I totally agree. Even as a kid, I thought that the mechanical web device thing was retarded. I always thought, if a spider bit him and made it so he could climb walls and have spider sense, then why does he have to invent a web thing? Wouldn't that just be part of the overall spider package?
I much prefer the new films handling of it (even though I haven't seen it yet).
I used to use DirecPC, which is like Starband, before I got something faster.
It worked really well, but there was a second or so lag time between request and the page loading. It doesn't work at all with games or VPNs, but for regular browsing and downloading, it sure beats a modem.
If it is all you have access to, I would recommend it.
Didn't we have engineers before computers? It may not be convenient right now, but to say it's not an option is a bit of a stretch. Perhaps this discomfort could be the dawn of a slew of superior new OSS or free software products; if anyone was bold enough to take the step.
I worked at Intel a number of years ago (ducking to avoid the rancid tomatoes) when they first came out with the ranch flavored Celeron line.
Celeron was created to compete with the lower priced AMD's of the day.
Not too long after that, AMD came out with the Duron to compete with the Celeron. I never understood why AMD didn't just keep around the older chips longer and sell them to people for less. Wouldn't this be more cost effective?
For example, at http://www.lsmicro.com the oldest AMD chip you can buy is a AMD XP 1700+ for $109.99. If they still sold the 1Ghz Athlon for $30.00 I bet a lot of people would be willing to buy it.
I buy books, etc. from Amazon over Barnes & Noble and other online book, etc. stores for one simple reason. The quality, quantity and ease of online customer reviews.
The comments are what really make the difference. There are many online stores that have customer ratings, but they are just stars and no comments, or very few, if any, customer reviews.
Comments are important in a review since it helps me, as a buyer, identify which reviews are valid. For example, if I see a customer give a book one star because it doesn't stoop down to the beginner level (which is many times the case) that review instantly becomes a 5 star in my mind and I'll probably buy the book.
Amazon has by far the most customer reviews and the most detailed customer reviews. I usually buy based on these reviews and have never been disappointed. That is the only reason I shop there more than other places.
I know this is blastphemy, but I have seen Akira in dubbed form, subtitled form and in the original Japanese form (yes, I do speak Japanese) and I really don't find it to be the amazing film that everyone else seems to. I think Japan has much better animated films to offer than this one.
I will say that the Japanese version is much better than the other two since translators never can seem to get things quite right; or at least the nuances don't seem to make it through to English to me anyway.
I do agree with other sentiments here though that remaking Akira in a more accessible==dumbed down version is not a good thing.
I like some things about Java, like its simplicity, servlets, JSP and its cross-platform capabilities. I also like some things about C#, like the way it does threads. I don't think Java will die due to C#, however, for the following reasons:
1) C# doesn't come close to the cross-platform, browser agnostic, enterprise server capabilities that Java does. C# is very Microsoft centric right now and can't even create applications for Windows 95 since there isn't (to my knowledge anyway) a copy of dotnetrun.dll (whatever the file is called) available for 95. Java works everywhere there's a JVM, and you can find them everywhere.
2) Java is basically free (as in beer) for developers to download and use. Other technologies that work with Java and the web (Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.) are also free. If I wish to create a database driven web site, I can do so for free if I go the Java route. I will have to pay thousands of dollars to do so using IIS, C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, etc. I think this alone will keep Java around for a very long time.
Corporations can afford MS tools and they are willing to accept silly per-user and per-CPU licensing schemes. These tools and their licenses are simply not a choice for the average individual programmer (sure, some programmers "borrow" their company's MSDN discs, but MS puts watermarks into the compiled product so heaven help you if you create a successful program using pirated dev tools and then try to sell it).
3) C#, like most Microsoft tools, is designed around their operating system. As I understand it, the parts of C# being ported to Linux (and other operating systems) do not include the forms and other controls (aren't they just an update of the WFC crap MS shoved into J++ 6?) That is fine, but what effects will this have on cross-platform capabilities if C# has to use a different graphics library on other operating systems? Swing isn't the greatest thing in the world perhaps, but it is very usable and available on many platforms and I personally think it looks great. In fact, the only thing I don't like about graphics programming under Java is the GridBagLayout.
I could go on, but I think I have made my point. There may be reasons to feel that Java will be killed by C#, but I think there are an equal number of compelling reasons that it wont.
