A lot of single-threaded code can be made parallel with just a little bit of OS support:
int my_cpu = sys_split(max_cpus, &ncpus, amt_work); // now executing on ncpus for (int i=my_cpu; i < niter; i++ ncpus) { // work } sys_combine(); //now executing on last CPU to finish
The OS can return you 1 CPU if amt_work is too small for how much time it will take to set up, or after the first split (doesn't make sense to break work into more than available processors). If there's a free CPU running idle thread it can be reassigned right away.
This covers a lot of the code that could be multithreaded and has minimal synchronization. The program doesn't have to manage anything, and it can be done by library code to automatically speed up many programs. And it's portable, in that systems that are single-CPU make this syscall a no-op, or systems that take a long time to get another CPU working for the program just return 1 CPU unless work is huge, or on arch with CPU threading it can split on even smaller-scale workloads.
But OS kernel designers will never do this, because they are only concerned about maximum throughput and making each CPU run at 100%, and not users. Honestly what most users want when they have an 8-core system is for a thread to have say 2-4 cores allocated to it if that means it can get even a 10% speedup. Eeking out even more performance on a single-threaded program is not hard, but OS designers need to be willing to 'waste' CPU time to do it, for instance by scheduling threads to two cores at the same time so that things like split() are practical... even when most of the time the other core is completely idle.
Nobody is going to interrupt the guys working on Y(1440).
That's because Y(1440) is a particle of no real consequence... not like Y(1441), the only unknown particle capable of stabilizing a miniature black hole long enough for it to grow by 'eating' the nearby matter.
If they had discovered that particle your work would surely be inter upt te d .
This is much better and more legit than just posting benchmark results, google got smart with this one
It's no different. In using Chrome, in just the first few minutes of poking around I found many sites that didn't render well. WebKit is great for new, standards-compliant pages, but it does a pretty bad job at rendering pages that are not perfect. Part of the reason why Gecko is complicated and slower is because it is actually doing a lot more than WebKit.
So you can have a fast bouncing beach ball in Chrome or nice-looking content in Firefox. If you're just looking at the beach ball, like Google wants you to do, then you're missing the big picture.
If Intel gets too pushy, the feds start staring at them REALLY hard. Which tends to make Intel fall in line.
One remedy used in the past for monopolies is to take it's patents and trade secrets and place them in the public domain. Even if Intel were to win a complete victory, they could end up losing it all.
I, too, can write obfuscated code and appear "genius-like."
I think the actual problem at all skill levels is programmers not working at their natural pace. Better programmers go too fast and their code is incomprehensible to others. Less capable programmers go too fast and their code is buggy and unreadable. In any case it's a maintenance nightmare.
And the solution is ridiculously simple: developers need to fix bugs in and add new features to their own code, whether it is from last week or ten years ago. When documentation actually helps to be more productive programmers are rewarded for doing it by less hassle and more work done (which presumably management can recognize).
The worst is when programmers just declare code done if it runs once, without testing, without removing hacks. In most jobs this gets the best reward because they programmer gets to claim it is 'done' faster AND it slows down anybody else that has to fix the bugs or add features to the code. If programmers would get mired in their own cesspool of bugs, they would either have to produce less or write better code. That would be an incentive to become better programmers and would limit the amount of damage they can do. This especially applies to the incompetent programmers, since they are always behind they have to cut more corners just to not look incompetent.
With Chrome and its incredibly clean and modern code base and extensions soon to arrive and the Linux version rapidly maturing, the only reason to keep using FF will be misplaced lingering fanboyism
It's easy to have a clean codebase when...
* No fullscreen mode. * No detection of click-through * Cut and paste uses icon-shape style instead of dragging an image * Can't grow selection using cursor * Not cross platform * History is just a list of titles (can't even get URL info) * History looks like a webpage, but you can't do text search or select or right-click on links * Downloads looks like a webpage, but same problems as history * Closing a window with multiple tabs nukes them with no warning. * No 'view page info' showing links, media, etc * No 'page style' css choices * Poor handling of many tabs (they shrink forever). * Can't control what sites are in the screenshots on start page * Can't search inside and outside a text field at once (either or) * Can't see pages that are in the cache (work offline mode) * Print... just silently does nothing if no printer installed * No rss support at all * No multiple profiles * With lots of bookmarks, it doesn't remember where you were in the list so you have to scroll to the bottom again to click more than one * Can't allow/prevent pages from choosing their own fonts * No whitelist for cookies * No clearing of cookies on closing browser * No separate proxy settings, have to use OS ones * No settings for enable/disable Java, Javascript. * Can't restrict Javascript behaviors, such as moving windows * Can't disable image loading * Can't modify MIME type mappings * Can't set max history time in days or entries * Can't set cache size * No master password * No whitelist to avoid site warnings * No support for security devices * Can't control update behavior * Poor accessibility * No autoscroll (fixed?) * Can't clear all transfers (have to remove one by one) * Buggy UI, for example Text Encoding menu doesn't autoscroll up despite having arrows (have to click arrow, can autoscroll down if wiggle mouse) * No firebug equivalent. * No mouse gestures. * Plugins perform badly and/or fail * Has bad rendering on many non-perfect sites (same with all WebKit browsers)
Oh yeah, and they stole the name 'chrome' from Mozilla, which is pretty scummy. They don't even give props to Mozilla for the name.
