On a 1980s computer, with a more limited set of functions, and a computing public with a lower level of computing knowledge, one mouse button was probably better than two.
Good point. There once was a time when you had to explain to people what double-clicking meant. (And if they had an Atari ST, they had to learn to double-click really really quickly.)
I would add that the day it made sense to have a two-button mouse over a one-button mouse was the day that contextual menus were invented, because that was the first time that a consistent meaning was applied to the second button. Not to pick on my poor old Atari ST, but the uses for the second mouse button varied so much between applications that it was more trouble to try and figure out what it did than use it.
Are you aware that X11 applications have been using three button mice with consistent functions since I don't know when?
What happened is that Microsoft Explorer crashed in a most unfortunate situation, and Mr. Waldman had to scramble under pressure. It was reported that he bashed the new G3's. That was taken out of context. He did say that the "machines" must not be working right, in an attempt to absolve Explorer of any fault. He shouldn't have done that. It looked bad.
So, what happened from what I gathered is that a Microsoft product for the Mac crashed, and Steve Jobs looked bad in an attempt to save Microsoft's face.
Doesn't really seem like a bad thing for Apple, after all... =)
To my experience, OGG does give substantially better quality at a substantially lower bitrate. Last I tried, 64 kbps OGG sounded better than 128 kbps MP3.
Also, I'd care to say that MP3 plays everywhere becuase it is the file format of reference -- not the other way around, as you put it.
As I understand it, it's still not clear if it at all allows for remote execution of code.
However, if it does, it's not just root, it's worse. Since it's a kernel-mode program, it allows for running code in kernel mode. Not that root can't do that, but in this case, you're invited right in.
On the other hand -- really, how many connect to unknown servers using smbfs? It doesn't seem as if this is a great problem.
Indeed -- the reason/usr has the function it has today is because in the days of old, UNIX shipped on two tapes, the root tape and the usr tape. Since/usr was supposed to hold all users' home dirs, the usr tape was much larger than the root tape, and in the long run, the only way to fit everything in the UNIX system was to put the excess on the usr tape. Therefrom comes the idea of just storing the stuff necessary for booting in the directories directly under the root dir, and everything else in/usr.
Simply because there are component-specific fans. If your CPU fan breaks, it doesn't help having 9 case fans for redundancy. Similarly so with your GPU fan.
Thus, it is good to get rid of the component-specific fans.
I don't get it - So you have 10Gbps LAN, and what now? Your PCI-X system only provides 4 Gbps. DDR400 RAM (which is the fastest right now AFAIK) is only 3.2 Gbps. You'd need like 4-band PCI Express just to get the required bus bandwidth, and even then, my 2200+ Athlon XP CPU can still just run arount 3500 instructions per second to process this amount of data, provided it can even get into RAM fast enough.
Seriously, when the LAN bandwidth closes in on that of the L1 cache bandwidth of even the fastest CPUs in existence, what the f* kind of hardware do you need to be able to actually do something with the amount of data you get?
10Gbps LAN has to be something for only the highest-performance servers in existence today, and even they should be more or less saturated by that kind of bandwidth. How long will it take before the hardware on the desktop will even stand a chance to process that much information?
While that may well be so, it gives rise to problems for others. Think of all the poor web developers who still can't even use CSS2 since IE doesn't support it.
It happens to be so that, although 4GHz CPUs exist and RAM prices are fairly low, not everyone actually takes advantage of that.
I for one haven't upgraded my computer since 2001, and all my servers are pre-2000 productions. I've never needed to upgrade them, and I'm happy for that. I'd hate seeing myself being forced to upgrade my hardware just to be able to run the base system.
In particular, all the "ordinary" computer users I know (grandparents, parents and the ordinary classes) - not a single one of them have a CPU running at above 1 GHz and all of them have pre-geforce3 video cards. I think they want to upgrade even less than I do just to upgrade their operating system.
I've seen many comments saying that the codecs will remain proprietary.
How does this work out with the GPL'd framework? AFAIK, the GPL explicitly prevents you from linking proprietary code (that is not part of the standard system libraries) into the running process image of a GPL'd program.
...and all, more proprietary products being GPL'd and all. I love seeing that.
- But -
Just how is Helix actually better than MPlayer, Xine, gstreamer, etc.? I mean, MPlayer and Xine are probably the most mature stand-alone players there are right now, and gstreamer provides probably the best architecture I've seen, and it's also integrated throughout GNOME (and soon KDE as well, as I've heard). Just what advantages does Helix provide over these?
You really thought so? Is it news to you that Mozilla is a memory hog? My Mozilla (suite) normally takes around 50-100 MBs, and right now, FireFox 0.9 is taking more than 100 MBs of RSS mem (almost 200 MBs mapped).
Even more importantly though (from parent's link):
Apache Webserver, PHP, Control software Roundshot Digital, JAVA 2 Runtime, Textpad, various service programs
Open source Livecam software under GNU licence
If you don't mind, would you explain (for someone like me who hasn't used any MS programs in at least two years) just what is so good about VS.NET?
See, I was using MSVC 5.0 before I left that platform, and once I got a taste of the development platform (including emacs, that is;-) ) on Linux, I really can't say that I've looked back to IDEs at all. Thus, could you explain just what is so good about it?
I don't understand what all this is about - everyone keeps saying there's no easy way to turn it off. On all systems with GNOME 2.6 that I've installed, you can just choose "Browse Filesystem" from the main menu, and you have a "browser-like" Nautilus. What's wrong with that?
