Most multi-monitor users I've seen don't sit 6 feet from their cluster of monitors to allow them simultaneous (non-peripheral) viewing of multiple monitors. On the other hand, I can switch between two virtual desktops in a fraction of a second.
The only time a second monitor, IMHO, is an improvement over a virtual desktop is when you can use your peripheral vision to monitor some live
Of course, most Windows users (even developers) are so glued to their mice, that switching desktops would be a time-consuming issue.
As for the comparison to "tabbing between windows", I find that ridiculous. Perhaps inflammatory (apologies...), but I really do. It presupposes a complete "Microsoft Windows" view of the world, where every application runs in exactly one window and all windows are inherently either maximized are minimized. It's not uncommon to see Linux developers have a multitude of windows open and visible at the same time.
You can't easily "tab between" groups of specifically positioned and sized windows. (Note, I said *easily*).
My opinion is this is largely a consequence of how the Maximize functionality works / has worked.
My money is on the complete lack of virtual desktops on Microsoft's platform.
Yes, there are third party apps that add the capability, but I don't know a single Windows developer who uses them. On the other hand, I don't know a single Linux developer who DOESN'T use them... (now watch Slashdot provide countless counter examples).
Developing on a system without virtual desktops *or* a second (at least) monitor is a huge pain in the ass.
Then it's a good thing Wayland can host X. It would require some (reportedly) minor adjustments to X, but it would be transparent to individual applications.
It's ironic that Grub returns nothing but sites that want to sell me jerseys when I search for an NFL player, whereas the top Google links are always the player profile pages from NFL.com and other major sports sites, and the player's Wikipedia entry. Add to that the easy access to "news" for the player and there's little question which search engine is the more useful.
Google works because their ranking system works. If it stopped working well, they would lose market share very quickly.
h264 isn't going to be a practical problem for the vast majority of users, since Firefox can just use a system codec (non-Windows-users would have to make sure they have one, of course).
As for JS speed, Mozilla are very ardent in their speed claims, so it's hard not to believe they have something to back it up. It's difficult for users and external testers to figure out exactly how fast they are, despite being open source, because the Moz team is pursuing several parallel tracks to increase JS speed. There's "fat-val", "tracer JIT" and "method JIT". Each is currently significantly faster than the "normal" versions, but there hasn't been any public testing on a build that combines all three.
Mozilla claim they'll be faster than everyone else and while they may be scuppered by new advances from Google and Opera, it seems reasonable that they will at least be faster at launch than where everyone else is now. That alone would ensure "next-generation JS performance".
Where they trail Chrome is in "use speed". Chrome starts and shuts down a lot faster -- and I think that's going to be a problem for Firefox moving forward (more than it already is).
The idiots behind the site are using OS detection, so if you're using Moonlight on a non-Windows/OSX platform, you'll need to spoof your User-Agent string.
Other than that, it works just fine with Firefox & Moonlight on Linux.
They are complementary only in a way icecream and fish are complementary. They don't seem to have overlap, but you don't want fish with your icecream.
Since bunratty's reply provides a technical description of why they are truly complementary (possibly even orthogonal), I'm going to believe that argument over your rather weak ice cream simile.
I think you're missing the point of what is being benchmarked. Mozilla hasn't released benchmarks of their new JS engine with both "method" and "tracer" JIT combined. They are being evolved separately, but are (according to Moz) complementary. Thus, we don't know how far they actually are from their goal yet.
From what I can gather from the associated bug report, the "fatval" optimizations are also not applied to the portions of JS code that is traced... which would imply that the better job the tracer engine does, the less the "fatval" optimizations are applied.
The result is that an unknown "free" speed increase is waiting in the wings. What the magnitude of this increase is... well, that's the question, isn't it?
Does 1 September seem like a really tight deadline? Yes, sure does, but more in terms of stability and robustness than actually getting to a specific speed milestone.
About 4 hours later, total sales have roughly doubled:
- Total raised $103,758 - Average contribution $7.96 - Number of contributions 13038
I can't help but wonder how long this thing has been running. The article claims "7 days", but considering the current timer state (6days19hours35min) and the article timestamp (-5hours), that appears unlikely to be entirely accurate.
