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The Arswards for 1999
Doll Part writes "Ars' year-end Arswards are up, and they look back at geek life this past year and talk about things that have really made a difference. Linus is Person of the Year (predictable), but most their other entries are technologically provocative, and they try to remember the whole year, rather than just December. There's a really interesting bit about the start of the AOL madness, too. " One of the things that I particularly enjoy about the Arsawards is that you don't have to have released in 1999 - you just need to have made your impact in that year, like in the case of...oh. That'd be telling, wouldn't it?
and this is funny because...
In your case, no. It's _optical_ which means it has to be seen.
Again, in your case, no. Now go away.
Sure, I have a thankless job. That's okay. I have a lot of (non
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
Speaking of all this, did anyone ever have an 'optical' mouse for the old Apple II/*? Not sure if it's the same technology...actually, I almost certain it isn't. It required a reflective mousepad, I think. Or maybe they just thought it looked cool, I don't know. Now that, my friends, was a real mouse. One button...practically no software that supported it...annoying, puzzling motion...ah, the memories.
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"Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and
I was very pleased to see that this video card won Video Card of the Year. As of late it's been seriously underated, even after sites like Anandtech declared it the best card for Athlon systems.
Also, Matrox was kind enough to release specs for their G200 (and G400? I think they're very similar in driver writing). This basically makes it the only 32-bit color viable card for Linux gamers.
>Cursing and a jerky boys reference?
I always thought they were one in the same, actually. (G)
I'd say that got that information at Comdex, where "Linux 3.0" was a hot topic in certain places, the least of which was Linus' speak.
With a name like "The Arswards", it's a shame they didn't get Arseface himself as their mascot!
(In case you're one of those Without Culture, he's a character in Preacher, the second greatest comic book being published today.)
Someone says something vaguely good about a Microsoft product and it gets moderated down as a "Troll"?
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
First, the quick movements that the mouse won't track are REALLY quick. If you think you move quick in quake, try a friends. I can do a 180 in quake with mine without a problem. Then again, I run on high sensitivity with high acceleration. Use PS2Rate if you use windows for gaming to get a MUCH higher resolution out of your mouse. Check out www.bluesnews.com for this little prog.
I love this mouse. It is absolutely the best mouse I have ever used.
In PS/2 mode it works fine under both Caldera Linux and BeOS.
I would totally agree with you on that one. I didn't find half-life very fun at all.
I had much more fun with Homeworld, Dungeonkeeper 2, Freespace 2, Quake III Arena, and Unreal Tournement than I did with Half-life. I have the CDs for those games right next to my desk, where I can't even tell you where the half-life CD is.
No, the best translation would be along the lines of "Art of technology"
Dang, and I used up all my moderator points, too
We've got an ancient sparc sitting near me with an optical mouse. suns have had 'em for yonks.
However, they're clunky and awkward, especially if you're used to mice with balls (thees ees a real mouse, sen~or, con cojones!) or trackballs.
MS's hardware division seems to exist on a higher plane than their software division as most of their products are pretty damn good. Of course they screwed up on the new natural keyboards.
dave "might as well face it, you're addicted to mwheelup"
I'm in the same boat, having recently bought an SBLive card. I'm trying to run it under Redhat 6.1 with no luck. Could you *please* post the link to the information that you found helpful ? Much appreciated.
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
One of the things that I particularly enjoy about the Arsawards is that you don't have to have released in 1999 - you just need to have made your impact in that year
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Actualy, there were 6 moderations to the post One offtopic, one redundant, one troll, one informative and two insightfull.
So, six mod points were lost, and nothing changed. Fantastic...
I've only seen you post once before.
Anyway, why the hell should we listen do you, ass face?
Lego should have been the greatest invention of the millenium...
Sure, I have a thankless job. That's okay. I have a lot of (non
I borrowed a friend's, just to try it out, stuck on the USB->PS/2 adapter, plugged it into my computer, and turned it on. It worked great, and didn't require any special drivers. So my guess is, if you set it up as you would a standard MS wheelmouse, it'll work fine.
