Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 25th Oct 2011 23:00 UTC
Ten years ago today, Microsoft launched what would become the world's most popular desktop operating system - for better or worse. Its interface colours were... Interesting (trying hard to avoid bias here, folks, bear with me now). Its early performance was... Not always entirely up to par. Its security track record was... Well, it sucked hard in that department (I tried). We're ten years down the line, and thanks to Vista, way too many people are still using this relic.
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Member since:2007-02-17
Which it is - for BeamishBoy and other 'non-brain-dead' users, who were the subjects of both our posts and to which you're replying.
... and which it most definitely isn't, for literally millions of non-expert machine owners who are expected to maintain their own machines.
Not everyone is an IT expert, nor should they be expected to be.
Except this does happen, even on OSX and linux. Config files and logs get messy and/or bloated, becoming harder to parse, data becomes corrupted, there's the very slow creep of additional services/daemons/'widgets' as users seek additional functionality and to a small degree, data fragmentation on the filesystem continues to be an issue. Then there's software 'upgrades' that slowly invite themselves to more system resources, there's the very real degradation in the performance of PC hardware as it ages
The poor performance of Windows has apparently given you some very strange ideas, and low expectations.
On linux, config files stay the same. Log files can be purged with a cron job. Functions do not simply accumulate, unless you deliberately install new functions.
PC hardware performance does not degrade as it ages. A 2 GHz clock is still 2 Ghz 10 years later on. 7500 rpm is still 7500 rpm.
Edited 2011-10-26 09:46 UTC
Member since:2009-08-18
Member since:2010-06-19
... and which it most definitely isn't, for literally millions of non-expert machine owners who are expected to maintain their own machines.
Not everyone is an IT expert, nor should they be expected to be.
No shit. Not everyone is an IT expert, nor should they be expected to be.
The poor performance of Windows has apparently given you some very strange ideas, and low expectations.
I'm primarily a linux user. On linux, config files stay the same.
Ideally, yes. In reality, no. Log files can be purged with a cron job.
Says Mr. 'not everyone should be an IT expert'. Functions do not simply accumulate, unless you deliberately install new functions.
Which is exactly what I suggested people do. PC hardware performance does not degrade as it ages. A 2 GHz clock is still 2 Ghz 10 years later on. 7500 rpm is still 7500 rpm.
Yes, it does. Performance peaks after a few months of use and then slowly declines. As errors accumulate on that 7500rpm HDD, the read/write times increase. As the circuitry and transistors on your CPU oxidise, actual performance drops, while the reported clock speed remains the same; conductivity and heat dissipation can decline with time, meaning that once stable 2ghz overclock needs to be dropped to 1.8ghz and/or have the voltage ramped up. Edited 2011-10-26 10:23 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Member since:
2010-06-19
Which it is - for BeamishBoy and other 'non-brain-dead' users, who were the subjects of both our posts and to which you're replying.
Except this does happen, even on OSX and linux. Config files and logs get messy and/or bloated, becoming harder to parse, data becomes corrupted, there's the very slow creep of additional services/daemons/'widgets' as users seek additional functionality and to a small degree, data fragmentation on the filesystem continues to be an issue. Then there's software 'upgrades' that slowly invite themselves to more system resources, there's the very real degradation in the performance of PC hardware as it ages and there's users invariably perceiving their PCs as getting slower as they optimise their efficiency with familiar workflows and they get faster.
But I digress - indeed, so do you.
Edited 2011-10-26 08:22 UTC