Let me know if these are outdated... I don't have my Windows vmware image handy.
They had super powers in the original series... Spock could read minds and was super strong. Uhura had some kind of super-hearing device that could listen to subspace waves.
And Kirk had... super ego powers. Seriously how many TOS episodes did they survive only because of Kirk's super ego refusing to live in captivity?! There was even one time where they meet God and Kirk's uses his super ego powers to call out God for being a wuss... 'what, lightning bolts is the best you can do? God, Shmod!' Those other schmucks almost let God into our universe, but Kirk knew rightly that the entire universe only had room for one of them.
Applications -> Add/Remove. There already is a simpler interface for complete newbies.
Heh, awesome. I replaced the "Applications Places System" menu with the "Ubuntu" ala "Gnome Foot" menu, so so that it doesn't take up 1/4th of the bar and never noticed this. I almost never use Places or System anyway. When it's just Ubuntu -> Add/Remove it's not so obvious.
I bet this reviewer had the same problem. You're looking at the menu and it says "Add/Remove..". Add/Remove what? Idk, so you mentally just skip over it.
It's really obvious once you see it of course, and then you find it impossible to think somebody might miss it. Clearly it doesn't say "Add/Remove Applications" since that one entry would double the menu width. Maybe it should say something "Get Applications" or "Get Programs".
Not pointless at all. The big thing we learned from this article is that "Synaptic Package Manager" menu item should be called "Add/Remove Programs" (like it is in Fedora Core).
I accidentally clicked submit, but I also wanted to point out that it would be good for add/remove programs (synaptic package manager) and software updates to have two levels:
1) Programs that people actually identify as 'applications' (ie, that have a menu item and are not command line programs) 2) Everything else
Because when you do software update then you can see "Update available for OpenOffice" instead of "Update available for gtk2-engines-pixbuf" or libkarma-dev or wtf else.
I find these reviews of "converting to linux" a bit pointless really; they're only ever one persons' perspective on what a conversion is, of which I often find I can't relate to much of what they go through.
Not pointless at all. The big thing we learned from this article is that "Synaptic Package Manager" menu item should be called "Add/Remove Programs" (like it is in Fedora Core).
This guy didn't know wtf a "Synaptic Package Manager" is and missed the tooltip that could have explained it. Instead he tried to install from an RPM on a debian system, and completely missed the fact that there are 10,000-odd programs he can install at the click of a button.
That's a HUGE failure for Ubuntu and all caused by a menu item name...
So, is there gigabit between you and the SVN server? If so, you might run into speed issues. Maybe. Probably not.
Speaking of which, the single best thing you could do to prolong the life of the SSD -or- improve the performance of the hard drive is to switch to a better version control system, like Mercurial for instance. Subversion stores about 8 files average per file you have version controlled. It also updates these files a lot. It's really a pig.
Mercurial is really the way to go here, whether on SSD or not.
However, if they were made to develop the software on boxes that met the minimum recommended spec. for their operating system, they'd have to give some thought to making the code run efficiently.
That assumes developers are using the software on those slow boxes. If they aren't eating their own dog food then you just end up with the developers getting less work done. That means cutting more corners, which means the most expedient algorithms and so slower, junkier code.
A developer isn't going to make a program more efficient because it's slow for them. They'll comment out parts needed to get to what they need tested, or just not test it properly. For instance if the spelling dictionary takes 3 seconds to load they'll just disable spellcheck while developing.
I've found the single best thing is to have a CPU% monitor going all the time. For instance, gnome's system monitor is nice because it's attractive, unobtrusive on the taskbar, and shows a history graph so you can see the total 'volume' of CPU time used. This gives a nice gut feeling for how efficient the software is.
Maybe draw a pair of glasses and a smile on it with a sharpie...
Pretty sure a Sharpie that can draw in a vacuum is going to cost at least $10.3 million. Much cheaper to just etch it into the metal using a special zero-g screwdriver...
I've seen the same exact behavior in the gnome desktop, but only in VMware images and usually Fedora Core. For example, even left clicking the close box sometimes doesn't take. Sometimes I'll click maximize and the window just disappears (I think something 'accidentally' clicked the close buttom). Sometimes it will double click. The mouse seems to work okay for moving, but it 'feels' a little jittery. The workaround for the right button is to hold it down, like another poster said.