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
I'm still trying to find out if the razor boomslang mouse (www.razorzone.com) works under linux. It's also a USB w/ ps/2 adapter mouse (so it's not _totally_ OT...), but I haven't gotten a straight answer from anyone, including news groups and the company itself. Please, if you know if this mouse works (including the wheel), reply or email!
as a human race, perhaps ?
Yeah, I have a Hoontech 4D Wave-NX card. It works great with ALSA and only cost $47 with coax and optical digital outputs. What a deal!
ars is latin for arts
Quid rides ignare?
i know. i was being irreverent. do you kiddies know what that means? probably not.
Umm, you know what I mean? I hope it's intentional, at least . . .
urgle said:
No, the best translation would be along the lines of "Art of technology"
Actually the translation is Art Technology
the phrase would have to be Ars technicae to mean art OF technology
Quid rides ignare?
The Catholic Church, for all its faults, did not keep the price of Bibles artificially high; the price was very high as it was. You cannot manually copy out an entire document, illustrate (rather well) and bind it for a pittance.
I can appreciate your frustration, but it does make sense to applaud the big name companies who go opensource. It sets a precedent for other companies and it brings a lot of press. Plus, it effects a lot of people because of market share.
But, all companies who have open source drivers should get recognition.
Microsoft's success is due to not living in a free market, to locking users into a system, to the unfortunate network effects that cause people to stick with one product even when it is not very good. As a contrast, the Unix market is fairly free; with a bit of effort, anyone can use just about any Unix. A simple recompile of apps is often all that is needed. At the moment, Linux is doing well in this market, but it will someday be replaced by a slimmer competitor.
There is no competitor to Windows. The Windows market is served by exactly one product, owned by MS.
You're as bad as that twit communist AC who has been posting. Take some econ classes and come back.
True, but then again, no athlon can touch a quad alpha system. We're talkign bang for the buck here remember. For the buck, the bang of the Athlon is still very high. For my particular purposes, which is to build a beowulf cluster for computational chemistry calculations, I ran the 2 pieces of software we're going to use on a C300A at 450, a C366 at 550, an Athlon 500 and an Athlon 700. Using the Athlon-performance-Mhz as my unit - ie it seemed to be about 1.1 to 1.15 celeron MHz/athlon Mhz), the prices in $CDN worked out to be per Athlon Mhz:
C300 @300 $1.43
C400 @400 $1.29
C300@450 $1.06
C366@550 $1.13
C400@600 $1.14
Athlon 500 $1.50
Athlon 700 $2.11
(this was 2 months ago).
Even when I considered how muhc memory we'd save (NFS mounted disks, servers runing FreeBSD because Linux's NFS sucks, go check to see if its true), as well as other parts, because we'd need more Celerons for the same power as Athlons, it was still a factor of at least 1.5 to 1. As I said - the bang for the buck wont come down for Athlons til about mid summer I think, and only then will it EQUAL the spring of 99's price/performance .
BTW - the Cpu of the year for 99 was the Celeron 300, even if it was released in 98. Its prices were high in 98. Spring 99 saw its prices dip way below even a K6-2 400's price at the time, and the price performance was incredible.
I just got a SBLive card and was looking for how to get it up on Linux. Google sent me to an old /. article talking about how nobody could figure it out, then I saw the date (mid Apr), tried another google link, and was happy.
+&x
I've used Mandrake 6.5, and it didn't even notice when I changed mice from a normal wheelmousie.
I'll definitely have to try out the USB connector, though.
So much smoother than regular meeses
Microsoft's success is due to not living in a free market, to locking users into a system, to the unfortunate network effects that cause people to stick with one product even when it is not very good.
Say what? How does that mean the market isn't free? Nobody made them buy the stuff. Free markets do from time to time produce monopolies, which do hurt the consumer. The rabid free-market zealots tell us that when that happens, the magic of the Free Market Fairy will magically make it all better! Personally, I think that's crap. The belief seems to be that a free market is morally good for whatever reason, therefore anything that it produces must necessarily be good as well . . . This is why the Randites claim that MS is so wonderful. They don't prove it by examining MS's products; rather, they "prove" that the products are good by examining the company's finances or something. To me, that sounds like nonsense. IMHO a thing is good exactly to the extent to which it produces good things, and no further.
