I'm not Russian, I'm Asian, but from my point of view, a lot of the criticism against the Kremlin comes from pro-NATO Cold War biases. ie. Everything that NATO countries do is right, and everything Putin & Co do is wrong. I didn't mean to sound like I was condemning their policies or calling for more "democracy" or "freedom" (whatever those terms actually mean these days). I just find it very, very sad that people will suffer and find themselves once more cut off from the world as the country reverts to the old Soviet system. But I'm not hypocritical enough to support democracy and call for an end to Putin's policies when he has such overwhelming support.
Even if you look at the Bolshevik Revolution that brought Russia under communist rule, it was backed by Western European powers trying to undermine the Czar. True. That (if I remember my history) was the Kaiser's little pet project...and it backfired rather dramatically when the Bolsheviks actually won their revolution (contrary to Western expectation) and set about doing their own thing.
That drunken Boris Yeltsin was likewise a Manchurian Candidate who... Yeltsin did the job he had to do. The old economy was falling apart and Russia's government knew it needed outside help to fix it. Giving Yeltsin the presidency was a move of sheer brilliance that compressed many decades of misery as Russia slowly regained the West's trust after the Cold War into one short, sharp, burst. Had he not made Russia seem week and impotent, Europe certainly wouldn't have put itself in the position it is now with regards to oil and gas. And don't forget that it was Yeltsin that put Putin into the Prime Minister's office early enough to prove himself as a good successor to Yeltsin, but late enough that he wasn't mired in the general hatered that's associated with Yeltsin's reign. That kind of timing is almost never a coincidence.
Oh, and let's not mention the fact that no matter how many good things Russians hear about Western democracy and Capitalism now that the Iron Curtain's gone, it's going to be a very long time before a significant number of them ever take it seriously again. The corruption during Yeltsin's reign certainly saw to that...which makes Putin's job (rebuilding what was lost) rather easier than it would otherwise have been. Before Yeltsin, Russians (and most other citizens of the USSR) generally envied the West and wanted their country to be run like the USA - had that view survived to this day it would have severely undermined Putin's stand against foreign meddling.
While some in the West cry for "more democracy in Russia," one can also note how there was a cry to "bring democracy to Iraq" -- and look what that caused. Agreed. The West seriously needs to get a clue. Aliens didn't show up one day, conquer us, and beat freedom into our skulls with highly advanced weapons. Our notions of democracy and freedom evolved over many years out of the old system. It's based on history, and tradition, not on force. Whoever first said that we'd be greeted as liberators, and that democracy would flourish in Iraq after a short period, and all the other crap, needs to go see his doctor right now because that kind of stupidity should be classified as a disease.
If we wanted peace and stability in the region we should have replaced Saddam with a limited monarch or something sane like that. Introducing a parlaiment into a region where people are completely unused to the idea of self-determination was...well, I've ranted enough about that.
And before anyone says it: Japan was nothing like Iraq.
It's good to see the Russians regaining their natural strength after having it sapped by carpetbaggers from abroad. You don't give them nearly enough credit. Russians have a long history of turning utter disaster into a long-term advantage. I won't believe the Russians have lost their strength until every last one of them is dead or asimilated into other cultures - and I would put the chances of that ever happening on par with those of a snow ball in hell (and that's a good thing).
Sounds exactly like the old Soviet days. Seriously, all that's missing is for the government to rename all those industries it nationalized into subdepartments of the ministry of the interior (or whatever the proper translation is), and the police to be put back into secret, ultra-effective mode. And the real bitch of it is that most Russians will probably be happy that the government is doing this because, hey, under the old regime there was at least food on the table, and the streets were safe.
In Soviet Russia...no, I can't joke about this. In Soviet Russia, nothing ever really changes.
I dunno. With the US dollar where it is now, do you think he'll be able to afford to buy off all those officials? Bah. Colbert rules, and I know a lot of people that agree. If the USD falls any more I'll just get some of my Canadian buddies together and we'll buy his officials for him. You know, like a Christmas gift.
Of course, there is the issue with foreigners not being allowed to support political candidates, but I'm sure we can find some way to get around that. Maybe Doritos' Canadian office will have some ideas... Heck, we could probably just make it a gift to the half of him on the TV host side of "the line":)
Instead I see all these idiotic posts making the assumption that parents are letting their kids have freedom but just waiting for a gadget to restrict it. I think you misunderstood what I and (possibly, I can't speak for anyone but myself) others are saying. The assumption is that parents these days are, by and large, the morns that "aren't letting their kids have freedom" and that much of the freedom that kids do get is had by evading the parents, which would become impossible if they were all tagged or collared with a tracking device. How free would you really be roaming the streets if you know your parents are probably watching and might yell at you over the little intercom or press the button that gives you a shock at any second?
