Have you been living under a rock for the last ten years? Of course web programming in PHP is easier than CGI! Just about anything is easier than CGI, not matter what language the CGI script is programmed in. If you want a similar (but more powerful) PHP-like environment for Perl, I highly recommend HTML::Mason. Two other interesting mod_perl environments are AxKit (centred around XML and XSLT) and Catalyst (a tight MVC framework). But they both are rougher to develop on, requiring restarts of Apache to load new code. At least Catalyst provides its own mini server for testing/development purposes.
In MySQL, my reports take about 10 minutes to run. In Postgres, they take 3-4 days
Any bet you were doing what most MySQL coders do: making tonnes of little, simple queries. MySQL is just great at that sort of workload. It's what it was originally designed for, being essentially a simple SQL interface to the filesystem. Now, I bet you'd get much better performance out of PostgreSQL if you sat down and spent a day (or however long) to rewrite your client logic and queries so that you're making only a few complex queries that spit out everything at once. That's what indexes and the plan optimizer are for. PostgreSQL gives much better performance when you let it create an optimal plan and use appropriate indexes.
Yeah, that always bugs me when people talk of immersive panoramas and light probes. Even worse is calling them a 360x360 degree view. Now, if we're talking long/lat, then wouldn't 360x180 be more accurate?
Oh, and Slashdot filters out HTML entities for some reason. Probably to stop trolls from using them to hide goatse.cx links and the like from the other anti-troll filters in slashcode. It kinda sucks sometimes. I have seen people do accents and umlauts and things on letters, so it seems that something is possible.
Considering that Steve Kerrison from Hexus submitted both stories (but with a difference email address for the previous story) I'd say he's asking for it, literally.
Why are you assuming there won't be an Office 13? Maybe she means that the feature won't be implemented in the next two releases of Office. Gee, hope it wasn't too important...
No, the problem probably is Samba. More specifically, I bet they have a Windows server. Samba is great on a single server or multiple servers. But it's not so great acting as a client to Windows servers, and/or operating as a server with other Windows severs. SMB is a terrible mess after all these years of MS piling stuff on with little regard for future compatablity. And various concepts in Windows don't always map 1:1 with equivalent concepts in Unix/Linux (and vice versa).
Yuck. Here's my neater Perl version from the GP's Python:
sub isLeapYear ($) { my ($year) = @_;
return 1 if ($year % 400 == 0); return 0 if ($year % 100 == 0); return 1 if ($year % 4 == 0); return 0; }
I like using Perl's inversed "(statement) (condition)" form for simple one-line tests. It helps to make the code more readable. No brackets and all on one line.
Couple this with the fact that 99% of all of the world's software is written for x86 and you have a very large inertia to overcome in order to change the ISA.
Really? Better tell the Debian guys then. They ship their distro for 10 platforms. Then there's the BSD's: NetBSD takes the cake with 49 platforms listed as stable. OpenBSD has 16 platforms and FreeBSD has 9 platforms.
I think you'll find that most software nowadays is written in a high-level language and not for a specific processor. If you have access to that source code and a compiler for your processor, then it doesn't really matter what it is. The big issue in porting is the operating system and GUI (and other) toolkits, not the CPU architecture.
The key word being traditional. You know that the X window system goes back back over twenty years? Hell, X11 just turned eighteen according to that Wikipedia page. A full ten years older than GNOME or KDE. Look back at the original X11 window managers and you'll always find focus-follows-mouse as the default, maybe even the only option. BTW, I use Sawfish with GNOME.
I find click-to-focus is just too cumbersome. It's probably easier for new users because they more likely to move the mouse "out of the way" like you described. I actually use what's called "sloppy focus-follows-mouse". It means I can move the mouse onto the desktop (root window) and not lose *all* focus. You should use multiple virtual desktops if your desktop is getting too cluttered.
Now, what's so great about focus-follows-mouse? The big thing is that I can do stuff without a lot of alt-tabbing or clicking on windows. I can type on any window without bringing them to the front. e.g I can have a window popup (like, say an IM message) and keep it there while I browse the web. I can cut and paste stuff without alt-tabbing or clicking on windows.