Also, the.NET toolkit looks very competent and building and deploying.asp's is quite simple as compared to deploying a java solution.
The following is just my experience with.NET and Java. I don't claim to have great wisdom or understanding of either technology.
The.NET toolkit is fairly competent for applications, however, I have been developing some ASP.NET pages and custom controls for the company I work for and I find C# and ASP.NET cumbersome in many ways.
As an example that doesn't take an hour to explain, when I'm writing a servlet or JSP, I only have to worry about Java and HTML. With.NET I have to concern myself with either VB (not a chance) or C#, ASP tags, HTML and either JScript or VBScript. I hardly call this simplified. I've also noticed that complicated pages and controls look great on IE, but suck on other browsers. I've never had that problem with servlets or JSP pages.
If this is all that.NET offers me for web development, I don't think they will be killing Java anytime soon. Heck, they can't even kill VB.
(M$ has beaten them - intsead of "write once, run anywhere,".NET offers "compile once, run anywhere.")
What? I don't claim to know everything, or much of anything for that matter, but I have written internal use apps for my employer in Visual Studio.NET. None of the apps I wrote would work on Windows 95 and C++ seemed to be the only language that I could compile down to a real machine executable. The other languages require dotnetrun.dll (or whatever they call it). I would hardly call this "compile once, run anywhere". Last I looked, this DLL wasn't available anywhere but Windows (and not even all of them).
ASP.NET can be accessed from any client provided you have an HTTP connection.
Java has been able to provide this functionality for a long time. I am writing custom asp.net controls for my current employer. I will say that VS.NET provides some nice tools for creating ASP.NET web apps, but in the end, I can do all of this with Java (servlets, JSP, applets, etc.) plus a whole lot more. In spite of VS.NET being a nice tool (when it is working that is) I am often frustrated with the languages themselves. I think Java is much cleaner that the.NET tools are.
I think that the Linux/Tomcat/MySQL or PostgreSQL/Apache combination is a better choice for most web developers. They are often times superior, but I think the top reason comes down to money.
To buy the Microsoft tools to be able to deliver my own database driven ASP.NET web site would cost me thousands of dollars. The Linux, et. al. route doesn't cost me a thing and I'm not limited to any per user or per CPU licenses.
No, my statement is correct as is. Urpmi is not as good as apt for several reasons. Here are some of them:
1) Urpmi cannot remember where it is in a download if the download is terminated for some reason. Apt can and will resume where it left off.
2) Urpmi opens a new FTP session for each file it downloads. This sucks when you get the "maximum users reached" error.
3) Urpmi gets screwed up all the time. Errors such as, "The upgrade has failed because some package is already installed", just don't happen with apt. The upgrade will not fail in this way.
I'm not trolling and I'm certainly not using apt to do so.
I feel that my statement was valid and appropriate. If you don't feel that way, that's your opinion, but I don't recall you being the troll definition maintainer.
"Mandrake urpmi provides the same functionnalities than apt (the only missing feature currently is the autorecompilation of source package..)"
Well then Mandrake urpmi does not provide the same functionalities as apt wouldn't you say? Besides, this is not the only shortcoming of urpmi when compared to apt.
Well, I was trying to be positive and let other/. readers who may not be familiar with Debian (perhaps they are frightened away by Debian's unrefined installer) that it is one of the most stable and easy to use systems once it's installed, while not expressing my negative opinion of Mandrake.
I have used SuSE, Caldera, RedHat, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian, Gentoo, TurboLinux, Corel Linux, Storm Linux, Libranet, and some other less known distributions. I would rank the top three personally, based on usability and stability, in this order (not that it's important or that anybody cares): 1) Debian 2) Caldera 3) A tie between Gentoo and Libranet
While I think that Mandrake's installer is refined and beautiful, I think that the system is buggy and less reliable than other distributions once it's up and running.
I feel that to say Mandrake is, "one of the nicest" is undeserved acclaim for anything but the installer. If by, "one of the nicest", you mean that it is a Linux distro and Linux is one of the nicest operating systems, then I will agree with that. It is one of the nicest right along with every other Linux distribution.
To answer your question about the "Debian is better" posts made by Debian users, I would like to first ask you one. Why do Mandrake users always pay such acclaim to Mandrake based solely on its installer? Is that all Mandrake users do, install the OS over and over again?
