I'm pretty happy about it. If Microsoft's package manager works reasonably well, then Windows will become significantly less painful to use. Unfortunately, it not clear if it will be useful in the general case, or if it's just going to be a slightly larger Windows Update + Gimmicky Toys.
On Windows:
* Run Windows Update
* Run a program that detects out-of-date software like FileHippo's update checker (or open all of your programs and see which ones annoy you)
* Download each program's update individually
* Run each of those (clicking through the damn wizard every time)
* Reboot your machine
* Watch as a "new update available" popup appears an hour later when you open a program
On Linux, pick one of the following:
* Click the update icon (Ubuntu, maybe other distros)
* Run 'yum upgrade', 'aptitude update && aptitude upgrade' or 'pacman -Syu'
"OMG Linux is so hard. You expect me to open a terminal and type two words??! It's much easier to spend an hour clicking 'Yes"!"
The reason for the "fragmentation" is that Linux programs tend to use global dependencies, instead of carrying all of their dependencies with them. It obviously has some (possibly major) disadvantages (DLL hell), but it's the reason Linux tends to use 5x less memory than Windows and OSX.
Instead of choice 1 and choice 2, I would say step 1 and step 2:
1. Inform Newegg that there's a problem with their process (considering this is on Slashdot, this may already be done). 2. Erase the drives. 3. ??? 4. Profit
Re:Can't update on my work computer
on
Firefox 10 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
When did FF go from being the crown jewel of OS to absoloute dogshit?
Never?
Or are you making the mistake of paying too much attention to Slashdot trolls?
PackageKit works on just about any Linux distro, has a nice GNOME interface, and while it's not quite as pretty, it's just as useful as Apple's "App Store". I have very little experience with Steam so I can't comment on that.
Package managers have been Linux's killer feature for years. It's not surprising other OS's are finally starting to figure that out.
Oh I don't know, how about when Asa Hitler...sorry, Dotzler, declared that business users didn't matter and they changed the release schedules for Firefox even despite the public outcry against it?
How dare they not let users make marketing decisions for them!
In fact it was so publically derided that Mozilla have back-pedalled and announced an "LTS" version of Firefox specifically for that purpose.
How dare they.. uh.. listen to their users.. Wait what are we angry about again?
I think most (all?) libertarians support some sort of enforcement of contracts. So, one option is for stock exchanges to require all traders to sign some sort of contract stating that they won't engage in insider trading, and if they do, they're subject to some kind of sanction (fines/jail time).
Only an idiot would trade at a stock exchange that didn't require this kind of contract. Sadly, there's enough idiots that it probably wouldn't work.
They have a huge guaranteed user - Google themselves. Think about how many people use GMail, for example...
But they're don't own all of the browsers. If this extension is a big enough deal to start moving people to Chrome, then *obviously they were right* and other browsers need to start supporting it.
Both machines run FF 3.6 because I keep reading that later versions have worse memory use and UI performance characteristics.
... people say that 3.6 is more responsive (especially on older HW) than the newer versions.
Those people are wrong. Newer versions of Firefox are *much* faster and use less memory. In fact, lowering memory usage became a priority right about the time you stopped upgrading. Ironic, eh?
I think the point is that there are plenty of filesystems far better than NTFS (Ext4, ReiserFS, ZFS), but Microsoft is choosing to make a new one, probably just so it will be incompatible with *nix systems.
Next question: why did Arch need to reinvent the package management wheel? deb and rpm already existed. What does the Arch package format (format, not the pacman front-end) give you that other formats could not have?
- OP
Arch packages are much easier to build. This was the thing for me. You basically write a file containing the package name, version number, where to get the sources (and their checksums), and then a bash script of how to install it. Most Arch packages can be written in minutes -- which I think is why the AUR is so popular.
For example, this is the entire source for a pylibmc package:
They may have crap mistakes in them that people will have to support for years to come, and a hundred million web developers will curse your hubris writing standards for stuff you don't understand and didn't check was okay.
Or, as is often the case, no one will support the standard.
NaCl and Dart are both fundamentally unacceptable to at least Firefox though - they consider them basically impossible to implement. Google is going ahead with them anyway. I don't think any of the other browser manufacturers are any more willing either.
So they fail. What's the problem?
Google wants to convince other people to implement something they like, so they created their own implementation to demonstrate it. How else do you expect them to convince anyone? Or should they just leave things how they are and get off your lawn?
You do know how web standards work right? It goes something like this:
1. A bunch of people come up with ideas that would be cool to have in browsers. 2. Some of them add those things to browsers. 3. After we figure out which approach works / is most acceptable to all browser makers, it becomes a standard.