I'm not too impressed with the Ubuntu live CD, but the problem wasn't with the speed of the apps. A local magazine here in Australia (APC) had it on one of their "cover DVD's" and I tried it on my dad's laptop. Choosing the "live" option at the boot menu, it appeared to go through almost the same process as the Debian installer i.e several menus selecting language, keyboard, etc. It was quite a while before we got a desktop up and could try things. Admitedly, it was a combo installation/live DVD, but we were both most unimpressed. Knoppix is still the king as far as live CD's/DVD's are concerned.
Are you on Windows? You have to bare in mind that the GIMP interface was mostly designed for focus-follows-mouse, the traditional focus policy on X11. I have used The GIMP on Windows and it is a pain compared to Linux/X11 because of the different focus policies. It also helps if you have multiple virtual desktops, so you can have a seperate, clean desktop (or several) for working with The GIMP and not clutter the image windows with lots of other windows. I guess this is why people keep whinging for an MDI interface.
Ooh, I'm not so sure I'd like that feature. I almost always open links in new tabs. I then go read those tabs, and close them when I'm finished. I know I'm in a "child" tab when the "go back" button is disabled. Otherwise, I'm in the original "parent" tab and I shouldn't close it. Your suggestion would totally screw up my system!
Oh please, *none* of those three! Why doesn't anyone apart from P2P'ers use XviD/DivX with MP3 sound? Is it just the stigma? No, instead we have to put up with crappy Real/WM/QT video and sound. In fact, why don't they go with H.264/MPEG-4 AVC? It's the future of broadcast television and offers amazing compression. I've just started playing around with x264, and it blows away even XviD! And it will only get better with time. I'm sure the commercial developers have already got a better H.264 implementation. The only problem is that everyone has to install VLC for now. Oh well, just another media player to download, right? And you never know, people might actually like a simple player instead of the all-in-one media *centres* that the other media players have become.
</rant>
I still think that some of the scenarios he describes, even with your clarifications, imply O(n), but I really need to look over it a little more.
The original trollish post seemed (to me) to imply with the mention of O(n) that the get*ent calls were doing an inefficient scan through every username/id, just using PAM/NSS to do the backend work. The GP explained that the name/id query is being passed right through to whatever is doing the lookup. For a machine just using/etc/passwd, that would indeed be a O(n) scan. But it could just as well be an LDAP or SQL server with an index to speed things up. Then it would be more like O(log(n)) or something much nicer.
Hmmm... but the middle button/wheel always seems to have a stronger spring in it than the other buttons. Probably to stop people from *accidentally* doing what you're suggesting (scrolling while pressing the wheel down) when they just want to scroll. After all, Windows (and Mac) hardly uses the third/middle mouse button, so it makes sense to "protect" it that way. So anyway, that's another reason I don't like pressing down on the scroll wheel, it's simply harder. In fact, it's probably why I think the wheel is going to "slip" when I use it as the third/middle mouse button. If it was a moderate tap like the other two buttons, then I could be more confident about operating it without scrolling. But since I have to exert more force, often with my middle finger raised and bent down, I'm afraid about turning the wheel. Bah, I need to stop ranting and go to bed...:P
---
I have an old Logitech M-BA47 from around 2000. It has a nice thumb button right where I rest my thumb (i.e low). When I first hooked it up, XFree86 mapped it as another middle button. I was happy with that so I never looked into changing it. It works great for me under Linux. Pasting text or opening links in new tabs is a matter of simply pressing with my thumb. And I never liked pressing down on the mouse wheel because it can turn unless you're careful about applying the pressure (or at least that's what I'm thinking about whenever I have to do it on other mice). Pressing the thumb button is so much easier.
Then earlier this year, my mum took pity on me still using a non-optical mouse and got me a Logitech MX500 mouse. Bleh. For a start, I had to hunt around a lot of web pages to figure out how to map the buttons the way I like. Then I realised the stupidity of having two (not one) thumb buttons, making them thin, and placing them up on the rim of the mouse. So now I not only had to move my thumb, I had to be careful to hit the right one, and I had to apply more pressure because they were much smaller. Think about it, the left and right mouse buttons are nice big pads you can rest your fingers on, so why make the other buttons so small and hard to hit?