What most people mean by a "free market" is a market that is left alone to operate by its own laws.
since it worked for him, mod me as "irresistable to women"
I can't wait
P.S. Sorry for being offtopic
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
the integrated circuit
You could argue that without the printing press, and the ability to both preserve and to disseminate knowledge reliably, the IC would never have been born.
the toilet
I'd rather have to pee in the street rather than lose my email :-)
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
As in "Back-Arswards"?
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
It's Arsward. It comes from Ars Technica. Ars Technica is latin and translates roughly into "the technical art."
I really don't want to start a flame-war here, but I'm afraid it may happen anyway. That being the case, please allow me to
A free market is one in which buyers are free to choose their product rationally;
I'd substitute "as they damn well please" for "rationally", but otherwise yeah: free == free. I hear a lot of free-marketeers who are primarily concerned with the right of sellers to sell as they damn well please, but IMHO it takes both. And I'm not entirely certain that either one necessarily implies the other.
. . . i.e. one in which all act in their own self-interest.
Here's where we part ways. This looks like a non sequitur to me. I'd say, "one in which all are free to act in their own self-interest, or however else they feel like acting at the moment (provided they respect each others rights, etc.)"
The fact that people are not prevented from acting in their own interest does not mean that they necessarily will act in their own interest. There are causes for irrationality other than network effects. The most common cause is being born human. Another is a lack of adequate knowledge. For example: How on earth are my parents supposed to decide which OS to buy? It's not practical for them to put in the time needed to make a really well-informed decision, because they also decided to buy a boat this year and they're up to their necks in fluid dynamics and nautical architecture so they can make an informed decision about which boat to buy. (And that's on top of the anatomy 'n' physiology and biochemistry they're studying so they can choose a doctor to treat Mom's arthritis.)
You will note how utterly great the Unix market is.
Will I? The *nix philosophy (small, powerful, modular, open) is far superior to the Windows philosophy (large, monolithic, labyrinthine, closed). However, my experiences with Linux have involved a couple of weeks trying to get PPP to work, and then another few weeks trying to get something (anything) else to work after I gave up on PPP. Screw it. System administration isn't my idea of a fun hobby. I used SunOS on SPARCs in college eight+ years ago, and I absolutely loved it. They annoying parts were handled by the sysadmin, so I got to spend all my time on the system playing instead of fighting with drivers and whatnot. Nowadays I would much rather write code than spend my life fighting with the OS. In principle, I think Linux is a great thing, but I don't talk about it much beause in practice I've found it unusable.
You can call me a dumbass wimp and/or a luser, and I'll just roll my eyes and shrug. Flaming me doesn't accomplish anything at all. (And a vendor which flames its customers won't last long in a truly free market. As long as "fuck you if you can't figure it out yourself" is the *nux tech-support mantra, Microsoft will thrive.) The fact is that in real life, in practical terms, I have concluded (with great reluctance and some degree of anger) that Windows is a better choice for my purposes than linux. And in my case (unlike most others) it's not even remotely about network effects; Linux has web browsers, some ungodly number of mailers, a fine C++ compiler (which for all I know may be close to standard-compliance by now), text editors, the GIMP, and whatever else I may desire. I don't give a flying fuck about Powerpoint files or any of the other garbage that gets people excited: I'm a developer. Hell, Linux (and/or *BSD, by the way) has a far greater variety of interesting languages and libraries and utilities than Windows will ever have. Far from staying with Windows so I can use certain programs, I'm standing sadly out in the snow with my nose pressed against the glass of the free software world, salivating at all the warm, tasty code heaped on their plates. The door is open, too, and I could walk right in and grab a plate -- but the problem is that it'll take a year of my free time to learn to use their silverware. So to speak
your 'nobody made them buy stuff' rationale is the first-level doesn't-understand-the-free-market sort of thing
Can the arrogance. I'm not a child. The common understanding of the term "free market" is known to both of us. In addition, we both agree about the phenomenon commonly known as "market failure", and we both seem to prefer network effects as our favorite example of market failure. The conclusion I draw from the existence of market failure (and other things, which I'd like to discuss but which won't fit in a parenthetical aside) is that perfectly free markets are not a perfectly good way to run an economy. To me, this makes sense; in software development, every design which looks elegant and perfect on paper turns out to require some special cases when the time comes to implement it. I hear the same story from hardware engineers. This doesn't prove anything because it's just an analogy, but it's suggestive at the very least.