Though, I as I posted earlier, I doubt parents would actually watch their kids. The damn things would probably be hooked up to monitoring software and computers would do the raising instead because from what I've seen the vast majority of modern parents are more interested in working long hours so that they can qualify for enough credit to live in a big house with nice things than they are in actually raising their children.
I was just about to reply with pretty much exactly what you wrote, only I wouldn't have expressed it nearly as well as you did. If I had mod points and hadn't already posted, I'd throw another +1 Insightful onto your post.
Easy to see where this will lead. It'll either be the generation that grows up hopelessly deranged because of the constant surveilance, or the generation that grows into docile little drones that do as they're told because they can't shake the feeling that someone's watching them...
Put on electric collars that zap you if you step "out of bounds". Heh. While they're at it they can give the collar the voice of GLaDOS so it can issue warnings, instructions, and inspirational anecdotes.*
* Those that haven't played Portal, or listened to someone who has played Portal rant incessantly about the Weighted Companion Cube, are excused from getting this joke.
Meh. By then parents will be so busy doing their own stuff and generally neglecting their children that there won't be anyone to watch the monitors, so it all cancels out in the end.
Oh, wait, that already happened, you say?
Well then by all means tag the little bastards. And someone make me a device that yells "Get off my lawn!" whenever kids get close...I'm far too busy doing my own stuff and neglecting real life to be bothered...
Too bad we'll never be able to do anything with this discovery. Pfft. I've already got a plan: Step 1: Grab Helmet God. Step 2: Upgrade it to stimulate the optimism center of the brain as well. Step 3: ??? Step 4: Profit!!!
3D modelling comes to mind - is there a Linux version of Maya or Lightwave? Yes, Maya does run on Linux. It also runs on OSX. I've used it on both those platforms, as well as on Windows - it works just fine on all of the above.
Actually, as a graphics chip developer, I can tell you that Graphics chip development focuses almost exclusively on Direct3D. What Microsoft wants, Microsoft gets. The needs of OpenGL are entirely secondary when it comes to the hardware design. Who's chips do you develop? And if the answer's NV or ATI then maybe you should talk to whoever gets sent out to GDC, because that sure as hell isn't what they're telling us game developers.
In fact, I can actually think of a few cases where GL had something before DX did: NV_primitive_restart's been spec'd since 2002 and MS just brought it into DX with DX10 (could have been a caps bit long before then). Same thing with EXT_depth_bounds_test (is this even in DX10? - I haven't seen it in the docs yet). I'm pretty sure NV also had a bunch of their depth shadowing stuff available through OpenGL before DX had anything of the sort in the spec as well. The only case I can think of where DX could so something way before GL could is MRT rendering - and that's just 'cuz pbuffers were allowed to exist for far too long before the introduction of EXT_framebuffer_object.
And I've always gotten better framerates with large numbers of small draw calls, or when rendering a lot of dynamic content, or even just uploading static data, from OpenGL than I've ever seen in DX, across both ATI and NV's drivers...so it's not like the core paths are being neglected that I can see.
Dunno. I'd be interested to hear some of the cases where you feel GL's being left in the dust... And do your comments also apply to the workstation hardware?
Well I'm pleased to hear that NV and ATI are still working on OpenGL as much as they are DirectX if that's really the case. It certainly is. NVIDIA had OpenGL equivalents to the new DX10 features out in the very first release of its DX10 driver. So did ATI (though their first DX10 card came much later than NV's so they had more time to begin with). I don't think either will ever be ignored - and that's a good thing. Competition between the two APIs has yielded a lot of good innovation that's now been adopted into both.
Are you really telling me that the only difference between a $1500 Quadro and gamer card is the drivers though? The bad-ass gamer card in my friend's computer chokes and can barely run at even the most basic animation of an of maybe 30 parts in CAD. No. There's much more to it than that, of course. It all comes down to usage. If you profile a video game and a CAD program you'll see that they stress completely different parts of the card. Workstation cards will have more silicon dedicated to things like the memory controller (CAD sends a lot more data across the bus each frame than a game does), whereas consumer cards put most of their power behind the shader processor (games use long and complex shaders to implement animation, lighting, shadowing, etc - CAD typically just shades everything with simple Phong lighting). There's a lot of other differences as well, though I'd rather not write a 10 page essay on the topic right now:)
There hasn't been any info on OpenGL 3.0 in a while now. Even the "sneak peek" type articles seem to have dried up. My guess is that NVIDIA and AMD/ATI are either doing some last-minute bickering over features, or that someone realized that the spec contains something that would be impossible to implement (my guess would be "mixed OpenGL 2.x/3.0" rendering).
Dammit I hate to see all this DirectX10 emphasis. It's games only. The book is written for game developers, and none of the topics are exclusive to DX10 - NVIDIA has already released OpenGL extensions that offer the same functionality under OpenGL. The fact that the samples use DX10 is irrelevant because the API isn't the point. Anyone with a working knowledge of both DX and GL can translate code from one to the other fairly easily.
