How will it help? Isn't this DX11 implementation exclusive to Gallium drivers? It's kinda a weird place to be considering most Linux gamers are probably going to be using the blobs from Nvidia and ATI for their distinctive performance gains over the open source offerings.
The type that are going to be interested in the closed source games from big gaming are not going to have a problem with using the closed blobs from Nvida and ATI. They probably already use Wine for some of their gaming and need the GL performance offered by the blobs to do it. This is an odd group that likes Linux, doesn't want to dual boot, and doesn't mind some closed software. Are they going to want to reload a different graphics stack (and their whole desktop environment that goes with it) just to run a different game?
Email? Meh, old news. Texting? Meh, newfangled. Slashdot? Ah Slashdot: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
It gets detected. Each work unit is processed by multiple clients. Given the number of computers involved it would be hard to fake a particular work unit because the likelihood of someone controlling the clients involved for that specific work unit is slim.
There are certainly many times I've moderated stuff as interesting or insightful even if I didn't necessarily agree with the sentiment of the poster.
Absolutely.
On digg, it's all up or down. You'll frequently see comments like "**** Republicans!" rated very highly. Whether or not you agree with Republican political views, putting four asterisks before their party name adds nothing to the discussion. You rarely, if ever, see a comment like that rated highly on slashdot, unless there's something sarcastic behind it. Of course, now you'll probably see lots of comments like that as responses rated highly:-P
Emphasis mine, of course. Digg never has been a good discussion medium. It's a voting booth at best. A three paragraph post on Digg is tl/dr. It has to be short like a campaign slogan (often without the finesse, however).
The reason "Fuck [insert topic]!!!!" posts don't get modded up on/. is that there's no value in the discussion unless the poster explains why he or she feels that way. Even if their reasoning is flawed, it leads to other insightful, informative, interesting, and funny comments. People want to do something when something is "WRONG on the internet." On Digg, it naturally leads to a vote down and for the most part it stops there. On/. it often leads to a discussion in addition to moderation. (I can't mod them down but at least I can set them straight!)
Yes. Silent updates suck. Well at least, for people that want to control their own computer, it does. But for my sister, my dad, my great aunt and all these people that think i'm their personal helpdesk, this is perfect. I've seen so many family members who had 2 year old browsers and stuff...
There's a lot of truth here.
Often the only updates that happen are automatic or silent. If they aren't automatic they typically don't happen. The silent updates that I speak of are when geeks like me do it for their friends and family because they wouldn't happen otherwise. Yeah I know those aren't technically silent or automatic, but they are to the user. I don't think the user is much worse off with silent updates because they genuinely are not interested in updating software. In fact, they probably have an aversion to updating software because of past experiences which were unpleasant.
At any rate you must trust Mozilla or you wouldn't be running their software to begin with. Right? Do you examine the source every time an update comes out to see if it does what the change log says?
I'd rather have CPUs and GPUs that clock down to prevent damage when the cooling is inadequate. Very often this is due to dust and debris clogging up the heat sinks. Dust and hairballs clogging up your heat sinks is not permanent damage. It's a temporary problem that's alleviated by maintenance.
There's also the common situation that people who build their own systems encounter where cases are poorly designed with inadequate air flow even despite having a large number of fans. A good example are cases which have fans butted up against an array of small holes. Not only do these cases make more noise trying to force air through the small holes but they move considerably much less air. Consider getting a case with wire finger guards (Google image search "wire finger guard") instead.
Even though a poor case isn't your GPU or CPU's fault, if they are well designed they won't melt down and you can get your money's worth by altering your case or replacing it altogether. (In my experience, a high price tag doesn't insure a well designed chassis.)
I can peg all four cores of my processor for extended periods of time (more than any game or encoding process I've ever seen) and not experience a clock down. I also use the stalk heatsink and fan. A well designed chassis and occasional maintenance will do that for you.
But when we're talking days, when the rest of the internet has moved on, it gets a bit much.
Let them move on. I still see plenty of insightful commentary about the subject matter that isn't found other places. People come here for the user generated content that happens despite poor summaries.
I'm with PopeRatzo above. Fuck the out of control bandwagon.