1) Enable the backports repository (and perhaps even -proposed, if you're desperate).
2) Check if the the app devs make a package available for download.
3) Download the source and compile yourself;)
It's worth noting that there's a simple reason why new versions of apps are not supported on old versions:
Dependencies.
Take a look at pretty much any package for Ubuntu and note how many other packages it depends on. In the Windows world (or indeed Mac world) the vast majority would be included when compiling (instead of linked to). The problem with the inclusion-model (aside from bulky programs) is that you don't get security updates applied centrally. Not that the link-model is perfect -- you noted it's biggest (IMHO) weakness.
It has only been running since this morning (about 6 hours ago), but top shows that it has 5644 MB resident. This is after some moderate browsing of some news sites, Slashdot, and then letting it sit until a few minutes ago.
Generally, you WANT Firefox to use all the memory you have. After all, the reason you paid for all that fancy memory in the first place was for programs to use it. The issue is solely whether Firefox releases it again, if another application needs the memory. If it does, then there's no bug, but a very good feature.
google is not better. It's just synonymous with internet.
Have you TRIED Bing lately? I did, multiple times in the last few days (two more or less pristine Windows7 installs -- pristine only because they're virtually never used) and the results were staggering. I had expected Bing to return results of about the same quality as Google, expecting only to be slightly annoyed at the layout (like I am every time the layout of something I'm used to is changed, even if it's for the better in the long run).
My queries were technical, but not insanely odd or anything. Bing returned a bunch of links to Czech (I think) blogs and forums, which may of may not have contained a solution to my problem. No, I don't live in Eastern Europe. Yes, I had Bing return "all results". Clicking "only in English" weeded out the weird language results, but the top page of results was still completely useless. Switching to Google solved the problem.
This may be a result of "niche" searches, but I was very surprised that Bing basically didn't work.
I'm playing Master of Orion 2, Battle at Anteres, with Dosbox, right now. For some reason, the DOS version works much better under Dosbox than the Windows version does under WINE.
There's a slight sound stutter at times and a slight effects lag, but everything else is perfect. Still one of the best turn-based strategy games.
They recommend setting the maximum password age to 42 days too.
Anyone who has ever worked in IT, or has a bit of common sense, knows that the result of such a policy is that every employee has a post-it with their password on or near their monitor.
any idea when Firefox will implement the multiple process stuff found in Chrome?
I'm probably in the minority, but I actually prefer MOST of my apps to be single-threaded (or at least sticking to one core). I can only imagine what it would feel like to have Firefox (Javascript or plugins, typically) completely max out ALL my cores the way they are one now.
Halogen light bulbs use tungsten filaments, JUST LIKE ORDINARY BULBS.
Two main differences:
- The filament is run at a much higher temperature, resulting in higher efficiency (around 20%).
- The gas inside the quartz "bulb" (the inner bulb, if you're buying a large bulb as a replacement) is a halogen gas (thus the name). These molecules combine with tungsten evaporated from the filament and effectively redeposits the tungsten on the filament. This results in longer lifetime.
End result: Longer lasting bulb, higher efficiency, roughly same environmental impact as normal bulb during production and disposal, still incandescent light (so no gaps in the output spectrum).
The one downside to halogen bulbs is that they get a lot hotter. Why? They have lower heat output, right? Yes, they do, but the AREA is a lot smaller due to the close proximity of the quartz. An outer bulb, such as typically present in a large-format "normal bulb replacement" (E26 base in the US), reduces this problem to about the same as for an ordinary bulb.
Double Jeopardy works differently in different countries. Originally part of "common law", double jeopardy laws vary throughout Europe, but generally look more like the Canadian version than the US version. In short: Appeals to a higher court are not considered a NEW trial, but rather a continuation of the old trial.
In Europe, the European Convention on Human Rights provides a measure of protection, specifically Protocol 7, article 4:
Article 4 - Right not to be tried or punished twice
1. No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again in criminal proceedings under the jurisdiction of the same State for an offence for which he has already been finally acquitted or convicted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of that State.
