Maybe now, slashdotters understand that they should have voted "Law" in the resent poll "What Would Benefit Most By Adopting an Open-Source Development Method?"
Anything can be fixed by Law. FBI refuses to let scientists analyze the accuracy of their DNA statistics? Simply introduce a law that forces them to open up their DNA databases.
Only problem, of course, is that everybody will have equal powers over the law, including FBI people and other crooks.
Many people here seem to be under the impression that it's the Étoilé project that compares themselves with OS X. It's not, at least not in the context of this specific release. The only place the official release note mentions Mac OS is here;
This release includes improvements to the Camaelon theme engine, providing a clean and modern appearance to GNUstep-based applications. This is combined with the Étoilé Menu Server, providing a horizontal menu bar similar to that found in Mac OS, and making this the first Étoilé release with enough features in place to be usable on a daily basis.
Of course, the fact that Étoilé is pushing a horizontal global menu means/. has to come up with an sensational headline like this.
When beating and raping people is seen as a lesser crime than copying certain combinations of 1s and 0s, this are both cruel, and soon getting all to usual! [emphasize mine]
Obviously, you didn't read your own wiki-linky very well. At the start of the longish definition part of that page, it clearly states that (in the U.S.) cruel punishments are absolutely fine as long as they happen often. Therefore, I don't see why you're upset with this cruelness becoming more common. From the Wiki entry;
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that as written it applies only to punishments that are both cruel and unusual, and that punishments that are unusual but not cruel, or cruel but not unusual, are constitutional.
The article mentions two times that each side of the screen runs its own operating system. Is this really so? I think it's more likely that it simply lets two users log in at once. Running different copies of the OS would require virtualization, twice as much RAM, and would suck more CPU power. Not to mention the part about moving the mouse cursor over to the other half. If it's not within the same operating system, this would probably need to be network transparent, meaning you could just as well move your cursor over to a screen in the next building. I find it unlikely that they bothered to implement this, so it adds to my suspicion that the article is wrong about the two operating systems.
Also, like others mentioned, it would be a lot more useful to hook up an extra monitor than splitting the screen. Two 15" monitors would probably even be cheaper than one 17". You avoid the vertical split that makes the screen real estate hopeless to work with, and you sit at a comfortable distance apart. If the idea behind the project is actually productized, I guess they'll end up adding support for utilizing separate video cards.
Oh, and one more thing. What does the license for MS Office say about two people using the same copy simultaneously? Within the same running instance of Windows.
This is GRT's first step toward a commercially viable air capture device.
Such a device already exists! In the movie Spaceballs, it was used to capture all of the air surrounding an entire planet. Congrats for reinventing 1987 technology, GRT!
No shit! AJR32 isn't even the name of a program. No wonder it executes fast, and your faith must be stronger than Yoda's if it has any effect on your file size at all.
C:\>AJR32 "My Crappy Document.doc" 'AJR32' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
Boy, are the Mozilla folks trigger happy with their version numbers lately. I thought they went pretty fast from 1.5 to 2.0, and expected them to slow down after that. With 2.0.0.3 as latest release, they're suddenly ready to go 3.0? WTF?
Actually, the very first thought I had after the first sentence of the summary was that Lisp would be a much better match than XML for something like this. The moment you try to treat code as data, you can be sure Lisp is what you want, although I believe Rebol (http://www.rebol.com/) tries to do something similar.
Unless you use the --delete option, using an empty folder as the source will do no harm. Dry runs are still very handy, to check for instance that you're not duplicating a whole directory because it was moved since the last sync. I use --delete only occasionally, and always carfully study a dry run first.
Ah, thanks for the explaination.
I know plists from NeXTstep and GNUstep, where they have a textual format which is simpler than XML. Didn't know that OS X used a binary format (yuck), nor that it had introduced XML into the picture.
The XML vs. flat file debate has been fought all over the web, so I won't rehash it here, but I think the benefits of machine-parseability are worth it and it uses Apple's standard plist format, so it is consistent the rest of the OS.
I don't understand, does launchd use XML or plist for configuration?
This explaination of NSAutoreleasePool is wrong. The parent seems to think that the point of an autorelease pool is to release a number of objects by releasing the pool itself.
Typically, an application will create an autorelease pool on startup and use that single pool for the rest of its life time. After the main loop exits, the application might call [pool release] for the sake of good habit, but it's not really necessary since this is at the very end of the program, and all memory is freed on exit anyway.
