even harder to get across.
Just checked my Opera 9.50 settings - and there is precisely ZERO mentioned of auto-updates. More than that, searching on-line help for "auto update" gave as first result article about e-mail address completion.
You must have been smoking something... FireFox probably ;)
P.S. As was pointed above, Opera 10.x beta - yes - have auto-updates. But you know, it took them so frigging long time to implement it...
"Auto-update" is really in 10.x. Thanks for the link!
No, I want it like in FireFox: "Help" > "Restart and install updates." (Or whatever it is called.)
Opera 9.x pretty much always tells "Oh! Update X.XX is available! Click here to download!!!". After clicking it sends you to generic download page where you have to download newer Opera version manually and install it manually. That sucks.
P.S. Sorry to be that spoiled by FireFox.
What about auto-updates?
This is something what prevents me from even considering Opera as main web-browser.
IE (in a way) does it. Chrome does it. FireFox does it. Opera - doesn't.
"Mac OS software takes special pride in its taste and aesthetics - something Java can never achieve."
Nonsense, it just hasn't achieved it to date.
"To date"??? I was working with Java 1.0.x - and there were lots of promises made by Sun. None of which came to fruition. AWT was awful. Swing was a major fluke, only to be forgotten few point releases later. Yeah, they have very cool internal API, but no, they do not allow to develop nice looking and fast UI.
Apple had in fact made Java libraries to allow to access Cocoa, but very few applications are using them. (None known to me actually.) Several applications use Java libraries in background, but for that purpose start Java in background: native UI is nice and snappy, but most of the actual work is done by background process.
"And now as more users and developers focus on notebooks, resource hungry Java applications are again bad fit."
Tell that to Android.
Android doesn't do Java per se. Those are special Google libraries for development of "managed code". IOW, Android is hardly Java compatible, what was actually already criticized by Sun and its followers.
"Spinning cycles for nothing is forgivable on desktops and servers - not on notebooks."
I think you got that backwards, fanboy.
I might well be a fanboi, but it seems that you read too much news (green servers, etc) but have too little of real life: anybody who uses regularly notebooks would always avoid anything that eats into battery life. I know I do.
I do not know what precisely GP meant. I would answer from my personal experience.
I don't see the problem.
Some updates forced by IT also force PC to restart.
I don't see a problem with that either.
Windows updates have the nagging screen "Please restart" which normal user can't disable or tell it "F*** off" or "I will restart when I'm finished with my work".
Sounds like they don't have a very nicely setup network. For the £5 difference in the cost to get a switch with hardware location identification verses a regular switch, that is kind of ridiculous.
Sounds like you haven't worked in large companies.
The problem is real: IT can't tell hundreds people (whole company or department) arbitrarily to stop working because some idiot attached private notebook with an infected OS.
Infecting? So the machines aren't up to date on the business network then? Doesn't that conflict with what you said earlier? o.O
No. It doesn't. All updates, before pushed onto users, are vetted by IT to make sure that corporate crapware wouldn't break after the update installation. Dysfunctional corporate crapware is literally same thing as arbitrarily telling whole company to stop working.
And my 7 year old Windows XP machine takes less than a minute to start or shut down, and it's using roaming profiles with avast anti-virus for the anti-virus software (centrally managed from the domain server too). It's beginning to sound like your company doesn't have the right people to me.
This is quite complicated topic. Be you anyway related to IT, you wouldn't be making such silly suggestions.
Corporate PCs are slow because IT schedules piles of checks during start-up and piles of back-ups during shutdown. AV updates on my corporate PC always take at least 1.5 minute during start-up. Plus 2-5 minutes check for 3rd party software updates. YMMV.
Nah, I just use Linux because I find it superior to most operating systems out there. Viruses have never been a real concern for me (I take enough safe guards), Windows or otherwise.
True. But on Windows side, where you have sloppy IT and even sloppier users (or worse: managers insisting to have admin rights) picture isn't that rosy.
and put out an OS X java that doesn't suck more dick than barney frank.
Well, Sun fixed this vulnerability many, many months ago on every other java platform except the Mac, because Apple won't let Sun fix it for the Mac.
IIRC, Sun doesn't do any porting except few platforms they support themselves: Solaris and Windows. (Now I also see Linux.)
IOW, depending how f***ed up Java interfaces are and how intrusive the fix is, it might well take some long time for 3rd party (Apple) to implement and release it in their port of JDK/JRE.
I'd say Apple does its users a great service by even bothering to support Java.
If you want to piss on somebody - better piss on Sun, who historically refused to port/allow porting of Java to platforms Sun itself wasn't interested in.
Even more: there are piles of 3rd party software on Mac OS and I do not see why Apple themselves should support the particular 3rd party software.