The reason that I touted the benefits of Debian is that you only have to install it once. I don't need to rush out and buy the latest distro. I can install Debian potato and without too much trouble update it to the testing branch, which is more stable than most other distributions, contrary to what one of the other posters inferred, and never have to install Debian again (unless my hardware fails or I do something stupid, which I don't). I just need to update it once in a while and I'm all set.
Another benefit is that I can easily make sure to only install programs I want to use. It is much easier to do in Debian than with any other distribution in my opinion.
I was not trolling, as was also suggested, but rather offering those/. readers unfamiliar with Debian a brief opinion that Debian deserves their attention. My post is not irrelevant to the main story. The main story infers that Mandrake is really something special but stops there. I simply carried the concept further by offering my opinion that there are more special things out there to be had. If that offends you or upsets you in some way, I suggest you not get so emotionally attached to your computer.
"That is great news since Linux community is now sure it will continue using one of the nicest distros available!"
I agree that the Mandrake installer is nice, but I think when you compare installed systems instead of installers, you just can't get any easier or better than Debian.
Keeping your system current takes only two commands (apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade). If you need a graphical apt tool, then I would suggest Synaptic.
Yes, there is something outside of the US, but it seems that whenever one country does something all the other ones can't seem to implement that thing fast enough.
...just in case, you CAN access Sharp's site with the Opera browser. The Opera browser is detected as an IE 5 browser and therefore does NOT cause any problems.
I wish people would actually try accessing the site with Opera before going off about how dumb Sharp is to bundle the Opera browser with their Zaurus PDA and then not support it on their web site, since they do.
So let me get this straight. You would rather use the bottom of the heap as far as quality, security and privacy go than to download and install something of better quality because of convenience?
Slashdot Mirror
I've been using those flushable toilet seat covers on my workstation for years.
Yes, I know. It was a joke.
I totally agree. Even as a kid, I thought that the mechanical web device thing was retarded. I always thought, if a spider bit him and made it so he could climb walls and have spider sense, then why does he have to invent a web thing? Wouldn't that just be part of the overall spider package?
I much prefer the new films handling of it (even though I haven't seen it yet).
...Verizon's coverage sucks.
I used to use DirecPC, which is like Starband, before I got something faster.
It worked really well, but there was a second or so lag time between request and the page loading. It doesn't work at all with games or VPNs, but for regular browsing and downloading, it sure beats a modem.
If it is all you have access to, I would recommend it.
Didn't we have engineers before computers? It may not be convenient right now, but to say it's not an option is a bit of a stretch. Perhaps this discomfort could be the dawn of a slew of superior new OSS or free software products; if anyone was bold enough to take the step.
I worked at Intel a number of years ago (ducking to avoid the rancid tomatoes) when they first came out with the ranch flavored Celeron line.
Celeron was created to compete with the lower priced AMD's of the day.
Not too long after that, AMD came out with the Duron to compete with the Celeron. I never understood why AMD didn't just keep around the older chips longer and sell them to people for less. Wouldn't this be more cost effective?
For example, at http://www.lsmicro.com the oldest AMD chip you can buy is a AMD XP 1700+ for $109.99. If they still sold the 1Ghz Athlon for $30.00 I bet a lot of people would be willing to buy it.
I buy books, etc. from Amazon over Barnes & Noble and other online book, etc. stores for one simple reason. The quality, quantity and ease of online customer reviews.
The comments are what really make the difference. There are many online stores that have customer ratings, but they are just stars and no comments, or very few, if any, customer reviews.
Comments are important in a review since it helps me, as a buyer, identify which reviews are valid. For example, if I see a customer give a book one star because it doesn't stoop down to the beginner level (which is many times the case) that review instantly becomes a 5 star in my mind and I'll probably buy the book.
Amazon has by far the most customer reviews and the most detailed customer reviews. I usually buy based on these reviews and have never been disappointed. That is the only reason I shop there more than other places.
Their menu sucks. Where are all the hamburgers?
I'm glad to see other people using Jim Breen's web page.
I know this is blastphemy, but I have seen Akira in dubbed form, subtitled form and in the original Japanese form (yes, I do speak Japanese) and I really don't find it to be the amazing film that everyone else seems to. I think Japan has much better animated films to offer than this one.