Much of the good content isn't really that time sensitive. A good article about a research project is still relevant and interesting for some time publish date. Its quality you can't get from instant news which is often 10 times more sensational than reality. The reason "the rest of the internet has moved on" so quickly is because it wasn't worth pause to begin with. So yeah the more time sensitive articles on/. are the crappier articles. But even the crappier articles can yield interesting, insightful, and informative comments which is what/. is about.
The GPU card should scale down when it's at dangerously high temperatures. People should be complaining SC2 has terrible frame rates before they complain that their video card caught on fire or melted.
The cards should be more like CPUs. "My computer sounds like a jet engine and runs slow" are the symptoms of a CPU's heat sink being clogged up. The CPU down clocks itself to prevent damage which results in poor performance.
I've seen many many computers with clogged CPU heat sinks. In relatively few cases were the CPUs actually damaged because even a clogged heat sink will cool a processor enough when its running in a low enough power state. In extreme cases the CPU will simply power off if it reaches a critical threshold.
The processor scales back and/or turns off. It's the reason they have their own temperature sensors. I don't see why GPUs can't do the same other than they aren't as well engineered.
After giving up on intelligence they had to... SETL. Ba da boom.
Why shouldn't they look for life? Discovering significant evidence for the existence of extra-terrestrial life (intelligent or not) strengthens their cause to find intelligent life. We really haven't found much to say that life is not unique to our own planet.
While it may not have been part of their original mission, "The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe." is on their front page. It doesn't seem like their mission is bounded by their acronym name.
While distributions may pack kernels which are different than Linus', pretty much all the development still happens in and around the Linus tree. Look at how distro kernels typically differ from "official":
1. Backports of patches from newer kernels to older kernels.
2. Patches that haven't made it into the official tree but are working toward that end.
3. Patches that won't make it into the official tree, but are continuously maintained to work with the official tree. (There are a few notables in this category but they are relatively few.)
4. Patches that are intended to be temporary solutions until further development happens in the official.
All these options involve the Linus tree (current or past) in an integral way.
If distributions are:
1. copying from a Linus' tree,
2. adapting to a Linus' tree, and
3. trying to push to Linus' tree then tell me how distribution maintainers don't think of Linus' tree as relatively official when practically everything they do revolves around the upstream.
Nobody calls a distribution's kernel a fork and I really don't think distribution maintainers think of it as one either.
Care to cite a reference, troll? While it's probably fair to say that Ubuntu and Fedora are the two most popular distributions, it's also probably fair to say that openSUSE is within the top 5 most popular distributions and hardly irrelevant.
Also, if popularity were the only significant metric for choosing an OS then we would all be using Windows. Although Arch and Gentoo are even farther down on the popularity chart, I think they are both very interesting choices. I certainly wouldn’t mock anyone for picking them.
AFAIK, it's often more than that. The 64-bit libraries don't include a lot of the old cruft from the Win-32 world. Even if you don't do pointer arithmetic, it's much more than a re-compile at that point since the API calls aren't there.
Also if you used 3rd party libraries that are no longer maintained... there is no hope for you unless you want to rewrite them yourself or figure out some thunking technique to use the 32-bit library in your 64-bit application. Either way it can be less than trivial.
The trouble with your 32-bit programs is that they are typically built for generations old processors. A 64-bit address space s NOT the only advancement made in the CPU over the years. It's not uncommon to see applications built with a build process thats compatable with the original Pentium for example (sometimes even as far back as the 386). This ignores generations of processor features like SSE, NX-bit, and so on. By choosing a 64-bit build process you can safely enable support for all kinds of goodies just because all 64-bit processors come with them.
The performance difference varies from application to application, but it generally isn't any worse. Some applications make out rather well.
The biggest stag in porting applications is that the 64-bit APIs and libraries do not include a lot of the old cruft from the Win-32 world. This makes it much more than setting a compiler flag and rebuilding. At least that seems to be how it is on the Windows side.
In short, my motivations for wanting a 64-bit environment really don't have much to do with having a 64-bit address space.
It's kinda stupid to blow things up just because you can.
