The case - European Comission (EC) v. Apple v. RIAA - in my head immediately was associated with good old movie.
The bad, the good and the ugly.
Badness of EC with all its accounting fraud mess is certain. Goodness of Apple is questionable, but in the party it definitely stands out. RIAA is part of deal since Apple here is retailer only (though still as retailer may bear responsibilities before consumers). And "ugly" is only descriptive adjective I can find for RIAA.
If you programmer, you can try to find some simple DB tool a-la M$ Access or KDE's Kexi.
Once you would put meta data along with file names into database, rest would be pretty easy. You can also implement something simple to convert track selection (SQL query) to play list and add button to launch external player on the play list.
Though I'm not sure about state of DB software on Macs.
Nintendo certainly widened the gaming market, but that gain came at a high price, namely they have alienated many gamers and long term fans, me included.
Good. Very good. Because old-timers "must die". That's my official point.
Probably with hard core gamers going elsewhere we would get more decent enjoyable titles. I mean "enjoyable" - not some "old timer brain f*ck" a-la Mario.
I hope some advancements of PC gaming then have chance of reaching consoles too: decent save/load functionality (which is in PC games about forever, but barely available in console games), adjustable difficulty level (so that places one doesn't like can do on easy setting and other on normal/hard/etc), cheat codes (so that one can hop thru game quickly to see all of its beauty).
To me most console games are primitive and unenjoyable. You hit wall in the straight story line and no way you can get around it. My friend once lent me his PS2 with couple of selected games - and it was like it: stupid unintuitive controls (called "traditional"), some crap a-la "boss monsters" (it's when you die for no apparent reason, or opponent doesn't die no matter what you do) and shit load of "combos" (when you twist fingers and brains (yeah, I have them) to memorize long boring sequence of key presses to pass particular place). Crap, not enjoyment.
"Zelda TP" made a crack in console games cliche, but judging from reaction on Net it is more of exception and it is expected soon to be fixed by Nintendo back into the unpalatable crap for old timers - just as it was before.
Nintendo is certainly making money with the Wii and will continue for a while, but at the moment I am really not so sure of the long term causes.
I glad you read Nintendo's message correctly: "We do not need you." Go away. Buy Xbox/PS3. Wii is made for people who want to enjoy games in their spare time and do not have time for all the old crap of old style console shit games.
To me WiiPlay/WiiSports best what happened in games in last decade. Regardless what other are saying.
I would much rather Ogg/MKV/Vorbis and some good open video codec obtain some traction than MP4.
I second that. Only problem is of course specification. I still recall the stalemate with Vorbis when it is turned out there is no documentation for it - only source code. It might be a good peice of code - but without proper documentation you cannot have alternative (better or simply competing) implementations. It took about year to write spec for Vorbis what ended its unofficial two year community boycott.
Ogg/MKV being containers would be of course easier to specify. Ogg is well specified. Yet, MKV has *no* specification. It has documentation on how and what you might find inside - but in no way the documentation is even close to serve as specification. And piles of stuff inside of MKV are pure Windows specific (e.g. font embedding) what bars any kind of portable implementation.
Technically, supporting MKV/Ogg/Vorbis is no brainer. (It is problem of MP4 which has enormous all encompassing specification nobody yet implemented completely). But legally, for MP4 you have licensing authority and all questions and royalties regarding patents and trademarks are resolved there. As for free formats, it is really can of worms few vendors would risk opening. Patent suit - even if frivolous - could easily bring consumer electronic company down: they live off very thin margins.
But compare that to term's of M$ Windows Media Services and accompanying DRM cruft. And as you might have guessed M$ will not give you patent indemnification too.
Thanks to patents, hardly anything can be called "free"...
1. Remove damm mic. Some stupid games try to use it.
2. Make "Start" & "Select" buttons larger - as they were in original DS. DS Lite they are smaller and hard to press. Some games require you press them often (e.g. Castlevania) and thumb start aching pretty soon into the battles.
