"Who's to say anything else would be more stable than the above cut-down X server?"
I think the point of Wayland is that it's actually not an X server at all (despite misleading article title) but could be used as an X server replacement for Linux; applications would have to be written or ported to it as it wouldn't be running the X protocol (however, a port of the X server could allow X apps to run in the same way as running an X server on Windows or OSX allows you to use X apps on those platforms).
"just means it's something else that YOUR X server does. Others may not"
And you took it the other way...
Yes X doesn't have to use a hardware framebuffer, yes you can have X on various other virtual framebuffers, but that's going a step in the oposite direction of what people are talking about here. That would be keeping the X server/protocol and throwing out its ability to write to and manage the hardware. What people are talking about is throwing out the X serrver/protocol, and allowing stuff to write more directly to the screen, have more stuff in the kernel, and reduce the number of abstractions and context switches required between the app and the pixels landing on the screen.
So an application that wanted to use this facitily would just create a shortcut to its configuration data (or whatever)... when you move that data, the shortcut gets updated, the app knows where to look. Personally I don't like the operating system doing things for me, if I want an app to look elsewhere for files, I'll tell it, I don't want application settings (including search paths) changed during file operations. Just different way of using your system I guess.
"Why can't the OS get out of my way so i can work?"
But what you're talking about is the exact oposite of that... you're talking about an OS that tracks changes you make, so when you try to use something that you've moved, it will automatically compensate and use the new location. If the OS got "out of your way", you'd have to look after this yourself.
Incidentally, Windows has the 'distributed link tracking' which (by sounds of it) does something similar (if enabled).
x86 is an instruction set. Not all processors supporting x86 instruction set are desktop processors, they're just the one's you're more likely to have heard of. Intel have also produced radiation hardened variations, static cores, on-chip I/O etc (such as 386EX, which is floating round in space in various satellites).
"PNG is somewhat better than TIFF last time I checked"
Most people learn at quite a young age that the word 'better' doesn't really mean anything on its own. Better at what? Better at supporting non-RGB colour spaces? Better at supporting RGB with more than 8bits per colour, or even floating point values? Storing multiple images in a single file? No, png supportings none of these things that tiff does. If you're creating computer graphics for UI's, websites etc, png is probably a better choice, as that's more what it's designed for, but there are many other uses for storing images outside of this scope that tiff fits much better than png. As far as compression's concerned, PNG supports DEFLATE, which existed before PNG did, and the same with TIFF and its supported LZW compression (not that there's anything stopping you compressing either with either).
Hubble's not gonna be wasting it's precious cpu time on running calculations for scientists on earth; they can do that themselves here on much faster processors, rather than divide up processor time onboard a satellite. Hubble will, however, need processing power for alignment; controlling rocket burns to get it pointing the right way, controlling motors to position mirrors, that kinda stuff, which doesn't need huge amounts of processing power. Just decent, realtime, predictable core + software, without things like fdiv bugs, or huge amounts of heat that pentiums+ give off.
Why bother with heavy shielding when you can just make the transistors big enough to not be flippable by single stray particals? Thick shielding might prevent 99.999% of dangerous bit flipping radiation from getting through, but what about that last tiny bit, you're going to need extra circuitry to detect errors in the processors circuitry... and everything starts getting more complicated, and you end up back where you started. In space, simpler is better.
"You can't modify the INF because that voids the driver certificate"
I forget which (driver packs or nlite, possibly both) should handle that. I don't know about OPK's, I use it for fully automated network installs of 2003, and any warnings/etc about unsigned drivers are just disabled. I forget where along the line I enabled this.
"Oh, I feel your pain on that one. I would LOVE to see an app that can escalate/de-escalate permissions in a cmd window, and it annoys me that Microsoft didn't provide it."
On 2003 (don't have vista to try), runas/?
RUNAS USAGE:
RUNAS [ [/noprofile |/profile] [/env] [/savecred |/netonly] ]/user: program
RUNAS [ [/noprofile |/profile] [/env] [/savecred] ]/smartcard [/user:] program/noprofile specifies that the user's profile should not be loaded.
This causes the application to load more quickly, but
can cause some applications to malfunction./profile specifies that the user's profile should be loaded.
This is the default./env to use current environment instead of user's./netonly use if the credentials specified are for remote
access only./savecred to use credentials previously saved by the user.
