Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 24th Jun 2009 14:10 UTC, submitted by TuxJournal.net
We're all pretty much versed in the worlds of GNOME, KDE, and to a lesser degree, Xfce, and while there are lots of alternatives, none of the smaller ones really seem to gain much traction beyond their fans. An exception is LXDE, a small and resource efficient desktop environment.
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RE[2]: Comment by flynn
by FooBarWidget on Wed 24th Jun 2009 20:27
in reply to "RE: Comment by flynn"
Member since:2005-11-11
"I think is this kind of tolerance of the user that leads to developer care less to develop more efficient application. Saying go to get a more powerful cpu and more ram and you would get smooth experience is not the right way to solve problem. And that is why after so many years of hardware improvement, we still experience more or less the same speed feeling on desktop usage."
Which totally makes sense considering how expensive development time is compared to hardware costs. I can write an app in C in 200 hours and spend another 100 optimizing it to death. But why should I if I can also spend $40 on a hardware upgrade, and write the app in Python in 60 hours, which still performs acceptably?
A lot of people complain about this increase in "bloat", but I call it lowering development costs at the expense of increase resource usage. Considering that computers are meant to serve humans it makes total sense.
You may argue that open source software is free, so there's no "development costs". This is not true: the developer of said software may have invested tremendous amounts of time, which are also costs.
RE[2]: Comment by flynn
by ggeldenhuys on Wed 24th Jun 2009 22:17
in reply to "RE: Comment by flynn"
Member since:2006-11-13
And that is why after so many years of hardware improvement, we still experience more or less the same speed feeling on desktop usage.
I can't agree more. I am a commercial and open source software developer. I am disgusted with the amount of bloat-ware out there! Our current computers could give us 100x the speed improvement with more optimized applications.
Just look at MS Windows for example: Win95 installed in less than 100MB of hard drive space. Win98 around 160MB, Win2000 around 200-300MB, Vista 4-8GIG, Win7 around 15GIG. It's totally ridiculous!!! It's just sloppy coding!
I take pride in my code and try to optimize all my applications using my preferred programming language. After all, I became a programmer because I enjoy doing it - and doing it well.
RE[3]: Comment by flynn
by gavin.mccord on Thu 25th Jun 2009 11:34
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by flynn"
Member since:2005-09-07
Member since:2005-06-29
Just look at MS Windows for example: Win95 installed in less than 100MB of hard drive space. Win98 around 160MB, Win2000 around 200-300MB, Vista 4-8GIG, Win7 around 15GIG. It's totally ridiculous!!! It's just sloppy coding!
Are you giving your own experiences or just quoting the hardware requirements? Particularly regarding Vista and 7, you are way off. Vista Ultimate is indeed in the 4-8GB range, though if I remember correctly it is on the low end, around 5.5GB last time I set it up for someone; nowhere near 8GB. Windows 7, which I have on a partition on my main PC (and am posting from now) was roughly 6GB after installation. Also, you skipped XP entirely, which depending on the included service pack can vary from about 1GB to nearly 2GB in my experience.
You do have a valid point, but don't go making up numbers to "prove" it.
Note: I'm not a Microsoft apologist by any stretch of the imagination, it just irks me to no end to see someone make up bullshit to prove a point. Windows 7 is on my main PC because the rest of the family requires Windows (for now; I'm working on that) and it's free for a year. I'm enjoying testing it out too; it's really the best thing they've ever put out there in my opinion. For my own computing I prefer OS X, BeOS or Slackware.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.More News »
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I think is this kind of tolerance of the user that leads to developer care less to develop more efficient application. Saying go to get a more powerful cpu and more ram and you would get smooth experience is not the right way to solve problem. And that is why after so many years of hardware improvement, we still experience more or less the same speed feeling on desktop usage.