---
Actually I recently set up my dad's windows laptop to do something similar. Remove the Acrobat plugin from the Mozilla plugin directory, and set Mozilla to launch Acrobat as an external viewer. He likes it much better than having it embed in the browser. On my Linux box I use GV.
Right.
One boot loader, one window manager, one desktop environment, one web browser, one email reader, one word processor, one media player, etc, etc. Everything else will be sacrificed, and the remainders dumbed-down, all in the name of "user friendliness" so that Linux can attract the "windows people".
But why do we need these people? Linux/FOSS development is still very much non-commercial, so we don't really need their money. And I'm sure very few of them are developers or otherwise able to contribute anything to Linux/FOSS.
So you're suggesting that Linux/FOSS change... for what? Just so that the clueless hordes of windows users come over to our camp? Sounds like a whole lot of work (and other sacrifices) for little or no return. No thanks.
We're a big continent with relatively few people (just passed 20 million recently). So most wired technologies aren't economically feasable outside of the metropolitan centres. The only reason that the bush has any telephone service at all is because Telstra started as a government-owned company (Telecom Australia). Almost half of it has already been sold off (so it's still government controlled) and now it looks certain that the rest will be sold as well. There's been all sorts of promises about maintaining services to the bush, but it's already bad enough and I can only see it getting worse. Deployment of WiMax (or something like it) might be the future of communications in regional areas. Expect to see WiMax/VOIP mobile phones soon. I reckon that's where it's headed - a unified IP network for voice and data.
It really seems to me like tabs SHOULD be the responsibility of the WM. I mean, why build every app (since tabs are so trendy these days) with its own custom tab support.
Just off the top of my head:
WM's typically concern themselves only with stuff around the outside of the window. Having tabs on the outside would probably not match up well with the contents of the app window. And the appearance of the tabs might not look like the widget set of the app.
Just how is it going to be structured? You can go the simple route and have multiple processes, each with their own tab. Or you have to come up with some extra communications channel so that the tabs can all be managed by one app and the WM tells the app when to change tabs.
Unless I'm missing something, a tabbed WM seems to be of limited appeal. Leave tabs in the apps, where the designer has total control over the layout and operation of the interface.
Interesting. I did a few google searches to make sure I was right. I thought all I got were stories about Microsoft vs Apple and how the Lisa and then the Mac were born after Jobs went to Xerox PARC.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you been living under a rock for the last ten years? Of course web programming in PHP is easier than CGI! Just about anything is easier than CGI, not matter what language the CGI script is programmed in. If you want a similar (but more powerful) PHP-like environment for Perl, I highly recommend HTML::Mason. Two other interesting mod_perl environments are AxKit (centred around XML and XSLT) and Catalyst (a tight MVC framework). But they both are rougher to develop on, requiring restarts of Apache to load new code. At least Catalyst provides its own mini server for testing/development purposes.
Any bet you were doing what most MySQL coders do: making tonnes of little, simple queries. MySQL is just great at that sort of workload. It's what it was originally designed for, being essentially a simple SQL interface to the filesystem. Now, I bet you'd get much better performance out of PostgreSQL if you sat down and spent a day (or however long) to rewrite your client logic and queries so that you're making only a few complex queries that spit out everything at once. That's what indexes and the plan optimizer are for. PostgreSQL gives much better performance when you let it create an optimal plan and use appropriate indexes.
Yeah, that always bugs me when people talk of immersive panoramas and light probes. Even worse is calling them a 360x360 degree view. Now, if we're talking long/lat, then wouldn't 360x180 be more accurate?
Oh, and Slashdot filters out HTML entities for some reason. Probably to stop trolls from using them to hide goatse.cx links and the like from the other anti-troll filters in slashcode. It kinda sucks sometimes. I have seen people do accents and umlauts and things on letters, so it seems that something is possible.
Considering that Steve Kerrison from Hexus submitted both stories (but with a difference email address for the previous story) I'd say he's asking for it, literally.
Why are you assuming there won't be an Office 13? Maybe she means that the feature won't be implemented in the next two releases of Office. Gee, hope it wasn't too important...
