Slashdot Mirror
Can Open Source Save Hardware?
Culexus writes "Tom's Hardware has a interesting story about Open Source saving the hardware industry. Pretty good read all in all. Hopefully chip makers and vendors won't have to bend to the iron might of Microsoft any longer." Some good comments on how early-adopters and enthusiasts are being marginalized by the industry, too.
Was Windows XP Product Activation. This inconviences anyone who changes a lot of their hardware regularly, and many of these folks do. They upgrade to the latest stuff right away, and regularly build whole new computers. It's no fun having to call Microsoft a few times a year to get their permission to run a piece of software that you bought and paid for.
If only it were possible for.... OPEN SOURCE HARDWARE!
http://mediagoblin.org/
"Doesn't look like it right now."
I think Linux will really push the hardware market forward because it is SLOW AS ASS in KDE and Gnome compared to any version of Windows. Everything is much slower and less responsive, other than resizing windows after a program has crashed. That's about it.
I can't imagine how painfully slow Linux would be on a $200 PC. Yeah, I'm sure some 1337 H4>0R can remove the new, appealing, and usable DEs and install something from 1992 and make it faster, but that's not realistic now, is it?
Until you guys get over your hate for commercial software and user friendliness, Linux is going NOWHERE.
How it was the mass-availability of MS-DOS that made clones possible. Have we gone full-circle? :^)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. ?????
Loser.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
This article makes the assumption that Microsoft is currently or has in the past somehow inhibited hardware vendors. Now, there are all sorts of "hardware vendors," but I would say universally most hardware vendors have bennifited tremendously from Microsoft, especially around Plug 'n Play (once Redmon got it working).
I would say that for many of today's hardware vendors, supporting the Linux OS is more painful than supporting the traditional unix vendors which were difficult enough.
The problem is that there is zilch technical support for linux, outside of the open source community. Most of the boutique hardware vendors cant afford the huge support teams to handle calls on every version of linux and all distros out there. Plus, they have a good deal of their IP in the software and they are leary of giving that away to competitors.
Not to mention, there is no partner marketing bennifits with linux. At least Microsoft promotes its hardware vendors, and comarkets their products with Windows, including them in its collosal marketing machine.
To be fair, the computer world in general has bennifited tremendously from open source. Don't get me wrong: I love linux, gcc, bash, etc. NetBSD has been a huge win for appliance vendors looking for instant-OS.
However, to say generally that hardware vendors are being saved by open source is actually the opposite of what the hardware vendors are really feeling. My experience with every hardware vendor that I've worked with is that Linux and open source is their #1 pain in the butt.
Someone you trust is one of us.
This should make hardware cheaper, from major manufacturers at least.
Dell, HP, and Gateway all are in pretty deep with Microsoft, to produce Windows PCs. So if the hardware companies don't have to contract with Microsoft anymore, theoretically, the prices should go down, if not the price of Windows XP Professional ($143).
Is this wrong? Or will the big guys continue to rip-off the consumer?
(Note situation in Europe after changing to the euro)
Error 407 - No creative sig found
That has got to be one of the worst articles I've read. Certainly that I've read, posted to Slashdot. The auther said abosultely nothing at all. "Hey look, neat new stuff coming out that nobody really cares about" followed by "I've got no idea if Linux can save the hardware industry."
Here's a big shock: the hardware industry doesn't need saving. They need to make and market products useful to consumers, and to corporate clients. And thats what they do. Because consumers decided that GigE and PCI-x really don't do anything for them doesn't mean the industry is going to burn to the ground.
Mod point free since 2001
Ok, so THG gets through this week enfuriating the enthusiast community. Posting infomercials labeled as articles, then throws the community this pat yourselves on the back editorial on Open Source? Anyone else find the timing a little suspicious?
It's not a matter of open source saving the hardware industry, and certainly not a matter of open source GAMES saving it. There are already good open source game creation tools available on most platforms today. Games are more about quality content now. It takes serious non-programming talent -- i.e. artists, animators and composers -- to create a modern game, no matter what tools (open source or closed) are used. And as long as that talent in in relatively short supply, it will graviate to the existing game creation houses and they will continue to develop for the lowest common denominatior -- consoles. The hardware industry will save itself by contining to push speed and feature sets. The biggest advantage a PC has over a console is the ability to upgraded on a regular basis, while the console is a static design. The article points out that next-gen consoles will have 'processor cycles to burn' but misses the fact that the latest PC will always have more cycles (or at least it will while Moore's law holds up.) And none of this makes a differce in the enterprise... Big business will usually replace or upgrade on a budgetary cycle, not on application release cycles.
I've just read the article 3 times and I have to ask; what part of it deals with open source? It's a TH article for christ sakes....are you slashdot editors just reading tag lines now?
Look guys, not everything MS does is an attack on open source. OS might be a threat, but it's hardly their only threat.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
I've always thought that a creed of Linux was to do more with less. It's the continual bloat added to Windows that drives the need for new hardware. Linux development strives for more efficiency. The only way Linux could spur sales of high-end hardware in the consumer market would be if they could finally get a stable gaming base. The lack of a killer app for the masses for so long is why most people are content with a $200 PC. They don't need anything better, because that $200 buys a great system.