3. Add second DS slot so that two game cartridges may be inserted simultaneously. (Probably by killing off GBA slot - it's useless anyway.) That would let me in 95% situations avoid stocking DS games in my pockets. I generally carry around one or two games with me, and if they would be all the time plugged into DS itself it would be just great.
N. Do not turn DS into PSP. Leave it simple. DS is first device I have seen female auditory can and actually does use. And enjoy it. Do NOT turn it into PSP, please.
Probably Nintendo might think about releasing bumped up but costlier version of DS with another firmware supporting SD/SDHC/MP3/MP4/JPEG/etc, leaving baseline version as it is now: simple, slim, cheap and dedicated to games.
For AMD, its next-generation microarchitecture can't come a moment too soon.
Nice reading.
But of course conclusions are not that surprising. AMD is 10+ times smaller than Intel (judged by capitalization). Intel has many fabs - while AMD is constantly struggling expanding its production capacities.
Yet, AMD (with Athlon 64) had managed to pull quite a match against Intel. Kudos to AMD: without you Intel's CPUs for sure would have costed $2500 a piece.
OMG. I think everybody got enough of that "old timer" crap on Wii. End result isn't that good: few new Wii games released - and all what is pushed up is the sentimental junk.
Though of course downloadable games are imminent: WiFi in DS paid off and Nintendo would definitely investigate possibility to make games even more cheaper and accessible. So I think what you say would eventually come true. I just hope it would NOT become another trash collector as Wii's VC.
As for camera. I'm not social type and camera to me is another useless add-on (just like mic now) which only drains battery. (And you do not need camera in ad-hoc scenario (e.g. party) - and that's what most people do right now.)
P.S. Or go buy PSP. Because all what you have said is only what PSP is good for. And it is definitely overall good deal. Though games... But you do not ask for games! You want MP3/MP4/Opera/etc!! WTF. No games? Move on people. We are talking here about "portable game platforms", not cheap handicapped PDAs.
I'd say even two DS slots would be great - so that you wouldn't have to carry cartridge in pocket.
I like to play several games simultaneously and it would be nice feat to be able start another game w/o need to dig in bag looking for another cartridge. (And probability to lose cartridge would be smaller too.)
More than two is better. But I think two slots would be sufficient for most scenarios.
Important question: "Do games/applications really need all this?"
To me it often looks like Intel in 486/Pentium times: Intel was investing heavily in different CPU intensive applications as to spur processor sales.
Now M$/nVidia/ATI are making run for DX10/DX11/DX12/etc - but the question is why they need all the new crap if Doom3 runs fine even with (very old) OpenGL 1.3??? Beats me.
I'm sorry to chime in with stupid comment. But sorry this is Slashdot so here I go;-)
I'm sick tired of such "researchers". Back in good old days they were simply called "testers" - and their job was look for bugs localize them and report to developers. Instead of reporting bug all they do is create a "sensation" or "scandal".
Apple might not the best company when it comes to PR (actually probably second worst - right after Sony) but most of the problems gets resolved easily. And even then, most of the time Apple's PR reaction is... right no reaction. The guys are used to live and work under piles of NDAs and very very rarely talk to press. Or rather they organize events if they want to announce something. (I'd rather give thumb up to Mac fan boys for smoking the so called "researcher" into clear. Because that what I believe took place.)
Rise of Internet unfortunately attracted hunters for cheap publicity. And most of the so called "security researchers" are fit right into the category. They relate to research equally as e.g. Britney Spears relates to music.
P.S. Disclaimers: Ex-Mac-owner. Linux developer. And yeah, I know how to write secure programs and what QA is.
Get your complains to Linux/Linus - reiser4 isn't mainline file system. Gentoo's nonacceptance is consequences of general disagreement with Hans Reiser's way of doing stuff. (e.g. maintenance of reiserfs 3.x: it has number of outstanding issues nobody know how to fix and Reiser is just happy to tout that problem doesn't exist in reiser4.) It might be advanced and very fast - but it is NOT mainline nor accepted.
Also check XFS people: they do not scream laud albeit their file system is alos unsupported by Gentoo though it is in mainline kernel.
