Er, wha? Threads will regularly kill a process when they're in a bad state in any sufficiently complex program, and given how nasty handling the Web can be, it really doesn't surprise me that web browsers crash.
Processes are both easier to use from a developer's point of view (because I assume part of LCIE is a developer-invisible shared memory model) and somewhat safer than just using threads. It's still possible to crash them, of course, but it's harder to crash than when using a threaded-process model
Both have pluses and minuses, as with anything. (I won't speak to the Unix model as I am not terribly conversant with it, but I know a good bit about the Windows model of threaded processes.)
A threaded process model has one enormous advantage: you stay within the same address space. Inter-process communication is annoying at best and painful at worse; you have to do some very ugly things like pipes, shared memory, or DBus (on Linux, that is). Using the threaded process model, I can do something like the following (it's C#-ish and off the cuff, so it probably won't compile, but it should be easy to follow):
class Foo {
Object o = new Object();// mutex lock, functionality built into C#
SomeClass c = new SomeClass();
static void Main(String[] args)
{
Thread t = new Thread(ThreadFunc1);
Thread t2 = new Thread(ThreadFunc2);
t.Start();
t2.Start();
while (t.IsRunning || t2.IsRunning) { Thread.Sleep(0); }// cede time
}
In an isolated task model, this is nowhere near as simple. The problem, though, is that one thread can, at least in C++, take down the whole damn process if something goes sour. (You can get around that in.NET with stuff like catching NullPointerExceptions, but you'll almost certainly be left in an unrecoverable state and have to either kill the thread or kill the program.) The Loosely Coupled Internet Explorer (LCIE) model is forced to use processes to avoid taking everything down when one tab barfs up its lunch.
Unix still has some pretty gnarly issues with threads being relatively expensive though, no? IIRC, they're nowhere near as cheap as Windows threads (and while you can do anything with processes that you can with threads, I think it's pretty clear that there are some big wins to retaining shared address space instead of doing IPC/shared memory files/whatever).
It's primarily improvements in computer speed. Threads are very cheap in Windows (and this is why.NET in particular is so heavily dependent on spawning tons of threads for many types of tasks) and processes remain fairly expensive, but that expense is somewhat minimized by being about to throw ten kajillion bogomips at the problem.
Unlike Groklaw, you don't come into every situation with an axe to grind. If you did, I wouldn't read stories you submitted.:P
Re:It gives you something just as bad...
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 1
Ooh, AC strawmen are so fun.
The money from sales of a PC and console version of a game go to the same place. You still reward a company who uses DRM with direct and tangible encouragement to continue using DRM. If there were a version of the game without DRM (and no, consoles don't count), like on Steam, I would suggest buying it to send what little message you could to the publisher that "hey, we'll gladly buy the no-DRM version." But anything else is cretinous.
I've watched Spore for a long time. I want to play it. But I won't buy a game with this kind of DRM; it's not worth it.
I am a libertarian (well, more paleoconservative these days, a la Goldwater)--and I'm not voting for Barr because he has no chance of getting elected. I can vote for Barr, and while I would be making a "statement," I would also essentially be forfeiting my vote meaninglessly.
I don't know if I'm voting for McCain or Obama. I thought McCain was a lock for a while...now not so sure. But I certainly won't vote for Barr.
Preposterous. Of course it matters. They're making money off of me, and if they wish to continue to do so, then they'd better pay attention to bug reports from me (though I've stopped trying to report bugs to them--it seems that unless you're in their little circle, your bug reports are unimportant).
You do realize that Mozilla makes a profit off its users, right? The fact that it's free to the end user doesn't mean the user isn't paying for it (his eyeballs, specifically, being sold to Google).
So instead of relatively small, relatively easy-to-ignore ads (note I'm not talking about the monstrous screen-grabbing Flash abortions), the idea is to drive webmasters to a subscription model. How brilliant.
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome
on
Google Chrome, Day 2
·
· Score: 1
Preposterous. Stating that there are more "tech-savvy" (using your word) people on Windows than on Linux or OS X is absolutely crazy, if only because most people with Linux machines also have Windows (and a large number of OS X users, too). Hell, most Slashdotters are probably on Windows.
Except when the monolithic truck that is Intel's legal department stomps on them in Europe, the US, Japan, Australia, and virtually every other market in which they have even the slightest of legal standing.
Ahh, so it's okay for the GNUtards to take from others and not give back, but how daaaaare anybody say anything when anybody remarks upon it.
For people who are so all about sharing of code (or say they are--the pushing of a political agenda is quite obviously their primary goal), they seem to dislike actually sharing.
If I choose to write innovative software and others choose to buy it for money, I may find myself prevented from continuing this business model when someone duplicates the innovation and distributes it under the GPL (eg Linux/Minix).
If somebody wants to take on the project of entirely duplicating my effort, I'm okay with them doing whatever the hell they want with it. What I would not be okay with--and the Linux driver snafu comes to mind--is an actual free license, like BSD, being "overridden" by the GPL in someone else's release, because at that point there is a not-unsubstantial chance of it becoming a fork under a license I cannot use.
If I want to find a free (eg BSD) project to use or contribute to, I cannot because GPL projects have tempted away developers with misleading political propoganda.
There are plenty of BSD projects out there. Don't be the BSD equivalent of a gnulot.
Slashdot Mirror
Cookies are files. You just have a read/write lock on the cookie directory (or database, if you went that way).
The next step is separate processes for those plug-ins.
Er, wha? Threads will regularly kill a process when they're in a bad state in any sufficiently complex program, and given how nasty handling the Web can be, it really doesn't surprise me that web browsers crash.