I think the decline in new tech development will continue, now that most people in North America have a computer, or can afford a cheap one easily. Perhaps hardware manufacturers will concentrate more on useful features and cross-platform compatibility in the future, instead of making stuff faster just for the sake of making it faster.
In other words, what really bugs Tom's Hardware is that nobody cares about Tom's Hardware any more.
Consider "overclocking". Overclocking in the 486 era was marginally useful. Overclocking today belongs in the same category as car stereo loudness competitions.
Open source can, and has, done a lot for server-side hardware. But it just doesn't sell enough iron on the desktop to matter. Look what happened to VA Linux.
The next "must buy" computer thing for consumers will probably be DRM-equipped hardware. They'll need it to run popular games and play popular music. All across America, kids will be screaming at their parents to buy the new "entertainment-ready" computers. Open source will be locked out of that world completely. (Yes, you can write DRM code for Linux. But Vivendi, Universal, and the RIAA aren't going to let the decrypt keys out into the open source world. So all you'll be able to play is off-brand protected content nobody will pay for.)
...if OpenSource saves Hardware vendors, why dont they make drivers for OpenSource platforms (Linux, BSD, whatever)?
:(
Except for some companies like Nvidia or ATI, I dont see any great moves towards non-Windows driver development
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
What point was this article making? There's all this shiny hardware coming out, and nothing that needs it?
Apparently, the evil Open Source / Linux people aren't writing inefficient enough software! We really need to write another 1,000 useless effects into our window managers, so that £5,000 machine has something to do!
It would be nice if the article had a few ideas of what the power could be used for. Otherwise, it's as pointless as those "Desktop metaphor is dead!" articles that fail to suggest an alternative.
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
Assuming you have a legal license and key to Windows XP ($10 at a university bookstore), along with a working internet connection, Activation is a one- or two-click process. Perhaps because my connection is so fast, the lag between that menu and the next was not perceptably different than the lag between any other two menus.
Total time stolen from me by the Evil Empire: 2 seconds. I'm sure raging now.
It's certainly a lot less time than is required to, say, recompile my kernel to support the new hardware I've bought.
e+----> <----e-
Fatal Attraction
an article on hardware and no mention whatsoever of Apple/Macintosh? The iMac kick started the USB peripheral market. It's likely that the PPC 970 will validate 64bit desktop computing. The G5 Macs will help push SATA into the mainstream and the iLook will push a variety of hardware into mainstream computing because mac users will laugh at PC users who don't have these features and whatever else PC users fight about they refuse to be laughed at by macheads.
Here's another thing that will save the hardware industry, the home server. But that won't be the open source community saving the hardware industry but the construction industry rolling in $10k servers into new construction home mortgages and making sure that the line stays current for the next couple of decades.
Does the article have anything to do with open source? Unless I'm missing something, it's about how games now get ported from PCs to games machines and back. Games machines tend to be even more proprietary than PCs running MS, and none of this is exactly new: I remember Elite being ported from the BBC Micro to DOS 20-odd years ago. And does anyone out there believe, even in their dreams, that Linux games are currently a driving force in the industry?
Virtually serving coffee
All serious IT analysts should be asking a different question: Can open source save itself? Yes, contrary to the denials of "open-source" pundits, it is already in decline. With Linux's much heralded "stability" and "security" being debunked as myths, and the amazing improvements made to Windows recently, any technical reasons for using open-source software disappeared. More and more businesses are rejecting the anti-capitalist attitude of open-source developers and licenses as a possible threat to their own businesses.
But the coup de grace for the "open source" world is the recent revalation that open-source developers have been copying SCO's patented source code directly into open-source products including Linux, without signing a proper widespread agreement. According to SCO's chief executive officer, Darl McBride, and every industry analyst who has actually viewed the code, the copying is so widespread and integral to Linux's operation that removing it may be impossible. Instead of trying to negotiate fair licensing agreements with SCO, Linux developers have gone into denial, and there is every reason to believe that companies such as IBM continue to copy protected code without restraint. No one has even suggested that Linux, or other possibly compromised projects such as the "Apache" web server or the "Perl" web scripting laguage, adopt tougher guidelines for the acceptance of code, that could lead to sniffing out copying. And this means that all open-source software could be illegal to use within a few short months, barring the liberal interventionist judiciary's refusal to enforce the relevant laws.
What can open-source do? Well, a good first step would be to enter into license agreements with intellectual property owners so that the software becomes less legally dubious. A second step would be to move away from such obviously anti-American licenses such as the 'BSD" and "GPL", to something which is more protective of the rights of property holders, and does not impede proprietary redistribution. I think Sun's Community Source License and Microsoft's Shared Source program are good examples of this. Finally, they need to stop accepting code from known IP pirates like IBM. With these steps, Linux can continue to be a popular low-cost platform for hobbyists, and the rights of intellectual property holders such as Microsoft and SCO won't be compromised.
The biggest role I see for Linux helping out games from a technological point of view -- and even this is a stretch -- is if games need more RAM than Windows can provide and Microsoft has not released a 64-bit Windows. In that case, Linux would serve as a stop-gap measure much as DOS4GW did between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.
It's the only thing most of us actually pay for any more.
I wasn't aware that hardware required saving! Did everybody ont he planet suddenly stop buying computer hardware and not tell me about it? What's this big crisis that the article completely fails in describing?