I will say that the Japanese version is much better than the other two since translators never can seem to get things quite right; or at least the nuances don't seem to make it through to English to me anyway.
I do agree with other sentiments here though that remaking Akira in a more accessible==dumbed down version is not a good thing.
I like some things about Java, like its simplicity, servlets, JSP and its cross-platform capabilities. I also like some things about C#, like the way it does threads. I don't think Java will die due to C#, however, for the following reasons:
1) C# doesn't come close to the cross-platform, browser agnostic, enterprise server capabilities that Java does. C# is very Microsoft centric right now and can't even create applications for Windows 95 since there isn't (to my knowledge anyway) a copy of dotnetrun.dll (whatever the file is called) available for 95. Java works everywhere there's a JVM, and you can find them everywhere.
2) Java is basically free (as in beer) for developers to download and use. Other technologies that work with Java and the web (Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.) are also free. If I wish to create a database driven web site, I can do so for free if I go the Java route. I will have to pay thousands of dollars to do so using IIS, C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, etc. I think this alone will keep Java around for a very long time.
Corporations can afford MS tools and they are willing to accept silly per-user and per-CPU licensing schemes. These tools and their licenses are simply not a choice for the average individual programmer (sure, some programmers "borrow" their company's MSDN discs, but MS puts watermarks into the compiled product so heaven help you if you create a successful program using pirated dev tools and then try to sell it).
3) C#, like most Microsoft tools, is designed around their operating system. As I understand it, the parts of C# being ported to Linux (and other operating systems) do not include the forms and other controls (aren't they just an update of the WFC crap MS shoved into J++ 6?) That is fine, but what effects will this have on cross-platform capabilities if C# has to use a different graphics library on other operating systems? Swing isn't the greatest thing in the world perhaps, but it is very usable and available on many platforms and I personally think it looks great. In fact, the only thing I don't like about graphics programming under Java is the GridBagLayout.
I could go on, but I think I have made my point. There may be reasons to feel that Java will be killed by C#, but I think there are an equal number of compelling reasons that it wont.
Also, the .NET toolkit looks very competent and building and deploying .asp's is quite simple as compared to deploying a java solution.
.NET and Java. I don't claim to have great wisdom or understanding of either technology.
.NET toolkit is fairly competent for applications, however, I have been developing some ASP.NET pages and custom controls for the company I work for and I find C# and ASP.NET cumbersome in many ways.
.NET I have to concern myself with either VB (not a chance) or C#, ASP tags, HTML and either JScript or VBScript. I hardly call this simplified. I've also noticed that complicated pages and controls look great on IE, but suck on other browsers. I've never had that problem with servlets or JSP pages.
.NET offers me for web development, I don't think they will be killing Java anytime soon. Heck, they can't even kill VB.
The following is just my experience with
The
As an example that doesn't take an hour to explain, when I'm writing a servlet or JSP, I only have to worry about Java and HTML. With
If this is all that
(M$ has beaten them - intsead of "write once, run anywhere," .NET offers "compile once, run anywhere.")
.NET. None of the apps I wrote would work on Windows 95 and C++ seemed to be the only language that I could compile down to a real machine executable. The other languages require dotnetrun.dll (or whatever they call it). I would hardly call this "compile once, run anywhere". Last I looked, this DLL wasn't available anywhere but Windows (and not even all of them).
.NET tools are.
What? I don't claim to know everything, or much of anything for that matter, but I have written internal use apps for my employer in Visual Studio
ASP.NET can be accessed from any client provided you have an HTTP connection.
Java has been able to provide this functionality for a long time. I am writing custom asp.net controls for my current employer. I will say that VS.NET provides some nice tools for creating ASP.NET web apps, but in the end, I can do all of this with Java (servlets, JSP, applets, etc.) plus a whole lot more. In spite of VS.NET being a nice tool (when it is working that is) I am often frustrated with the languages themselves. I think Java is much cleaner that the
I think that the Linux/Tomcat/MySQL or PostgreSQL/Apache combination is a better choice for most web developers. They are often times superior, but I think the top reason comes down to money.
To buy the Microsoft tools to be able to deliver my own database driven ASP.NET web site would cost me thousands of dollars. The Linux, et. al. route doesn't cost me a thing and I'm not limited to any per user or per CPU licenses.