Right now there is no laptop let alone "consumer" card in the world that can handle even the kind of CAD work a lot of people have to do.
These cards cost hundreds of dollars but they can't handle an assembly with 100 parts in a CAD model simply because they barely have any OpenGL hardware in them. A car, airplane, etc has millions of parts. That's like comparing a pickup truck to a freight train. Consumer cards aren't designed to do CAD, they're designed to do games because (surprise!) they're sold to gamers. Workstation cards are made to do CAD. If you want to play the latest games, you get a 8800GTX. If you want to do CAD, or ultra high-poly modeling, or movie-quality animation, you get a Quadro FX. Or a FireGL if you prefer AMD/ATI.
And now all the graphics cards are focusing on the DirectX and neglecting OpenGL. Graphics cards don't focus on either. Graphics cards focus on accelerating the sort of math that's common to all 3D rendering - transforming vertices, rasterizing triangles, and shading fragments (which are roughly analogous to pixels, for those of you that don't speak GL). Graphics drivers focus on DX or GL, and even in the consumer space you'd be stretching if you said that OpenGL is being neglected (see all the OpenGL extensions that start with NV_ or ATI_ for proof).
Were these counties all named things like Microsoft-land, Microsoft-world, Microsoftia and so on? I protest this vile insult to the proud and ancient heritage of the Incorporated Republic of Microsoftia, you insensitive clod! Honestly, the ignorance of some people...look it up on a map some time, I mean it's right next to Robonia, for crying out loud!
Maybe because they are real businesses and aren't pandering some direct ship junk or get rich quick scheme. It might also be because they have enormous advertising budgets, so people will know of them and link to their site regardless of whether their web designers whore themselves out to the Google Bot or not.
The frustrating thing is that smaller, but still legitimate, companies are often forced to do dumb shit like this because the retarded Scam Inc. type pages have already claimed most of the useful keywords, and apart from lots of expensive advertising there isn't really much else you can do to compete...
Of course, no company should base its business model on maintaining a high Google page rank, but it is frustrating when you lose customers because they Google your company's name, or some closely related phrase, to see if you're legitimate and get turned off because the first thing that pops up is spam.
...my company's webfilter says I can't be shown it because the site has fallen in the "tasteless and/or gross" category. You don't happen to work for Google, do you?:)
I think this is going to be a shoe-in for "The Greatest Flamewar Ever" Award. No kidding. I give this a couple of weeks before it degenerates into what will essentially be the youtube comments attached to political news clips.
Well, I would think "because we'd all die" is about as objective as a reason can get...but I'm not really arguing with you. I agree completely: any sort of ethical argument is, fundamentally, based on what people feel about the issue (though we do like to disguise our feelings behind facades like fairness or justice).
Still, that doesn't stop me from trying to convince others to think as I do.
...this research will someday lead to the development of a tentacled plant-like love-beast But, but...if we don't make tentacled plant-like love-beasts, then by the time I have grandkids/. might have run out of new overlords to welcome! This would be horrible! Won't somebody please think of the (grand)children?!;-)
overlord. welcome. yay. Hey! You butchered my second-most-loved meme, you insensitive clod!
On a more serious note, are these improvements dramatic, or is story featured just because it's the newest Lolnus kernel? I don't know about dramatic, but the change does replace several core OS components, some of which generated quite a bit of buzz when development was first announced (too lazy to link some of the flame wars^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H discussions that news of a new scheduler generated).
I have to say this is a pretty big batch of changes. I'm actually really interested to see how the new scheduler performs. Oh well, time to go update my Linux box...
*prays to god that random hacked up drivers keep working*
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Oh, and let's not mention the fact that no matter how many good things Russians hear about Western democracy and Capitalism now that the Iron Curtain's gone, it's going to be a very long time before a significant number of them ever take it seriously again. The corruption during Yeltsin's reign certainly saw to that...which makes Putin's job (rebuilding what was lost) rather easier than it would otherwise have been. Before Yeltsin, Russians (and most other citizens of the USSR) generally envied the West and wanted their country to be run like the USA - had that view survived to this day it would have severely undermined Putin's stand against foreign meddling. While some in the West cry for "more democracy in Russia," one can also note how there was a cry to "bring democracy to Iraq" -- and look what that caused. Agreed. The West seriously needs to get a clue. Aliens didn't show up one day, conquer us, and beat freedom into our skulls with highly advanced weapons. Our notions of democracy and freedom evolved over many years out of the old system. It's based on history, and tradition, not on force. Whoever first said that we'd be greeted as liberators, and that democracy would flourish in Iraq after a short period, and all the other crap, needs to go see his doctor right now because that kind of stupidity should be classified as a disease.