For some reason it's a common belief that it works the other way around (make standard -> implement standard), but anyone know hows anything about programming can tell you why setting everything in stone and then writing the software is a terrible idea.
I've used SQL Server and Postgres/PostGIS for spatial queries, and PostGIS is much better. SQL Server's spatial indexes are not as good, and require a lot of work to even be acceptable. PostGIS indexes don't require any work and are faster.
Would it not make sense for them to still use this idea to some extent, though? Put some solar panels on the phone just to give that extra little bit of battery life.
It's probably cheaper and more effective to just give it a bigger battery.
I lost 60 pounds in 6 months on the "Eat correctly, not so much fast carbs you moron" diet.
Basically, I eliminated the refined sugars (HFCS is one of the fastest carbs in the universe) and then removing the other low end ones like rice, pasta, bread, noodles, potato, corn, wheat, most fruits. The hardest thing to cut was wheat gluten; they put that shit in everything!
Uh, you do know that gluten is protein right?
So what do I eat now? Like you said, mostly fish and fowl, with some red meat in there. I also eat liver on a monthly basis for the super-dense protein.
" If people lowered the amount of carbs they take then they would be both more healthier and more lean."
However, if "everybody" did that, then we wouldn't have nearly enough food. Note the percentage of your diet that the pyramid says should be cheap-carbs and then look at the percentage of US food that comes from wheat and corn.
So you're on the dying of a heart attack diet now?
My point was that none of those things have anything to do with the language choice. If you want to add a language to phones, it doesn't matter what language it is. JavaScript is perfectly capable of running outside of a browser, and if Google wanted to, they could do exactly what you're proposing.
The point of my snarky reply is that you don't seem to know the difference between a language and libraries, specifically this:
And you don't really mean pure JavaScript?
As if "pure JavaScript" can't exist outside a sandbox (or in the case of phones, a different sandbox).
I still think JavaScript is only available in browsers. Further, i don't understand that browsers can access local files as well as remote ones. I also don't understand the concept of JavaScript sandboxing, or the possibility of running the same language outside of a sandbox.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty happy about it. If Microsoft's package manager works reasonably well, then Windows will become significantly less painful to use. Unfortunately, it not clear if it will be useful in the general case, or if it's just going to be a slightly larger Windows Update + Gimmicky Toys.
The one that really gets me is updating.
On Windows:
* Run Windows Update
* Run a program that detects out-of-date software like FileHippo's update checker (or open all of your programs and see which ones annoy you)
* Download each program's update individually
* Run each of those (clicking through the damn wizard every time)
* Reboot your machine
* Watch as a "new update available" popup appears an hour later when you open a program
On Linux, pick one of the following:
* Click the update icon (Ubuntu, maybe other distros)
* Run 'yum upgrade', 'aptitude update && aptitude upgrade' or 'pacman -Syu'
"OMG Linux is so hard. You expect me to open a terminal and type two words??! It's much easier to spend an hour clicking 'Yes"!"
Is "apt-get upgrade" really that complicated?
The reason for the "fragmentation" is that Linux programs tend to use global dependencies, instead of carrying all of their dependencies with them. It obviously has some (possibly major) disadvantages (DLL hell), but it's the reason Linux tends to use 5x less memory than Windows and OSX.
And if you're not a sheep, you pick a job that goes *with* your ideals.
Instead of choice 1 and choice 2, I would say step 1 and step 2:
1. Inform Newegg that there's a problem with their process (considering this is on Slashdot, this may already be done).
2. Erase the drives.
3. ???
4. Profit
When did FF go from being the crown jewel of OS to absoloute dogshit?
Never?
Or are you making the mistake of paying too much attention to Slashdot trolls?
PackageKit works on just about any Linux distro, has a nice GNOME interface, and while it's not quite as pretty, it's just as useful as Apple's "App Store". I have very little experience with Steam so I can't comment on that.
Package managers have been Linux's killer feature for years. It's not surprising other OS's are finally starting to figure that out.
This is why things like Steam took off and 'app stores'.
This is why Linux has has "app stores" for over ten years. Users didn't like package managers until they had to pay money to use them.
Also go read up on Wayland and why it's being developed.
To bring the future of GUIs (such as remote display, etc) to Linux?
I hope you're trolling.
Oh I don't know, how about when Asa Hitler...sorry, Dotzler, declared that business users didn't matter and they changed the release schedules for Firefox even despite the public outcry against it?
How dare they not let users make marketing decisions for them!
In fact it was so publically derided that Mozilla have back-pedalled and announced an "LTS" version of Firefox specifically for that purpose.
How dare they.. uh.. listen to their users.. Wait what are we angry about again?
Also go read up on Wayland and why it's being developed.
Because in the open source community, if you discover a problem, you can fix it?
