Well, I have an ATI card and all I had to do to get 3D acceleration was run
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
and restart X, but I don't deny that hardware compatibility is an issue with Linux. Software compatibility is an issue, too; there's no Photoshop or Half-Life 2 for Linux. Incompatibility is the problem I said meant "Linux is still behind Windows in some areas", and in my opinion, compatibility is in fact the only reason to run Windows at all.
My reply and my bafflement were not directed specifically at you. To me, your post represented an irritating trend among Slashdot Windows users dabbling in GNOME: that of their declaring, "its not tehj w indow". I remember someone wrote in a story, for example, that GNOME 2.12 was looking good but that it was still "miles behind Windows". There's only so long I can be astonished by a pattern of idiocy before I pick someone I think symbolizes it and attack them. You were that someone, so consider my annoyance accumulated over time by many comments rather than created all at once by yours.
XP lacks package management (.msi)
I thought you might point this out, but it really only validates my complaint: XP is behind Linux. If you honestly believe that Windows' package management compares in any mildly favourable way to.deb/apt-get/Synaptic, you need your crack dealer to disappear in a mysterious traffic accident and therefore not sell you any more crack.
I optimized Mozilla but clicking through tabs has a noticeable laggy nature.
Very true. This is a Firefox problem, and if you check the 1.5 beta you'll find it's been fixed somewhat. If it annoys you too much, you should try Epiphany, which is much, much faster, but lacks some Firefox features.
Look, I'm not blind to Linux's faults. Really. They are plentiful. But Windows is just awful, and having switched from it precisely because I find it inferior, I have trouble accepting reflexive, dismissive comments of its superiority. The main thing I want to defend here is GNOME, which, while itself not perfect by any means, is better designed than anything else out there save Mac OS.
Am I the only one who likes GNOME/Ubuntu more than XP? Am I the only one who finds using XP irritating because it lacks a whole range of usability features such as virtual desktops, actual attractiveness, package management, a control panel that requires less than a dozen clicks to do anything, text file and PDF icons that indicate their content, a way to mount ISOs without hacks like Alcohol and useful, configurable panels? Linux is still behind Windows in some areas, but in usability it is in many ways ahead, so I have to look at comments like these with incredularity.
The main pitfalls of Ubuntu are oversights in out-of-the-box functionality, which, I admit, are oversights nonetheless. For example, there has been an mplayer plugin for Mozilla around for ages that does precisely what you describe, but it wasn't included. For Real, there's RealPlayer and its plugin; you have to get it from the universe repository. Recently, a Totem plugin for Firefox and Epiphany was released; I expect it will be bundled with Breezy, but at the moment you have to install it with Ubuntu Backports and a strategically placed symlink. Others, such as the unfortunate lack of a clipboard daemon in Hoary and the default of spatial mode for Nautilus, can also be easily fixed, but shouldn't really require fixing to begin with.
Yet these problems are both more repairable and less significant than XP's pervasive poverty of usability. I would much rather use GNOME or OS X than Windows; your comment that Ubuntu is "not XP" is either a compliment or really baffling criticism. Thank God it's not XP!
Yes, of course; I did that to get OpenOffice.org 1.1.4. Just change
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted universe multiverse
to
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy main restricted universe multiverse
do an
apt-get update
and install the package you want. The problem is that upgrading something like GNOME will replace a lot of dependencies as well -- so much so that you'll have in large part upgraded to Breezy, which, as you know, is unstable.
Can you wait a month?
Site seems down; here's that article's text
on
Supernova 1987A Decoded
·
· Score: 5, Informative
24 August 2005
Supernova 1987A Decoded
Supernova 1987A is the closest supernova event since the invention of the telescope. It was first seen in February 1987 in the nearby Magellanic cloud, a dwarf companion galaxy of the Milky Way, and only 169,000 light years from Earth. Close observation since 1987 has now provided proof that supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star.
>> IMAGE CAPTION: The enigmatic and beautiful structure of SN1987A with its three axial rings. The brightening of the equatorial ring is obvious. The two bright stars are just in the field of view and are not associated with the supernova.