IOW, the response you have received from Gentoo was more like "we have our hands full with mainline file systems to bother with something external." I think have you had come with patches for better reiser4 (or any other fs) support - relations might have been different.
Not in this case I think. Do not forget that we are talking about French here. And bureaucracy.
It is more along populist lines: "We are using computers provided by local vendors! We are not using evil software from convicted *US* monopolist!! We are saving bunch of your tax payers' money!!!"
I mean, they have elections looming. And I think it is part of campaign to get support from local business.
Gentoo just isn't worth it for me anymore, it was in the past.
But if you happen to pick some junk PC/Sparc/Apple and would want to put it to better use, you soon would find that only flexibility of Gentoo allows you to make something real out of the junk. Or if you are developer you get instantly all the environment for you ready: with capability to automatically test little but disruptive changes on wide range of applications. It is irreplaceable.
Of course, for end user on new powerful computer it makes little sense of installing everything from sources. For end user overall makes little sense to bother with compilations. But as time passes every computer gets closer to the "junk" status and support by modern distros is withering quicker than one can imaging. And that's when flexibility of Gentoo - and its near perfect documentation - comes very very handy.
Considering both posts together I think this is sign of healthy community.
I personally would vote for the people who have remained with Gentoo: I believe that you can make something better only from inside. External critique is also very important - but it is rarely constructive. And to be really constructive you have to be in loop - you have to be part of it. (But of course that make sense if the loop isn't broken already.)
Not true. If applications do fit the purpose - it would be fine. And since they have backing of two consulting agencies, I hope they know what they do. I mean, somebody lobbied for the deal, someone sweetened the deal to the point of acceptance.
[ I know people who moved bureaucracy to Linux - it was bit involuntary move when power failure fried bunch of hard drives 5(6?) years ago. IT gave three of their old Linux servers to department so that they would at least be able to work in Web interface. And people liked Netscape more than they liked IE. So several (junk) computers there still run Linux and people use them solely for intranet portals. Anyway they really need only two Windows computers there since company has bought only two licenses for Windows book keeping software. Rest of work is done on home brew Web inranet. IIRC crucial factor of accepting Linux was availability of - and that's NOT joke - mahjong. ]
Though I too share your concerns. I really hope those two providers know what they are subscribing themselves to. But if people need only to access some web portals & KOffice/OpenOffice.org fit the bill for productivity software - why not to try?
But when it comes to kernel debugging on Linux, the picture is still bleak.
I recently was customizing for myself frame buffer driver. I have overhauled about 20k of kernel code - and after several compilation errors it worked perfectly fine. As in "just works."
On Linux side I can tell only one thing: if you need a debugger for kernel, then you are better off doing your stuff in user space. 2.6 is heck a lot cleaner and polished than any linux kernel I have worked before - 2.0/2.1/2.2/2.4. Most stuff is so frigging straight forward that kernel framework basically leaves you... little place for error. And especially if you do programming by good ol' "copy'n'pasting" method and adopt code from other part of kernel it is damn obvious how stuff works and how to change it - just from its look. Room for error is very very tiny - in many cases non-existent.
As an advice, try to program w/o debuggers for some time. Start trusting your hunch feeling - what is right and what is wrong. (K.I.S.S. helps here too: "looks complicated" == "very likely buggy"). Do more code audit/review so that your eyes/mind would be able to spot errors sooner than later. In the end it would improve your coding speed: because that would train your imagination to program not in text editor/ide - but firstly in your brain. To amend algorithm in best editor you need to type/click what takes time - amending algorithm in your brain takes no keyboard/mouse effort what is much much quicker.
Most people I know - who use debuggers - use hardware jtag port debuggers. If you are digging something more in hardware than in software (e.g. driver for very very complicated piece of hardware) than jtag is must have anyway. But even then it is possible to go w/o debugger - modularized Linux (with module dependencies) makes that a bliss.