I'll tell you what pisses off the vast majority of hardware companies:
If a significant number of them act as their customers would like, they will only be able to compete on hardware.
What hardware vendors *should* do is open up the specs to their hardware. If they are especially competitive, fund the development of open source drivers.
The fact is that hardware with well defined and open specs works brilliantly in linux and the BSDs. Thats because the drivers are generally better written, usually because the drivers can share infrastructure and code from drivers from similar hardware, and these drivers are often written by the same people.
Hardware vendors who do not open their specs or write drivers for Linux are writing themselves out of the future.
If a driver is accepted into the mainline kernel, and has an appreciable userbase, its very unlikely that there will be a lot of tech support issues - IF the hardware isn't flaky.
And thats what they hate. A huge amount of vendors make *really* bad hardware. If it becomes known that a bit of hardware works well in linux, more people buy it. As Linux market share increases, *this* PR ( the hardware is actually *good* and *works*) will take over from the MS crap ( the hardware company has some agreement with MS that says *nothing* about the quality of the hardware).
I know which kind of PR I take more seriously.
Don't link to Tom's Hardware anymore Slashdot. This past week they threatened to sue AMDMB.com for defamatory comments.
D =243
http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleI
In other news, air guitar found to eliminate smog.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What if someone gave a party and no one came?
Ideas like a booting from a ram run fixed drive get thrown away!
Why? Because to eliminate MS Windows need to boot from a spinning junky harddrive on the PC would make the consumer wise to the built in planned obsoscence of Microsofts software/hardware dominance.
Hardware advancement is stiffled by the lack of competition. This is how the ram, harddrive, and most of computer hardware industry has come to be run. Unfortunately this has become the norm in hardware/software design because of the mad ruin of competiting ideas by a monoply.
If some bright computer company bucks the trend and produces a home computer that does not need to boot from a harddrive, but can use whatever OS the user chooses from a base boot system. Then what will happen to the MS dominated hardware market? Oh my computer doesn't care if it runs XP, Linux, or whatever.
If the harddrive based software OS screws up then I just run the original fixed OS which could also be upgraded. Problem is the user would tend to stick to the fast boot OS on the fixed ram drive.
Microsoft knows this and just has not been able to make the idea work on the antiquated IBM 386 arch PC yet. Or, are they scared stiff that the people who hold certain patents to this particular type of system configuration would sue their butts!
Just imagine no more viruses, no more trojans (unless you are really stupid). Not having to bow to Redmond 6 times per day, or every time you use the net.
This is a very real possibility.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
If linux can make my el cheapo Linksys router a lot more flexible and useful, that's good enough for me.
holy shit! those are some uber-dweebs...including Linus.
The funny thing is if you take a look at the directories above this, the guy looks like he needs to get out a little bit more...
They tend to crash/nag/cry/pester alot for unknown reasons. If the source was available, I'm sure some geek would write a patch as soon as a problem occured.
Sigh...if only life was that easy
Heck they could buy the Senate and entire House of Representatives for a whole lot less than that. Add them to their Administration and Justice figures and they would have nearly a complete set. Someday it could be worth a lot of money especially if they keep the original packaging.
I think I now have a template to get a story accepted by the /. (hehe) Editors (lol).
(user name) writes "(geek web site) has a interesting story about Open Source saving the (pick one) industry. Pretty good read all in all. (brief statement about how it relates to MS)"
TheMe
From the article: "you can't blame Microsoft for following strategies that don't help the hardware community."
:-) ). However, there seems to be an underlying struggle between the hardware and content-creating industries. The latter are lobbying for legislation that, aside from effects on freedom and rights of everybody, will also result in loss of profits from hardware companies. For example, they could be forced to implement a "controller" technology (e.g. v-chip) that not only makes the product less desirable, but also increases the sale price (or reduces margin).
That sentence opened a whole new perspective on the subject for me... OSS "saves" hardware but I would say the savings occur in the consumer's pockets (us, so, it's good
Either way they (hardware manufacturers) can lose along with the consumer. That for example explains why Apple had their campaign of "rip mix and burn": the mere possibility of those activities is an incentive that drives purchases of CD-R and DVD-R drives, new hardware, more powerful computers, etc. Of course some of these activities may be legal gray areas, but it's not a matter of doing them or not, but rather of knowing that they can be done, like having a sports car and still drive at 70mph. In other words the features may be useless or even misunderstood [for that particular person, not power users], but it makes people [joe sixpack] want to buy hardware.
If you take a paranoid point of view you could say we haven't lost all of our rights yet because another industry has something at stake... personally I think it's more of a side effect rather than a direct cause - since where there are liberties there's always somebody that can make a business out of them.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
I would have sold you two of my turds for $10. Got any money left?
I'll give Tom's Hardware some credit for mentioning a few key points, but I also think they missed one very key issue.
..but there are a few things missing here. Namely reliability and focused innovation.
What does 'save hardware' really indicate?
From the slant of the writeup, they're assuming that this means the creation of software that will spur revolutionary, fast-paced hardware development. In part, this is accurate, as these companies do need to release products on a fairly consistent basis if they want to stay in business..