2. The provisions of the preceding paragraph shall not prevent the reopening of the case in accordance with the law and penal procedure of the State concerned, if there is evidence of new or newly discovered facts, or if there has been a fundamental defect in the previous proceedings, which could affect the outcome of the case.
3. No derogation from this Article shall be made under Article 15 of the Convention.
As the article implicitly states, unless you have been FINALLY convicted, you can be tried again.
command mode (beep constantly?) insert mode (not sure how you are breaking things here)
and
visual mode.
Note from a VIM user...
on
Vim 7.2 Released
·
· Score: 3, Informative
come on now, it's a great editor for deleting things from files!
Go to the character of interest, hit x. Go to the line of interest and hit dd.
Of course, if you want to do more than delete, you are better off with notepad.
I was very tempted to use my mod points to mod this TROLL, but I try staying far away from anything that even smells like "modding down stuff you disagree with", so I'll Feed the Troll, instead...
How do I search-replace SMARTLY (i.e. with regexp) in Notepad?
Does notepad support syntax highlighting?
Does notepad support "jumping" to the last position when reopening a file?
Does notepad support auto-indentation? Language-dependent auto-indentation?
Does notepad support multiple buffers? (cut-n-paste)
Does notepad support variable tabstops? Using spaces as tabs?
Does notepad support collapsing/folding sections into a single line?
These features are just a tiny fraction of what I use in VIM *every single day*. Notepad does none of these. I used to use emacs, because the insert, command and visual modes confused me. It really didn't take long to get used to, however, and I generally prefer VIM now (although I'm perfectly happy using emacs instead).
I feel I should now come up with a car analogy, comparing VIM and Notepad, but the only word that comes to mind is Yugo. And that would be Notepad, in case you were wondering.
That's impressive, sure, but doesn't give me a clue as to whether he's on track to a 10-year pay back.
Checking out his first article on the solar setup, he apparently spent $36K up front for the whole thing.
His pre-solar electricity bill was listed as $4400. His 6-month post-solar usage was $389. July - December should be a reasonable estimate of January - June power consumption, but let's just say $800 for the full year.
That's a savings of $3600 or pretty much exactly 10 years to pay the up-front costs back (ignoring all the other stuff: capital costs (interest), effect on home value, inflation, year-to-year fluctuations in price pr kWh and actual need etc).
So, depending on how it all adds up - and assuming maintenance costs are relatively low - he could end up in the green after maybe 8-12 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Most multi-monitor users I've seen don't sit 6 feet from their cluster of monitors to allow them simultaneous (non-peripheral) viewing of multiple monitors. On the other hand, I can switch between two virtual desktops in a fraction of a second.
The only time a second monitor, IMHO, is an improvement over a virtual desktop is when you can use your peripheral vision to monitor some live
Of course, most Windows users (even developers) are so glued to their mice, that switching desktops would be a time-consuming issue.
As for the comparison to "tabbing between windows", I find that ridiculous. Perhaps inflammatory (apologies...), but I really do. It presupposes a complete "Microsoft Windows" view of the world, where every application runs in exactly one window and all windows are inherently either maximized are minimized. It's not uncommon to see Linux developers have a multitude of windows open and visible at the same time.
You can't easily "tab between" groups of specifically positioned and sized windows. (Note, I said *easily*).
My money is on the complete lack of virtual desktops on Microsoft's platform.
Yes, there are third party apps that add the capability, but I don't know a single Windows developer who uses them. On the other hand, I don't know a single Linux developer who DOESN'T use them... (now watch Slashdot provide countless counter examples).
Developing on a system without virtual desktops *or* a second (at least) monitor is a huge pain in the ass.
Then it's a good thing Wayland can host X. It would require some (reportedly) minor adjustments to X, but it would be transparent to individual applications.
Wayland is a display server, like X. Why wouldn't it be possible to forward Wayland over SSH?
It's ironic that Grub returns nothing but sites that want to sell me jerseys when I search for an NFL player, whereas the top Google links are always the player profile pages from NFL.com and other major sports sites, and the player's Wikipedia entry. Add to that the easy access to "news" for the player and there's little question which search engine is the more useful.
