We don't want good ones! Look at the reaction to Elephant's Dream - the plot of which covered an abstract look at the internet - on Slashdot. Total mockery. Even Wikipedia doesn't bother to mention the story.
Can you immagine the Slashdot comments if ED was used as the basis for a game, exploring the nature of the internet?
Couple that with the fact that naturally creative types are pushed away from/dont want to touch programming or the 'hard' subjects that go along with video game design and you end up with the situation we have today.
Dashboard sucks up WAY too much CPU (especially when starting)
Are you sure it's Dashboard and not the widgets? I installed SuperKaramba and a few changes to the widget files dropped CPU usage from 30%+ to under 1%.
If the widgets for Dashboard are also written by non-programmers they may be suffering from the same problems of polling too frequently. Why on earth do you need to update a display of how much hard disk space there is available every 100ms anyway!
Good features *should* be copied from operating system to operating system - that way everyone gets the best of what is available! Who cares who invented it first, as long as people are implimenting the slickest ideas and improving on them where possible.
I just hope they get around to copying window shading, window tabbing and focus on mouse as fast as possible.
Woohoo, I get to recycle my +5 comment from last night
Proprietary software, as long as it doesn't make the system less free, is not necessarily bad.
For example a proprietary document system that uses open formats and has open APIs does very little to harm the user and potentially fills a niche that cannot be served by free software very well (eg handles certain legal compliance issues, which requires expensive insurance and research).
As long as you *could* write your own software to replace bits of the system, or interoperate with the system, then you dont necessarily have to for the benefit to be very real indeed.
Proprietary software, as long as it doesn't make the system less free, is not necessarily bad.
For example a proprietary document system that uses open formats and has open APIs does very little to harm the user and potentially fills a niche that cannot be served by free software very well (eg handles certain legal compliance issues, which requires expensive insurance and research).
As long as you *could* write your own software to replace bits of the system, or interoperate with the system, then you dont necessarily have to for the benefit to be very real indeed.
A lot (although not all) of the stuff that comes with Linspire falls into this category.
I would really like to get hold of a small bluetooth mouse as my laptop has an internal bluetooth setup. Rather than carrying around a USB dongle (which I would have to find in the bottom of a laptop bag and plug in) it would be all integrated.
Other than the Apple one, has anyone seen one that works with Linux? I did see a Microsoft made one *once* but never again.
Since eyeOs takes 30 seconds to install I can't see why any geek would want a hosted version. Running on your own webserver you have much greater protection in terms of who can and cannot see the data.
Still, I can see how it would appeal to non-geeks away from home - and it's not much different to placing your trust in online mail, online shopping or online tax return services - all of which have a healthy take up and get a splodge of your personal data.
Principle No. 6 deals with APIs. Microsoft provides the developer community with a broad range of innovative operating system services, via documented APIs (application programming interfaces), for use in developing state-of-the-art applications.
If they do it fast enough they might even manage to avoid getting fined another $1bn by the EU.
I wish someone would do this much work for OpenOffice - I mean, think of how many $ of pen testing Microsoft is getting out of this deal, and all for free! Now they just need to put some deecnt programmers on it to clean up bugs and they will end up with a nice solid, secure codebase.
Well this one is 66% of the weight of the Dell (a big deal for me since I travel a lot - in fact being sub 3lb it's amazingly light), by the time I picked out similar specs for both the Dell and the R Cubed the comparison was around $1700 (Dell) vs $2000.
$300 is easily paid for with the weight reduction and having every bug already worked out so I don't need to spend any time setting it up to run under Linux, in my opinion, but it depends how much you value your time I suppose.
Anyway it's interesting enough that I'm seriously considering getting one as my next laptop instead of a MacBook Pro as I'm not sure I can face messing around like this to get wireless working again when I could have it all functioning out of the box.
Last time I checked, Microsoft was convicted of being an illegal monopoly, Apple wasn't. Different rules apply to each category.
The grandparent didn't suggest this at all. There's a difference between being it being LEGAL to do something and it being RIGHT to do something.
It would be RIGHT (in an idealistic sense) for Apple to sell their computers witout OS X. Consumers could then chose their own operating system (OS X, Windows, Linux) and put it on. The price would be lower than the normal price because OS X has a non-zero cost of production.