How often do we hear about or experience first-hand hardware failure? Weird driver bugs on video cards, hard drives that have to be RMA'ed after 3 months to a year, heat dissipation issues, the list goes on. Undoubtedly, things have become much more advanced since the days of the 486, but on the same token, we're also being introduced to a different set of problems. The technology is largely the same; it's just a new set of boundaries and guidelines.
The manufacturers are pumping out products every goddamned month, mostly introducing only minimal changes from product to product. I'm sorry, but this just isn't realistic.. the average buyer doesn't shell out cash for a new video card or whatever every goddamned month. When the time comes to upgrade, we want it to be a worthwhile one.. not just a $300+ clock-speed increase or an even more ridiculously huge heatsink added.
I think if the hardware industry needs saving, it's going to take a change in how things are done. From a user standpoint, at least, i'd like to see a greater emphasis on *quality* for once. There are very few companies I have genuine, lasting faith in. Everyone's in such a mad rush to be first, to hit the best benchmarks on the goddamned review sites, that they're making quality a secondary focus to just releasing something. I see it in software, I see it in hardware, and it's simply ridiculous.
Take this, for example:
A quick search on Pricewatch for 'Nvidia 5800' gives the lowest price at $268.00. Not too bad for a decent video card; worth it if you need it. Then I check for Nvidia 5900, which has only recently been released.
The price suddenly shoots up to $401.99. I can almost guarantee that in a month or two, it'll be nearly the same price as the 5800. You're getting only a marginal performance increase for nearly twice the price. If you opt for the 5800, you're getting sub-par performance when you could've waited a couple months for the 5900, spent the same as the 5800 would've cost, and gotten better performance. In another year, or less, they'll release *yet another* product.
So here's my question..no, my challenge.
Knock this shit off. Instead of releasing 2 or 3 or 4 products of the same type in a year or two, why not release one or two? Focus on ultra-quality performance and product, don't compromise on parts and manufacturing, and let the market ride the wave for awhile. These guys are surprised that sales are down when they've helped instill a stigma of "save your cash. our current product will be obsolete in a week!" They're going for maximum price, crossing their fingers that they'll sell a bunch before they move onto the next release on their roadmap.
The other issue is where these guys are focusing their efforts. You can clock shit up as much as you like, but shitty build quality coupled with a lack of genuine innovation is getting us nowhere. 3D animators/compositors/etc, digital video editors, gamers, etc. all *want* high performance, no doubt. So does the home user, if only to avoid the dreaded click-and-lag demon. But how long can they keep cranking speeds before they realize that there are more important things to consider?
For instance, we've got DDR-II slowly trickling in, mostly on video cards. Why frickin' bother?
Where's the goddamned MRAM? Where's our truly solid state hard drives? Why aren't we developing cooling solutions that don't involve water or noisy fans
No.
Hi Perrier! Sharpy's here ;)
I remember it being the BIOS not DOS as the hurdle for clone makers to overcome.
running Lotus 1-2-3 was *the* most important aspect not ms-dos compatibilty, that came later
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Let me start with networking first because I think that this is a very exciting area for the enthusiast, even if it hasn't quite caught fire.
The author is wrong there, at least for me. My network has caught fire many times!
Karma: Bad. Mostly because the only moderators that notice me are conservatives.
Its not the point of how much inconvience, its why.
For Linux or Win98, its hunting down how to get something to work. I need new drivers/new code/new libraries. I might even need to get new drivers for WinXp. I can justify it.
For Windows Activation, I need to do something because MS doesn't trust me with something I bought from them? Yes its simple, but its the "unnesscary steps" which is the point.
How does needing to go to MS to get a new install code add to my functionality of my computer? Zero.
(And I'm ignoring the "they can stop supporting WinXP Activation at any point in the future" argument)
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Any hardware vendor feels the heavy hand of microsoft in the form of non-disclosure pricing agreements where they will only get the "good" (way below retail) price on Windows if they guarantee X, Y and Z capabilities of the hardware that they ship. (boot time, graphics capabilty, etc).
The other heavy hand of microsoft is the little windows logo sticker. MS doesn't just give those out. They make vendors pay dearly for that by bowing down to MSs every demand. why? because normal idiot consumers apparently don't buy things without the sticker.
Now, if the Open Source movement sees its installed base of desktop users reach a critical mass, it can enable a new generation of game designers, who will be shut out of the existing game industry because there is nothing else for them there.
noble sentiment but, sadly, naive. open source will not help game designers. (to say nothing about leading the next hardware revolution!)
games are extraordinarily expensive to make, but the cost isn't driven up by software. modern games require a team of specialists to build or adapt the basic engine, a very talented team of artists to produce the graphic and sound assets, perhaps a team of level designers and scripters, and of course people responsible for high-level gameplay design - to say nothing of production, marketing, and other people on the business side of the fence. all these people bring their expertise into play, and that ends up being really expensive.
can open source help with this? no, not really.
suppose we live in the best possible world, where all of the software used in game production is open-sourced - all game engines, all physics and AI engines, all modeling tools, all graphics software, everything. even in that world, games would retain high production costs - because the cost of making games is not in the tools, but in using the tools to produce content. what's worse, our world isn't too far from that ideal world - many tools are already open-sourced or otherwise available (quake engine is free, torque is available for minimal costs, some modeling tools are free, etc). you could create a game today using only free tools. but revolutionary new games by garage designers are still nowhere to be found. again, this is not surprising. the cost of making new games is not in the tools, it's in the many man-years it takes to produce a polished game using those tools.
the days of shareware garage games aren't over - people will always enjoy simple games, as the success of snood and cell phone games demonstrates - but they have been permanently demoted to a secondary role in the industry. gamers want well-designed, highly-polished games, and are willing to pay for them. this is not a domain that open-source can assist or compete in.