Windows was clearly the best for remote kernel debugging with windbg and I don't see that changing anytime soon. A fully fledged debugger, automatic download of kernel symbols from Microsoft and your own repository, reliable capture of dumps etc. That and the API documentation made the black box nature of the O/S a much smaller issue than the open source community would like us to believe. I was always so much more confident if we had a crash due to our software at a customer site that with Windows we had the best chance of capturing and hopefully identifying the problem.
This is not *nix way. You need to always remember: inside of every big problem there is little one trying to break out. *nix way is to "divide and conquer". If instead of single monster application you would have set of executables each running in separate memory space - error localization would be improved drastically.
I did once for my friends dumb conversion of their (Windows) application into such one. First I have split application into N libraries. Over some time interfaces had settled down and I have processed to second step: I have compiled every library into application automatically with script generating RPC-like stubs for every function. RPC performance sucked big time. But that way we were able to localize several hard to spot bugs - including nasty one reported by our customers which kick-started the effort. In our case, when system is in production cycle you cannot access it with debugger anyway. Reproducing customer's environment is impossible for it depends on large unique hardware installation. But with simple trick we were able to make system much much more manageable and accessible to testing. All that WITHOUT DEBUGGERS. (I'd say all thanks to clever M$' compiler and linker which allowed that feat. Though of course method I have learned from *nix (-; )
You won't find a single European ISP that is not already thinking about how to roll-out IPv6 on their network.
That wasn't case three years ago. I have worked for german router/switch producer and IPv6 wasn't even on roadmap. When I asked why, prompt reply was "no demand."
Probably now they have wised up. Anyway, from POV of core network builders - IPv6 adoption isn't issue (They all sit by now on MPLS or VLAN which are IP address type agnostic). This is issue for edge networks which touch the infamous "last mile" and all the cheap IPv4 home routers. How the problem would be solved I'm really not sure. It is not that you would require every customer to buy new router. Nor proper IPv6 support on customer's "last mile" end can be probed by ISP. (Probably as solution some probing would be implemented and "should support"-ed for new routers, so that ISP would be able to dynamically give IPv6 addresses to IPv6 capable routers and rest with older routers would go on sitting on IPv4.)
The US users (who make out some 5% of the Internet population) have about 75% of all IP addresses. Vast numbers of them unused.
IP ranges were in past literally given away. And US as home of Internet and one of the largest user of Internet of course has large number of ISP, all of whom bought generous IP ranges. But even if you would clean up US' ISPs, we will face same problem in few years when India & China would complete their governmental and educational networks. 2.5Bln population isn't joke...
bzip2 is much more CPU intensive on both encoding and decoding. On average it is about 30-40% slower than gzip and takes more memory for decompression. (Try to imaging that Opera/Firefox got even bigger memory foot print and page rendering degraded by 25% percents.)
Also, bzip2 is good with large amounts of information. And surprisingly PNG isn't the case: not the whole image is compressed but group of adjacent lines. That's done to allow network usage: user can see parts of image before it is completely downloaded.
Also since gzip's decompression is very simple and already heavily tested you get another advantage for network usage: security. We all heard of overflow bug in gzip (which allowed remote execution exploit) - but have anybody heard of such research on bzip2? There is none.
Overall, gzip provides very good compromise of performance and compression ratio. And that's why it is so popular.
You are wrong. I have also once opined so on the topic and was immediately pwned by profis.
The major handicap is of course the places which need IPv6 are pretty poor - India & China. Europe & US do NOT have any shortage of IP address ranges - but Asia does. So from our - US/EU - p.o.v. IPv6 is needless hustle. Now as India and China have improved their connectivity pace, IPv6 isn't minor player anymore. If somebody missed the news, Asia more or less completely now on IPv6 (google:China ipv6) and last problems with DNS were recently solved too by approving new RR "A" specifically for IPv6 - "AAAA" (google: dns rr ipv6, rfc3596).