In any case, this isn't a firefox-only issue. I think you should check your X windows mouse settings and make sure it's not goofed, and also the keyboard since I've also seen weird problems when vmware bugs out and leaves a mod key 'pressed'. Do you have an AMD dual core by any chance?
I wouldn't argue that Chrome is a better browser than Firefox, but it suits my needs better, so I prefer it. What have you got against competition?
I don't have anything against competition, I just don't understand the draw the Chrome has, and *especially* in terms of UI.
Get chromifox, turn off status bar, turn off bookmarks bar. Maybe get a couple extensions for behavior you like, such as HistoryInTab since you prefer that. I didn't find one for the homepage screenshots though, so if that *one* feature is so valuable then I guess Chrome/Safari/Opera is for you. That all takes about 30 seconds to set up.
Then you have a Chrome, only better because it's a fully fleshed out browser. And frankly a/. user that's prefers screenshot homepage over NoScript is suspect...
Chrome's UI, Chrome is light years better. hey've uncomplicated and uncluttered the modern address bar design while keeping it (making it?) actually useful. First letter, tab, search phrase is brilliant. I'm not sure I care one way or the other yet about the screenshot start page but it is growing on me. I like how settings and history and such open as browser tabs rather than dialogs. That pretty much avoids the overextended 'stack of tabs' convention.
Screenshot start page is bloat. History is better in a side panel (ctrl-H in firefox) than in a separate tab or window. Settings are almost never used, and about:config is better than Chrome's config (iirc, on linux atm). If you care about UI space you're probably using full-screen, in which case Firefox's F11 fullscreen mode is better.
I'm sorry, but it just seems like what you probably meant by UI is that you use Chrome because it's 'cool' and it's 'googlishous'. In that case, you might like firefox with Chromifox theme. It makes firefox look 'cool' like Chrome.
if you really so sick of getting that noscript/adblock add-on, why not develop one yourself and contribute back to the project?
Time to develop extensions support and equivalent noscript add-on: six months, full time Time to complain about lack of extensions in Google Chrome: <10 seconds
Your question is why people don't give up 6 months of their time instead of complaining why Google released a browser without modern features? That's madness. Developers work on open source for free when they feel like it, so unless some developer is really excited about reinventing NoScript they are going to complain instead.
And I'll go even further and turn the tables on you. If you are so sick of people complaining about lack of extensions why haven't you fixed it yet? And even if you are contributing to the project, why are you taking your free time to complain about everybody else instead of working on plugins? The chromium code is right there, so get back to work.
I suspect that in most places it could be there for months -- maybe years -- before anyone noticed. Make sure the drop isn't traceable to you and just collect the take as long as it goes unnoticed.
You forgot some steps...
1. Place device 2. Collect the take 'as long as it goes unnoticed' 3. ??? 4. Do not pass 'go'. 5. Do not collect $200.
This would be cool for a pocket-sized router, firewall, packet sniffer, etc.
You mean like some kind of a pocket protector, for you network? That can store pen-test tools and even a simple calculator? Hmm... sounds interesting.
Re:Zsh has had these features for years
on
BASH 4.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
1.) You can use < <(command) read variable
The 'read variable' part has to be a single command... it can't be compound, like a while or {..}. If you use eval then your variables are scoped to that subprocess. Furthermore, it's awkward.
2.) bash does support this, look at the bash manual (search for menu-complete)
Ok, I see that you can do this with a bind. There's no set option to do it, so you have to be fairly into tweaking your shell to do this. It's slightly annoying by adding an extra space and cycling back to the original text and ringing the bell, but presumably those can also be tweaked and are minor issues.
3.) That behaviour is mandated by the standard.
Bash isn't normally standards-compliant either unless using '-o posix', in which case it's only mostly compliant. So big deal. Zsh's behavior is better.
4.) That is only the default behaviour, other people here have pointed out how to change it.
Maybe so, but last time I tried I couldn't get bash to work anywhere near as well as zsh for history. In particular, I haven't seen any way to append to the history as the commands are entered instead of when the shell exits. So if your shell dies, for ex from power failure, all your history in that shell is list. Also the commands are not available in new terminals until you exit the shell they were typed into.
So... 1 out of 4 isn't too bad?!
Re:Zsh has had these features for years
on
BASH 4.0 Released
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The reasons I use zsh and not bash:
1)... some pipeline | read variable
In zsh you can use $variable to get the value. In base you have to do variable=$(... pipeline | { read variable; echo $variable; } ), and this is annoying and complicated when doing anything more than reading just one variable.