My other car is a cons.
In other words, what really bugs Tom's Hardware is that nobody cares about Tom's Hardware any more.
Yeah, and guess why- every time you went and looked at Tom's Hardware, the information and reviews were months old, or worse. I was continually frustrated, while shopping for PC components, at how out-of-date THG was- so I simply stopped bothering to look at their site.
THG should have stuck to what they were most useful for- a place to learn about PC technology. Not a lets-run-some-benchmark-scripts-with-different-vid eo-cards. THG has turned into what I call "two guys in a dorm room who have a hardware review site". Unfortunately, that market is a dime-a-dozen; every stupid moron who knows how to use Front Page has one.
Open source can, and has, done a lot for server-side hardware. But it just doesn't sell enough iron on the desktop to matter. Look what happened to VA Linux.
Open source sells plenty of iron- it's just that there's no point in going with some boutique rackmount company with absurd sales policies(see below), when you've got better support, better hardware, better access to parts, etc from IBM, Gateway, HP, Compaq...all of whom have supported Linux on a lot of their hardware for years.
VA filled a niche that disappeared the second the Big Boys supported Linux; none of the big corporations really knew who VA was, and nobody cared; they just called their IBM/HP/Gateway/Compaq rep and ordered up systems from them. What made it worse was that VA didn't have stock on 'accessory' items, and you couldn't get parts. For example, this is an almost word-for-word phone conversation between VA and myself, trying to get carriers for adding new drives to our one VA Linux DB server(we needed the drives within 2 days.)
Operator:"Thank you for calling VA blah blah"
Me:"Sales please."
Sales:"VA sales, this is ____, how can I help you?"
Me: "I need two SCSI drive carriers for my VA ____."
Sales:"Ah, you'll need to talk to someone in our parts department, they handle those requests. Let me transfer you."
Parts:"VA Parts, how can I help you?"
Me: "Yes, Hi, I need two SCSI drive carriers for my VA ____."
Parts:"Okay, hmm, one sec..[click click click click]...I'm sorry sir, they're not available."
Me:"Oh, backordered? When will they be in?"
Parts:"We have them in stock. I'm not authorized to sell you this part."
(very long pause while I censor myself)
Me:"Okkkkaaaaaay. Do you have any 36GB 10,000 RPM drives?"
Parts:"Yes."
Me:"How much?"
Parts:"$800 each"
Me(I actually laughed):"I can get those drives from any of a dozen vendors for half that. Alright, fine. How soon can you have them shipped to me?"
Parts:"We don't have any in stock. Maybe two weeks."
So you know what we did? We swore never to buy another VA Linux system, ordered two drives from a vendor who had them there by 10am the next morning, and jury-rigged them in the drive slots. VA sunk themselves with stupid bullshit that kept customers from meeting critical deadlines. Many IT departments work on a "we needed this two days ago" schedule, not a "we might need this in two weeks" schedule. There are those that recognize this, and those that try to force you into buying product they don't even have in stock, by not selling you parts like empty drive carriers- and consequently go out of business when suddenly they're the dinky little hole-in-the-wall company nobody cares about in a market full of Big Boys. We bought over two dozen rackmount servers within a year of that incident, and they came from Gateway- not VA.
Please help metamoderate.
(b)
Which of the following is inconsistent?
A. Complaining that consumer technology is advancing too slowly:
For instance, we've got DDR-II slowly trickling in, mostly on video cards. Why frickin' bother?
Where's the goddamned MRAM? Where's our truly solid state hard drives?
B. Complaining that consumer technology is advancing too quickly:
It really sucks to spend $100 on a great CD-R or something, only to see that same company put out something nearly twice as fast less than a year later.
C. Doing both at once.
This article doesn't pat anyone on the back. It doesn't even say anything at all. It's a terribly written piece of crap with no point and no logic. Immagine... assuming that any of us give a shit about how we all have to "save the hardware industry".
Liberty.
The author first bemoans the lack of exciting reasons to buy powerful new hardware. Then he argues that open source software must step up and provide these killer apps.
Let's take his first statement first. Do you think that the PC is as fast as you'd like it? Is it as reliable? Are you really content to stay with the current generation of GUIs? Are you not interested in voice or gesture recognition, not interested in virtual reality, not interested in intelligent agents, not interested in vastly more intelligent means of storing and sorting your data?
The answers are obvious. I don't think the PC is done yet. Far from it. Greater reliability, ease-of-use, and more interesting applications will all require endless new hardware. All it will take is a good product and good marketing to make PC hardware sexy again.
And where are many of these kinds of innovations going to come from? Well, they could come from Linux or another open-source project, or they could come from Microsoft or Apple or another large company. Indeed, if we really want to see such tools go out widely in the near future, Microsoft will likely have to lead the way. And I think it will.
