Honest Question about this:
on
Linux in 3D
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· Score: 1
Just exactly how does 16-bit/channel rendering help when compared to the 8-bit/channel rendering we're all used to? As far as I'm aware, the human eye isn't even capable of distinguishing even 1/4 of the 16M colors provided by 8-bit/channel graphics.
Does it have to do with the actual rendering process is unable to 'finish' with the proper 8-bit color unless a 16-bit color is inputted?
I know most of this is human perception; but fascinating nonetheless.
Of course, this is a fair chance to point out some of the differences between types of 3D, and how Linux is used on it.
Most users know of 3D as in the type that Gamers expect - real-time, hardware-accelerated, high-framerate polygons.
However, Houdini (and similar software) is nothing like it at all. None of it is real-time; not even close, really. A 'faster' video card won't help much here, as modelers and animators typically work with flat-shaded or wireframe models-- not fully-rendered scenes like in Quake III.
As a workstation, Linux offers an inexpensive workstation solution for the artists to work with. Many who work with 3D are already familiar with IRIX. With the multi-million dollar budgets these shops are used to having, they go with what works; not necessarily what is cheap. As far as the animators' needs go, they just need a stable, reasonably-performing system and some imagination.
But when it comes to rendering - that is where Linux has really begun to shine. Linux can cluster wonderfully and inexpensively - which has been used to great effect by animation shops (such as the famous Titanic example). Even Pixar has released their RenderMan rendering software for Linux.
Pixar has not, however, released modeling, or animation tools. In fact, as far as I'm aware, Houdini and Blender are among the very few 3D 'suites' out there for Linux. No 3DS Max, no Lightwave, no ElectricImage... not much is being done on the 'graphics workstation' side of the equation.
But rendering tools - from the lowliest student's hobby to Pixar's RenderMan abound in Linux. Again, the vast majority of what is being done in 3D on Linux is a clustered number-crunching supercomputer; not as a Desktop OS on a graphics workstation. But the time is coming.
Basically, those games that are written to use OpenGL have rather easy development paths to operating systems other than Windows.
By binding Direct3D so tightly to the Win32 API, they make porting the appliation to a non-Windows API much more difficult.
And the same goes with Macintosh computers - Apple doesn't have its own proprietary graphics API; they use OpenGL. And, just about any game you see in OpenGL appears on a Mac in no time at all. Loki can port the same app to Linux without much trouble either.
For cross-platform game development, we have to start seeing more use of OpenGL, rather than D3D.
I'm currently a Computer Engineering student, so I think I have some qualifications to describe the difference.
A Computer Science major deals primarily with programming and algorithms. They write programs, Operating systems, high-level drivers, etc.
An Electrical Engineer deals primarily with hardware - logic gates, and designing hardware that will perform algorithmic computations. IE. they design chips. These are the guys who work for Intel, AMD, etc. They don't worry much about programming.
A Computer Engineer is an Electrical Engineer that specializes in programmable computer devices, and therefore programming. So a CompE is mainly an Electrical Engineer, but also does a great deal of programming. Some CompE's design hardware, others write extremely low-level software, drivers, etc. Computer Engineers quite often work in the embedded market, as they have the skills to do both the hardware and software engineering involved.
Think of an Electrical Engineer as a geek who designs computer chips with a minor in math.
Think of a Computer Engineer as a geek who designs computer chips with a minor in Computer Science.
Think of a Computer Science major as a geek who programs computers, and doesn't design hardware.
And, in my opinion, it's funner to be a CompE because you can be doing hardware on one project, then software on the next.
This is more of an observation than anything, but I thought there already was a group fighting UCITA. Espescially with all the 'Slashdot advocates' who are against UCITA.
Is it just me or is this evidence that us xBSD/GNU/Linux advocates need to start doing more real work and having more real involvement in IP laws than we have been?
Of the number of IP laws/issues that have been discussed on/., just how many of us have actually written a well-reasoned letter to our elected official(s)?
Do we write our thoughts and opinions to our government official(s), or do we just complain about it on./?
There isn't really a difference in the amount of effort it takes to write to the elected officials in your locale, than it does to write to Slashdot.
Writing your representatives will get noticed, and may get results. Writing the entire argument to Slashdot won't do that.
But, on the upside, Slashdot can inspire us to write our officials. Do it!!!
This article may only deal with the United States, but that doesn't mean that there aren't IP issues elsewhere in the world. (Fight software patents in the E.U., etc.)
Not to mention that for the longest time, broadband was unavailable in many areas simply because the local telco's wouldn't sell it. They had the equipment, but wouldn't sell it.