The real point of autorelease pools is to let a method say; "I want this object to be released when my callers are done with it." Remember that releasing an object does not necessarily mean destroying it. It means to decrement its retain-count, and if the count reaches zero, kill it.
The way this happens is probably like the parent describes - the autorelease pool adds the object to an internal array, and releases it once because the array retains it. At some later point the pool is told do the promised release of the objects, so it empties the array, meaning that every object in there is released. Here comes the important part; this "some later point" needs to be at a time when it is guaranteed that all of the callers to the original method have had their chance to retain the object, so a good time to do it is when the call stack has unwinded all the way up to the main loop. That is, the main loop tells the autorelease pool to do its thing once per iteration.
The grand-parent asked:
I'm confused... I thought that ObjC did have garbage collection...
isn't that what the Autorelease pool is for? or is this more automatic?
The answer to that is;
There have for a long time been some GC libraries for ObjC, but none were part of Cocoa.
Cocoa's autorelease pools have nothing to do with GC, all they do is let a method ask for a delayed decrementation of an object's retain-count.
I predict that Google will take up the fight with bookspot, sonicspot, gourmetspot, blogspot, f-spot, teenspot, sciencespot, wetspot, botspot, and findyourspot by creating the all mighty GSpot.
You got the HD and LCD percentages from different charts. When the HD consumes 15% the LCD consumes 19% (when the disk spins up, the percentages for the other parts go down), which is not so far apart. If you turned down the LCD so it only used 7% (actually this would be lower as well, still because of the increased HD consumption), the HD would draw approximately 20%.
19% -> 5% for the LCD is a good thing, and so is 15% -> 2% for the HD. I pulled 2 and 5 out of the air there, though.
Let's just say that all the parts that draw about 10% (LCD, HDD, CPU, GPU, wireless, etc) are worth making more efficient.
So all the fancy, new wave FS features are basically not suited for the storage devices of the future. Sounds like FAT is going to raise from its grave:p
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe now, slashdotters understand that they should have voted "Law" in the resent poll "What Would Benefit Most By Adopting an Open-Source Development Method?"
Anything can be fixed by Law. FBI refuses to let scientists analyze the accuracy of their DNA statistics? Simply introduce a law that forces them to open up their DNA databases.
Only problem, of course, is that everybody will have equal powers over the law, including FBI people and other crooks.
In the US you kill presentations, in Soviet Russia presentations kill you!
Both places, bullets kill people, though, so banning bullets might be a good idea after all...
Many people here seem to be under the impression that it's the Étoilé project that compares themselves with OS X. It's not, at least not in the context of this specific release. The only place the official release note mentions Mac OS is here;
Of course, the fact that Étoilé is pushing a horizontal global menu means /. has to come up with an sensational headline like this.
the Dark Force has finally determined to rip our world apart?
I've been waiting for this in terror since 1977.
Obviously, you didn't read your own wiki-linky very well. At the start of the longish definition part of that page, it clearly states that (in the U.S.) cruel punishments are absolutely fine as long as they happen often. Therefore, I don't see why you're upset with this cruelness becoming more common. From the Wiki entry;
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that as written it applies only to punishments that are both cruel and unusual, and that punishments that are unusual but not cruel, or cruel but not unusual, are constitutional.No, nobody from your homeworld can read this, they don't even know how to turn on a computer, remember?
The article mentions two times that each side of the screen runs its own operating system. Is this really so? I think it's more likely that it simply lets two users log in at once. Running different copies of the OS would require virtualization, twice as much RAM, and would suck more CPU power. Not to mention the part about moving the mouse cursor over to the other half. If it's not within the same operating system, this would probably need to be network transparent, meaning you could just as well move your cursor over to a screen in the next building. I find it unlikely that they bothered to implement this, so it adds to my suspicion that the article is wrong about the two operating systems.
Also, like others mentioned, it would be a lot more useful to hook up an extra monitor than splitting the screen. Two 15" monitors would probably even be cheaper than one 17". You avoid the vertical split that makes the screen real estate hopeless to work with, and you sit at a comfortable distance apart. If the idea behind the project is actually productized, I guess they'll end up adding support for utilizing separate video cards.
Oh, and one more thing. What does the license for MS Office say about two people using the same copy simultaneously? Within the same running instance of Windows.
This is GRT's first step toward a commercially viable air capture device.
