I think what makes Windows and Mac... er... OSX... more popular is that they're installed on computers in WALMART. When was the last time you saw a computer in Walmart sporting any version of Linux (excluding PC Jacking)? If they had Linux-based systems regularly displayed, I bet awareness--and eventual usage--of Linux would increase a lot.
Imagine what would happen if two computers were set side-by-side, one with Vista, the other with Linux + Compiz and a few cool plugins? Maybe Vista wouldn't look so great. Especially when Vista started chugging while app switching, while Linux just kept blazing away.
So, you're saying that putting a kid on a leash so the parent can stop paying attention to them altogether is more responsible than putting a GPS device "in them" that still requires the parent to watch them? A lot of this issue has to do with the intention behind the actions, how they are dealt with, etc.
Imagine two different (single) parents, each with their own child, each going to the carnival that's in town. The first parent, John, has his child on a leash. The second parent, Alex, has his child lojacked. Each child is taken: John's leash is attached to a pole, giving him the false peace-of-mind that his child is safe (no need to hide from John, since he's learned he doesn't have to pay attention to anything but the tautness of the rope); Alex's child is simply taken when Alex isn't looking (probably after his child walks around a corner).
Alex goes in a panic almost immediately, since he has to watch his child constantly, and realizes he's missing. John, however, is oblivious to the situation for a prolonged period while he stands talking to his friend. John calls the police after searching for a while, giving the kidnapper over an hour to get away (takes 10-20 minutes to realize he's gone, another 30-40 minutes before resorting to the police). Alex searches for 30-40 minutes, then uses his GPS tracker to find out his son is MUCH further away than he should be, and calls the police to tell them.
Alex's child would be returned after only enough time for the police to catch up with the kidnapper, which isn't long since they know exactly where he is. John's child, on the other hand (having been taken by another kidnapper), would remain as a picture on the sides of milk cartons and grocery bags... possibly never to come back home (alive).
Which parent would you rather be? There are obviously good and bad implementations of everything. Nuclear energy can be used to create an abundant amount of clean energy, or to wipe an entire island clean of life.
This is probably flamebait... but seriously, it seems you know nothing about databases. A DATABASE has nothing to do with sounds. If you're going to pretend to be a geek, do it somewhere that you have a snowball's chance in hell of getting away with it, but don't try it on Slashdot.
So, essentially, if I have a single-threaded app on a quad core, it'll perform at 1/4th the potential speed.
Another, simpler way to look at it: now, instead of your M$ OS killing your gameplay experience, your game will (mostly) have it's own "dedicated" processor.
Sadly, many of the new cable & DSL installations still use a modem that has no firewall, NAT, etc. to protect the user. The user isn't warned about the dangers of connecting their system directly to the modem, or even told why they should get a router with a proper firewall/NAT system.
I went to my mother-in-law's house to work on her computer and found that she'd been given a cable modem that lacked any firewall whatsoever. Amazingly, her M$ laptop that was directly connected always seemed to freeze...
Right! And remember, the government has to give them immunity for posting all their tapes of sexual activities that occur in those rooms on the internet. After all, they're just providing evidence that all sexual activities are consensual and always between adults...
That reminds me of a story that maybe some of you can relate to:
Me and a few other developers worked on a huge project for my previous employer involving a rewrite of an old website. The old one had a terrible logging system (file-based), several very non-normalized databases that had many things that were very case-sensitive (I think there was a "membership" field for each user's record, wherein "Premium" gave them full access, but "premium" gave them nothing). There was a terrible conglomeration of systems to run the searches, such as one that ran a grep against a 3 gigabyte text file... The new project's goal was to convert it into a completely dynamic, database-driven, e-commerce system... needless to say, it was a pretty large endeavor.
Anyway, me and the other main developer, we'll call him "Joe," worked 9-12 hour days working on this beast, trying to meet a 6 month full release deadline. We had an agreement with our employer that one of us was able to sleep in, provided someone was available for internal tech support in the morning. It worked pretty well until we got our wires crossed and we both slept in on the same day. We returned to work and got mauled by our employers, revocation of our afore-mentioned agreement, and subtle threats of firing.
Now me and Joe were working long days with no ability to sleep in. We became increasingly less productive, with a higher level of bugs introduced into the system, and overshot our full release deadline by 3 months. Instead of doing a beta release as we recommended, they forced a full release... they realized almost immediately that the new system wasn't up to par, and our long days got even longer (by 2-6 hours, without any extra days off) as we fixed the new system, maintained the old system, and attempted to synchronize data between the two.