2) tab completion doesn't have a cycle mode (like DOS's completion)
abc-1.2.3 abc-1.2.4 abc-2.0.1 abcdef
In bash you have to do "a, tab, -, tab, 1, tab, 3" to get the first one. That means you have to know all the filenames so that you know what letter to press to get the next 'section' of the filename you want (you can double-tab to get a menu, but it's annoying). In zsh you can configure it to cycle, so to get the first one you type "a, tab" or the second one "a, tab, tab".
3) rm -f -- $FILE
In zsh, this does what you want, removing the files. In bash you have to say "$FILE" because if it has a space it is treated as two parameters, and also wildcard expanded. It's annoying to have 1/3 of the script be " characters.
4) bash history has problem with multiple shells. It only writes the commands when the shell exists, so if it exits unexpectedly your history is lost. And if you open up another terminal you can't ctrl-r for recent commands in another window.
5) zsh's line editor is better when editing multi-line commands and just generally readline is a pos. After having to use readline in a C program I have a huge bias against anything using it. It sounds like they improved it slightly by being able to remember the prompt text... before to erase the prompt and reshow it (in order to print async text) you had to remember the prompt index, delete the prompt text, save the prompt, clear the message, your code here, then restore the prompt, undo the delete of the text, restore the prompt index (by setting a global variable), then redisplay the prompt, then set the prompt string. Oh, and each one of these functions is just poorly documented enough that you feel like it might possibly tell you what you need to know, then you find out the time you spent figuring out how to navigate an 'info' file (again) was completely wasted.
...that consistancy with historical data is worthless if that data is wrong.... Well guess what - your test is WRONG. And all that lovely historical data is worthless, no matter how pretty the graph.
Data is ALWAYS wrong, the only question is 'how wrong is it'.
If you have a long history of data and discover the measurements were flawed, you replace the data with something else or correct the data as much as possible.
By continuing to collect the more flawed data and comparing it to the more accurate data, models may be created to improve the accuracy of the historical data. It's not like we can go back in time 50 years and take the measurements over again. The new historical data will have the extra dependency on the model, but if this helps make predictions more accurate then this is a good thing and part of the scientific process.
Just get a felt tip marker and write on your screen (or if it isn't glass then overlay some clear plastic). Draw lines over clauses you don't like and initial them. If the text box is too small, below the last line write "Displayed text constitutes the entire agreement". Then take a picture of this with your camera with "Ok" button pressed down and release.
If you really want to make a point, add some more:
"(company) agrees to pay (you) $5 per month for use of (your name)'s data, such as login name and password" and "By providing access to (service), company agrees to the terms of this contract".
Wait a month, then send them a bill, then a past-due notice, then by certified mail a letter saying they have '30 days' to pay before you go to small claims court. Ok, you'll lose in court but it will still be awesome. Maybe they won't show up and you'll get a default judgement;-P
Power PC and Alpha were outcompeted by the fundamentally inferior x86 family not because of flaws in their designs, but because intel spent more on improving their process than anyone else.... So now we're still using hacks upon hack on the truly horrible x86 architecture.
I sympathize with you about the x86 architecture, but you are simple wrong to say that it is inferior.
The CISC x86 instruction set is a form of compression. For most of time, the memory size has been at least an issue in performance, whether bandwidth or getting the most use of cache, and x86 code takes significantly fewer bytes than RISC instruction sets. It turns out with pipelining and other magic that the CPU can 'decompress' instructions and run them faster than just running RISC instructions directly.
Furthermore, CISC instructions allow the CPU to greatly optimize very specific operations. As a classic example, x86 CPUs can do a very fast xor, which ends up being used for zeroing registers. By way of analogy, in English text x86 CPUs could specifically optimize the whole words 'the', 'of', and 'to' whereas RISC would have to separately optimize 't', 'h', 'e', 'o', and 'f'. Basically, the RISC chips end up having to optimize everything to get the same gains x86 gets by optimizing just a few instructions.
The only real drawback to x86 over any of the RISC instruction sets is that a 'decompressor' is needed on the chip and this adds some extra cost in terms of energy and transistor count. That's why you see RISC chips dominating the ultra-low power and size market (for now).
Ruby is actually much better... since it has a sensible syntax you could make a rubysh that wouldn't suck.
If you care so much about performance, I'm surprised you bring up ruby;-). It's not really "much better" even if your friend moved to it from perl - it's just something some people pick up because they heard a cousin of their friend was once bitten by python's indentation rules.
23s: 1000x ruby -e 'printf("test\n");'
Ruby's startup time is the same as Python. Both are too slow for many things small shell scripts are used for, which contrary to your belief often do get run thousands of times.