socialists who misunderstand what they advocate (i.e. large-scale theft, removal of incentives and the start of a downward spiral into dystopia).
Socialists assume that people are (or can be) motivated by belief in an ideal; free-marketeers believe that people are motivated by "greed" (in the positive sense). IMHO they're both on crack. Money is nice, but it's not why I drive into the office and write code. To the best of my knowledge, the only professionals who are primarily motivated by money are lawyers, and I think most people would take that as a powerful statement in and of itself
If lack of profit "destroys incentives", how then did Linux, GCC, Apache, and Perl come about? People aren't little one-variable robots like the free-marketeers, socialists, and other reductionists like to assume. Life is complicated. Even if people pursued their interests rationally at all times, their needs and desires would themselves still be irrational, because people (including me, obviously) are really just hairless apes with opposable thumbs and a tremendous capacity for language.
I assume, then, that Transmetropolitan is first?
A fine choice, I agree, but I lean towards manga, in kanji (to keep up my skillz). Transmetro is definitely the best american comic, tho.
What are your feelings on Fred Perry?
> Socialists assume that people are (or can be) motivated by belief in an ideal...
Nonsense. Socialists are motivated by enlightened self-interest. Think about it, was Karl Marx an idealist or a materialist? Unfortunately this silly idea that socialism is a particularly airy form of idealism, is widely shared by people who know nothing about the theory or history of socialism.
Of course the reason for that is that this fraudulent idea is deliberately promoted and disseminated by anti-socialists, in order to make voters think socialism is inherently impractical, which of course it is not. Somewhere a while back I read a quote by, of all people, Milton Friedman - who, as you know, is in no way pro-socialist. He stated that the single most influential program in twentieth century American politics was that of the Socialist Party in 1928; every one of the items on that platform - which includes such "radical" notions as universal public schools, utility regulation, old-age pensions, etc. - has since been made part of U.S. law. Well, has the U.S.A. been economically successful in this century? and particularly since when those 1928 Socialist Party proposals were incorporated in U.S. law? If you say "yes", then you agree that socialism DOES work in practice.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Don't know kf I'd be putting that one up on the mantle.
Aw, now THAT'S funny! That kinda name just gets me outta sync and makes me forget everythin else... ARSwards! Mwahah!
;-)
Oh please please, mod me as "Funny".
............ no.
Too bad backorder is the name of the G400 game ...
I am, therefore you think.
I'd like to give Creative an award for releasing their drivers' source ahead of most everybody else in the hardware industry. I think they started the ball rolling. Now 3Com has to be the "biggest" company to release drivers - these will doubtless be VERY useful for encouraging corporate adoption of linux, but Creative started it.
...gutenberg didn't invent the moveable-type press. that was done by some chinese guy in the 600's, i think. he probably invented the first practical one, though.
:).
all-in-all, i like the article, except that *my* case is much better than the one they picked
-k. ^-^ ^D
so who wins the award of biggest Arse of the Year?
or perhaps best Arse of the Year?
Now THAT is a viable question that no one has really awnsered....
i have a few suggestions, but flamebaiting myself doesn't sound fun right now.
I had something worth saying prior to typing this..but it kinda went away.....
Now, I don't like Microsoft much, but I will admit, that some of thier hardware is pretty good (I've got a M$ Natural Keyboard 1.0 I love).
Has anyone used this new Microsoft Optical Mouse? Does it really work well on any surface? Does it work under Linux?
Is it USB and PS/2? or USB only?