P.S. And if game devel makes such comments, I can only judge that he is not up to challenge. People did near perfect (for the time) 3D graphics on 386SX@25MHz - and the games were cool & fun. Devels were not saying "486 is crap since it cannot push 1000000000 triangles we have thrown into our latest game" - they were trying to deliver best gaming experience with means available. Notice that "means available" go after "best gaming experience." Game devels need to suck less from big corporations (M$/Sony/EA) and start concentrating on the experience after all.
Slashdot Mirror
The case - European Comission (EC) v. Apple v. RIAA - in my head immediately was associated with good old movie.
The bad, the good and the ugly.
Badness of EC with all its accounting fraud mess is certain. Goodness of Apple is questionable, but in the party it definitely stands out. RIAA is part of deal since Apple here is retailer only (though still as retailer may bear responsibilities before consumers). And "ugly" is only descriptive adjective I can find for RIAA.
The key here is that once some piece of (relatively) independent code is in library, you can make a test suit for it.
After any change committed to library run local test and see does it work or not.
The approach does miracles to reusability and maintainability of code.
If you programmer, you can try to find some simple DB tool a-la M$ Access or KDE's Kexi.
Once you would put meta data along with file names into database, rest would be pretty easy. You can also implement something simple to convert track selection (SQL query) to play list and add button to launch external player on the play list.
Though I'm not sure about state of DB software on Macs.
Who asked for $500 PS3?
By all means it seems MS has heard you!
Good. Very good. Because old-timers "must die". That's my official point.
Probably with hard core gamers going elsewhere we would get more decent enjoyable titles. I mean "enjoyable" - not some "old timer brain f*ck" a-la Mario.
I hope some advancements of PC gaming then have chance of reaching consoles too: decent save/load functionality (which is in PC games about forever, but barely available in console games), adjustable difficulty level (so that places one doesn't like can do on easy setting and other on normal/hard/etc), cheat codes (so that one can hop thru game quickly to see all of its beauty).
To me most console games are primitive and unenjoyable. You hit wall in the straight story line and no way you can get around it. My friend once lent me his PS2 with couple of selected games - and it was like it: stupid unintuitive controls (called "traditional"), some crap a-la "boss monsters" (it's when you die for no apparent reason, or opponent doesn't die no matter what you do) and shit load of "combos" (when you twist fingers and brains (yeah, I have them) to memorize long boring sequence of key presses to pass particular place). Crap, not enjoyment.
"Zelda TP" made a crack in console games cliche, but judging from reaction on Net it is more of exception and it is expected soon to be fixed by Nintendo back into the unpalatable crap for old timers - just as it was before.
I glad you read Nintendo's message correctly: "We do not need you." Go away. Buy Xbox/PS3. Wii is made for people who want to enjoy games in their spare time and do not have time for all the old crap of old style console shit games.
To me WiiPlay/WiiSports best what happened in games in last decade. Regardless what other are saying.
I second that. Only problem is of course specification. I still recall the stalemate with Vorbis when it is turned out there is no documentation for it - only source code. It might be a good peice of code - but without proper documentation you cannot have alternative (better or simply competing) implementations. It took about year to write spec for Vorbis what ended its unofficial two year community boycott.
Ogg/MKV being containers would be of course easier to specify. Ogg is well specified. Yet, MKV has *no* specification. It has documentation on how and what you might find inside - but in no way the documentation is even close to serve as specification. And piles of stuff inside of MKV are pure Windows specific (e.g. font embedding) what bars any kind of portable implementation.
Technically, supporting MKV/Ogg/Vorbis is no brainer. (It is problem of MP4 which has enormous all encompassing specification nobody yet implemented completely). But legally, for MP4 you have licensing authority and all questions and royalties regarding patents and trademarks are resolved there. As for free formats, it is really can of worms few vendors would risk opening. Patent suit - even if frivolous - could easily bring consumer electronic company down: they live off very thin margins.
Yeah, well there are patents. And ISO terms.
But compare that to term's of M$ Windows Media Services and accompanying DRM cruft. And as you might have guessed M$ will not give you patent indemnification too.
Thanks to patents, hardly anything can be called "free"...