Your beliefs that shell scripting is never appropriate, that python's syntax is not an impediment, and that Ruby is 'slow' compared to Python are not based on facts, they're based on ignorance.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of single-threaded code can be made parallel with just a little bit of OS support:
int my_cpu = sys_split(max_cpus, &ncpus, amt_work);
// now executing on ncpus
// work
//now executing on last CPU to finish
for (int i=my_cpu; i < niter; i++ ncpus) {
}
sys_combine();
The OS can return you 1 CPU if amt_work is too small for how much time it will take to set up, or after the first split (doesn't make sense to break work into more than available processors). If there's a free CPU running idle thread it can be reassigned right away.
This covers a lot of the code that could be multithreaded and has minimal synchronization. The program doesn't have to manage anything, and it can be done by library code to automatically speed up many programs. And it's portable, in that systems that are single-CPU make this syscall a no-op, or systems that take a long time to get another CPU working for the program just return 1 CPU unless work is huge, or on arch with CPU threading it can split on even smaller-scale workloads.
But OS kernel designers will never do this, because they are only concerned about maximum throughput and making each CPU run at 100%, and not users. Honestly what most users want when they have an 8-core system is for a thread to have say 2-4 cores allocated to it if that means it can get even a 10% speedup. Eeking out even more performance on a single-threaded program is not hard, but OS designers need to be willing to 'waste' CPU time to do it, for instance by scheduling threads to two cores at the same time so that things like split() are practical... even when most of the time the other core is completely idle.
Nobody is going to interrupt the guys working on Y(1440).
That's because Y(1440) is a particle of no real consequence... not like Y(1441), the only unknown particle capable of stabilizing a miniature black hole long enough for it to grow by 'eating' the nearby matter.
If they had discovered that particle your work
would surely
be inter
upt
te
d
.
This is much better and more legit than just posting benchmark results, google got smart with this one
It's no different. In using Chrome, in just the first few minutes of poking around I found many sites that didn't render well. WebKit is great for new, standards-compliant pages, but it does a pretty bad job at rendering pages that are not perfect. Part of the reason why Gecko is complicated and slower is because it is actually doing a lot more than WebKit.
So you can have a fast bouncing beach ball in Chrome or nice-looking content in Firefox. If you're just looking at the beach ball, like Google wants you to do, then you're missing the big picture.
If Intel gets too pushy, the feds start staring at them REALLY hard. Which tends to make Intel fall in line.
One remedy used in the past for monopolies is to take it's patents and trade secrets and place them in the public domain. Even if Intel were to win a complete victory, they could end up losing it all.
Also, documentation of that work is essential...
I, too, can write obfuscated code and appear "genius-like."
I think the actual problem at all skill levels is programmers not working at their natural pace. Better programmers go too fast and their code is incomprehensible to others. Less capable programmers go too fast and their code is buggy and unreadable. In any case it's a maintenance nightmare.
And the solution is ridiculously simple: developers need to fix bugs in and add new features to their own code, whether it is from last week or ten years ago. When documentation actually helps to be more productive programmers are rewarded for doing it by less hassle and more work done (which presumably management can recognize).
The worst is when programmers just declare code done if it runs once, without testing, without removing hacks. In most jobs this gets the best reward because they programmer gets to claim it is 'done' faster AND it slows down anybody else that has to fix the bugs or add features to the code. If programmers would get mired in their own cesspool of bugs, they would either have to produce less or write better code. That would be an incentive to become better programmers and would limit the amount of damage they can do. This especially applies to the incompetent programmers, since they are always behind they have to cut more corners just to not look incompetent.
With Chrome and its incredibly clean and modern code base and extensions soon to arrive and the Linux version rapidly maturing, the only reason to keep using FF will be misplaced lingering fanboyism
It's easy to have a clean codebase when...
* No fullscreen mode.
* No detection of click-through
* Cut and paste uses icon-shape style instead of dragging an image
* Can't grow selection using cursor
* Not cross platform
* History is just a list of titles (can't even get URL info)
* History looks like a webpage, but you can't do text search or select or right-click on links
* Downloads looks like a webpage, but same problems as history
* Closing a window with multiple tabs nukes them with no warning.
* No 'view page info' showing links, media, etc
* No 'page style' css choices
* Poor handling of many tabs (they shrink forever).
* Can't control what sites are in the screenshots on start page
* Can't search inside and outside a text field at once (either or)
* Can't see pages that are in the cache (work offline mode)
* Print... just silently does nothing if no printer installed
* No rss support at all
* No multiple profiles
* With lots of bookmarks, it doesn't remember where you were in the list so you have to scroll to the bottom again to click more than one
* Can't allow/prevent pages from choosing their own fonts
* No whitelist for cookies
* No clearing of cookies on closing browser
* No separate proxy settings, have to use OS ones
* No settings for enable/disable Java, Javascript.