I have used the MS optical mouse by plugging into the USB port of my Mac G3 Laptop (Lombard) running LinuxPPC. It worked perfectly in both X and the console, and it sure was nice to have those three buttons back :)
-Outland Traveller
The drivers are SMP friendly, AFAIK. They are under Windows NT and BeOS and Linux IIRC.
I too love the celeron. I have a 300a that I just bumped up to 450. You should note though that if you want to build the fastest system you can, the Athlon is the only way to go. You can buy one of the lower speed grade already modded out. Now you can control voltage, L2 cache divider, and the bus multiplier. With control of those many have been able to hit 800 Mhz. Celerons are fast, but there is no celeron that can touch an Athlon at 800 Mhz.
Seriously, I can't imagine a single person who looks at that and thinks "arse awards" - I thought it was a humerous sight of lame geek awards, but this is a real SERIOUS award. This is almost too funny in itself. Who is the moron who thought this one up? I nominate him for the RetarAward of the year.
It looks like lots of people do care, considering that their server is slammed. And does the word millenium appear anywhere? And the fact that they do this every year plays into this how? Half-Life rules!
and they have been for months. That was literally the first bugfix posted when Creative opened up the source. Get the curent CVS version or a recent snapshot.
Those Ars technica (Technical Arts, :-)) people must've read the Linux Kernel 3.0 joke post, refering mainly to After-Y2K stuff..
.. Maybe 2.5 will morph into 3.0, but first we need 2.4 before 2.5 forks off, and then we need at least 12 months for a "major" version change worth of work. Really. It's a shame that such a good piece of review has such an obvious typo. Then again, they might've been confused by this piece of information, even though it really didn't mention release dates. Oh well, caveat Ars Technica.
"Also, the 3.0 kernel should be out in the not-too-distant future, and Linux will only get better."
Unless Linus has changed his 2.4 plans, it's still 2.4
---
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
As others have noted, you can indeed use either a USB or a PS/2 connection for this mouse, but it should be noted that a serial-to-PS/2 adapater WILL NOT WORK with this mouse. So, if you've got an older system (like some of mine) which has no PS/2 or USB ports, and you're used to being able to using PS/2 mice via a USB-serial adapter, you're not gonna be able to use the IntelliMouse Explorer. (If you're really in need, you could always go buy a cheap USB card.)
That said, it's still a fantastic little piece of hardware.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
You are right, they did not keep the price artificially high. But price was irrelevant. The point of making bibles "closed source" was not to make money, it was to control access to the information by limiting the number of copies that were made, thus to keep people under the control of the church. Bibles were available only for the clergy, regardless of price.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
The comment that I am responding to is probably the most insightful one that I have read all day on Slashdot. Look beyond the lines about Microsoft, Windows 2000, Internet Explorer, and the DOJ and think about what the poster is saying generally about the economic system of free-market capitalism. Without going into a paean about its virtues, I think that it can hardly be denied that this innovation has been responsible for an era of unparalleled prosperity and technological innovation.
The previous post may not have been phrased in the most diplomatic manner possible, but to ignore its underlying message by moderating based on the overt example that he/she uses is unfair. I don't think it is a troll at all.
Actually I voted for Homeworld *wink* ///Gonzo
I nominate ArseAwards as the Award of the Year. I would also like to nominate Time Magazine as having being the best "best of the millenium" of the millenium.
However I think the ArseAwards got one thing wrong: the controversy of the year should be whether or not anybody cares what someone else thinks was the best of the year.
This is just millenium fever, it isn't news.
Now if only creative's drivers were SMP friendly...
However the opensound stuff is very nice, though
propriatary and closed.
-JB
With all the hoopla over PDAs and/or "the search for 7 of 9" (or neural shunts, ala _The Matrix_), why weren't any cool new video devices mentioned? Some goggles? Those cool new reflective prescription lenses?
And, most of all, what about that 3D holographic enhancement stuff for LCD screens derived from the same cheezy plastic stuff they use on Pogs and childrens' bookcovers (you know, the stuff that makes the dinosaur appear on the cover of the Jurassic Park videos) -- that's one of those things that makes you go: Holy Shit, Batman!!!