The employer tried several "incentive" programs. Holding back profit sharing bonuses (the ones that would "always be there, guys") if we didn't make their absurdly short deadlines or insanely over-ambitious milestones. That didn't work, and even caused Joe to quit; he'd bought a house based on the idea that the profit sharing would always be there, and he nearly lost it when our bonuses were held for over 3 months... I tried to explain to employers that trying to make us meet such short deadlines would only encourage hastily-written, poorly tested code, to which he responded (something like): "No, you won't. Just write the code fast, but I won't let you cut corners to do it. Just meet the deadlines."
One of the other slashdotters posted a message about using MoonSecure, which is a free OSS antivirus. Previous to looking into the software, I was going to say how much I liked ClamAV... then I realized MoonSecure uses Clam. Plus it provides the non-clunky interface, including right-click options, that ClamAV lacks.
If it turns out to be as nice as I'm hoping, I'll be installing that on my wife's computer tonight and removing AVG. If it works well, and her computer starts running as fast as it used to (pre-AVG), I'm going to be installing it on all the PCs that I support. Yay, open source!
I've installed several add-ons and it hasn't crashed for me, either. I thought it would be just as stable on any other OS, so I installed it on my mother's tablet (with M$ Vista), and it crashed almost immediately. Every once in a while, it'll randomly crash when I hit F6 (to highlight the URL), or when I first browse to a site. I would venture a guess, based upon my admittedly limited amount of experience on the matter, that the Windows version may have more instabilities than that of Linux... gosh, imagine that.;)
Thank you. I was trying to post the same, but I apparently lost my cookies when I upgraded to FF3. Many projects use the {Major}.{Minor}.{Bug/Service Release} model, pretty much as described, but many only appear to use the model. For some, the second digit is the major version.
But wait: let's say Terrorist Johnny ("TJ" for short) constructs a big nuke and uses his unknowing friend to get into a small airport without his baggage being checked. Using this influence, he boards a small airplane with the nuke, heading to a major airport.
As far as I understand, there is an assumption in airport security that arriving luggage is already secure. Even if there is a check, it doesn't matter; TJ is already close enough to wipe out the whole airport, and more (depending on the "size" of the nuke).
But wait... it's a nuke. Close only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades; even if they found the device at some security station. Heck, even if he just drove it into the unloading section in front of the airport. Step outside, scream some obligatory thing about the oppression of his peoples, and press a button: TJ could have easily converted LAX into a nuclear wasteland (worse yet, he could have done so comfortably from his apartment in New York; hooray for cellphones and pagers).
Indeed. After reading this story (well, okay, during... damn my ADD), I remembered a website that was a spoof of my company's website (www.avsupport.com). They were using an extra "s" (www.avssupport.com), and it was an "adult content" site. Anyway, I did a quick whois on my computer (Linux rocks), and found no matches. I didn't think it was possible to remove a domain from registry like that... WTF?
I'm just waiting for the Google announcement: "Store your hard drive online" (and the resulting disclaimer when 10 million people suddenly have access to all that private data you thought was encrypted).
Slashdot Mirror
Astronomical... anybody else find it ironic that this term is used when speaking of astronomy-related subjects?
I think what makes Windows and Mac... er... OSX... more popular is that they're installed on computers in WALMART. When was the last time you saw a computer in Walmart sporting any version of Linux (excluding PC Jacking)? If they had Linux-based systems regularly displayed, I bet awareness--and eventual usage--of Linux would increase a lot.
Imagine what would happen if two computers were set side-by-side, one with Vista, the other with Linux + Compiz and a few cool plugins? Maybe Vista wouldn't look so great. Especially when Vista started chugging while app switching, while Linux just kept blazing away.
$450 for Vista Ultimate
$450 for Microsoft Office
$400 for new PC
Realizing you paid more for software on your computer than for the computer itself: PRICELESS.
So, you're saying that putting a kid on a leash so the parent can stop paying attention to them altogether is more responsible than putting a GPS device "in them" that still requires the parent to watch them? A lot of this issue has to do with the intention behind the actions, how they are dealt with, etc.
Imagine two different (single) parents, each with their own child, each going to the carnival that's in town. The first parent, John, has his child on a leash. The second parent, Alex, has his child lojacked. Each child is taken: John's leash is attached to a pole, giving him the false peace-of-mind that his child is safe (no need to hide from John, since he's learned he doesn't have to pay attention to anything but the tautness of the rope); Alex's child is simply taken when Alex isn't looking (probably after his child walks around a corner).