* Can't restrict Javascript behaviors, such as moving windows
* Can't disable image loading
* Can't modify MIME type mappings
* Can't set max history time in days or entries
* Can't set cache size
* No master password
* No whitelist to avoid site warnings
* No support for security devices
* Can't control update behavior
* Poor accessibility
* No autoscroll (fixed?)
* Can't clear all transfers (have to remove one by one)
* Buggy UI, for example Text Encoding menu doesn't autoscroll up despite having arrows (have to click arrow, can autoscroll down if wiggle mouse)
* No firebug equivalent.
* No mouse gestures.
* Plugins perform badly and/or fail
* Has bad rendering on many non-perfect sites (same with all WebKit browsers)
Oh yeah, and they stole the name 'chrome' from Mozilla, which is pretty scummy. They don't even give props to Mozilla for the name.
Let me know if these are outdated... I don't have my Windows vmware image handy.
They had super powers in the original series... Spock could read minds and was super strong. Uhura had some kind of super-hearing device that could listen to subspace waves.
And Kirk had... super ego powers. Seriously how many TOS episodes did they survive only because of Kirk's super ego refusing to live in captivity?! There was even one time where they meet God and Kirk's uses his super ego powers to call out God for being a wuss... 'what, lightning bolts is the best you can do? God, Shmod!' Those other schmucks almost let God into our universe, but Kirk knew rightly that the entire universe only had room for one of them.
Applications -> Add/Remove. There already is a simpler interface for complete newbies.
Heh, awesome. I replaced the "Applications Places System" menu with the "Ubuntu" ala "Gnome Foot" menu, so so that it doesn't take up 1/4th of the bar and never noticed this. I almost never use Places or System anyway. When it's just Ubuntu -> Add/Remove it's not so obvious.
I bet this reviewer had the same problem. You're looking at the menu and it says "Add/Remove..". Add/Remove what? Idk, so you mentally just skip over it.
It's really obvious once you see it of course, and then you find it impossible to think somebody might miss it. Clearly it doesn't say "Add/Remove Applications" since that one entry would double the menu width. Maybe it should say something "Get Applications" or "Get Programs".
Not pointless at all. The big thing we learned from this article is that "Synaptic Package Manager" menu item should be called "Add/Remove Programs" (like it is in Fedora Core).
I accidentally clicked submit, but I also wanted to point out that it would be good for add/remove programs (synaptic package manager) and software updates to have two levels:
1) Programs that people actually identify as 'applications' (ie, that have a menu item and are not command line programs)
2) Everything else
Because when you do software update then you can see "Update available for OpenOffice" instead of "Update available for gtk2-engines-pixbuf" or libkarma-dev or wtf else.
I find these reviews of "converting to linux" a bit pointless really; they're only ever one persons' perspective on what a conversion is, of which I often find I can't relate to much of what they go through.
Not pointless at all. The big thing we learned from this article is that "Synaptic Package Manager" menu item should be called "Add/Remove Programs" (like it is in Fedora Core).
This guy didn't know wtf a "Synaptic Package Manager" is and missed the tooltip that could have explained it. Instead he tried to install from an RPM on a debian system, and completely missed the fact that there are 10,000-odd programs he can install at the click of a button.
That's a HUGE failure for Ubuntu and all caused by a menu item name...
So, is there gigabit between you and the SVN server? If so, you might run into speed issues. Maybe. Probably not.
Speaking of which, the single best thing you could do to prolong the life of the SSD -or- improve the performance of the hard drive is to switch to a better version control system, like Mercurial for instance. Subversion stores about 8 files average per file you have version controlled. It also updates these files a lot. It's really a pig.
Mercurial is really the way to go here, whether on SSD or not.
However, if they were made to develop the software on boxes that met the minimum recommended spec. for their operating system, they'd have to give some thought to making the code run efficiently.
That assumes developers are using the software on those slow boxes. If they aren't eating their own dog food then you just end up with the developers getting less work done. That means cutting more corners, which means the most expedient algorithms and so slower, junkier code.
A developer isn't going to make a program more efficient because it's slow for them. They'll comment out parts needed to get to what they need tested, or just not test it properly. For instance if the spelling dictionary takes 3 seconds to load they'll just disable spellcheck while developing.
I've found the single best thing is to have a CPU% monitor going all the time. For instance, gnome's system monitor is nice because it's attractive, unobtrusive on the taskbar, and shows a history graph so you can see the total 'volume' of CPU time used. This gives a nice gut feeling for how efficient the software is.
Maybe draw a pair of glasses and a smile on it with a sharpie...
Pretty sure a Sharpie that can draw in a vacuum is going to cost at least $10.3 million. Much cheaper to just etch it into the metal using a special zero-g screwdriver...