I sincerely hope that Apple TV would succeed - if only to additionally indirectly support MP4 format wider adoption.
It's not the best, but among other formats it is only one which is open, free and platform independent.
Then my personal list would pretty short:
1. Remove damm mic. Some stupid games try to use it.
2. Make "Start" & "Select" buttons larger - as they were in original DS. DS Lite they are smaller and hard to press. Some games require you press them often (e.g. Castlevania) and thumb start aching pretty soon into the battles.
3. Add second DS slot so that two game cartridges may be inserted simultaneously. (Probably by killing off GBA slot - it's useless anyway.) That would let me in 95% situations avoid stocking DS games in my pockets. I generally carry around one or two games with me, and if they would be all the time plugged into DS itself it would be just great.
N. Do not turn DS into PSP. Leave it simple. DS is first device I have seen female auditory can and actually does use. And enjoy it. Do NOT turn it into PSP, please.
Probably Nintendo might think about releasing bumped up but costlier version of DS with another firmware supporting SD/SDHC/MP3/MP4/JPEG/etc, leaving baseline version as it is now: simple, slim, cheap and dedicated to games.
Nice reading.
But of course conclusions are not that surprising. AMD is 10+ times smaller than Intel (judged by capitalization). Intel has many fabs - while AMD is constantly struggling expanding its production capacities.
Yet, AMD (with Athlon 64) had managed to pull quite a match against Intel. Kudos to AMD: without you Intel's CPUs for sure would have costed $2500 a piece.
OMG. I think everybody got enough of that "old timer" crap on Wii. End result isn't that good: few new Wii games released - and all what is pushed up is the sentimental junk.
Though of course downloadable games are imminent: WiFi in DS paid off and Nintendo would definitely investigate possibility to make games even more cheaper and accessible. So I think what you say would eventually come true. I just hope it would NOT become another trash collector as Wii's VC.
As for camera. I'm not social type and camera to me is another useless add-on (just like mic now) which only drains battery. (And you do not need camera in ad-hoc scenario (e.g. party) - and that's what most people do right now.)
Guys, you really need a PDA.
Please please please, leave DS for games.
P.S. Or go buy PSP. Because all what you have said is only what PSP is good for. And it is definitely overall good deal. Though games... But you do not ask for games! You want MP3/MP4/Opera/etc!! WTF. No games? Move on people. We are talking here about "portable game platforms", not cheap handicapped PDAs.
I'd say even two DS slots would be great - so that you wouldn't have to carry cartridge in pocket.
I like to play several games simultaneously and it would be nice feat to be able start another game w/o need to dig in bag looking for another cartridge. (And probability to lose cartridge would be smaller too.)
More than two is better. But I think two slots would be sufficient for most scenarios.
Important question: "Do games/applications really need all this?"
To me it often looks like Intel in 486/Pentium times: Intel was investing heavily in different CPU intensive applications as to spur processor sales.
Now M$/nVidia/ATI are making run for DX10/DX11/DX12/etc - but the question is why they need all the new crap if Doom3 runs fine even with (very old) OpenGL 1.3??? Beats me.
I'm sorry to chime in with stupid comment. But sorry this is Slashdot so here I go ;-)
I'm sick tired of such "researchers". Back in good old days they were simply called "testers" - and their job was look for bugs localize them and report to developers. Instead of reporting bug all they do is create a "sensation" or "scandal".
Apple might not the best company when it comes to PR (actually probably second worst - right after Sony) but most of the problems gets resolved easily. And even then, most of the time Apple's PR reaction is ... right no reaction. The guys are used to live and work under piles of NDAs and very very rarely talk to press. Or rather they organize events if they want to announce something. (I'd rather give thumb up to Mac fan boys for smoking the so called "researcher" into clear. Because that what I believe took place.)
Rise of Internet unfortunately attracted hunters for cheap publicity. And most of the so called "security researchers" are fit right into the category. They relate to research equally as e.g. Britney Spears relates to music.
P.S. Disclaimers: Ex-Mac-owner. Linux developer. And yeah, I know how to write secure programs and what QA is.