This option is not available on Windows XP Home Edition
and will be ignored./smartcard use if the credentials are to be supplied from a
smartcard./user should be in form USER@DOMAIN or DOMAIN\USER
program command line for EXE. See below for examples
NOTE: Enter user's password only when prompted. NOTE: USER@DOMAIN is not compatible with/netonly. NOTE:/profile is not compatible with/netonly. NOTE:/savecred is not compatible with/smartcard.
Re:Building your own kernel these days ain't easy
on
Linux 2.6.27 Out
·
· Score: 1
Yeah and huge patchsets that mean upgrading to a vanilla kernel can break things if you don't know and often include all the patches the previous distro-kernel did... but then the distro should give you the source so you can.
"So you start off with a mess and end up with a bit less of a mess"
The other option of course is that you stick with the original not-a-bit-less-of-a-mess... but the fact at the end of the day is that linux does let you clean things up, compile stuff in/out, should you want to (personally, I put the effort in to compile from scratch, with minimal options, adding features that I need, avoiding distro messes... but I make money out of knowing all this stuff, so it works for me). Operating systems that don't let you compile out stuff you don't need will generally just leave you running stuff you don't need. Just cuz the option's not there to get rid of it, doesn't mean it's not there to be got rid of!
Re:Building your own kernel these days ain't easy
on
Linux 2.6.27 Out
·
· Score: 2, Informative
um... the "whacky idea" here is that you start off with defaults that you know works... and then change things that you know you want to change. For example, compile in drivers/filesystems/etc that you otherwise would be loading as modules... tell it to compile using instructions for your specific cpu model, rather than a generic 'i686'... remove any unneeded sections for example sata if running on a pata-only system, firewire, memory card support, video for linux, ISDN/modem/ppp support... this isn't a difficult concept; you don't have to know what everything is to know that there are some things you can do to make improvements.
Re:Not in upcoming Debian
on
Linux 2.6.27 Out
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
That's where driverpacks and perhaps nlite projects come in handy.
"The problem isn't that Mono prevents migration from Windows"
No of course not, hence the absurdity of the of the statement claiming otherwise.
"It seems like Mono will never provide complete portability"
It's a massive project... but everyone seems to be forgetting here, it is open source! Where there are portability problems (for example, path name changes when running under different operating systems) instead of patching the software, you could write hooks to modify the file/io calls (as in WINE, c:\windows could be translated to ~/wine/drive_c/windows). Lack of portability in certain areas is not a fundamental problem with the Mono architecture surely, but with the fact that not enough work has been done on it for that to have been achieved. With more developers and more time, these issues can be resolved.
My claim is that of the two techs mentioned (Wine and.NET), one enables migration from Windows, the other prevents it."
Are you serious?! How do you think that Mono prevents migration of software from Windows to Linux? Bare in mind that for that to be true, what you're saying, is that if I have some software written for.Net and want to migrate it to Linux, I could do if it wasn't for Mono? So surely that means that if I avoid installing Mono, then I will be able to migrate it to Linux? Without Mono, I can run it, but installing Mono prevents me from running it? If that's not what ya meant, maybe you could word your argument more clearly?
Before I tear apart what you think passes for an argument,
"Ad hominem"
Erm... do you know what 'ad hominem' means? This is insulting your argument, not you personally. It's insulting to you personally by proxy, on the basis that you believe your argument etc etc. Okay, yes, there is an ad hominem element to it still as you are insulted along with what you said, but that doesn't invalidate it. "Ad hominem" is hardly a defence.
"Then you have a short memory"
Or more likely: hasn't come across posts where you express the bug up your ass about java.
"Wine does, certainly"
Erm... mono "certainly" does too... not *all*, and often without some porting (such as changing paths to reflect unixy filesystems), which is stated. You may remember what WINE was like as 'early' into the project as Mono currently.
Among other things, Mono allows transference of skills of Windows programmers to Linux systems, should they desire to work under Linux. If you think people are going to develop under Mono on Linux, and then move their projects over to the Windows platform instead, I think that demonstrates how little confidence you have in Linux.
"Irrelevant, Ad hominem and a strawman. Well Done!!!"
Untrue, irrelevant, untrue, and unduely patronising.
"We repealed slavery laws, because they violated the Right of Liberty"
I thought* it was because it was giving economical benefits (not having to pay your workers) to the south, whereas in the more built up areas of the north where lincoln ruled from, slave workers brought much less benefit to the economy as more skilled workers were needed to power the industrial revolution... Lincoln didn't want to leave the south with such an advantage. The fact that there were moral reasons that could be used to back up the removal of the south's economic advantage was purely incidental (is not like political spin is a new invention!)