As a US citizen and it being the day after the 4th of July (a holiday well known for exploits in the "blow things up" category), I'm having trouble seeing your point.:D
Because I can't drill holes in floors and walls that I don't own in order to run cables. I know others who only have Internet access via wireless connections. Neither one of these scenarios are that obscure.
More likely they're hiding behind memes such as "You can't please everybody" and the general observation that people are overly dramatic and often a bit off base "on the Internet." Slashdot is still popular so "we must be doing it right" may be another hide behind. These are somewhat fair. Its hard to quantify the necessity of change if you're reasonably popular and relevant.
At any rate, I think it's clear that most people read/. for the user commentary rather than for the "instant out" news. Even if its late it still gives a good jumping off point for discussion. And being "late" can have a positive effect on the discussion. People come to the discussion with better informed opinions and insight that is very often missing from other mediums like such as Digg.
I still read Digg though. In the end one should just stop expecting one medium to be the perfect solution and pull from multiple sources to even out the strengths and weaknesses any one medium.
Also consider that the "criticism" is often out of band and off topic. None of this, for example, has anything to do with "The Star Wars Kid." It's hard not to discount it as noise and skip over it in pursuit of the discussion you clicked for in the first place.
I'll throw in the word "linker" just to confuse you both.
Instead of your application linking with "real" Windows binaries it links with an alternate implementation of those binaries.
In many cases an API function call is implemented without even making a call to X, GL, the native kernel, or any other part of Linux/Mac/etc. It is simply a reimplementation of the call. Translation does not fit here because it doesn't translate the Windows call to a native Linux call at all.
And really both Linux, Windows, and applications are speaking the same x86 based "language" anyway. To my understanding, that fact is mostly is what the recursive acronym was getting at. They wished to distance themselves from the notion that Wine was akin to the same kind of technology and approach as a NES emulator or VM environment.
Translator fits for a NES emulator but only loosely and imprecisely fits for Wine.
Also, interpreter and translator ignore the existence of Winelib which shares the same code base and doesn't fit either. Winelib aims to let you compile your Windows sources as a Linux/Mac/FreeBSD/etc binary. Source compatibility generally isn't considered emulation, interpretation, or translation.
"Reimplementation" is probably the best word to use if you are going to pick just one single word.
Obviously the reason Macs are being held back. Instead of encouraging native ports to Mac, software vendors don't see the point and use Wine's existence as an excuse to not port.
Only if the beholders submit quality bug reports and/or patches acceptable to those who oversee the software's source.
Here's an interesting question: If I were to go find a copy and then find a bug in it, would Google accept my patch or would black helicopters show up above my house?:D
If I pay them will they stop spying on me? I doubt it. In fact we probably give up even more privacy by paying for content.
... but is this part of the price we pay for free websites?
How can this be a price for free websites if the same applies to pay sites? Just because you don't see adds doesn't mean they aren't tracking you.
Ultimately it comes down to choice. The one you don't have. Currently you can't choose to not be tracked. Not without extra software which may or may not be successful at stopping it (kinda like virus protection). You don't get a notice about being tracked and you don't get the option to opt out. It would be one thing if you could opt out and as a result you wouldn't be able to access the content. At least then the price would be upfront instead of a dirty secret.
In truth I don't care much about targeted ads. I don't see many of them, thanks to adblock any way. Even if I did see lots of relevant ads I wouldn't click on them. When I want to buy something I go directly to the manufactures web sight or a trusted retailer. I'll do a Google search before I click on an ad. Why? Ad companies can't be trusted. It is that simple.
Don't get me started on the abuse that goes beyond privacy. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The collect calling ads on TV did more to insure people hit mute on their remote for every ad break than any other ad campaign in history. They were that fucking annoying that they are still costing advertisers money today. An ad break comes up and people hit mute so fucking fast it ain't even funny.
If you have a site that depends on ad revenue you'd best spend your time policing the content and behavior of your ad providers. Keep doing that for a bout 10 years to make up for the 10 years of no one policing them at all. Then **maybe then** I may start trusting them enough to unblock them. I'm sorry you can't get the revenue you'd like from ads. Someone shit (ad companies) in that bed and I won't climb in there with them until long after the stench is gone--and even then they'd better be damn hot. Pick another business model because everyone can smell the dookie.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a Soviet Russia joke in there somewhere.