I've seen the same exact behavior in the gnome desktop, but only in VMware images and usually Fedora Core. For example, even left clicking the close box sometimes doesn't take. Sometimes I'll click maximize and the window just disappears (I think something 'accidentally' clicked the close buttom). Sometimes it will double click. The mouse seems to work okay for moving, but it 'feels' a little jittery. The workaround for the right button is to hold it down, like another poster said.
In any case, this isn't a firefox-only issue. I think you should check your X windows mouse settings and make sure it's not goofed, and also the keyboard since I've also seen weird problems when vmware bugs out and leaves a mod key 'pressed'. Do you have an AMD dual core by any chance?
I wouldn't argue that Chrome is a better browser than Firefox, but it suits my needs better, so I prefer it. What have you got against competition?
I don't have anything against competition, I just don't understand the draw the Chrome has, and *especially* in terms of UI.
Get chromifox, turn off status bar, turn off bookmarks bar. Maybe get a couple extensions for behavior you like, such as HistoryInTab since you prefer that. I didn't find one for the homepage screenshots though, so if that *one* feature is so valuable then I guess Chrome/Safari/Opera is for you. That all takes about 30 seconds to set up.
Then you have a Chrome, only better because it's a fully fleshed out browser. And frankly a /. user that's prefers screenshot homepage over NoScript is suspect...
Chrome's UI, Chrome is light years better. hey've uncomplicated and uncluttered the modern address bar design while keeping it (making it?) actually useful. First letter, tab, search phrase is brilliant. I'm not sure I care one way or the other yet about the screenshot start page but it is growing on me. I like how settings and history and such open as browser tabs rather than dialogs. That pretty much avoids the overextended 'stack of tabs' convention.
Screenshot start page is bloat. History is better in a side panel (ctrl-H in firefox) than in a separate tab or window. Settings are almost never used, and about:config is better than Chrome's config (iirc, on linux atm). If you care about UI space you're probably using full-screen, in which case Firefox's F11 fullscreen mode is better.
I'm sorry, but it just seems like what you probably meant by UI is that you use Chrome because it's 'cool' and it's 'googlishous'. In that case, you might like firefox with Chromifox theme. It makes firefox look 'cool' like Chrome.
if you really so sick of getting that noscript/adblock add-on, why not develop one yourself and contribute back to the project?
Time to develop extensions support and equivalent noscript add-on: six months, full time
Time to complain about lack of extensions in Google Chrome: <10 seconds
Your question is why people don't give up 6 months of their time instead of complaining why Google released a browser without modern features? That's madness. Developers work on open source for free when they feel like it, so unless some developer is really excited about reinventing NoScript they are going to complain instead.
And I'll go even further and turn the tables on you. If you are so sick of people complaining about lack of extensions why haven't you fixed it yet? And even if you are contributing to the project, why are you taking your free time to complain about everybody else instead of working on plugins? The chromium code is right there, so get back to work.
I suspect that in most places it could be there for months -- maybe years -- before anyone noticed. Make sure the drop isn't traceable to you and just collect the take as long as it goes unnoticed.
You forgot some steps...
1. Place device
2. Collect the take 'as long as it goes unnoticed'
3. ???
4. Do not pass 'go'.
5. Do not collect $200.
This would be cool for a pocket-sized router, firewall, packet sniffer, etc.
You mean like some kind of a pocket protector, for you network? That can store pen-test tools and even a simple calculator? Hmm... sounds interesting.
1.) You can use < <(command) read variable
The 'read variable' part has to be a single command... it can't be compound, like a while or {..}. If you use eval then your variables are scoped to that subprocess. Furthermore, it's awkward.
2.) bash does support this, look at the bash manual (search for menu-complete)
Ok, I see that you can do this with a bind. There's no set option to do it, so you have to be fairly into tweaking your shell to do this. It's slightly annoying by adding an extra space and cycling back to the original text and ringing the bell, but presumably those can also be tweaked and are minor issues.
3.) That behaviour is mandated by the standard.
Bash isn't normally standards-compliant either unless using '-o posix', in which case it's only mostly compliant. So big deal. Zsh's behavior is better.
4.) That is only the default behaviour, other people here have pointed out how to change it.
Maybe so, but last time I tried I couldn't get bash to work anywhere near as well as zsh for history. In particular, I haven't seen any way to append to the history as the commands are entered instead of when the shell exits. So if your shell dies, for ex from power failure, all your history in that shell is list. Also the commands are not available in new terminals until you exit the shell they were typed into.
So... 1 out of 4 isn't too bad?!
The reasons I use zsh and not bash:
1) ... some pipeline | read variable
In zsh you can use $variable to get the value. In base you have to do variable=$(... pipeline | { read variable; echo $variable; } ), and this is annoying and complicated when doing anything more than reading just one variable.