Get your complains to Linux/Linus - reiser4 isn't mainline file system. Gentoo's nonacceptance is consequences of general disagreement with Hans Reiser's way of doing stuff. (e.g. maintenance of reiserfs 3.x: it has number of outstanding issues nobody know how to fix and Reiser is just happy to tout that problem doesn't exist in reiser4.) It might be advanced and very fast - but it is NOT mainline nor accepted.
Also check XFS people: they do not scream laud albeit their file system is alos unsupported by Gentoo though it is in mainline kernel.
IOW, the response you have received from Gentoo was more like "we have our hands full with mainline file systems to bother with something external." I think have you had come with patches for better reiser4 (or any other fs) support - relations might have been different.
Not in this case I think. Do not forget that we are talking about French here. And bureaucracy.
It is more along populist lines: "We are using computers provided by local vendors! We are not using evil software from convicted *US* monopolist!! We are saving bunch of your tax payers' money!!!"
I mean, they have elections looming. And I think it is part of campaign to get support from local business.
But if you happen to pick some junk PC/Sparc/Apple and would want to put it to better use, you soon would find that only flexibility of Gentoo allows you to make something real out of the junk. Or if you are developer you get instantly all the environment for you ready: with capability to automatically test little but disruptive changes on wide range of applications. It is irreplaceable.
Of course, for end user on new powerful computer it makes little sense of installing everything from sources. For end user overall makes little sense to bother with compilations. But as time passes every computer gets closer to the "junk" status and support by modern distros is withering quicker than one can imaging. And that's when flexibility of Gentoo - and its near perfect documentation - comes very very handy.
Considering both posts together I think this is sign of healthy community.
I personally would vote for the people who have remained with Gentoo: I believe that you can make something better only from inside. External critique is also very important - but it is rarely constructive. And to be really constructive you have to be in loop - you have to be part of it. (But of course that make sense if the loop isn't broken already.)
Not true. If applications do fit the purpose - it would be fine. And since they have backing of two consulting agencies, I hope they know what they do. I mean, somebody lobbied for the deal, someone sweetened the deal to the point of acceptance.
[ I know people who moved bureaucracy to Linux - it was bit involuntary move when power failure fried bunch of hard drives 5(6?) years ago. IT gave three of their old Linux servers to department so that they would at least be able to work in Web interface. And people liked Netscape more than they liked IE. So several (junk) computers there still run Linux and people use them solely for intranet portals. Anyway they really need only two Windows computers there since company has bought only two licenses for Windows book keeping software. Rest of work is done on home brew Web inranet. IIRC crucial factor of accepting Linux was availability of - and that's NOT joke - mahjong. ]
Though I too share your concerns. I really hope those two providers know what they are subscribing themselves to. But if people need only to access some web portals & KOffice/OpenOffice.org fit the bill for productivity software - why not to try?
I recently was customizing for myself frame buffer driver. I have overhauled about 20k of kernel code - and after several compilation errors it worked perfectly fine. As in "just works."
On Linux side I can tell only one thing: if you need a debugger for kernel, then you are better off doing your stuff in user space. 2.6 is heck a lot cleaner and polished than any linux kernel I have worked before - 2.0/2.1/2.2/2.4. Most stuff is so frigging straight forward that kernel framework basically leaves you ... little place for error. And especially if you do programming by good ol' "copy'n'pasting" method and adopt code from other part of kernel it is damn obvious how stuff works and how to change it - just from its look. Room for error is very very tiny - in many cases non-existent.
As an advice, try to program w/o debuggers for some time. Start trusting your hunch feeling - what is right and what is wrong. (K.I.S.S. helps here too: "looks complicated" == "very likely buggy"). Do more code audit/review so that your eyes/mind would be able to spot errors sooner than later. In the end it would improve your coding speed: because that would train your imagination to program not in text editor/ide - but firstly in your brain. To amend algorithm in best editor you need to type/click what takes time - amending algorithm in your brain takes no keyboard/mouse effort what is much much quicker.