A supernova is one of the most energetic events witnessed in the universe. The accepted explanation is that it occurs at the end of a star's lifetime, or red giant stage, when the star's nuclear fuel is exhausted. There is no more release of nuclear energy in the core so the huge star collapses in on itself. If sufficiently massive, the imploding layers of the star are thought to rebound when they hit the core, resulting in an explosion, and the blast wave ejects the star's envelope into interstellar space. The bright equatorial ring is caused by the collision of exploded matter from the star with the remnants of an earlier stellar "wind." The two faint rings are a problem. The best that theorists have been able to manage is to postulate some kind of rotating beam from an assumed supernova remnant, sweeping and lighting up a shell of gas expelled at an earlier epoch. The ad hoc nature of these explanations is obvious.
The detection of a pulsar remnant after some supernovae is explained by the implosion of the stellar core to produce a neutron star. Pulsars emit bursts of radiation up to thousands of times a second. It is believed that a pulsar must be a super-collapsed stellar object that can spin up to thousands of times a second and emit a rotating beam of X-rays (like a lighthouse). Commonsense suggests that this mechanical model is wrong when some pulsars rev beyond the redline, even for such a bizarre object.
A recent example of conventional thinking can be seen on the Chandra website. On August 17, a news story was posted: Supernova 1987A: Fast Forward to the Past.
Recent Chandra observations have revealed new details about the fiery ring surrounding the stellar explosion that produced Supernova 1987A. The data give insight into the behavior of the doomed star in the years before it exploded, and indicate that the predicted spectacular brightening of the circumstellar ring has begun.. The site of the explosion was traced to the location of a blue supergiant star called Sanduleak -69Â 202 (SK -69 for short) that had a mass estimated at approximately 20 Suns.
Subsequent optical, ultraviolet and X-ray observations have enabled astronomers to piece together the following scenario for SK -69: about ten million years ago the star formed out of a dark, dense, cloud of dust and gas; roughly a million years ago, the star lost most of its outer layers in a slowly moving stellar wind that formed a vast cloud of gas around it; before the star exploded, a high-speed wind blowing off its hot surface carved out a cavity in the cool gas cloud.
The intense flash of ultraviolet light from the supernova illuminated the edge of this cavity to produce the bright ring seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. In the meantime the supernova explosion sent a shock wave rumbling through the cavity. In 1999, Chandra imaged this shock wave, and astronomers have waited expectantly for the shock wave to hit the edge of the cavity, where it would encounter the much denser gas deposited by the red supergiant wind, and produce a dramatic increase in X-radiation.
The latest data from Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope indicate that this much-anticipated event has begun. Optical hot-spots now encircle the ring like a necklace of incandescent diamonds. The Chandra image reveals multimillion-degree gas at the location
I think it's fairly easy to know where they went. Because they were "different" than modern humans, with lower technology levels, we simply killed them off for trying to take our resources.
We wouldn't have needed to actually kill them. Both Neanderthals and humans would have competed for the same food; because of our higher intelligence, we would have gotten it and they wouldn't have as a result. Neanderthals probably died because of us, true, but we needn't have directly killed them.
Or was it "chinko wo nametakatta"? It's just as easy for me to believe, you hot Slashdot nerd, you.
Being more serious, how do you think humans learn the rudiments of language? It's pattern analysis, i.e. precisely the technique this algorithm tries to replicate. It is true that the algorithm won't then progress onto the next stage, which is using that rudimentary grasp of the language to be taught its finer points, but if you genuinely doubt the capacity of this method to produce an understanding of language you are contesting the experiences of every human on the planet.
Returning to your example, "I really wanted to see you tonight" is what you discerned that sentence meant from its context. You can hardly expect a machine translator to know that it was a woman you were out with at night who said it (which seems to be the basis for your insertion of "tonight", "really" and "you"); fortunately, this algorithm is intended to translate written, not spoken, language. Since writing would have to include that detail (in order to be independent of its context), the problem you identified is not even relevant.
Even though he said it was "well seen" he didn't bother showing it to us? Even though the ONLY THING SLASHDOT DOES IS LINK TO OTHER SITES IT STILL FAILS AT IT?!?!?
Really, we should defer to the UK's right to name its own institutions and call it the "Ministry of Defence", just like Pearl Harbor should not be "Pearl Harbour" or "Perl Harbor" (as I've been admittedly prone to think).
They're current opteron hardware sales have been growing fast.
"They are current opteron hardware sales have been growing fast"? Wah?
Did you mean: "They-are-current opteron hardware sales [lists say they] have been growing fast"? Or: "They are current [with their opteron hardware]; their opteron hardware sales have been growing fast"?
Or, maybe, you meant: "Their current opteron hardware sales have been growing fast"?