Alex goes in a panic almost immediately, since he has to watch his child constantly, and realizes he's missing. John, however, is oblivious to the situation for a prolonged period while he stands talking to his friend. John calls the police after searching for a while, giving the kidnapper over an hour to get away (takes 10-20 minutes to realize he's gone, another 30-40 minutes before resorting to the police). Alex searches for 30-40 minutes, then uses his GPS tracker to find out his son is MUCH further away than he should be, and calls the police to tell them.
Alex's child would be returned after only enough time for the police to catch up with the kidnapper, which isn't long since they know exactly where he is. John's child, on the other hand (having been taken by another kidnapper), would remain as a picture on the sides of milk cartons and grocery bags... possibly never to come back home (alive).
Which parent would you rather be? There are obviously good and bad implementations of everything. Nuclear energy can be used to create an abundant amount of clean energy, or to wipe an entire island clean of life.
This is probably flamebait... but seriously, it seems you know nothing about databases. A DATABASE has nothing to do with sounds. If you're going to pretend to be a geek, do it somewhere that you have a snowball's chance in hell of getting away with it, but don't try it on Slashdot.
So, essentially, if I have a single-threaded app on a quad core, it'll perform at 1/4th the potential speed.
Another, simpler way to look at it: now, instead of your M$ OS killing your gameplay experience, your game will (mostly) have it's own "dedicated" processor.
Sadly, many of the new cable & DSL installations still use a modem that has no firewall, NAT, etc. to protect the user. The user isn't warned about the dangers of connecting their system directly to the modem, or even told why they should get a router with a proper firewall/NAT system.
I went to my mother-in-law's house to work on her computer and found that she'd been given a cable modem that lacked any firewall whatsoever. Amazingly, her M$ laptop that was directly connected always seemed to freeze...
Um... Baywatch, anyone?
I'm a Joss Whedon fan, but truth is truth: give the show enough T&A, and there will always be enough guys out there to keep it alive.
Right! And remember, the government has to give them immunity for posting all their tapes of sexual activities that occur in those rooms on the internet. After all, they're just providing evidence that all sexual activities are consensual and always between adults...
One of the other slashdotters posted a message about using MoonSecure, which is a free OSS antivirus. Previous to looking into the software, I was going to say how much I liked ClamAV... then I realized MoonSecure uses Clam. Plus it provides the non-clunky interface, including right-click options, that ClamAV lacks.
If it turns out to be as nice as I'm hoping, I'll be installing that on my wife's computer tonight and removing AVG. If it works well, and her computer starts running as fast as it used to (pre-AVG), I'm going to be installing it on all the PCs that I support. Yay, open source!
That's just funny. I meant some of my browser cookies.
I've installed several add-ons and it hasn't crashed for me, either. I thought it would be just as stable on any other OS, so I installed it on my mother's tablet (with M$ Vista), and it crashed almost immediately. Every once in a while, it'll randomly crash when I hit F6 (to highlight the URL), or when I first browse to a site. I would venture a guess, based upon my admittedly limited amount of experience on the matter, that the Windows version may have more instabilities than that of Linux... gosh, imagine that. ;)
Thank you. I was trying to post the same, but I apparently lost my cookies when I upgraded to FF3. Many projects use the {Major}.{Minor}.{Bug/Service Release} model, pretty much as described, but many only appear to use the model. For some, the second digit is the major version.
But wait: let's say Terrorist Johnny ("TJ" for short) constructs a big nuke and uses his unknowing friend to get into a small airport without his baggage being checked. Using this influence, he boards a small airplane with the nuke, heading to a major airport.
As far as I understand, there is an assumption in airport security that arriving luggage is already secure. Even if there is a check, it doesn't matter; TJ is already close enough to wipe out the whole airport, and more (depending on the "size" of the nuke).
But wait... it's a nuke. Close only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades; even if they found the device at some security station. Heck, even if he just drove it into the unloading section in front of the airport. Step outside, scream some obligatory thing about the oppression of his peoples, and press a button: TJ could have easily converted LAX into a nuclear wasteland (worse yet, he could have done so comfortably from his apartment in New York; hooray for cellphones and pagers).
Indeed. After reading this story (well, okay, during... damn my ADD), I remembered a website that was a spoof of my company's website (www.avsupport.com). They were using an extra "s" (www.avssupport.com), and it was an "adult content" site. Anyway, I did a quick whois on my computer (Linux rocks), and found no matches. I didn't think it was possible to remove a domain from registry like that... WTF?
I'm just waiting for the Google announcement: "Store your hard drive online" (and the resulting disclaimer when 10 million people suddenly have access to all that private data you thought was encrypted).