You mean something like this?
How will it help? Isn't this DX11 implementation exclusive to Gallium drivers? It's kinda a weird place to be considering most Linux gamers are probably going to be using the blobs from Nvidia and ATI for their distinctive performance gains over the open source offerings.
The type that are going to be interested in the closed source games from big gaming are not going to have a problem with using the closed blobs from Nvida and ATI. They probably already use Wine for some of their gaming and need the GL performance offered by the blobs to do it. This is an odd group that likes Linux, doesn't want to dual boot, and doesn't mind some closed software. Are they going to want to reload a different graphics stack (and their whole desktop environment that goes with it) just to run a different game?
Am I missing something?
Email? Meh, old news. Texting? Meh, newfangled. Slashdot? Ah Slashdot: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
It gets detected. Each work unit is processed by multiple clients. Given the number of computers involved it would be hard to fake a particular work unit because the likelihood of someone controlling the clients involved for that specific work unit is slim.
Absolutely.
Emphasis mine, of course. Digg never has been a good discussion medium. It's a voting booth at best. A three paragraph post on Digg is tl/dr. It has to be short like a campaign slogan (often without the finesse, however).
The reason "Fuck [insert topic]!!!!" posts don't get modded up on /. is that there's no value in the discussion unless the poster explains why he or she feels that way. Even if their reasoning is flawed, it leads to other insightful, informative, interesting, and funny comments. People want to do something when something is "WRONG on the internet." On Digg, it naturally leads to a vote down and for the most part it stops there. On /. it often leads to a discussion in addition to moderation. (I can't mod them down but at least I can set them straight!)
/. is not perfect, but it's often good enough.
What's wrong with duplicate toasts? OMMM NOMMM NOMMM NOMMM!!!!
There's a lot of truth here.
Often the only updates that happen are automatic or silent. If they aren't automatic they typically don't happen. The silent updates that I speak of are when geeks like me do it for their friends and family because they wouldn't happen otherwise. Yeah I know those aren't technically silent or automatic, but they are to the user. I don't think the user is much worse off with silent updates because they genuinely are not interested in updating software. In fact, they probably have an aversion to updating software because of past experiences which were unpleasant.
At any rate you must trust Mozilla or you wouldn't be running their software to begin with. Right? Do you examine the source every time an update comes out to see if it does what the change log says?
I'd rather have CPUs and GPUs that clock down to prevent damage when the cooling is inadequate. Very often this is due to dust and debris clogging up the heat sinks. Dust and hairballs clogging up your heat sinks is not permanent damage. It's a temporary problem that's alleviated by maintenance.
There's also the common situation that people who build their own systems encounter where cases are poorly designed with inadequate air flow even despite having a large number of fans. A good example are cases which have fans butted up against an array of small holes. Not only do these cases make more noise trying to force air through the small holes but they move considerably much less air. Consider getting a case with wire finger guards (Google image search "wire finger guard") instead.
Even though a poor case isn't your GPU or CPU's fault, if they are well designed they won't melt down and you can get your money's worth by altering your case or replacing it altogether. (In my experience, a high price tag doesn't insure a well designed chassis.)
I can peg all four cores of my processor for extended periods of time (more than any game or encoding process I've ever seen) and not experience a clock down. I also use the stalk heatsink and fan. A well designed chassis and occasional maintenance will do that for you.
Let them move on. I still see plenty of insightful commentary about the subject matter that isn't found other places. People come here for the user generated content that happens despite poor summaries.
I'm with PopeRatzo above. Fuck the out of control bandwagon.
Much of the good content isn't really that time sensitive. A good article about a research project is still relevant and interesting for some time publish date. Its quality you can't get from instant news which is often 10 times more sensational than reality. The reason "the rest of the internet has moved on" so quickly is because it wasn't worth pause to begin with. So yeah the more time sensitive articles on /. are the crappier articles. But even the crappier articles can yield interesting, insightful, and informative comments which is what /. is about.