If we wanted peace and stability in the region we should have replaced Saddam with a limited monarch or something sane like that. Introducing a parlaiment into a region where people are completely unused to the idea of self-determination was...well, I've ranted enough about that.
And before anyone says it: Japan was nothing like Iraq. It's good to see the Russians regaining their natural strength after having it sapped by carpetbaggers from abroad. You don't give them nearly enough credit. Russians have a long history of turning utter disaster into a long-term advantage. I won't believe the Russians have lost their strength until every last one of them is dead or asimilated into other cultures - and I would put the chances of that ever happening on par with those of a snow ball in hell (and that's a good thing).
Sounds exactly like the old Soviet days. Seriously, all that's missing is for the government to rename all those industries it nationalized into subdepartments of the ministry of the interior (or whatever the proper translation is), and the police to be put back into secret, ultra-effective mode. And the real bitch of it is that most Russians will probably be happy that the government is doing this because, hey, under the old regime there was at least food on the table, and the streets were safe.
In Soviet Russia...no, I can't joke about this. In Soviet Russia, nothing ever really changes.
Of course, there is the issue with foreigners not being allowed to support political candidates, but I'm sure we can find some way to get around that. Maybe Doritos' Canadian office will have some ideas... Heck, we could probably just make it a gift to the half of him on the TV host side of "the line"
Though, I as I posted earlier, I doubt parents would actually watch their kids. The damn things would probably be hooked up to monitoring software and computers would do the raising instead because from what I've seen the vast majority of modern parents are more interested in working long hours so that they can qualify for enough credit to live in a big house with nice things than they are in actually raising their children.
I was just about to reply with pretty much exactly what you wrote, only I wouldn't have expressed it nearly as well as you did. If I had mod points and hadn't already posted, I'd throw another +1 Insightful onto your post.
* Those that haven't played Portal, or listened to someone who has played Portal rant incessantly about the Weighted Companion Cube, are excused from getting this joke.
Meh. By then parents will be so busy doing their own stuff and generally neglecting their children that there won't be anyone to watch the monitors, so it all cancels out in the end.
Oh, wait, that already happened, you say?
Well then by all means tag the little bastards. And someone make me a device that yells "Get off my lawn!" whenever kids get close...I'm far too busy doing my own stuff and neglecting real life to be bothered...
</rant>
Step 1: Grab Helmet God.
Step 2: Upgrade it to stimulate the optimism center of the brain as well.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!!!
In fact, I can actually think of a few cases where GL had something before DX did: NV_primitive_restart's been spec'd since 2002 and MS just brought it into DX with DX10 (could have been a caps bit long before then). Same thing with EXT_depth_bounds_test (is this even in DX10? - I haven't seen it in the docs yet). I'm pretty sure NV also had a bunch of their depth shadowing stuff available through OpenGL before DX had anything of the sort in the spec as well. The only case I can think of where DX could so something way before GL could is MRT rendering - and that's just 'cuz pbuffers were allowed to exist for far too long before the introduction of EXT_framebuffer_object.
And I've always gotten better framerates with large numbers of small draw calls, or when rendering a lot of dynamic content, or even just uploading static data, from OpenGL than I've ever seen in DX, across both ATI and NV's drivers...so it's not like the core paths are being neglected that I can see.
Dunno. I'd be interested to hear some of the cases where you feel GL's being left in the dust... And do your comments also apply to the workstation hardware?
There hasn't been any info on OpenGL 3.0 in a while now. Even the "sneak peek" type articles seem to have dried up. My guess is that NVIDIA and AMD/ATI are either doing some last-minute bickering over features, or that someone realized that the spec contains something that would be impossible to implement (my guess would be "mixed OpenGL 2.x/3.0" rendering).
LOL. I'd love to see this one hit the courts: "RIAA vs RFC 1149".
Wait, no, I just depressed myself...
The original rant may be found here.
The frustrating thing is that smaller, but still legitimate, companies are often forced to do dumb shit like this because the retarded Scam Inc. type pages have already claimed most of the useful keywords, and apart from lots of expensive advertising there isn't really much else you can do to compete...
Of course, no company should base its business model on maintaining a high Google page rank, but it is frustrating when you lose customers because they Google your company's name, or some closely related phrase, to see if you're legitimate and get turned off because the first thing that pops up is spam.
...my company's webfilter says I can't be shown it because the site has fallen in the "tasteless and/or gross" category. You don't happen to work for Google, do you?
...this research will someday lead to the development of a tentacled plant-like love-beast But, but...if we don't make tentacled plant-like love-beasts, then by the time I have grandkidsNow that that's out of my system...
I have to say this is a pretty big batch of changes. I'm actually really interested to see how the new scheduler performs. Oh well, time to go update my Linux box...
*prays to god that random hacked up drivers keep working*