Processes are both easier to use from a developer's point of view (because I assume part of LCIE is a developer-invisible shared memory model) and somewhat safer than just using threads. It's still possible to crash them, of course, but it's harder to crash than when using a threaded-process model
Both have pluses and minuses, as with anything. (I won't speak to the Unix model as I am not terribly conversant with it, but I know a good bit about the Windows model of threaded processes.)
A threaded process model has one enormous advantage: you stay within the same address space. Inter-process communication is annoying at best and painful at worse; you have to do some very ugly things like pipes, shared memory, or DBus (on Linux, that is). Using the threaded process model, I can do something like the following (it's C#-ish and off the cuff, so it probably won't compile, but it should be easy to follow):
In an isolated task model, this is nowhere near as simple. The problem, though, is that one thread can, at least in C++, take down the whole damn process if something goes sour. (You can get around that in .NET with stuff like catching NullPointerExceptions, but you'll almost certainly be left in an unrecoverable state and have to either kill the thread or kill the program.) The Loosely Coupled Internet Explorer (LCIE) model is forced to use processes to avoid taking everything down when one tab barfs up its lunch.
Unix still has some pretty gnarly issues with threads being relatively expensive though, no? IIRC, they're nowhere near as cheap as Windows threads (and while you can do anything with processes that you can with threads, I think it's pretty clear that there are some big wins to retaining shared address space instead of doing IPC/shared memory files/whatever).
It's primarily improvements in computer speed. Threads are very cheap in Windows (and this is why .NET in particular is so heavily dependent on spawning tons of threads for many types of tasks) and processes remain fairly expensive, but that expense is somewhat minimized by being about to throw ten kajillion bogomips at the problem.
Unlike Groklaw, you don't come into every situation with an axe to grind. If you did, I wouldn't read stories you submitted. :P
Ooh, AC strawmen are so fun.
The money from sales of a PC and console version of a game go to the same place. You still reward a company who uses DRM with direct and tangible encouragement to continue using DRM. If there were a version of the game without DRM (and no, consoles don't count), like on Steam, I would suggest buying it to send what little message you could to the publisher that "hey, we'll gladly buy the no-DRM version." But anything else is cretinous.
I've watched Spore for a long time. I want to play it. But I won't buy a game with this kind of DRM; it's not worth it.
And with threaded tabs, it kicks Firefox's ass up and down the street.
At the moment, Firefox and Safari are competing for "suckiest browser." Chrome and IE8 are hanging out at the cool kids' table.
To an extent...you *are* still supporting a company that thinks it's OK to DRM their products.
They can't open source it. It's encumbered.
Eeeeer...I'm being rude, ungrateful, and antisocial where? Somebody's projecting!
I am a libertarian (well, more paleoconservative these days, a la Goldwater)--and I'm not voting for Barr because he has no chance of getting elected. I can vote for Barr, and while I would be making a "statement," I would also essentially be forfeiting my vote meaninglessly.
I don't know if I'm voting for McCain or Obama. I thought McCain was a lock for a while...now not so sure. But I certainly won't vote for Barr.
Preposterous. Of course it matters. They're making money off of me, and if they wish to continue to do so, then they'd better pay attention to bug reports from me (though I've stopped trying to report bugs to them--it seems that unless you're in their little circle, your bug reports are unimportant).
You do realize that Mozilla makes a profit off its users, right? The fact that it's free to the end user doesn't mean the user isn't paying for it (his eyeballs, specifically, being sold to Google).
Them: Adobe PDF Viewer.
Foxit is faster and smaller
They're making how much money off selling my default-search-eyeballs to Google?
So instead of relatively small, relatively easy-to-ignore ads (note I'm not talking about the monstrous screen-grabbing Flash abortions), the idea is to drive webmasters to a subscription model. How brilliant.
Preposterous. Stating that there are more "tech-savvy" (using your word) people on Windows than on Linux or OS X is absolutely crazy, if only because most people with Linux machines also have Windows (and a large number of OS X users, too). Hell, most Slashdotters are probably on Windows.
Except when the monolithic truck that is Intel's legal department stomps on them in Europe, the US, Japan, Australia, and virtually every other market in which they have even the slightest of legal standing.
You know. Basically all of them.
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html
Ahh, so it's okay for the GNUtards to take from others and not give back, but how daaaaare anybody say anything when anybody remarks upon it.
For people who are so all about sharing of code (or say they are--the pushing of a political agenda is quite obviously their primary goal), they seem to dislike actually sharing.
Oh, and get the Restoration Patch before playing; it fixes most of the bugs.
There's a "better" ending, but the results are the same.
Hint for you: lots of intelligence, the Empathy perk, and talk to Vree before partying down upon the Cathedral.
Not that I know of. Primarily TNG/DS9, with a few VOY bits and pieces here and there.
I agree with you spot-on, except for these...
If I choose to write innovative software and others choose to buy it for money, I may find myself prevented from continuing this business model when someone duplicates the innovation and distributes it under the GPL (eg Linux/Minix).
If somebody wants to take on the project of entirely duplicating my effort, I'm okay with them doing whatever the hell they want with it. What I would not be okay with--and the Linux driver snafu comes to mind--is an actual free license, like BSD, being "overridden" by the GPL in someone else's release, because at that point there is a not-unsubstantial chance of it becoming a fork under a license I cannot use.
If I want to find a free (eg BSD) project to use or contribute to, I cannot because GPL projects have tempted away developers with misleading political propoganda.
There are plenty of BSD projects out there. Don't be the BSD equivalent of a gnulot.
Oh, and it's not free as in beer either.
Eh...yeah, for the most part, it is.