As long as there's the potential for cool new software (and there is), the PC can still evolve. I think we're in a transition period right now. The Internet has temporarily eclipsed the fundamental hardware and software elements of the PC, but the game's only just begun.
Maybe he should buy a mac
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
enough said
It seems to me if prices would come down a little bit, I'd be buying more hardware. I guess that's a shock to some, who want "Open Source" to save the industry...but how about saving my wallet first?
"Sufferin' succotash."
You'd think after about 10 years of Macintosh enthusiast columnists pining for Apple's sucessor to "desktop publishing" this sort of uninspired writing would end..... but saddly this drivel is too easy to write, especially when 4th-of-july barbeque is what's really on his mind and something/anything needs to get knockout out quickly to meet a publish deadline.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Games are what drives hardware. Games force people to build that ultimate "gaming system" and to tweak every little bit of performance. Games are the reason people study every little aspect of two different cards to choose the one with the .002% performance increase.
Playing games, and making games, are the two things that really drive that stuff. I don't know how Open Source is supposed to affect much in that department (we're still trying to write drivers!). Unless you make Open Source games or something.
"Sufferin' succotash."
like how the poster tried to pshop da camel toe.
dumb nigs.
Two of the three technologies that were mentioned, 64-bit systems and gigabit ethernet, are led by Apple. Every Powermac and some of the Powerbooks have had gigabit ethernet for years now, and the 64-bit G5 boxes are on sale and will be shipping next month.
I think Microsoft would be happy for people to buy new hardware. It would force many users to buy new copies of Windows XP and discard their old Windows 98 systems. But most people don't care about the new hardware; their old 500 Mhz systems are fast enough to handle email, browsing the web, and balancing the checkbook.
It is also hard to justify bleeding-edge hardware solely for gaming when a new video card costs about the same as a entire gaming console.
Many businesses aren't going to spend a lot of money on new hardware unless they can save that much or more with the new systems. For most of them, 64-bit systems and other new hardware don't provide much benefit.
The point is, there is no driving factor in the PC market. Microsoft can't make people buy new computers, the hardware manufacturers can't sell their products at compelling prices, and many businesses and individuals don't see a benefit to buying new hardware. But there is a driving factor for for Macs; Apple. Every new Powermac will be a cutting-edge system, there is no extra cost for a 64-bit system. Even those who might be happy with a 32-bit Powermac will buy a G5 (with a very few exceptions), because there not a sufficient benefit to them to buy a G4 instead. Every Powermac has gigabit ethernet, so there is no need to justify an additional expediture over 100Mb ethernet. Plus many of the people who buy Macs (video and audio types) need as much power as possible, and for this market it is easier to justify the costs of buying new systems. Everyone else will get carried along.
It is this lack of a driving factor that will cause the PC market will continue to stagnate, while Apple's will move forward.
What is it about a personal computer that requires roughly an order of magnitude more power than a supercomputer of 7 years ago that we need to 'save'?
Even worse, he has a traitor on his site:
L in ux/linux_chick5.jpg
S CO /sco.jpg
http://hope-2000.org/smo/rumpel/pics/Unixbabes/
http://hope-2000.org/smo/rumpel/pics/Unixbabes/
I don't know what that writer was thinking.
He seems to pining for the days when you HAD to pay top dollar to play a game. Quite frankly, I'm glad those days are gone. Sure they where fun, but I perfer to be able to use my hardare for longer then 3 months.
I thinkits a grewat thing when you can go years between ungardes. I used my 400 Mgz chip For about 4 years with no problems running the latests games. the on exception is one memory upgrade.
To me, having a OS that uses a system more efficiantly is far more beneficial because you can play the latest stuff on cheaper hardware.
I do not know why he thinks paying 5000 dllars for a computer is a good thing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
is there a better reason to buy new hardware than gentoo ?!? one , two or three days just to compile kde seem like a good reason to upgrade :)
sooo..... gentoo will save the hardware...
This report at CNetl
http://news.com.com/2030-6596_3-1023242.htm
is titled: Why "Open R&D" is the future.
The amazing success of OSS has spawned a new buzz word.
Way to go ESR.
1000 SlashDot sigs
They gave you a score of "4: Informative." But is your post really information or opinion? I would like to find out:
Thats because the drivers are generally better written,
-What device drivers were tested and how many?
-What criteria were used to say a device driver for the same piece of hardware is better on Linux that on Windoze or Apple?
-What percentage are better written vs. written worse?
A huge amount of vendors make *really* bad hardware. If it becomes known that a bit of hardware works well in linux, more people buy it.
-For which companies does this hold true?
-For which companies does this holds false?
-How many companies were tested?
I know which kind of PR I take more seriously.
I don't know what to make of your post. Are you basing it on a study (or studies), or is all this just your opinion?
If, like the article suggests, future versions of Xbox and PS will offer similar gaming experience as on PC and PC will not be a gaming platform anymore there will be no reason at all to run Windows on a PC !!!
I know for sure that the moment PC dies as a gaming platform so will my ntfs partition.
hey upgrade to the latest stuff right away, and regularly build whole new computers. It's no fun having to call Microsoft a few times a year to get their permission to run a piece of software that you bought and paid for.