I'm happy with what I'm using, but thanks for the update. I haven't used Mandrake for a while.
No, my statement is correct as is. Urpmi is not as good as apt for several reasons. Here are some of them:
1) Urpmi cannot remember where it is in a download if the download is terminated for some reason. Apt can and will resume where it left off.
2) Urpmi opens a new FTP session for each file it downloads. This sucks when you get the "maximum users reached" error.
3) Urpmi gets screwed up all the time. Errors such as, "The upgrade has failed because some package is already installed", just don't happen with apt. The upgrade will not fail in this way.
But thanks for your post Sir.
I'm not trolling and I'm certainly not using apt to do so.
I feel that my statement was valid and appropriate. If you don't feel that way, that's your opinion, but I don't recall you being the troll definition maintainer.
"Mandrake urpmi provides the same functionnalities than apt (the only missing feature currently is the autorecompilation of source package..)"
Well then Mandrake urpmi does not provide the same functionalities as apt wouldn't you say? Besides, this is not the only shortcoming of urpmi when compared to apt.
Well, I was trying to be positive and let other /. readers who may not be familiar with Debian (perhaps they are frightened away by Debian's unrefined installer) that it is one of the most stable and easy to use systems once it's installed, while not expressing my negative opinion of Mandrake.
/. readers unfamiliar with Debian a brief opinion that Debian deserves their attention. My post is not irrelevant to the main story. The main story infers that Mandrake is really something special but stops there. I simply carried the concept further by offering my opinion that there are more special things out there to be had. If that offends you or upsets you in some way, I suggest you not get so emotionally attached to your computer.
I have used SuSE, Caldera, RedHat, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian, Gentoo, TurboLinux, Corel Linux, Storm Linux, Libranet, and some other less known distributions. I would rank the top three personally, based on usability and stability, in this order (not that it's important or that anybody cares):
1) Debian
2) Caldera
3) A tie between Gentoo and Libranet
While I think that Mandrake's installer is refined and beautiful, I think that the system is buggy and less reliable than other distributions once it's up and running.
I feel that to say Mandrake is, "one of the nicest" is undeserved acclaim for anything but the installer. If by, "one of the nicest", you mean that it is a Linux distro and Linux is one of the nicest operating systems, then I will agree with that. It is one of the nicest right along with every other Linux distribution.
To answer your question about the "Debian is better" posts made by Debian users, I would like to first ask you one. Why do Mandrake users always pay such acclaim to Mandrake based solely on its installer? Is that all Mandrake users do, install the OS over and over again?
The reason that I touted the benefits of Debian is that you only have to install it once. I don't need to rush out and buy the latest distro. I can install Debian potato and without too much trouble update it to the testing branch, which is more stable than most other distributions, contrary to what one of the other posters inferred, and never have to install Debian again (unless my hardware fails or I do something stupid, which I don't). I just need to update it once in a while and I'm all set.
Another benefit is that I can easily make sure to only install programs I want to use. It is much easier to do in Debian than with any other distribution in my opinion.
I was not trolling, as was also suggested, but rather offering those
"That is great news since Linux community is now sure it will continue using one of the nicest distros available!"
I agree that the Mandrake installer is nice, but I think when you compare installed systems instead of installers, you just can't get any easier or better than Debian.
Keeping your system current takes only two commands (apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade). If you need a graphical apt tool, then I would suggest Synaptic.
What if they made it so you couldn't buy anything unless you had one of these things. Then it would be succumb or starve wouldn't it?
Yes, there is something outside of the US, but it seems that whenever one country does something all the other ones can't seem to implement that thing fast enough.
...just in case, you CAN access Sharp's site with the Opera browser. The Opera browser is detected as an IE 5 browser and therefore does NOT cause any problems.
I wish people would actually try accessing the site with Opera before going off about how dumb Sharp is to bundle the Opera browser with their Zaurus PDA and then not support it on their web site, since they do.
I am using Opera and am able to access their site just fine.
So let me get this straight. You would rather use the bottom of the heap as far as quality, security and privacy go than to download and install something of better quality because of convenience?
You poor technical poltroon.
I thought the gap was narrowing thanks to the Dummies series.