The GPU card should scale down when it's at dangerously high temperatures. People should be complaining SC2 has terrible frame rates before they complain that their video card caught on fire or melted.
The cards should be more like CPUs. "My computer sounds like a jet engine and runs slow" are the symptoms of a CPU's heat sink being clogged up. The CPU down clocks itself to prevent damage which results in poor performance.
I've seen many many computers with clogged CPU heat sinks. In relatively few cases were the CPUs actually damaged because even a clogged heat sink will cool a processor enough when its running in a low enough power state. In extreme cases the CPU will simply power off if it reaches a critical threshold.
The processor scales back and/or turns off. It's the reason they have their own temperature sensors. I don't see why GPUs can't do the same other than they aren't as well engineered.
After giving up on intelligence they had to... SETL. Ba da boom.
Why shouldn't they look for life? Discovering significant evidence for the existence of extra-terrestrial life (intelligent or not) strengthens their cause to find intelligent life. We really haven't found much to say that life is not unique to our own planet.
While it may not have been part of their original mission, "The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe." is on their front page. It doesn't seem like their mission is bounded by their acronym name.
While distributions may pack kernels which are different than Linus', pretty much all the development still happens in and around the Linus tree. Look at how distro kernels typically differ from "official":
1. Backports of patches from newer kernels to older kernels.
2. Patches that haven't made it into the official tree but are working toward that end.
3. Patches that won't make it into the official tree, but are continuously maintained to work with the official tree. (There are a few notables in this category but they are relatively few.)
4. Patches that are intended to be temporary solutions until further development happens in the official.
All these options involve the Linus tree (current or past) in an integral way.
If distributions are:
1. copying from a Linus' tree,
2. adapting to a Linus' tree, and
3. trying to push to Linus' tree
then tell me how distribution maintainers don't think of Linus' tree as relatively official when practically everything they do revolves around the upstream.
Nobody calls a distribution's kernel a fork and I really don't think distribution maintainers think of it as one either.
Care to cite a reference, troll? While it's probably fair to say that Ubuntu and Fedora are the two most popular distributions, it's also probably fair to say that openSUSE is within the top 5 most popular distributions and hardly irrelevant.
Also, if popularity were the only significant metric for choosing an OS then we would all be using Windows. Although Arch and Gentoo are even farther down on the popularity chart, I think they are both very interesting choices. I certainly wouldn’t mock anyone for picking them.
AFAIK, it's often more than that. The 64-bit libraries don't include a lot of the old cruft from the Win-32 world. Even if you don't do pointer arithmetic, it's much more than a re-compile at that point since the API calls aren't there.
Also if you used 3rd party libraries that are no longer maintained... there is no hope for you unless you want to rewrite them yourself or figure out some thunking technique to use the 32-bit library in your 64-bit application. Either way it can be less than trivial.
The trouble with your 32-bit programs is that they are typically built for generations old processors. A 64-bit address space s NOT the only advancement made in the CPU over the years. It's not uncommon to see applications built with a build process thats compatable with the original Pentium for example (sometimes even as far back as the 386). This ignores generations of processor features like SSE, NX-bit, and so on. By choosing a 64-bit build process you can safely enable support for all kinds of goodies just because all 64-bit processors come with them.
The performance difference varies from application to application, but it generally isn't any worse. Some applications make out rather well.
The biggest stag in porting applications is that the 64-bit APIs and libraries do not include a lot of the old cruft from the Win-32 world. This makes it much more than setting a compiler flag and rebuilding. At least that seems to be how it is on the Windows side.
In short, my motivations for wanting a 64-bit environment really don't have much to do with having a 64-bit address space.
As a US citizen and it being the day after the 4th of July (a holiday well known for exploits in the "blow things up" category), I'm having trouble seeing your point. :D
Well... that really narrows it down. You're talking about the keyboard they sell right?
Because I can't drill holes in floors and walls that I don't own in order to run cables. I know others who only have Internet access via wireless connections. Neither one of these scenarios are that obscure.