Google works because their ranking system works. If it stopped working well, they would lose market share very quickly.
This is probably due to sqlite and a severely fragmented / huge / whatever history+bookmarks.
Try a clean profile. If that does the trick, try backing them up and importing in a clean profile. Probably "prune" them a bit while you're at it.
h264 isn't going to be a practical problem for the vast majority of users, since Firefox can just use a system codec (non-Windows-users would have to make sure they have one, of course).
As for JS speed, Mozilla are very ardent in their speed claims, so it's hard not to believe they have something to back it up. It's difficult for users and external testers to figure out exactly how fast they are, despite being open source, because the Moz team is pursuing several parallel tracks to increase JS speed. There's "fat-val", "tracer JIT" and "method JIT". Each is currently significantly faster than the "normal" versions, but there hasn't been any public testing on a build that combines all three.
Mozilla claim they'll be faster than everyone else and while they may be scuppered by new advances from Google and Opera, it seems reasonable that they will at least be faster at launch than where everyone else is now. That alone would ensure "next-generation JS performance".
Where they trail Chrome is in "use speed". Chrome starts and shuts down a lot faster -- and I think that's going to be a problem for Firefox moving forward (more than it already is).
Spoofing as Firefox 3 on Vista worked for me.
Specifically:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6
With Novell Moonlight 2.3.
The idiots behind the site are using OS detection, so if you're using Moonlight on a non-Windows/OSX platform, you'll need to spoof your User-Agent string.
Other than that, it works just fine with Firefox & Moonlight on Linux.
Since bunratty's reply provides a technical description of why they are truly complementary (possibly even orthogonal), I'm going to believe that argument over your rather weak ice cream simile.
I think you're missing the point of what is being benchmarked. Mozilla hasn't released benchmarks of their new JS engine with both "method" and "tracer" JIT combined. They are being evolved separately, but are (according to Moz) complementary. Thus, we don't know how far they actually are from their goal yet.
Check out http://www.arewefastyet.com/ for benchmarks and description.
From what I can gather from the associated bug report, the "fatval" optimizations are also not applied to the portions of JS code that is traced... which would imply that the better job the tracer engine does, the less the "fatval" optimizations are applied.
The result is that an unknown "free" speed increase is waiting in the wings. What the magnitude of this increase is... well, that's the question, isn't it?
Does 1 September seem like a really tight deadline? Yes, sure does, but more in terms of stability and robustness than actually getting to a specific speed milestone.
About 4 hours later, total sales have roughly doubled:
- Total raised $103,758
- Average contribution $7.96
- Number of contributions 13038
I can't help but wonder how long this thing has been running. The article claims "7 days", but considering the current timer state (6days19hours35min) and the article timestamp (-5hours), that appears unlikely to be entirely accurate.
There are a few options here:
1) Enable the backports repository (and perhaps even -proposed, if you're desperate).
2) Check if the the app devs make a package available for download.
3) Download the source and compile yourself ;)
It's worth noting that there's a simple reason why new versions of apps are not supported on old versions:
Dependencies.
Take a look at pretty much any package for Ubuntu and note how many other packages it depends on. In the Windows world (or indeed Mac world) the vast majority would be included when compiling (instead of linked to). The problem with the inclusion-model (aside from bulky programs) is that you don't get security updates applied centrally. Not that the link-model is perfect -- you noted it's biggest (IMHO) weakness.
Generally, you WANT Firefox to use all the memory you have. After all, the reason you paid for all that fancy memory in the first place was for programs to use it. The issue is solely whether Firefox releases it again, if another application needs the memory. If it does, then there's no bug, but a very good feature.
Have you TRIED Bing lately? I did, multiple times in the last few days (two more or less pristine Windows7 installs -- pristine only because they're virtually never used) and the results were staggering. I had expected Bing to return results of about the same quality as Google, expecting only to be slightly annoyed at the layout (like I am every time the layout of something I'm used to is changed, even if it's for the better in the long run).
