Slashdot Mirror
ATI Releases New Linux Drivers
dinivin writes "Today, ATI has released all new 2D/3D drivers for Linux/XFree86. The drivers will work on any "Built by ATI" Radeon 8500 or higher card (up to the 9700). Unlike the previous drivers from ATI, these support both the XVideo extension and S3TC (making UT2003 playable with these drivers)."
So? If driver releases are front page worthy, today, then I'll stop visiting today.
BOOOORING!
Yeah, right, Probably not
I have some time to type about this, because I just made another comment, so I have 2 minutes to kill whil I wait.
/. gets /.ed:
In case
dinivin writes "Today, ATI has released all new 2D/3D drivers for Linux/XFree86. The drivers will work on any "Built by ATI" Radeon 8500 or higher card (up to the 9700). Unlike the previous drivers from ATI, these support both the XVideo extension and S3TC (making UT2003 playable with these drivers)."
Looks like I finally have a reason to use Linux.
I take insult to that! My face is not greasy because I wash it hourly with a fresh, steaming cum bath. Before bed, I spread an oozing pile of day old shit on my face, let it dry, and then peel! It's a great way to have young, healthy looking skin.
I can finally go back to Gentoo as my primary OS! (Now if they would just release 1.4...)
emerge rsync (update the list of what's available)
emerge -up world (preview what's comming)
emerge -u world (do it!)
Gentoo isn't like other distros, in which you must wait for a release to stay current. With gentoo, the above three commands bring you up to what is current, which is generally close to the leading edge of the state of the art.
Oh, but you don't like the freeze and want all those new ebuilds waiting in the wings for the release? Fine, just set ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" and you can jump past the pending release and play with all the experimental stuff coming down the pike.
I have one set of partitions for exactly that purpose, and one set for the more formal, stable stuff. And you know what? With this approach, I don't have to even care at all when, or even if, they're going to have a "final" release of 1.4. The only other distros I know which come close to this is Debian unstable and Source Mage. The former suffers from the Curse of Binary Distros (lag behind the state of the art by weeks or, in the case of xfree, months), the latter is quite good, comparable to gentoo in many respects (but a different approach, so like salad vs. steak, the choice is entirely up to your own sensibilities and taste).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Anyone know of any tools to use the built-in DVD decoder in GNU/Linux? My software decoder still chokes a bit on fast action scenes.
THE 'BAD' PARTS OF TECHNOLOGY CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM THE 'GOOD' PARTS
121. A further reason why industrial society cannot be reformed in favor of freedom is that modern technology is a unified system in which all parts are dependent on one another. You can't get rid of the "bad" parts of technology and retain only the "good" parts. Take modern medicine, for example. Progress in medical science depends on progress in chemistry, physics, biology, computer science and other fields. Advanced medical treatments require expensive, high-tech equipment that can be made available only by a technologically progressive, economically rich society. Clearly you can't have much progress in medicine without the whole technological system and everything that goes with it.
122. Even if medical progress could be maintained without the rest of the technological system, it would by itself bring certain evils. Suppose for example that a cure for diabetes is discovered. People with a genetic tendency to diabetes will then be able to survive and reproduce as well as anyone else. Natural selection against genes for diabetes will cease and such genes will spread throughout the population. (This may be occurring to some extent already, since diabetes, while not curable, can be controlled through the use of insulin.) The same thing will happen with many other diseases susceptibility to which is affected by genetic degradation of the population. The only solution will be some sort of eugenics program or extensive genetic engineering of human beings, so that man in the future will no longer be a creation of nature, or of chance, or of God (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions), but a manufactured product.
123. If you think that big government interferes in your life too much NOW, just wait till the government starts regulating the genetic constitution of your children. Such regulation will inevitably follow the introduction of genetic engineering of human beings, because the consequences of unregulated genetic engineering would be disastrous. [19]
124. The usual response to such concerns is to talk about "medical ethics." But a code of ethics would not serve to protect freedom in the face of medical progress; it would only make matters worse. A code of ethics applicable to genetic engineering would be in effect a means of regulating the genetic constitution of human beings. Somebody (probably the upper-middle class, mostly) would decide that such and such applications of genetic engineering were "ethical" and others were not, so that in effect they would be imposing their own values on the genetic constitution of the population at large. Even if a code of ethics were chosen on a completely democratic basis, the majority would be imposing their own values on any minorities who might have a different idea of what constituted an "ethical" use of genetic engineering. The only code of ethics that would truly protect freedom would be one that prohibited ANY genetic engineering of human beings, and you can be sure that no such code will ever be applied in a technological society. No code that reduced genetic engineering to a minor role could stand up for long, because the temptation presented by the immense power of biotechnology would be irresistible, especially since to the majority of people many of its applications will seem obviously and unequivocally good (eliminating physical and mental diseases, giving people the abilities they need to get along in today's world). Inevitably, genetic engineering will be used extensively, but only in ways consistent with the needs of the industrial-technological system. [20]
I don't remember reading a "you must believe in the philosophy of the GNU/Linux community to be considered a memeber of the Slashdot community" when I signed up. Even though I do believe in the philosophy, not everyone here does - nor do they have to.
Slashdot caters its news to the geek masses, typically people of our opinions - but I see no reason why this news should be prohibited. This is important news for some/many slashdot readers, including myself, for where the only option for now has been nVidia. Now we have more of a choice.
I agree that ATI should have released the drivers opensource, but that does not exclude it for being news that is important to many slashdot readers.