More likely they're hiding behind memes such as "You can't please everybody" and the general observation that people are overly dramatic and often a bit off base "on the Internet." Slashdot is still popular so "we must be doing it right" may be another hide behind. These are somewhat fair. Its hard to quantify the necessity of change if you're reasonably popular and relevant.
At any rate, I think it's clear that most people read /. for the user commentary rather than for the "instant out" news. Even if its late it still gives a good jumping off point for discussion. And being "late" can have a positive effect on the discussion. People come to the discussion with better informed opinions and insight that is very often missing from other mediums like such as Digg.
I still read Digg though. In the end one should just stop expecting one medium to be the perfect solution and pull from multiple sources to even out the strengths and weaknesses any one medium.
Also consider that the "criticism" is often out of band and off topic. None of this, for example, has anything to do with "The Star Wars Kid." It's hard not to discount it as noise and skip over it in pursuit of the discussion you clicked for in the first place.
I'll throw in the word "linker" just to confuse you both.
Instead of your application linking with "real" Windows binaries it links with an alternate implementation of those binaries.
In many cases an API function call is implemented without even making a call to X, GL, the native kernel, or any other part of Linux/Mac/etc. It is simply a reimplementation of the call. Translation does not fit here because it doesn't translate the Windows call to a native Linux call at all.
And really both Linux, Windows, and applications are speaking the same x86 based "language" anyway. To my understanding, that fact is mostly is what the recursive acronym was getting at. They wished to distance themselves from the notion that Wine was akin to the same kind of technology and approach as a NES emulator or VM environment.
Translator fits for a NES emulator but only loosely and imprecisely fits for Wine.
Also, interpreter and translator ignore the existence of Winelib which shares the same code base and doesn't fit either. Winelib aims to let you compile your Windows sources as a Linux/Mac/FreeBSD/etc binary. Source compatibility generally isn't considered emulation, interpretation, or translation.
"Reimplementation" is probably the best word to use if you are going to pick just one single word.
Obviously the reason Macs are being held back. Instead of encouraging native ports to Mac, software vendors don't see the point and use Wine's existence as an excuse to not port.
Wine hurts Mac OS!!!!!
KVM doesn't cost you a damned thing. Are you a a filthy Windows user? ...
Oh I see the problem. Bing puts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVM_switch above http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page
You want the second one.
More eyes make the bugs shallow, right? ;)
Only if the beholders submit quality bug reports and/or patches acceptable to those who oversee the software's source.
Here's an interesting question: If I were to go find a copy and then find a bug in it, would Google accept my patch or would black helicopters show up above my house? :D
If I pay them will they stop spying on me? I doubt it. In fact we probably give up even more privacy by paying for content.
How can this be a price for free websites if the same applies to pay sites? Just because you don't see adds doesn't mean they aren't tracking you.
Ultimately it comes down to choice. The one you don't have. Currently you can't choose to not be tracked. Not without extra software which may or may not be successful at stopping it (kinda like virus protection). You don't get a notice about being tracked and you don't get the option to opt out. It would be one thing if you could opt out and as a result you wouldn't be able to access the content. At least then the price would be upfront instead of a dirty secret.
In truth I don't care much about targeted ads. I don't see many of them, thanks to adblock any way. Even if I did see lots of relevant ads I wouldn't click on them. When I want to buy something I go directly to the manufactures web sight or a trusted retailer. I'll do a Google search before I click on an ad. Why? Ad companies can't be trusted. It is that simple.
Don't get me started on the abuse that goes beyond privacy. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The collect calling ads on TV did more to insure people hit mute on their remote for every ad break than any other ad campaign in history. They were that fucking annoying that they are still costing advertisers money today. An ad break comes up and people hit mute so fucking fast it ain't even funny.
If you have a site that depends on ad revenue you'd best spend your time policing the content and behavior of your ad providers. Keep doing that for a bout 10 years to make up for the 10 years of no one policing them at all. Then **maybe then** I may start trusting them enough to unblock them. I'm sorry you can't get the revenue you'd like from ads. Someone shit (ad companies) in that bed and I won't climb in there with them until long after the stench is gone--and even then they'd better be damn hot. Pick another business model because everyone can smell the dookie.