Obviously Apple don't do this because it makes no sense for them to make it cheaper/easier for people to use operating systems that are not OS X - and the more people that use OS X the larger their market for hardware upgrades (because there is no choice to move to conventional X86). Since they aren't a monopoly they arent forced to do this, but that doesn't make it right.
Re:What everyone seems to be forgetting...
on
A Browser War Preview
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I have just realised that someone is shortly going to be along whining about binary formats and ajax and whatnot.
This is why we are anticipating shortly the release of TELNET 2.0 for the Web 2.0 generation. It includes such amazing new technology features as:
Renders Flash into meaningless symbols.
Decodes Java into meaningless binary.
Turns javascript powered websites into impossible to understand hex clusters that don't do anything when you click on them.
Dumps MP3 data to beep()
In this way we feel that all the key features of Web 2.0 are adequately recreated for an authentic experience as the website creators intend and TELNET 2.0 is a whole new competative browser platform for the 21st century.
What everyone seems to be forgetting...
on
A Browser War Preview
·
· Score: 5, Funny
...is that real men browse the internet with telnet to port 80.
I am much happier with well laid out, structured and simple code that has X rate of defects than well polished over the years, old, cruddy and complex with X rate of defects because with the former:
Fixes will be faster. Fixes will be easier/cheaper. Fixes will be possible! Bug fixes will have less chance of introducing new bugs.
Given time we can then be sure that we will end up with... err well polished over the years, old, cruddy and complex. But it probably won't be as bad as if the process never happened in the first place.
Exactly what I was thinking. Why hasn't an ATI or and AMD or an NVidia pounced on them?
in the style of a shopping channel announcer:
Introducing the ALL NEW and breathtaking SGI X9900, brought to you by ATI! Powered by the revolutionary MIPS, er ITANIUM MUSCLE, err sorry we meant MIPS with INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH UNIX or was that NT oh NO ACTUALLY UNIX POWER thats great for GRAPHICS POWER, LONG TERM VIABILITY, and going OUT OF BUSINESS REALLY SOON! Buy yours today!
You would think that the SGI name has enough high end appeal that nVidia or ATI would want to market SGI branded video cards.
For some time now SGI have been using ATI cards to power their machines - even on the high end. How much more prestiege there is to be gained, especially for nVidia who weren't picked, I don't know.
...the Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. error seems oddly appropriate.
We used to use SGI for everything related to virtual worlds... and carried on doing so when they moved to NT. About 6 months later someone noticed that we could swap expensive SGI boxes for cheap white boxes and save a fortune, then migrate all the legacy code without much pain to RedHat... and that was the end of SGI for us.
I do have a very nice SGI Indigo foot rest however.
...Windows Media Player only. EVE is one of the most comitted Microsoft fanboy companies I have ever known, which is somewhat surprising for what is esentially a small indie.
*Although they use Python they run their backend on MSSQL. *Client is Windows only. (Although they haven't tried to stop the WINE effort.) *They are *already* porting to DirectX 10 (bundled with Vista).
One of the prime reasons I stopped playing was because I had no confidence in their future versions being playable on non-MS platforms considering how heavily they are brought in and didn't want to have to abandon a multi-year developed (unlike some MMORPGs, EVE has no level cap and there is no way to catch up with older players) character for that reason.
is show the importance of checking multiple sources, especially when you are relying on it for something important!
However, I believe that Wikipedia is already looking at a stable version, in which a stable and unstable branch of the project are maintained with the unstable changes merged in reguarly. This would remove problems like this one, for the most part anyway.
Whichever method worked best. For both UT and NWN that was native, not via WINE. (Although in many cases the set up to play the Windows version with Cedega is easier than the native setup... YMMV.)
Generally performance running games on Linux has been a mixed bag (on the same hardware).
NWN, WoW and UT have all been slightly faster than the Windows version, and crashes have been less of a problem (ctrl-alt-f1, kill task, no need to reboot - which _is_ required for some reason under Windows as games seem to offer best performance off a fresh reboot... resource recovery problems in the DirectX subsystem maybe?)
On the other hand EVE runs slower, with more graphical artifacts. Yes I'm aware that this is because it doesn't play that nicely with WINE and the fact that it runs in a playable fashion is a small miracle. It is still the case that if you want the best performance then you have to play it on Windows, for now.