No, the problem probably is Samba. More specifically, I bet they have a Windows server. Samba is great on a single server or multiple servers. But it's not so great acting as a client to Windows servers, and/or operating as a server with other Windows severs. SMB is a terrible mess after all these years of MS piling stuff on with little regard for future compatablity. And various concepts in Windows don't always map 1:1 with equivalent concepts in Unix/Linux (and vice versa).
Really? Better tell the Debian guys then. They ship their distro for 10 platforms. Then there's the BSD's: NetBSD takes the cake with 49 platforms listed as stable. OpenBSD has 16 platforms and FreeBSD has 9 platforms.
I think you'll find that most software nowadays is written in a high-level language and not for a specific processor. If you have access to that source code and a compiler for your processor, then it doesn't really matter what it is. The big issue in porting is the operating system and GUI (and other) toolkits, not the CPU architecture.
The key word being traditional. You know that the X window system goes back back over twenty years? Hell, X11 just turned eighteen according to that Wikipedia page. A full ten years older than GNOME or KDE. Look back at the original X11 window managers and you'll always find focus-follows-mouse as the default, maybe even the only option. BTW, I use Sawfish with GNOME.
I find click-to-focus is just too cumbersome. It's probably easier for new users because they more likely to move the mouse "out of the way" like you described. I actually use what's called "sloppy focus-follows-mouse". It means I can move the mouse onto the desktop (root window) and not lose *all* focus. You should use multiple virtual desktops if your desktop is getting too cluttered.
Now, what's so great about focus-follows-mouse? The big thing is that I can do stuff without a lot of alt-tabbing or clicking on windows. I can type on any window without bringing them to the front. e.g I can have a window popup (like, say an IM message) and keep it there while I browse the web. I can cut and paste stuff without alt-tabbing or clicking on windows.
Ok. I think I see where you're coming from.
I'm not too impressed with the Ubuntu live CD, but the problem wasn't with the speed of the apps. A local magazine here in Australia (APC) had it on one of their "cover DVD's" and I tried it on my dad's laptop. Choosing the "live" option at the boot menu, it appeared to go through almost the same process as the Debian installer i.e several menus selecting language, keyboard, etc. It was quite a while before we got a desktop up and could try things. Admitedly, it was a combo installation/live DVD, but we were both most unimpressed. Knoppix is still the king as far as live CD's/DVD's are concerned.
Are you on Windows? You have to bare in mind that the GIMP interface was mostly designed for focus-follows-mouse, the traditional focus policy on X11. I have used The GIMP on Windows and it is a pain compared to Linux/X11 because of the different focus policies. It also helps if you have multiple virtual desktops, so you can have a seperate, clean desktop (or several) for working with The GIMP and not clutter the image windows with lots of other windows. I guess this is why people keep whinging for an MDI interface.
Ooh, I'm not so sure I'd like that feature. I almost always open links in new tabs. I then go read those tabs, and close them when I'm finished. I know I'm in a "child" tab when the "go back" button is disabled. Otherwise, I'm in the original "parent" tab and I shouldn't close it. Your suggestion would totally screw up my system!
Oh please, *none* of those three! Why doesn't anyone apart from P2P'ers use XviD/DivX with MP3 sound? Is it just the stigma? No, instead we have to put up with crappy Real/WM/QT video and sound. In fact, why don't they go with H.264/MPEG-4 AVC? It's the future of broadcast television and offers amazing compression. I've just started playing around with x264, and it blows away even XviD! And it will only get better with time. I'm sure the commercial developers have already got a better H.264 implementation. The only problem is that everyone has to install VLC for now. Oh well, just another media player to download, right? And you never know, people might actually like a simple player instead of the all-in-one media *centres* that the other media players have become.
</rant>
The original trollish post seemed (to me) to imply with the mention of O(n) that the get*ent calls were doing an inefficient scan through every username/id, just using PAM/NSS to do the backend work. The GP explained that the name/id query is being passed right through to whatever is doing the lookup. For a machine just using /etc/passwd, that would indeed be a O(n) scan. But it could just as well be an LDAP or SQL server with an index to speed things up. Then it would be more like O(log(n)) or something much nicer.