My queries were technical, but not insanely odd or anything. Bing returned a bunch of links to Czech (I think) blogs and forums, which may of may not have contained a solution to my problem. No, I don't live in Eastern Europe. Yes, I had Bing return "all results". Clicking "only in English" weeded out the weird language results, but the top page of results was still completely useless. Switching to Google solved the problem.
This may be a result of "niche" searches, but I was very surprised that Bing basically didn't work.
...
...
...
...
And you're NOT seeing the insanity of your actions?
Boiling frog indeed...
I'm playing Master of Orion 2, Battle at Anteres, with Dosbox, right now. For some reason, the DOS version works much better under Dosbox than the Windows version does under WINE.
There's a slight sound stutter at times and a slight effects lag, but everything else is perfect. Still one of the best turn-based strategy games.
Anyone who has ever worked in IT, or has a bit of common sense, knows that the result of such a policy is that every employee has a post-it with their password on or near their monitor.
This must be the American "liberalism is just another word for communism" version of the word "liberal".
I'm probably in the minority, but I actually prefer MOST of my apps to be single-threaded (or at least sticking to one core). I can only imagine what it would feel like to have Firefox (Javascript or plugins, typically) completely max out ALL my cores the way they are one now.
Halogen light bulbs use tungsten filaments, JUST LIKE ORDINARY BULBS.
Two main differences:
- The filament is run at a much higher temperature, resulting in higher efficiency (around 20%).
- The gas inside the quartz "bulb" (the inner bulb, if you're buying a large bulb as a replacement) is a halogen gas (thus the name). These molecules combine with tungsten evaporated from the filament and effectively redeposits the tungsten on the filament. This results in longer lifetime.
End result: Longer lasting bulb, higher efficiency, roughly same environmental impact as normal bulb during production and disposal, still incandescent light (so no gaps in the output spectrum).
The one downside to halogen bulbs is that they get a lot hotter. Why? They have lower heat output, right? Yes, they do, but the AREA is a lot smaller due to the close proximity of the quartz. An outer bulb, such as typically present in a large-format "normal bulb replacement" (E26 base in the US), reduces this problem to about the same as for an ordinary bulb.
Double Jeopardy works differently in different countries. Originally part of "common law", double jeopardy laws vary throughout Europe, but generally look more like the Canadian version than the US version. In short: Appeals to a higher court are not considered a NEW trial, but rather a continuation of the old trial.
In Europe, the European Convention on Human Rights provides a measure of protection, specifically Protocol 7, article 4:
As the article implicitly states, unless you have been FINALLY convicted, you can be tried again.
command mode (beep constantly?)
insert mode (not sure how you are breaking things here)
and
visual mode.
I was very tempted to use my mod points to mod this TROLL, but I try staying far away from anything that even smells like "modding down stuff you disagree with", so I'll Feed the Troll, instead...
How do I search-replace SMARTLY (i.e. with regexp) in Notepad?
Does notepad support syntax highlighting?
Does notepad support "jumping" to the last position when reopening a file?
Does notepad support auto-indentation? Language-dependent auto-indentation?
Does notepad support multiple buffers? (cut-n-paste)
Does notepad support variable tabstops? Using spaces as tabs?
Does notepad support collapsing/folding sections into a single line?
These features are just a tiny fraction of what I use in VIM *every single day*. Notepad does none of these. I used to use emacs, because the insert, command and visual modes confused me. It really didn't take long to get used to, however, and I generally prefer VIM now (although I'm perfectly happy using emacs instead).
I feel I should now come up with a car analogy, comparing VIM and Notepad, but the only word that comes to mind is Yugo. And that would be Notepad, in case you were wondering.
Checking out his first article on the solar setup, he apparently spent $36K up front for the whole thing.
His pre-solar electricity bill was listed as $4400. His 6-month post-solar usage was $389. July - December should be a reasonable estimate of January - June power consumption, but let's just say $800 for the full year.
That's a savings of $3600 or pretty much exactly 10 years to pay the up-front costs back (ignoring all the other stuff: capital costs (interest), effect on home value, inflation, year-to-year fluctuations in price pr kWh and actual need etc).
So, depending on how it all adds up - and assuming maintenance costs are relatively low - he could end up in the green after maybe 8-12 years.