(* plz note use 'thought', I am not making certain claims either way)
"If the binary isn't made for Linux nothing happens"
Yeah right! My linux machine got infected with a virus and it took forever cuz it was over 50meg download cuz it needed it installed WINE first. I wouldn't mind so much but I was connected on my 3G card, phone bill at end of the month was *massive*. At least windows can run viruses natively so they don't have to be statically linked to libwine. That saves me loads of money when I'm connected thru my mobile phone.
"Once upon a time, people sold browsers just like they sold any other piece of software. Netscape were making money licensing their browser for corporate environments. The web, and consequently its leader, Netscape, threatened Microsoft's desktop monopoly. So Microsoft used all the cash they had from selling desktop operating systems, bought a web browser (defrauding that company in the process) and spent lots of money developing it further"
And now we have free and even open source browsers as well! Thank you Microsoft for taking the money out of the browser market so that we can all now download a choice of free browsers for surfin 'net with! x x
No... if you wanna sleep through progress, set yourself an alarm to wake yourself up when it's "all done". Why should anyone else care what you wanna sleep through?
"Actually science still can't explain where DNA came from"
Abuse of word "actually", requires that following sentence is factually accurate. What you mean is that science still can't explain it to you. Don't assume that knowledge doesn't exist just because you don't possess it personally. "Generalising from self" is a form of inductive reasoning which should only be used when sufficient data for deductive reasoning cannot be easily obtained. You should remember though, that as this form of reasoning does not always yield a correct result, you should always be sure to word such uncertainty into your statements based on it so as to not inaccurately portray the level of research you have carried out which you base the statement upon.
"The big bang was a theological idea used to give scientists a starting point"
The big bang is a mathmatical idea resulting from divisions by zero in the time dimension... or something... it's not purely theological.
"I reject it as an explanation for the source of all matter"
The metric of whether a theory should be considered true or not should not be whether it explains the source of all matter, as explaining the source of all matter is not a prerequisite in explaining unrelated things and even many related things.
Slashdot Mirror
"Who's to say anything else would be more stable than the above cut-down X server?"
I think the point of Wayland is that it's actually not an X server at all (despite misleading article title) but could be used as an X server replacement for Linux; applications would have to be written or ported to it as it wouldn't be running the X protocol (however, a port of the X server could allow X apps to run in the same way as running an X server on Windows or OSX allows you to use X apps on those platforms).
All in all, this seems like A Good Thing(tm)
"just means it's something else that YOUR X server does. Others may not"
And you took it the other way...
Yes X doesn't have to use a hardware framebuffer, yes you can have X on various other virtual framebuffers, but that's going a step in the oposite direction of what people are talking about here. That would be keeping the X server/protocol and throwing out its ability to write to and manage the hardware. What people are talking about is throwing out the X serrver/protocol, and allowing stuff to write more directly to the screen, have more stuff in the kernel, and reduce the number of abstractions and context switches required between the app and the pixels landing on the screen.
So an application that wanted to use this facitily would just create a shortcut to its configuration data (or whatever)... when you move that data, the shortcut gets updated, the app knows where to look. Personally I don't like the operating system doing things for me, if I want an app to look elsewhere for files, I'll tell it, I don't want application settings (including search paths) changed during file operations. Just different way of using your system I guess.
"Why can't the OS get out of my way so i can work?"
But what you're talking about is the exact oposite of that... you're talking about an OS that tracks changes you make, so when you try to use something that you've moved, it will automatically compensate and use the new location. If the OS got "out of your way", you'd have to look after this yourself.
Incidentally, Windows has the 'distributed link tracking' which (by sounds of it) does something similar (if enabled).
x86 is an instruction set. Not all processors supporting x86 instruction set are desktop processors, they're just the one's you're more likely to have heard of. Intel have also produced radiation hardened variations, static cores, on-chip I/O etc (such as 386EX, which is floating round in space in various satellites).
"PNG is somewhat better than TIFF last time I checked"
Most people learn at quite a young age that the word 'better' doesn't really mean anything on its own. Better at what? Better at supporting non-RGB colour spaces? Better at supporting RGB with more than 8bits per colour, or even floating point values? Storing multiple images in a single file? No, png supportings none of these things that tiff does. If you're creating computer graphics for UI's, websites etc, png is probably a better choice, as that's more what it's designed for, but there are many other uses for storing images outside of this scope that tiff fits much better than png. As far as compression's concerned, PNG supports DEFLATE, which existed before PNG did, and the same with TIFF and its supported LZW compression (not that there's anything stopping you compressing either with either).