Hmmm... but the middle button/wheel always seems to have a stronger spring in it than the other buttons. Probably to stop people from *accidentally* doing what you're suggesting (scrolling while pressing the wheel down) when they just want to scroll. After all, Windows (and Mac) hardly uses the third/middle mouse button, so it makes sense to "protect" it that way. So anyway, that's another reason I don't like pressing down on the scroll wheel, it's simply harder. In fact, it's probably why I think the wheel is going to "slip" when I use it as the third/middle mouse button. If it was a moderate tap like the other two buttons, then I could be more confident about operating it without scrolling. But since I have to exert more force, often with my middle finger raised and bent down, I'm afraid about turning the wheel. Bah, I need to stop ranting and go to bed... :P
Gosh, it hasn't even been a month since the last Logitech Slash-vertisment. So I can quote my last rant about the buttons on newer Logitech mice:
---
I have an old Logitech M-BA47 from around 2000. It has a nice thumb button right where I rest my thumb (i.e low). When I first hooked it up, XFree86 mapped it as another middle button. I was happy with that so I never looked into changing it. It works great for me under Linux. Pasting text or opening links in new tabs is a matter of simply pressing with my thumb. And I never liked pressing down on the mouse wheel because it can turn unless you're careful about applying the pressure (or at least that's what I'm thinking about whenever I have to do it on other mice). Pressing the thumb button is so much easier.
Then earlier this year, my mum took pity on me still using a non-optical mouse and got me a Logitech MX500 mouse. Bleh. For a start, I had to hunt around a lot of web pages to figure out how to map the buttons the way I like. Then I realised the stupidity of having two (not one) thumb buttons, making them thin, and placing them up on the rim of the mouse. So now I not only had to move my thumb, I had to be careful to hit the right one, and I had to apply more pressure because they were much smaller. Think about it, the left and right mouse buttons are nice big pads you can rest your fingers on, so why make the other buttons so small and hard to hit?
---
Wow, The USA has moved so far to the right it's sick.
Open your eyes and look around, mate.
It's just a zip file, mate. Nothing magical there. They use it to contain a few XML files, a style sheet, and any attachments.
Actually I recently set up my dad's windows laptop to do something similar. Remove the Acrobat plugin from the Mozilla plugin directory, and set Mozilla to launch Acrobat as an external viewer. He likes it much better than having it embed in the browser. On my Linux box I use GV.
Right.
One boot loader, one window manager, one desktop environment, one web browser, one email reader, one word processor, one media player, etc, etc. Everything else will be sacrificed, and the remainders dumbed-down, all in the name of "user friendliness" so that Linux can attract the "windows people".
But why do we need these people? Linux/FOSS development is still very much non-commercial, so we don't really need their money. And I'm sure very few of them are developers or otherwise able to contribute anything to Linux/FOSS.
So you're suggesting that Linux/FOSS change... for what? Just so that the clueless hordes of windows users come over to our camp? Sounds like a whole lot of work (and other sacrifices) for little or no return. No thanks.
We're a big continent with relatively few people (just passed 20 million recently). So most wired technologies aren't economically feasable outside of the metropolitan centres. The only reason that the bush has any telephone service at all is because Telstra started as a government-owned company (Telecom Australia). Almost half of it has already been sold off (so it's still government controlled) and now it looks certain that the rest will be sold as well. There's been all sorts of promises about maintaining services to the bush, but it's already bad enough and I can only see it getting worse. Deployment of WiMax (or something like it) might be the future of communications in regional areas. Expect to see WiMax/VOIP mobile phones soon. I reckon that's where it's headed - a unified IP network for voice and data.
Just off the top of my head:
Unless I'm missing something, a tabbed WM seems to be of limited appeal. Leave tabs in the apps, where the designer has total control over the layout and operation of the interface.
Interesting. I did a few google searches to make sure I was right. I thought all I got were stories about Microsoft vs Apple and how the Lisa and then the Mac were born after Jobs went to Xerox PARC.
Since when did Gates go to Xerox PARC? It was just Steve Jobs. Get your story right: Apple copied from Xerox PARC, and MS copied from Apple.
Isn't this a dupe of a previous story?