If you read most of microsofts EULAs, you will find that you are only allowed to use the software on the computer is is *first* installed on. I.e. it is not allowed to transfer the OS to another machine..
With Microsoft you have no rights, either 'get over it' or do something about it... /. is not going to change anything ..
Whining on
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
At last someone understood the article and its an AC. Please mod up.
as far as I can tell the article says that Microsoft et al are not going to be exploiting the latest and greatest in PCs anymore since business units are already more than powerful enough and XBox is where they are concentrating on gaming. Can open source software fill the gap and make compelling use of say 64 bit computing?
PCI-Express uses high-speed multichannel SERDES on its datapath. PCI-X uses special single-ended I/O and is slower. There are good networkable PCI-X adapters coming out for things like iSCSI and the like, but PCI-Express hardware doesn't exist yet. Very common mistake to make, btw.
Send all your hardware to me.
All you hardware is belong to me.
Plenty of folks bought XP Pro, still have to activate it. Your point?
It sounds to me like Tom never got into using PCs until Doom came out.
Because PCs have traditionally not been a gaming platform, and in fact, the majority of PC users don't use them solely for this purpose, and a good percentage don't use them for this purpose at all.
Pre-Doom, sure, there were games for the PC. Some were okay, but the best games, you had to buy a console for that, or go to an arcade. Super Mario Brothers. Zelda. Hell, even Q-bert. Using a PC to play games in those days was the funniest joke ever, since they were either too slow to play anything worth playing, or you had to shell out $3000 or more for a machine that would play them. The arcade boxes running games like Galaga had three times the processor power of any PC, right up until the 386 was produced, and that's a game that was made in 1981.
Since the 486 of course, PCs have vastly outpowered consoles, and although they've been catching up in leaps and bounds, it was still some time before you could even run Bubble Bobble on your PC without wishing that you had the real thing.
So when Tom complains that the X box is going to kill the PC gaming market, I ask "Who cares?"
What does the PC market need gaming for? It's thrived without it this entire time because PCs are general-purpose tools so flexible that you can even use them as toys, rather than gaming platforms that also support e-mail and web browsing (like the dreamcast was, which was a huge joke).
And these days, you can buy an X-box for $299 and the games for the same price as any PC games. You can also buy a fast computer for $599 and have it do everything else. Or you can spend $799 and get Gateway's cheapest laptop (running at 2 Ghz no less). So you can have a computer and a console for less than what a computer alone would have cost 5 years ago.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I'd forgotten about flight sim
Lotus 1-2-3 was released in 1983
Whereas the first Flight Sim for PC was in November 1982
I do remember us selling an Apricot PC Compatible that had a "Runs Lotus 1-2-3" sticker on it.
Might have done a bit better if it had said "Runs Leisure Suit Larry".
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Linus doesn't want to be hindered by not being able to change the API/ABI for drivers when something better comes along. They've changed the framework EACH AND EVERY TIME that a new release has come out. Not enough each time to merit a new major number, but enough to need to re-write the drivers a little bit. Because he and the other kernel developers had a better idea than the last time for dealing with the driver infrastructure. If the vendors want closed source drivers, they need to keep up. Hell, if NVidia can, the others can- or they can open the technical data, it's not as if someone's going to steal their IP through those interfaces ANYHOW.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Yes, enthusiasts are an odd, often misguided minority. The author is spot-on in that such enthusiasts are refusing to change, even despite such a drastic shift in how PCs fit into the gaming world. This is becoming more glaringly obvious every time nVidia or ATI releases a flashy, overheating, $300+ video card, and base machines from Dell keep shipping with Intel Extreme 2 motherboard graphics chipsets.
But the conclusions and recommendations in the article don't make much sense. There needs to be exciting reasons for people to upgrade their hardware? Game development is all of a sudden going to require 10x fewer resources? What?
If anything, the article a lament about the end of the PC hardware fanboy era (of which Tom's was a part). Maybe, just maybe, that's a good thing, as all of the pointless upgrading wasn't serving a whole lot of purpose anyway. And now we've got more hardware power than we know what do do with. Who can complain about that? If you're still swooning over benchmarks that show one processor being 6% faster than another, or getting 12% more FPSs in Unreal, then you need to move on. That's no longer relevant to computing. The people who realize that are going to be leading the next round of innovation.
running Linux.
It rocked.
The 64bit migration will NOT start on MS's desktop. Nor will it start with MS's "server" OS.
64bits are AWESOME when you're hammering on huge databases. (Access is not a huge database)
Gigabit ethernet and 64bit processors will take off. But not at home and not in games and NOT with Microsoft.
The same as USB took off with the Apple, 64bit will take off with Linux.
Boot from a CD, store your user files on a USB plug.
I do not know if it is possible to boot Windows in that manner. I've been told that it cannot be done.
How do you remote in to fix the machine if they're on a firewalled broadband ISP, and their network card is borked?
Yeah, spend that extra $100 for the corporate edition. After all, we have a potential $10,000,000,000.00 dividend payout staring us in the face...
It's deja vu all over again!
It's called tying. And it's illegal.
There are court cases to back it up.
You can take the os, remove it from the original box, and install it on another box. Legally.
Regardless of what the eula says.
And regardless of what you believe.
Now go get your fuckin' shinebox!