Such a device already exists! In the movie Spaceballs, it was used to capture all of the air surrounding an entire planet. Congrats for reinventing 1987 technology, GRT!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceballsNo shit! AJR32 isn't even the name of a program. No wonder it executes fast, and your faith must be stronger than Yoda's if it has any effect on your file size at all.
Look at it from the bright side; Bono and The Edge will be stuck on a single scene for as long as this play is rolling =P
Boy, are the Mozilla folks trigger happy with their version numbers lately. I thought they went pretty fast from 1.5 to 2.0, and expected them to slow down after that. With 2.0.0.3 as latest release, they're suddenly ready to go 3.0? WTF?
Even though I expected the screen to be a tad bigger and Chris++ to be a bit more high level...
...imagine a Beowulf cluster of these cigar boxen!!!1!!1
Still not short enough for me though. [...] Furthermore, I'm not sure it makes ANY sense to have commands in XML.
I bet you'll find this article at least a little bit interesting; http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html
Actually, the very first thought I had after the first sentence of the summary was that Lisp would be a much better match than XML for something like this. The moment you try to treat code as data, you can be sure Lisp is what you want, although I believe Rebol (http://www.rebol.com/) tries to do something similar.
Maybe now you see what having positive karma is good for?
Unless you use the --delete option, using an empty folder as the source will do no harm. Dry runs are still very handy, to check for instance that you're not duplicating a whole directory because it was moved since the last sync. I use --delete only occasionally, and always carfully study a dry run first.
Ah, thanks for the explaination. I know plists from NeXTstep and GNUstep, where they have a textual format which is simpler than XML. Didn't know that OS X used a binary format (yuck), nor that it had introduced XML into the picture.
The XML vs. flat file debate has been fought all over the web, so I won't rehash it here, but I think the benefits of machine-parseability are worth it and it uses Apple's standard plist format, so it is consistent the rest of the OS.
I don't understand, does launchd use XML or plist for configuration?
This explaination of NSAutoreleasePool is wrong. The parent seems to think that the point of an autorelease pool is to release a number of objects by releasing the pool itself.
Typically, an application will create an autorelease pool on startup and use that single pool for the rest of its life time. After the main loop exits, the application might call [pool release] for the sake of good habit, but it's not really necessary since this is at the very end of the program, and all memory is freed on exit anyway.
The real point of autorelease pools is to let a method say; "I want this object to be released when my callers are done with it." Remember that releasing an object does not necessarily mean destroying it. It means to decrement its retain-count, and if the count reaches zero, kill it.
The way this happens is probably like the parent describes - the autorelease pool adds the object to an internal array, and releases it once because the array retains it. At some later point the pool is told do the promised release of the objects, so it empties the array, meaning that every object in there is released. Here comes the important part; this "some later point" needs to be at a time when it is guaranteed that all of the callers to the original method have had their chance to retain the object, so a good time to do it is when the call stack has unwinded all the way up to the main loop. That is, the main loop tells the autorelease pool to do its thing once per iteration.
The grand-parent asked:I'm confused... I thought that ObjC did have garbage collection...
isn't that what the Autorelease pool is for? or is this more automatic?
The answer to that is;
I predict that Google will take up the fight with bookspot, sonicspot, gourmetspot, blogspot, f-spot, teenspot, sciencespot, wetspot, botspot, and findyourspot by creating the all mighty GSpot.
You got the HD and LCD percentages from different charts. When the HD consumes 15% the LCD consumes 19% (when the disk spins up, the percentages for the other parts go down), which is not so far apart. If you turned down the LCD so it only used 7% (actually this would be lower as well, still because of the increased HD consumption), the HD would draw approximately 20%. 19% -> 5% for the LCD is a good thing, and so is 15% -> 2% for the HD. I pulled 2 and 5 out of the air there, though. Let's just say that all the parts that draw about 10% (LCD, HDD, CPU, GPU, wireless, etc) are worth making more efficient.
So all the fancy, new wave FS features are basically not suited for the storage devices of the future. Sounds like FAT is going to raise from its grave :p
Yeah, reheating coffee - that just has to be what this practical tool was *really* invented for.
That's dual 2GHz to you, Mr. Chip Speed.
So, the almost credible story you mention would be this:
All I see is bitching, whining and moaning from a people who've never used it.
Yeah, a real shame that fine story went down the drain.
and of course, when the VHS recorder was introduced in the 80's, the movie makers were doomed and saw the writing on the wall