And on a side note, call me strange, but I really do like the spatial interface, especially the way it remembers the position and size of all directories. If you have too many levels of hierarchy... well, that's what Ctrl+Shift+W is for.
That may well be, but lack of addresses is not the primary problem. The problem is that these available addresses are scattered all over the address space which makes routing much harder for each new address block that gets allocated.
That's the greatest promise of IPv6 - ISPs will no longer have to divide their customers over a couple of hundred individual address blocks spread over distant areas of the IPv4 space - it's kinda like running defrag over the address space, only that this time it won't become fragmented again after just a little extra use.
Oh, come on? Don't tell me you've never got a STOP error in Win2k+? The first time I ever used Win2k, I got one within the first 30 minutes by running a DOS program. After that, I've got them every now and then, with standard drivers. Admittedly, it isn't often (but then again, I don't use Windows very often at all these days - maybe once a month when I'm not at home or something like that), but I've only got a single kernel panic on Linux - ever - when not running experimental kernels.
In Win2k, there's even a provocable STOP error - take a Linux box and ping the Win2k box over IrDA, and it will STOP.
I haven't seen one of those since win95...
Surely, you must at least have seen them on 98/ME? In my experience, 95 was the most stable in that line.
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So, what happened from what I gathered is that a Microsoft product for the Mac crashed, and Steve Jobs looked bad in an attempt to save Microsoft's face.
Doesn't really seem like a bad thing for Apple, after all... =)
This report is from 1999. Did OSX even exist then? Was that demo to demonstrate a preview version of OSX or was it a demo of OS9?
Also, I'd care to say that MP3 plays everywhere becuase it is the file format of reference -- not the other way around, as you put it.
Actually, it's more like replacing a car because a windshield wiper blade has worn out and cannot be replaced.
However, if it does, it's not just root, it's worse. Since it's a kernel-mode program, it allows for running code in kernel mode. Not that root can't do that, but in this case, you're invited right in.
On the other hand -- really, how many connect to unknown servers using smbfs? It doesn't seem as if this is a great problem.
Indeed -- the reason /usr has the function it has today is because in the days of old, UNIX shipped on two tapes, the root tape and the usr tape. Since /usr was supposed to hold all users' home dirs, the usr tape was much larger than the root tape, and in the long run, the only way to fit everything in the UNIX system was to put the excess on the usr tape. Therefrom comes the idea of just storing the stuff necessary for booting in the directories directly under the root dir, and everything else in /usr.
Thus, it is good to get rid of the component-specific fans.
...is such a relative word. :-/
Seriously, when the LAN bandwidth closes in on that of the L1 cache bandwidth of even the fastest CPUs in existence, what the f* kind of hardware do you need to be able to actually do something with the amount of data you get?
10Gbps LAN has to be something for only the highest-performance servers in existence today, and even they should be more or less saturated by that kind of bandwidth. How long will it take before the hardware on the desktop will even stand a chance to process that much information?
Yes, I agree that that would be very nice, but try to convince Microsoft about that...
It would be nice if, finally, the Flash plugin doesn't take my entire Mozilla session with it everytime it dies.
Then wait until you hear this - from what I've heard, this Linux thing is actually free!
While that may well be so, it gives rise to problems for others. Think of all the poor web developers who still can't even use CSS2 since IE doesn't support it.
I for one haven't upgraded my computer since 2001, and all my servers are pre-2000 productions. I've never needed to upgrade them, and I'm happy for that. I'd hate seeing myself being forced to upgrade my hardware just to be able to run the base system.
In particular, all the "ordinary" computer users I know (grandparents, parents and the ordinary classes) - not a single one of them have a CPU running at above 1 GHz and all of them have pre-geforce3 video cards. I think they want to upgrade even less than I do just to upgrade their operating system.
Well, I dunno. I was merely wondering how it works out.
How does this work out with the GPL'd framework? AFAIK, the GPL explicitly prevents you from linking proprietary code (that is not part of the standard system libraries) into the running process image of a GPL'd program.
...and all, more proprietary products being GPL'd and all. I love seeing that. - But - Just how is Helix actually better than MPlayer, Xine, gstreamer, etc.? I mean, MPlayer and Xine are probably the most mature stand-alone players there are right now, and gstreamer provides probably the best architecture I've seen, and it's also integrated throughout GNOME (and soon KDE as well, as I've heard). Just what advantages does Helix provide over these?
You really thought so? Is it news to you that Mozilla is a memory hog? My Mozilla (suite) normally takes around 50-100 MBs, and right now, FireFox 0.9 is taking more than 100 MBs of RSS mem (almost 200 MBs mapped).
See, I was using MSVC 5.0 before I left that platform, and once I got a taste of the development platform (including emacs, that is ;-) ) on Linux, I really can't say that I've looked back to IDEs at all. Thus, could you explain just what is so good about it?
Not trying to flame, just curious.
Was it just me who got a commerical for M$'s Get the FUD "campaign" on my first visit to the site?
And on a side note, call me strange, but I really do like the spatial interface, especially the way it remembers the position and size of all directories. If you have too many levels of hierarchy... well, that's what Ctrl+Shift+W is for.
That's the greatest promise of IPv6 - ISPs will no longer have to divide their customers over a couple of hundred individual address blocks spread over distant areas of the IPv4 space - it's kinda like running defrag over the address space, only that this time it won't become fragmented again after just a little extra use.
In Win2k, there's even a provocable STOP error - take a Linux box and ping the Win2k box over IrDA, and it will STOP.
Surely, you must at least have seen them on 98/ME? In my experience, 95 was the most stable in that line.