This guy is so right!
Time to upgrade. Invent a security problem. Maybe even a "terrorist" using the "poor" drm controls in the "old" windows xp.
We must prevent terrorists from using insecure operating systems. XP was three version releases ago. Longhorn is two version releases old, but has much better drm controls, and thus prevents terrorists from using the p2p controls to upload military secrets to their terrorist partners in crime across the continents.
The xp activation servers will be turned off in 30 days. We have provided sufficient notice, and have extended the time period 3 times already, due to user concerns. It won't be extended anymore, due to problems with terrorists hacking the xp operating system. Through our surveys and activation servers, we have determined that less than 3% of corporate users, and 10% of general users are still using xp, and we have programs and support options for those users to upgrade. And anyone buying a new computer automatically gets the newest operating system.
Just remember to send your dna and tia number along with the serial number of the distribution...
That was an absolutely excellent use of irony. I applaud your attempt. Granted, it's not up there with "A Modest Proposal", or even your typical SCO press release, but it's still impressive.
How is this different then what Apple does?
Life is not for the lazy.
If I understand correctly this would mean no patches for the usual weekly cavalcade of Windows vulnerabilities. Personally, I wouldn't want to run 2000 under those circumstances, even with Mozilla/Eudora/Agent. I'm sure they'll use these fears to "force" people to updgrade.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
Most of the mainstream press, HW and SW companies buys into the not-proven theory that strong copy protection and content protection is necessary to encourage content vendors to release their "stuff" into the PC world.
I think the theory is well-known enough that its not worth re-hashing. But I have to point out that a cornerstone of this view is that the content creator gets to control exactly how content is used. If they don't want you to copy it to your MP3 player, then you can't.
Let me take the opposite view: as long as copy protection is in place, particularly copy control, innovation in hardware is going to be limited, because its no use building hardware that can quickly copy hours of content to some new storage if its illegal to build such a device.
If music/video/books/other entertainment was available without control, hardware sales would skyrocket because consumers would have a new capability they would actually want and use.
Instead, we're getting the same HW for the past 10 years with little in the way of new capability, just faster stuff, and marginally improved MS OS.
HW & SW companies have neutered their product and limited innovation and now they're paying the price.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Use Linux. /mbr could not bring Windows back to a bootable state.
I am playing around with my Redhat 6.1 box right now, and have a ball changing everything when I want to.
I use DriveCopy to copy selected partitions to new (well old) HDD's, and usually have a bunch of OS's on them.
(Yes, I have all the machines taken apart and the HDD's all over the place for this "copy")
I'm going to the store tomorrow and get me a 80 GB HDD just to play around with. I'll put this Redhat setup on it, A Windows 98, perhaps my Debian 2.2 that I am running out of room with, (81%/df)and need a nice 20 GB partition to place it in. Then I can apt-get all 8700 packages!
If XP could be installed like my Windows 98 can, then I would buy it. I don't want to have to call anyone at MS either.
Do you suppose Bill Gates is listening? I doubt it, he has to pay out a 10 billion dollar dividend soon on MS stock, so nothing is going to change.
BTW: I found that if you move a Windows 98 partition to a new HDD, and new machine, just "reinstall windows 98" on top of it, and all your new hardware will be setup in Device Manager, etc.
You need to switch on verbose hardware detection with "/p g=3" in setup to see what happens (not necessary, however) and when the Windows 98 installer does not ask you for a timezone, etc., you'll be nearly done.. All you toolbar icons, etc. (everything) will reappear after this "install". Apparently Windows 98 does not "format" the partition.
I tried this lately when I ruined my Windows master boot record with some lilo fiddling, and fdisk
Anyway, I like Linux for the fun I have setting it up (especially 2.2 kernels),and don't think I would have that freedom in XP.
It's called tying. And it's illegal.
Yes.
There are court cases to back it up.
Yes.
You can take the os, remove it from the original box, and install it on another box. Legally.
Legally, yes. Actually, no.
Have you ever tried to install from an OEM supplied restore CD? Oops, it won't install if you're not on the original hardware.
Workaround (requires Ghost and a spare drive or partition):
Perform restore on OE computer such that the next boot will dump you into Microsoft setup. Ghost an image onto another drive. Use Ghost on the new computer to restore that image to the new computer's drive. Boot up new computer and continue.
The truth is, this happened largely because of the increase(s) in speed we've seen int he past year. Once the 1Ghtz barrier was broken, most people don't need computers much faster than that. Thats why people can use an Athlon 1700 (the lowest end AMD CPU that's still fairly wildly available) and not need to upgrade their machine until it stops working; what software other than games really will require more oomph? Maybe video encoding.
Since Doom 3 and HL2 aren't out yet, it seems foolish to bring up vaporware as examples of games "that can only be experienced optimally on a PC" because you can't experience them now.
RMS will find a way to punish alleged GPL violators through product delays, "can't ship with the GPL lawsuit unresolved" and other legal harassment tatics.
One of the best things about open source is that the license 'ownership' is diversified and that no party yet has a monopoly on the vast majority of open source projects.
Be forwarned, by 2009, GPL and RMS will try to legally shut down a big company for all of the massive PR that they will receive.
Go open source, just not using GPL or RMS friendly licenses.