To sum up: better at what?
Hubble's not gonna be wasting it's precious cpu time on running calculations for scientists on earth; they can do that themselves here on much faster processors, rather than divide up processor time onboard a satellite. Hubble will, however, need processing power for alignment; controlling rocket burns to get it pointing the right way, controlling motors to position mirrors, that kinda stuff, which doesn't need huge amounts of processing power. Just decent, realtime, predictable core + software, without things like fdiv bugs, or huge amounts of heat that pentiums+ give off.
Why bother with heavy shielding when you can just make the transistors big enough to not be flippable by single stray particals? Thick shielding might prevent 99.999% of dangerous bit flipping radiation from getting through, but what about that last tiny bit, you're going to need extra circuitry to detect errors in the processors circuitry... and everything starts getting more complicated, and you end up back where you started. In space, simpler is better.
"Every computer program can be interpreted to "improve the way a system runs""
Sorry, have to say it... Vista?
"You can't modify the INF because that voids the driver certificate"
I forget which (driver packs or nlite, possibly both) should handle that. I don't know about OPK's, I use it for fully automated network installs of 2003, and any warnings/etc about unsigned drivers are just disabled. I forget where along the line I enabled this.
"Oh, I feel your pain on that one. I would LOVE to see an app that can escalate/de-escalate permissions in a cmd window, and it annoys me that Microsoft didn't provide it."
On 2003 (don't have vista to try), runas /?
RUNAS USAGE:
RUNAS [ [/noprofile | /profile] [/env] [/savecred | /netonly] ] /user: program
RUNAS [ [/noprofile | /profile] [/env] [/savecred] ] /smartcard [/user:] program /noprofile specifies that the user's profile should not be loaded. /profile specifies that the user's profile should be loaded. /env to use current environment instead of user's. /netonly use if the credentials specified are for remote /savecred to use credentials previously saved by the user. /smartcard use if the credentials are to be supplied from a /user should be in form USER@DOMAIN or DOMAIN\USER
This causes the application to load more quickly, but
can cause some applications to malfunction.
This is the default.
access only.
This option is not available on Windows XP Home Edition
and will be ignored.
smartcard.
program command line for EXE. See below for examples
Examples: /noprofile /user:mymachine\administrator cmd /profile /env /user:mydomain\admin "mmc %windir%\system32\dsa.msc" /env /user:user@domain.microsoft.com "notepad \"my file.txt\""
> runas
> runas
> runas
NOTE: Enter user's password only when prompted. /netonly. /profile is not compatible with /netonly. /savecred is not compatible with /smartcard.
NOTE: USER@DOMAIN is not compatible with
NOTE:
NOTE:
Yeah and huge patchsets that mean upgrading to a vanilla kernel can break things if you don't know and often include all the patches the previous distro-kernel did... but then the distro should give you the source so you can.
"So you start off with a mess and end up with a bit less of a mess"
The other option of course is that you stick with the original not-a-bit-less-of-a-mess... but the fact at the end of the day is that linux does let you clean things up, compile stuff in/out, should you want to (personally, I put the effort in to compile from scratch, with minimal options, adding features that I need, avoiding distro messes... but I make money out of knowing all this stuff, so it works for me). Operating systems that don't let you compile out stuff you don't need will generally just leave you running stuff you don't need. Just cuz the option's not there to get rid of it, doesn't mean it's not there to be got rid of!
um... the "whacky idea" here is that you start off with defaults that you know works... and then change things that you know you want to change. For example, compile in drivers/filesystems/etc that you otherwise would be loading as modules... tell it to compile using instructions for your specific cpu model, rather than a generic 'i686'... remove any unneeded sections for example sata if running on a pata-only system, firewire, memory card support, video for linux, ISDN/modem/ppp support... this isn't a difficult concept; you don't have to know what everything is to know that there are some things you can do to make improvements.
That's where driverpacks and perhaps nlite projects come in handy.
"The problem isn't that Mono prevents migration from Windows"
No of course not, hence the absurdity of the of the statement claiming otherwise.
"It seems like Mono will never provide complete portability"
It's a massive project... but everyone seems to be forgetting here, it is open source! Where there are portability problems (for example, path name changes when running under different operating systems) instead of patching the software, you could write hooks to modify the file/io calls (as in WINE, c:\windows could be translated to ~/wine/drive_c/windows). Lack of portability in certain areas is not a fundamental problem with the Mono architecture surely, but with the fact that not enough work has been done on it for that to have been achieved. With more developers and more time, these issues can be resolved.