I think most (all?) libertarians support some sort of enforcement of contracts. So, one option is for stock exchanges to require all traders to sign some sort of contract stating that they won't engage in insider trading, and if they do, they're subject to some kind of sanction (fines/jail time).
Only an idiot would trade at a stock exchange that didn't require this kind of contract. Sadly, there's enough idiots that it probably wouldn't work.
They have a huge guaranteed user - Google themselves. Think about how many people use GMail, for example...
But they're don't own all of the browsers. If this extension is a big enough deal to start moving people to Chrome, then *obviously they were right* and other browsers need to start supporting it.
Both machines run FF 3.6 because I keep reading that later versions have worse memory use and UI performance characteristics.
... people say that 3.6 is more responsive (especially on older HW) than the newer versions.
Those people are wrong. Newer versions of Firefox are *much* faster and use less memory. In fact, lowering memory usage became a priority right about the time you stopped upgrading. Ironic, eh?
I think the point is that there are plenty of filesystems far better than NTFS (Ext4, ReiserFS, ZFS), but Microsoft is choosing to make a new one, probably just so it will be incompatible with *nix systems.
Next question: why did Arch need to reinvent the package management wheel? deb and rpm already existed. What does the Arch package format (format, not the pacman front-end) give you that other formats could not have?
- OP
Arch packages are much easier to build. This was the thing for me. You basically write a file containing the package name, version number, where to get the sources (and their checksums), and then a bash script of how to install it. Most Arch packages can be written in minutes -- which I think is why the AUR is so popular.
For example, this is the entire source for a pylibmc package:
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/py/python2-pylibmc/PKGBUILD
Notice how simple the build() section is in comparison to Debian packaging.
They may have crap mistakes in them that people will have to support for years to come, and a hundred million web developers will curse your hubris writing standards for stuff you don't understand and didn't check was okay.
Or, as is often the case, no one will support the standard.
NaCl and Dart are both fundamentally unacceptable to at least Firefox though - they consider them basically impossible to implement. Google is going ahead with them anyway. I don't think any of the other browser manufacturers are any more willing either.
So they fail. What's the problem?
Google wants to convince other people to implement something they like, so they created their own implementation to demonstrate it. How else do you expect them to convince anyone? Or should they just leave things how they are and get off your lawn?
You do know how web standards work right? It goes something like this:
1. A bunch of people come up with ideas that would be cool to have in browsers.
2. Some of them add those things to browsers.
3. After we figure out which approach works / is most acceptable to all browser makers, it becomes a standard.
For some reason it's a common belief that it works the other way around (make standard -> implement standard), but anyone know hows anything about programming can tell you why setting everything in stone and then writing the software is a terrible idea.
This.
I've used SQL Server and Postgres/PostGIS for spatial queries, and PostGIS is much better. SQL Server's spatial indexes are not as good, and require a lot of work to even be acceptable. PostGIS indexes don't require any work and are faster.
https://www.google.com/search?q=sql+server+spatial+slow
Would it not make sense for them to still use this idea to some extent, though? Put some solar panels on the phone just to give that extra little bit of battery life.
It's probably cheaper and more effective to just give it a bigger battery.
Hydroponic farming usually involves growing plants in chemicals (plants have to get nutrients somewhere).
I lost 60 pounds in 6 months on the "Eat correctly, not so much fast carbs you moron" diet.
Basically, I eliminated the refined sugars (HFCS is one of the fastest carbs in the universe) and then removing the other low end ones like rice, pasta, bread, noodles, potato, corn, wheat, most fruits. The hardest thing to cut was wheat gluten; they put that shit in everything!
Uh, you do know that gluten is protein right?
So what do I eat now? Like you said, mostly fish and fowl, with some red meat in there. I also eat liver on a monthly basis for the super-dense protein.
" If people lowered the amount of carbs they take then they would be both more healthier and more lean."
However, if "everybody" did that, then we wouldn't have nearly enough food. Note the percentage of your diet that the pyramid says should be cheap-carbs and then look at the percentage of US food that comes from wheat and corn.
So you're on the dying of a heart attack diet now?
My point was that none of those things have anything to do with the language choice. If you want to add a language to phones, it doesn't matter what language it is. JavaScript is perfectly capable of running outside of a browser, and if Google wanted to, they could do exactly what you're proposing.
The point of my snarky reply is that you don't seem to know the difference between a language and libraries, specifically this:
And you don't really mean pure JavaScript?
As if "pure JavaScript" can't exist outside a sandbox (or in the case of phones, a different sandbox).
I still think JavaScript is only available in browsers. Further, i don't understand that browsers can access local files as well as remote ones. I also don't understand the concept of JavaScript sandboxing, or the possibility of running the same language outside of a sandbox.
FTFY