Slashdot Mirror
We don't want good ones! Look at the reaction to Elephant's Dream - the plot of which covered an abstract look at the internet - on Slashdot. Total mockery. Even Wikipedia doesn't bother to mention the story.
Can you immagine the Slashdot comments if ED was used as the basis for a game, exploring the nature of the internet?
Couple that with the fact that naturally creative types are pushed away from/dont want to touch programming or the 'hard' subjects that go along with video game design and you end up with the situation we have today.
Dashboard sucks up WAY too much CPU (especially when starting)
Are you sure it's Dashboard and not the widgets? I installed SuperKaramba and a few changes to the widget files dropped CPU usage from 30%+ to under 1%.
If the widgets for Dashboard are also written by non-programmers they may be suffering from the same problems of polling too frequently. Why on earth do you need to update a display of how much hard disk space there is available every 100ms anyway!
Good features *should* be copied from operating system to operating system - that way everyone gets the best of what is available! Who cares who invented it first, as long as people are implimenting the slickest ideas and improving on them where possible.
I just hope they get around to copying window shading, window tabbing and focus on mouse as fast as possible.
Been done already I'm afraid - I present the iFrige (work safe link).
Woohoo, I get to recycle my +5 comment from last night
Proprietary software, as long as it doesn't make the system less free, is not necessarily bad.
For example a proprietary document system that uses open formats and has open APIs does very little to harm the user and potentially fills a niche that cannot be served by free software very well (eg handles certain legal compliance issues, which requires expensive insurance and research).
As long as you *could* write your own software to replace bits of the system, or interoperate with the system, then you dont necessarily have to for the benefit to be very real indeed.
Proprietary software, as long as it doesn't make the system less free, is not necessarily bad.
For example a proprietary document system that uses open formats and has open APIs does very little to harm the user and potentially fills a niche that cannot be served by free software very well (eg handles certain legal compliance issues, which requires expensive insurance and research).
As long as you *could* write your own software to replace bits of the system, or interoperate with the system, then you dont necessarily have to for the benefit to be very real indeed.
A lot (although not all) of the stuff that comes with Linspire falls into this category.
The biggest and most serious form of click fraud is the kind that manages to take you unknowingly to visit the Goatse man.
I would really like to get hold of a small bluetooth mouse as my laptop has an internal bluetooth setup. Rather than carrying around a USB dongle (which I would have to find in the bottom of a laptop bag and plug in) it would be all integrated.
Other than the Apple one, has anyone seen one that works with Linux? I did see a Microsoft made one *once* but never again.
It's also worth noting that eyeOS supports Lemmings. But installing it isn't a good idea.
On Noes!
*kaboom*
Apache terminated.
Since eyeOs takes 30 seconds to install I can't see why any geek would want a hosted version. Running on your own webserver you have much greater protection in terms of who can and cannot see the data.
Still, I can see how it would appeal to non-geeks away from home - and it's not much different to placing your trust in online mail, online shopping or online tax return services - all of which have a healthy take up and get a splodge of your personal data.
Principle No. 6 deals with APIs. Microsoft provides the developer community with a broad range of innovative operating system services, via documented APIs (application programming interfaces), for use in developing state-of-the-art applications.
If they do it fast enough they might even manage to avoid getting fined another $1bn by the EU.
I wish someone would do this much work for OpenOffice - I mean, think of how many $ of pen testing Microsoft is getting out of this deal, and all for free! Now they just need to put some deecnt programmers on it to clean up bugs and they will end up with a nice solid, secure codebase.
Well this one is 66% of the weight of the Dell (a big deal for me since I travel a lot - in fact being sub 3lb it's amazingly light), by the time I picked out similar specs for both the Dell and the R Cubed the comparison was around $1700 (Dell) vs $2000.
$300 is easily paid for with the weight reduction and having every bug already worked out so I don't need to spend any time setting it up to run under Linux, in my opinion, but it depends how much you value your time I suppose.
Anyway it's interesting enough that I'm seriously considering getting one as my next laptop instead of a MacBook Pro as I'm not sure I can face messing around like this to get wireless working again when I could have it all functioning out of the box.
Last time I checked, Microsoft was convicted of being an illegal monopoly, Apple wasn't. Different rules apply to each category.
The grandparent didn't suggest this at all. There's a difference between being it being LEGAL to do something and it being RIGHT to do something.