2) tab completion doesn't have a cycle mode (like DOS's completion)
abc-1.2.3
abc-1.2.4
abc-2.0.1
abcdef
In bash you have to do "a, tab, -, tab, 1, tab, 3" to get the first one. That means you have to know all the filenames so that you know what letter to press to get the next 'section' of the filename you want (you can double-tab to get a menu, but it's annoying). In zsh you can configure it to cycle, so to get the first one you type "a, tab" or the second one "a, tab, tab".
3) rm -f -- $FILE
In zsh, this does what you want, removing the files. In bash you have to say "$FILE" because if it has a space it is treated as two parameters, and also wildcard expanded. It's annoying to have 1/3 of the script be " characters.
4) bash history has problem with multiple shells. It only writes the commands when the shell exists, so if it exits unexpectedly your history is lost. And if you open up another terminal you can't ctrl-r for recent commands in another window.
5) zsh's line editor is better when editing multi-line commands and just generally readline is a pos. After having to use readline in a C program I have a huge bias against anything using it. It sounds like they improved it slightly by being able to remember the prompt text... before to erase the prompt and reshow it (in order to print async text) you had to remember the prompt index, delete the prompt text, save the prompt, clear the message, your code here, then restore the prompt, undo the delete of the text, restore the prompt index (by setting a global variable), then redisplay the prompt, then set the prompt string. Oh, and each one of these functions is just poorly documented enough that you feel like it might possibly tell you what you need to know, then you find out the time you spent figuring out how to navigate an 'info' file (again) was completely wasted.
...that consistancy with historical data is worthless if that data is wrong. ... Well guess what - your test is WRONG. And all that lovely historical data is worthless, no matter how pretty the graph.
Data is ALWAYS wrong, the only question is 'how wrong is it'.
If you have a long history of data and discover the measurements were flawed, you replace the data with something else or correct the data as much as possible.
By continuing to collect the more flawed data and comparing it to the more accurate data, models may be created to improve the accuracy of the historical data. It's not like we can go back in time 50 years and take the measurements over again. The new historical data will have the extra dependency on the model, but if this helps make predictions more accurate then this is a good thing and part of the scientific process.
Just get a felt tip marker and write on your screen (or if it isn't glass then overlay some clear plastic). Draw lines over clauses you don't like and initial them. If the text box is too small, below the last line write "Displayed text constitutes the entire agreement". Then take a picture of this with your camera with "Ok" button pressed down and release.
If you really want to make a point, add some more:
"(company) agrees to pay (you) $5 per month for use of (your name)'s data, such as login name and password" and "By providing access to (service), company agrees to the terms of this contract".
Wait a month, then send them a bill, then a past-due notice, then by certified mail a letter saying they have '30 days' to pay before you go to small claims court. Ok, you'll lose in court but it will still be awesome. Maybe they won't show up and you'll get a default judgement ;-P
Power PC and Alpha were outcompeted by the fundamentally inferior x86 family not because of flaws in their designs, but because intel spent more on improving their process than anyone else. ... So now we're still using hacks upon hack on the truly horrible x86 architecture.
I sympathize with you about the x86 architecture, but you are simple wrong to say that it is inferior.
The CISC x86 instruction set is a form of compression. For most of time, the memory size has been at least an issue in performance, whether bandwidth or getting the most use of cache, and x86 code takes significantly fewer bytes than RISC instruction sets. It turns out with pipelining and other magic that the CPU can 'decompress' instructions and run them faster than just running RISC instructions directly.
Furthermore, CISC instructions allow the CPU to greatly optimize very specific operations. As a classic example, x86 CPUs can do a very fast xor, which ends up being used for zeroing registers. By way of analogy, in English text x86 CPUs could specifically optimize the whole words 'the', 'of', and 'to' whereas RISC would have to separately optimize 't', 'h', 'e', 'o', and 'f'. Basically, the RISC chips end up having to optimize everything to get the same gains x86 gets by optimizing just a few instructions.
The only real drawback to x86 over any of the RISC instruction sets is that a 'decompressor' is needed on the chip and this adds some extra cost in terms of energy and transistor count. That's why you see RISC chips dominating the ultra-low power and size market (for now).
Ruby is actually much better... since it has a sensible syntax you could make a rubysh that wouldn't suck.
If you care so much about performance, I'm surprised you bring up ruby ;-). It's not really "much better" even if your friend moved to it from perl - it's just something some people pick up because they heard a cousin of their friend was once bitten by python's indentation rules.
23s: 1000x ruby -e 'printf("test\n");'
Ruby's startup time is the same as Python. Both are too slow for many things small shell scripts are used for, which contrary to your belief often do get run thousands of times.
Your beliefs that shell scripting is never appropriate, that python's syntax is not an impediment, and that Ruby is 'slow' compared to Python are not based on facts, they're based on ignorance.
Good day, sir.