Well, the profit might come from context-sensitive AdSense ads for all the sites you visit using Google's free Wi-Fi - that is, the same way Google makes billions out of free search and free email.
I'm personally not sure that it would work, but I am sure that's how Google would want it to.
As I commented here, it probably means that no new mod points are being given out, and that only people who already have them or are editors can moderate. Well, it's an April Fools day type of Slashdot fun - that is to say that it sucks.
Thanks, that worked. I understand what that error is, as well: baidu.com suddenly disconnected. Eerie. I guess I searched with different characters, yet it returns results, and my search for freedom returned the same results as the original poster's.
The great grandparent likes to affirm himself anonymously, methinks.
After all, convincing Firefox to raise an error is a suspiciously clunky form of censorship.
Okay, you're a troll, and you've not been modded anywhere. What the hell is going on with moderation? For my karma-whoring theory, oh, wait, well, read on anyway.
Observations and Explanations
Allofthesestorieshavenorepliesmodded higher than 3, which perhaps amounts to just the editors or people who already had mod points moderating. I suggest no one else is being offered points.
Conclusions
No doubt I won't be rewarded for my astonishing insight.
Perhaps the most popular feature about Baidu that Google does not support is the MP3 search. This is very similar with the image search of Google, however, it searches for MP3/WMA/SWF files instead of image files. The MP3 search are mainly used for Chinese Pop Music, and the search results are surprisingly accurate. Though it's illegal in most of the world, Baidu can do this as the Chinese law doesn't prohibit putting music on the internet, and Baidu is under Chinese law.
So, considering that searching and organizing pirated material is one of Baidu's most popular features, it's not surprising that they've been sued by copyright holders. This case should be an interesting test of the Chinese judiciary's commitment to intellectual property.
Can anyone here tell me what Baidu.com is actually like as a search engine, in terms of quality and accuracy of results, compared to Google and Yahoo? Why is it popular? I'm really curious.
It's true that the tresspassing part of the analogy is invalid. On the other hand, capitalizing on the generosity of the doorman to intentionally steal from inside the house is what the wireless hijacker is actually in trouble for. As I pointed out elsewhere, the intentions of the hijacker are really, really important in deciding their guilt in something that can easily be done by accident.
Slashdot Mirror
My reply and my bafflement were not directed specifically at you. To me, your post represented an irritating trend among Slashdot Windows users dabbling in GNOME: that of their declaring, "its not tehj w indow". I remember someone wrote in a story, for example, that GNOME 2.12 was looking good but that it was still "miles behind Windows". There's only so long I can be astonished by a pattern of idiocy before I pick someone I think symbolizes it and attack them. You were that someone, so consider my annoyance accumulated over time by many comments rather than created all at once by yours.
XP lacks package management (.msi)
I thought you might point this out, but it really only validates my complaint: XP is behind Linux. If you honestly believe that Windows' package management compares in any mildly favourable way to
I optimized Mozilla but clicking through tabs has a noticeable laggy nature.
Very true. This is a Firefox problem, and if you check the 1.5 beta you'll find it's been fixed somewhat. If it annoys you too much, you should try Epiphany, which is much, much faster, but lacks some Firefox features.
Look, I'm not blind to Linux's faults. Really. They are plentiful. But Windows is just awful, and having switched from it precisely because I find it inferior, I have trouble accepting reflexive, dismissive comments of its superiority. The main thing I want to defend here is GNOME, which, while itself not perfect by any means, is better designed than anything else out there save Mac OS.
Am I the only one who likes GNOME/Ubuntu more than XP? Am I the only one who finds using XP irritating because it lacks a whole range of usability features such as virtual desktops, actual attractiveness, package management, a control panel that requires less than a dozen clicks to do anything, text file and PDF icons that indicate their content, a way to mount ISOs without hacks like Alcohol and useful, configurable panels? Linux is still behind Windows in some areas, but in usability it is in many ways ahead, so I have to look at comments like these with incredularity.
The main pitfalls of Ubuntu are oversights in out-of-the-box functionality, which, I admit, are oversights nonetheless. For example, there has been an mplayer plugin for Mozilla around for ages that does precisely what you describe, but it wasn't included. For Real, there's RealPlayer and its plugin; you have to get it from the universe repository. Recently, a Totem plugin for Firefox and Epiphany was released; I expect it will be bundled with Breezy, but at the moment you have to install it with Ubuntu Backports and a strategically placed symlink. Others, such as the unfortunate lack of a clipboard daemon in Hoary and the default of spatial mode for Nautilus, can also be easily fixed, but shouldn't really require fixing to begin with.