It would be RIGHT (in an idealistic sense) for Apple to sell their computers witout OS X. Consumers could then chose their own operating system (OS X, Windows, Linux) and put it on. The price would be lower than the normal price because OS X has a non-zero cost of production.
Obviously Apple don't do this because it makes no sense for them to make it cheaper/easier for people to use operating systems that are not OS X - and the more people that use OS X the larger their market for hardware upgrades (because there is no choice to move to conventional X86). Since they aren't a monopoly they arent forced to do this, but that doesn't make it right.
I have just realised that someone is shortly going to be along whining about binary formats and ajax and whatnot.
This is why we are anticipating shortly the release of TELNET 2.0 for the Web 2.0 generation. It includes such amazing new technology features as:
Renders Flash into meaningless symbols.
Decodes Java into meaningless binary.
Turns javascript powered websites into impossible to understand hex clusters that don't do anything when you click on them.
Dumps MP3 data to beep()
In this way we feel that all the key features of Web 2.0 are adequately recreated for an authentic experience as the website creators intend and TELNET 2.0 is a whole new competative browser platform for the 21st century.
...is that real men browse the internet with telnet to port 80.
I had so many Slashdot Netflix storeis to potentially read I ended up leaving them all on the shelf to gather dust.
This may not be a bad thing.
I am much happier with well laid out, structured and simple code that has X rate of defects than well polished over the years, old, cruddy and complex with X rate of defects because with the former:
Fixes will be faster.
Fixes will be easier/cheaper.
Fixes will be possible!
Bug fixes will have less chance of introducing new bugs.
Given time we can then be sure that we will end up with... err well polished over the years, old, cruddy and complex. But it probably won't be as bad as if the process never happened in the first place.
Introducing the ALL NEW and breathtaking SGI X9900, brought to you by ATI! Powered by the revolutionary MIPS, er ITANIUM MUSCLE, err sorry we meant MIPS with INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH UNIX or was that NT oh NO ACTUALLY UNIX POWER thats great for GRAPHICS POWER, LONG TERM VIABILITY, and going OUT OF BUSINESS REALLY SOON! Buy yours today!
You would think that the SGI name has enough high end appeal that nVidia or ATI would want to market SGI branded video cards.
For some time now SGI have been using ATI cards to power their machines - even on the high end. How much more prestiege there is to be gained, especially for nVidia who weren't picked, I don't know.
...the Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. error seems oddly appropriate.
We used to use SGI for everything related to virtual worlds... and carried on doing so when they moved to NT. About 6 months later someone noticed that we could swap expensive SGI boxes for cheap white boxes and save a fortune, then migrate all the legacy code without much pain to RedHat... and that was the end of SGI for us.
I do have a very nice SGI Indigo foot rest however.
...Windows Media Player only. EVE is one of the most comitted Microsoft fanboy companies I have ever known, which is somewhat surprising for what is esentially a small indie.
*Although they use Python they run their backend on MSSQL.
*Client is Windows only. (Although they haven't tried to stop the WINE effort.)
*They are *already* porting to DirectX 10 (bundled with Vista).
One of the prime reasons I stopped playing was because I had no confidence in their future versions being playable on non-MS platforms considering how heavily they are brought in and didn't want to have to abandon a multi-year developed (unlike some MMORPGs, EVE has no level cap and there is no way to catch up with older players) character for that reason.
is show the importance of checking multiple sources, especially when you are relying on it for something important! However, I believe that Wikipedia is already looking at a stable version, in which a stable and unstable branch of the project are maintained with the unstable changes merged in reguarly. This would remove problems like this one, for the most part anyway.
Whichever method worked best. For both UT and NWN that was native, not via WINE. (Although in many cases the set up to play the Windows version with Cedega is easier than the native setup... YMMV.)
Generally performance running games on Linux has been a mixed bag (on the same hardware).
NWN, WoW and UT have all been slightly faster than the Windows version, and crashes have been less of a problem (ctrl-alt-f1, kill task, no need to reboot - which _is_ required for some reason under Windows as games seem to offer best performance off a fresh reboot... resource recovery problems in the DirectX subsystem maybe?)
On the other hand EVE runs slower, with more graphical artifacts. Yes I'm aware that this is because it doesn't play that nicely with WINE and the fact that it runs in a playable fashion is a small miracle. It is still the case that if you want the best performance then you have to play it on Windows, for now.