My claim is that of the two techs mentioned (Wine and .NET), one enables migration from Windows, the other prevents it."
Are you serious?! How do you think that Mono prevents migration of software from Windows to Linux? Bare in mind that for that to be true, what you're saying, is that if I have some software written for .Net and want to migrate it to Linux, I could do if it wasn't for Mono? So surely that means that if I avoid installing Mono, then I will be able to migrate it to Linux? Without Mono, I can run it, but installing Mono prevents me from running it? If that's not what ya meant, maybe you could word your argument more clearly?
Before I tear apart what you think passes for an argument,
"Ad hominem"
Erm... do you know what 'ad hominem' means? This is insulting your argument, not you personally. It's insulting to you personally by proxy, on the basis that you believe your argument etc etc. Okay, yes, there is an ad hominem element to it still as you are insulted along with what you said, but that doesn't invalidate it. "Ad hominem" is hardly a defence.
"Then you have a short memory"
Or more likely: hasn't come across posts where you express the bug up your ass about java.
"Wine does, certainly"
Erm... mono "certainly" does too... not *all*, and often without some porting (such as changing paths to reflect unixy filesystems), which is stated. You may remember what WINE was like as 'early' into the project as Mono currently.
Among other things, Mono allows transference of skills of Windows programmers to Linux systems, should they desire to work under Linux. If you think people are going to develop under Mono on Linux, and then move their projects over to the Windows platform instead, I think that demonstrates how little confidence you have in Linux.
"Irrelevant, Ad hominem and a strawman. Well Done!!!"
Untrue, irrelevant, untrue, and unduely patronising.
"We repealed slavery laws, because they violated the Right of Liberty"
I thought* it was because it was giving economical benefits (not having to pay your workers) to the south, whereas in the more built up areas of the north where lincoln ruled from, slave workers brought much less benefit to the economy as more skilled workers were needed to power the industrial revolution... Lincoln didn't want to leave the south with such an advantage. The fact that there were moral reasons that could be used to back up the removal of the south's economic advantage was purely incidental (is not like political spin is a new invention!)
(* plz note use 'thought', I am not making certain claims either way)
"If the binary isn't made for Linux nothing happens"
Yeah right! My linux machine got infected with a virus and it took forever cuz it was over 50meg download cuz it needed it installed WINE first. I wouldn't mind so much but I was connected on my 3G card, phone bill at end of the month was *massive*. At least windows can run viruses natively so they don't have to be statically linked to libwine. That saves me loads of money when I'm connected thru my mobile phone.
haha, cheers!
I visited my parents today for a younger brother's birthday, and found a bottle of red they'd bought at 14.5% alc... I was so proud of 'em :-)
"Once upon a time, people sold browsers just like they sold any other piece of software. Netscape were making money licensing their browser for corporate environments. The web, and consequently its leader, Netscape, threatened Microsoft's desktop monopoly. So Microsoft used all the cash they had from selling desktop operating systems, bought a web browser (defrauding that company in the process) and spent lots of money developing it further"
And now we have free and even open source browsers as well! Thank you Microsoft for taking the money out of the browser market so that we can all now download a choice of free browsers for surfin 'net with! x x
hehe
No... if you wanna sleep through progress, set yourself an alarm to wake yourself up when it's "all done". Why should anyone else care what you wanna sleep through?
"See China/India/Brazil"
Well, we use their cheap workforce to save us money... I say let them use our ideas, seems a fair trade!
"Actually science still can't explain where DNA came from"
Abuse of word "actually", requires that following sentence is factually accurate. What you mean is that science still can't explain it to you. Don't assume that knowledge doesn't exist just because you don't possess it personally. "Generalising from self" is a form of inductive reasoning which should only be used when sufficient data for deductive reasoning cannot be easily obtained. You should remember though, that as this form of reasoning does not always yield a correct result, you should always be sure to word such uncertainty into your statements based on it so as to not inaccurately portray the level of research you have carried out which you base the statement upon.
"The big bang was a theological idea used to give scientists a starting point"
The big bang is a mathmatical idea resulting from divisions by zero in the time dimension... or something... it's not purely theological.
"I reject it as an explanation for the source of all matter"
The metric of whether a theory should be considered true or not should not be whether it explains the source of all matter, as explaining the source of all matter is not a prerequisite in explaining unrelated things and even many related things.
"Now stop trying to ruin my joke"
Woosh! Think your own joke went over your head *lol* fool!