Yet these problems are both more repairable and less significant than XP's pervasive poverty of usability. I would much rather use GNOME or OS X than Windows; your comment that Ubuntu is "not XP" is either a compliment or really baffling criticism. Thank God it's not XP!
Can you wait a month?
24 August 2005 Supernova 1987A Decoded
Supernova 1987A is the closest supernova event since the invention of the telescope. It was first seen in February 1987 in the nearby Magellanic cloud, a dwarf companion galaxy of the Milky Way, and only 169,000 light years from Earth. Close observation since 1987 has now provided proof that supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star.
>> IMAGE CAPTION: The enigmatic and beautiful structure of SN1987A with its three axial rings. The brightening of the equatorial ring is obvious. The two bright stars are just in the field of view and are not associated with the supernova.
A supernova is one of the most energetic events witnessed in the universe. The accepted explanation is that it occurs at the end of a star's lifetime, or red giant stage, when the star's nuclear fuel is exhausted. There is no more release of nuclear energy in the core so the huge star collapses in on itself. If sufficiently massive, the imploding layers of the star are thought to rebound when they hit the core, resulting in an explosion, and the blast wave ejects the star's envelope into interstellar space. The bright equatorial ring is caused by the collision of exploded matter from the star with the remnants of an earlier stellar "wind." The two faint rings are a problem. The best that theorists have been able to manage is to postulate some kind of rotating beam from an assumed supernova remnant, sweeping and lighting up a shell of gas expelled at an earlier epoch. The ad hoc nature of these explanations is obvious.
The detection of a pulsar remnant after some supernovae is explained by the implosion of the stellar core to produce a neutron star. Pulsars emit bursts of radiation up to thousands of times a second. It is believed that a pulsar must be a super-collapsed stellar object that can spin up to thousands of times a second and emit a rotating beam of X-rays (like a lighthouse). Commonsense suggests that this mechanical model is wrong when some pulsars rev beyond the redline, even for such a bizarre object.
A recent example of conventional thinking can be seen on the Chandra website. On August 17, a news story was posted: Supernova 1987A: Fast Forward to the Past.
Recent Chandra observations have revealed new details about the fiery ring surrounding the stellar explosion that produced Supernova 1987A. The data give insight into the behavior of the doomed star in the years before it exploded, and indicate that the predicted spectacular brightening of the circumstellar ring has begun.. The site of the explosion was traced to the location of a blue supergiant star called Sanduleak -69Â 202 (SK -69 for short) that had a mass estimated at approximately 20 Suns.
Subsequent optical, ultraviolet and X-ray observations have enabled astronomers to piece together the following scenario for SK -69: about ten million years ago the star formed out of a dark, dense, cloud of dust and gas; roughly a million years ago, the star lost most of its outer layers in a slowly moving stellar wind that formed a vast cloud of gas around it; before the star exploded, a high-speed wind blowing off its hot surface carved out a cavity in the cool gas cloud.
The intense flash of ultraviolet light from the supernova illuminated the edge of this cavity to produce the bright ring seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. In the meantime the supernova explosion sent a shock wave rumbling through the cavity. In 1999, Chandra imaged this shock wave, and astronomers have waited expectantly for the shock wave to hit the edge of the cavity, where it would encounter the much denser gas deposited by the red supergiant wind, and produce a dramatic increase in X-radiation.
The latest data from Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope indicate that this much-anticipated event has begun. Optical hot-spots now encircle the ring like a necklace of incandescent diamonds. The Chandra image reveals multimillion-degree gas at the location
Here's a text-only copy of the site from Google. It's a shame about the pictures, but at least his captions are descriptive.
I think it's fairly easy to know where they went. Because they were "different" than modern humans, with lower technology levels, we simply killed them off for trying to take our resources.
We wouldn't have needed to actually kill them. Both Neanderthals and humans would have competed for the same food; because of our higher intelligence, we would have gotten it and they wouldn't have as a result. Neanderthals probably died because of us, true, but we needn't have directly killed them.
Actually, they weren't thinking about noodles.
I don't know, is it a joke to write "WOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!" instead of "WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!", as it would be correctly spelled?
Or was it "chinko wo nametakatta"? It's just as easy for me to believe, you hot Slashdot nerd, you.
