Slashdot Mirror
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?
Trident wrote an ALSA module for their 4DWave chipset before Creative even decided to relase a binary only module. Just because Trident isn't as big as Creative doesn't mean they don't deserve praise as much.
What bothers me is that people are commending Creative for releasing open source drivers, when Trident has had ones from the start. But who does Slashdot post about, saying they're a great company? Creative, of course.
I know what chipset my next soundcard will contain. If you REALLY want to support open companies, buy a Trident based card (www.hoontech.com has one).
Course, companies like Advansys have also written open source drivers, but oh well.. If they're not popular, they're not recognized.
I own one of the optical mice, actually I bought it the first day it was released in stores.
It has several issues people should know about though. It doesnt work on glass or reflective surfaces (the LED doesnt get picked up properly by the imager on them), also it doesnt work too well with glazed surfaces (like a shiny table surface), it does work really well on textured surfaces though, a mouse pad works well, so does a book cover etc.
It has some really bad problems with fast mouse moving though. You cant just move the mouse around ultra quick as one would in a game of quake. The optical "camera" inside the mouse cant track the surface fast enough, so it loses its tracking and the mouse goes crazy. Sucks. The only solution is the crank the mouse to a high resolution in whatever game your playing (assuming the game requires quick mousing).
The mouse also works great under windows (both USB and PS2), and works well under Linux (ps2), however it cannot function as a serial device, as the current supplied by the serial port is not enough to supply the LED and camera within the mouse, so using a PS2 to serial converter will not work.
All in all its a pretty neat device, and works with everything after a bit of tweaking. I personally hate cleaning ball mice, so I really like it.
KAMEL