The stuff that won awards was all definitely interesting, but there was something lacking about its representation of "what we lust after" in the geek community.
~~~~~~~~
Signature illegible, could be somebody else.
though the printing press won the award, i wouldn't have said it had the impact it could (and did) have immediately, as much knowledge and its dissemination was still controlled by few sources (such as the catholic church) - no open sourcing until the 17th-18th centuries
i was surprised to see none of what i would consider the greatest technological inventions of our millenium got any considerable votage, namely:
the combustion engine. for obvious reasons.
the integrated circuit. for allowing the crunching down of technology into such a small space as to make computers, small electronic circuits and essentially every appliance we use today from microwaves to dishwashers to toasters and water meters, a possibility.
and last but definitely not least, and probably the top of all:
the toilet. the invention of the u-bend allowed for an amazing increase in santitation in the home, leading to greater quality of life for all concerned. look at countries that don't have a sewage disposal system comparable to the western world, and the impact it has in terms of disease and pollution. this simple device put paid to all that.
but all round, it is amazing to think how far we have come as a race in a thousand years. i think that calls for a drink! ooh! fermentation! damn, that was invented over a thousand years ago, wasn't it... *grin*
Fross
The author wrote "Of course, Gutenberg can't take all of the credit; he merely brought together five hundred years worth of innovations to produce what we now know today as the printing press, inventions like:" .... and then lists all kinds of things that were borrowed from Asia.
It definitely took some getting used to, as it doesn't have quiiiiiite the same mechanics (in terms of wrist movement and rotation of the mouse) as a traditional ball-mouse does. Once you're used to it, though, it's great.
As for surfaces, well:
Bear in mind, however, that although it will track equally well on all surfaces, I still use my snazzy 3Com mousepad. Why? Because as a gamer, I need the mouse to respond to my slightest wrist flick, and with the mouse sitting on my desktop, its four rubber feet are a little too resistant. In other words, a mousepad has nothing to do with how well it tracks, simply how fast you can go from 0-60.
petruchio@ihatespam.mauimail.com
Of course, by Ars' logic, which was that Half-Life was released so late in '98 that its main impact came in '99, it really didn't deserve the awards in '98...but years are an illusion, and the fact that Half-Life is a great game is not.
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -Carl Sagan
Celeron 300A was relased in 1998.
And now sites like Ars Technica are saying that Half-Life deserves to be placed in the 1999 games because it was too late in 1998... That's definitely a first!
Heck, what can I say. Half-Life does deserve to win two years in a row.
It was the Celeron. Whatever intel did to make such damn high quality C300A's was great. They used technologies from P2 production and yet left the Celeron at 1.5 times less Mhz than the P2.
This left us with only one thing to do. OVERCLOCK. They tried to lock the bus to make it hard to do, but that didnt matter. With the advent of really nice 100Mhz FSB boards out there like the BH6 which was rock solid for overclocking, things just took off.
Now that Celerons up to 533are now being produced, with Intel 'doing the OC for us' by having them at 100Mhz bus now, those halcyon days are over. The C300A was just the BEST at overclocking. No need for any special cooling devices for me, and among a dozen friends that tried it, 11 of us succeeded - the other guy went and got a replacement that worked. The power/$ because of this is something the Athlon wont even match til prices fall this summer.
Or ARE the halcyon days over? According to this slashdot note about this article, there may be more such days ahead during the early release of the intel flipchip 500 and 550e, before they start streaming into high quality high speed high price chips, and lo end ones which wont OC. GET THEM AT THE START of the cycle.
If you arent running a server, the leeway intel has given for overclocking is just too large to ignore. If you consider it, the Athlon, while a technological marvel and all for the elegant solutions it employs to be compatible with a stupid x86 design (see this ARSTechnica comparison G4 vs Athlon) just does NOT give the same bang for the buck if you check it all out. (And REALLY, the Alpha is still an amazing chip, 64 bits and all, and heavily underused - and its years old.)
So if price/performance and x86 compatibility are all that matters, the Celeron300A was the best CPU deal of the year.
Math