Most people I know - who use debuggers - use hardware jtag port debuggers. If you are digging something more in hardware than in software (e.g. driver for very very complicated piece of hardware) than jtag is must have anyway. But even then it is possible to go w/o debugger - modularized Linux (with module dependencies) makes that a bliss.
This is not *nix way. You need to always remember: inside of every big problem there is little one trying to break out. *nix way is to "divide and conquer". If instead of single monster application you would have set of executables each running in separate memory space - error localization would be improved drastically.
I did once for my friends dumb conversion of their (Windows) application into such one. First I have split application into N libraries. Over some time interfaces had settled down and I have processed to second step: I have compiled every library into application automatically with script generating RPC-like stubs for every function. RPC performance sucked big time. But that way we were able to localize several hard to spot bugs - including nasty one reported by our customers which kick-started the effort. In our case, when system is in production cycle you cannot access it with debugger anyway. Reproducing customer's environment is impossible for it depends on large unique hardware installation. But with simple trick we were able to make system much much more manageable and accessible to testing. All that WITHOUT DEBUGGERS. (I'd say all thanks to clever M$' compiler and linker which allowed that feat. Though of course method I have learned from *nix (-; )
That wasn't case three years ago. I have worked for german router/switch producer and IPv6 wasn't even on roadmap. When I asked why, prompt reply was "no demand."
Probably now they have wised up. Anyway, from POV of core network builders - IPv6 adoption isn't issue (They all sit by now on MPLS or VLAN which are IP address type agnostic). This is issue for edge networks which touch the infamous "last mile" and all the cheap IPv4 home routers. How the problem would be solved I'm really not sure. It is not that you would require every customer to buy new router. Nor proper IPv6 support on customer's "last mile" end can be probed by ISP. (Probably as solution some probing would be implemented and "should support"-ed for new routers, so that ISP would be able to dynamically give IPv6 addresses to IPv6 capable routers and rest with older routers would go on sitting on IPv4.)
IP ranges were in past literally given away. And US as home of Internet and one of the largest user of Internet of course has large number of ISP, all of whom bought generous IP ranges. But even if you would clean up US' ISPs, we will face same problem in few years when India & China would complete their governmental and educational networks. 2.5Bln population isn't joke...
bzip2 is much more CPU intensive on both encoding and decoding. On average it is about 30-40% slower than gzip and takes more memory for decompression. (Try to imaging that Opera/Firefox got even bigger memory foot print and page rendering degraded by 25% percents.)
Also, bzip2 is good with large amounts of information. And surprisingly PNG isn't the case: not the whole image is compressed but group of adjacent lines. That's done to allow network usage: user can see parts of image before it is completely downloaded.
Also since gzip's decompression is very simple and already heavily tested you get another advantage for network usage: security. We all heard of overflow bug in gzip (which allowed remote execution exploit) - but have anybody heard of such research on bzip2? There is none.
Overall, gzip provides very good compromise of performance and compression ratio. And that's why it is so popular.
You are wrong. I have also once opined so on the topic and was immediately pwned by profis.
The major handicap is of course the places which need IPv6 are pretty poor - India & China. Europe & US do NOT have any shortage of IP address ranges - but Asia does. So from our - US/EU - p.o.v. IPv6 is needless hustle. Now as India and China have improved their connectivity pace, IPv6 isn't minor player anymore. If somebody missed the news, Asia more or less completely now on IPv6 (google:China ipv6) and last problems with DNS were recently solved too by approving new RR "A" specifically for IPv6 - "AAAA" (google: dns rr ipv6, rfc3596).
P.S. And if game devel makes such comments, I can only judge that he is not up to challenge. People did near perfect (for the time) 3D graphics on 386SX@25MHz - and the games were cool & fun. Devels were not saying "486 is crap since it cannot push 1000000000 triangles we have thrown into our latest game" - they were trying to deliver best gaming experience with means available. Notice that "means available" go after "best gaming experience." Game devels need to suck less from big corporations (M$/Sony/EA) and start concentrating on the experience after all.