Being more serious, how do you think humans learn the rudiments of language? It's pattern analysis, i.e. precisely the technique this algorithm tries to replicate. It is true that the algorithm won't then progress onto the next stage, which is using that rudimentary grasp of the language to be taught its finer points, but if you genuinely doubt the capacity of this method to produce an understanding of language you are contesting the experiences of every human on the planet.
Returning to your example, "I really wanted to see you tonight" is what you discerned that sentence meant from its context. You can hardly expect a machine translator to know that it was a woman you were out with at night who said it (which seems to be the basis for your insertion of "tonight", "really" and "you"); fortunately, this algorithm is intended to translate written, not spoken, language. Since writing would have to include that detail (in order to be independent of its context), the problem you identified is not even relevant.
The parent has glued together two comments from OSNews, made some minor alterations and tried to pass them off as his own.
Even though he said it was "well seen" he didn't bother showing it to us? Even though the ONLY THING SLASHDOT DOES IS LINK TO OTHER SITES IT STILL FAILS AT IT?!?!?
Go figure.
Really, we should defer to the UK's right to name its own institutions and call it the "Ministry of Defence", just like Pearl Harbor should not be "Pearl Harbour" or "Perl Harbor" (as I've been admittedly prone to think).
They're current opteron hardware sales have been growing fast.
"They are current opteron hardware sales have been growing fast"? Wah?
Did you mean: "They-are-current opteron hardware sales [lists say they] have been growing fast"? Or: "They are current [with their opteron hardware]; their opteron hardware sales have been growing fast"?
Or, maybe, you meant: "Their current opteron hardware sales have been growing fast"?
Well, the profit might come from context-sensitive AdSense ads for all the sites you visit using Google's free Wi-Fi - that is, the same way Google makes billions out of free search and free email.
I'm personally not sure that it would work, but I am sure that's how Google would want it to.
As I commented here, it probably means that no new mod points are being given out, and that only people who already have them or are editors can moderate. Well, it's an April Fools day type of Slashdot fun - that is to say that it sucks.
Um, nope, withdrawn. It happens sometimes, but not every time. I think it's just a server error.
Yes, I do feel guilty about populating this thread so much by myself.
Thanks, that worked. I understand what that error is, as well: baidu.com suddenly disconnected. Eerie. I guess I searched with different characters, yet it returns results, and my search for freedom returned the same results as the original poster's.
Try it for yourself.
The great grandparent likes to affirm himself anonymously, methinks. After all, convincing Firefox to raise an error is a suspiciously clunky form of censorship.
I searched for it in Chinese, idiot. It didn't work for me.
I call BS. I searched for "democracy" and nothing of the sort happened; in fact, I got 9,560,000 results. I got 12,900,000 for "freedom".
Okay, you're a troll, and you've not been modded anywhere. What the hell is going on with moderation? For my karma-whoring theory, oh, wait, well, read on anyway.
Observations and Explanations
All of these stories have no replies modded higher than 3, which perhaps amounts to just the editors or people who already had mod points moderating. I suggest no one else is being offered points.
Conclusions
No doubt I won't be rewarded for my astonishing insight.
Okay, thanks. Wikipedia also had this to say:
Perhaps the most popular feature about Baidu that Google does not support is the MP3 search. This is very similar with the image search of Google, however, it searches for MP3/WMA/SWF files instead of image files. The MP3 search are mainly used for Chinese Pop Music, and the search results are surprisingly accurate. Though it's illegal in most of the world, Baidu can do this as the Chinese law doesn't prohibit putting music on the internet, and Baidu is under Chinese law.
So, considering that searching and organizing pirated material is one of Baidu's most popular features, it's not surprising that they've been sued by copyright holders. This case should be an interesting test of the Chinese judiciary's commitment to intellectual property.
Can anyone here tell me what Baidu.com is actually like as a search engine, in terms of quality and accuracy of results, compared to Google and Yahoo? Why is it popular? I'm really curious.
2.12639285 x 10^-11 light years for us space-faring people. But we already have Wi-Fi anyway. Surrender your planet!
It's true that the tresspassing part of the analogy is invalid. On the other hand, capitalizing on the generosity of the doorman to intentionally steal from inside the house is what the wireless hijacker is actually in trouble for. As I pointed out elsewhere, the intentions of the hijacker are really, really important in deciding their guilt in something that can easily be done by accident.