The parent of this thread mentions Utah - the state with the highest rate of home computers per capita in the US. Broadband has only recently became a reality; after the cable company secured a 100% monopoly on cable TV, they offered cable service as a means to squeeze more money from consumers.
Meanwhile, the telco was resolutely refusing to offer even ISDN - let alone any form of DSL. If you wanted high-speed internet, you had to shell out $800 a month for a 1.5 Mbit DS1. USWest didn't want to let go of the gravy train.
Suddenly the cable monopoly offers broadband - 500kbit for $60 a month (at first). Only AFTER there was competition did USWest decide to offer broadband. DSL came into the high population density areas only recently.
And getting DSL is, as everywhere, as much as a sick joke as a service. Call QWest (who bought USWest) for DSL - they'll tell you the phone lines in your home are too old.
I became extremely cynical of this when QWest told a friend of mine that his home is too old for DSL, and he would have to hire QWest electricians - at prime rates - to re-wire his entire home before he could get DSL.
His home's construction crews had left the lot a couple of days before. The cement on the driveway wasn't even completely dry yet.
It has nothing to do with geography. Just the super-wealthy trying to outscore the next-door neighbor's income; a neighbor who happens to live in the next county.
I mean... Windows NT/2000 use a microkernel architecture... and the microkernel is over a megabyte.
So if a megabyte is a microkernel, couldn't the 60-80k kernels of QNX/BeOS be better described as a nanokernel? A picokernel?
Maybe Microsoft got the 'micro' kernel from the same place they got the 'micro' in Microsoft. There's nothing small about that particular 'Micro' company.
Actually, it is one of the things that many astronomers are in the process of observing and gathering facts on; During the big bang 'space' expanded at a speed far greater than the speed of light; as a result, we can still observe what happened during that time as there is still EM radiation arriving at Earth from the 'big bang'
Just because there is insufficient facts at this point in time doesn't mean too much. And replication is a nice facet of the scientific process; although it is not always possible, or necessary.
Black holes are not known to explode:
In truth, hardly anything is known about these enigmatic lumps of matter; black holes have been shown to release mass, and that they eventually burn out. This certainly doesn't account for the 'big bang', however.
The 'egg' that is the source of the big bang: Black holes are not completely inside our understanding of superdense matter. This cosmic 'egg' is beyond our understanding of superdense matter. We simply don't know if there are any physical laws that are broken or not in the 'big bang'.
Moreover, with the energies required to observe such phenomenon, even on the micro level, requires accelerating high-density particles to speeds beyond the speed of light. The aborted US supercollider project was the limit of current theory; two protons, each moving very near light speed, crash head-on in an attempt to create a high enough energy reaction to observe the behavior of superdense particles. None of these come near what a black hole is, let alone our cosmic egg.
Oft-quoted second law of thermodynamics: chaos increases
Unfortunately, the 2nd law of thermodynamics depends on one assumption that we also don't know anything about: The 2nd law depends on an assumption that we live in an 'open' universe that expands without limit. A 'closed' universe that will collapse on itself does not follow the 2nd law on a univsersal scale.
And, another fun point about the 2nd law: I've heard many a physicist state that if the 2nd law is true, God cannot exist.
Because in case of Big Bang, there's nothing to hit, the matter would fly in all directions forever:
Unfortunately, this argument falls apart because it *has* been shown that until something like a million years after the big-bang (cosmic background astronomy has shown this) the 'laws' of physics as we know them did not exist, and nothing behaved as we know things to behave now.
Also, there *was no matter* until a very long period of time after the big bang; something like 700,000 years. There was, however, gravity. And massive amounts of gravity -- enough to pull and loop the primordeal soup back upon itself to form matter -- in lumps.
As for the chemical analysis: My chemistry is a bit rusty, as it's been a few years since I did any research in it. However, I DID do research in organic chemistry. It's not entirely impossible for the correct components to form spontaneously. And water does indeed dissolve ammino acids - as it dissolves the components of all other acids.
(And, a question here: isn't referring to the compound as an 'ammino acid' a misnomer, since to truly be an 'acid' it *must* be dissolved in water?) Yeah, I know; that's just play-on-words; but that's why I call it a 'question' I said my chemistry was a bit rusty already.
* Abiogenesis - creation of life from non-life. Not proven
Not disproven either.
* 100% of fossils should be intermediate forms, with clear links. The links are missing.
Well, if we could recover 100% of any given fossil, this would hold meaning; you even stated yourself that there is insufficient data to show whether these things are ancestors or not; for all we know these incomplete fossils are the links.
To be short: Lack of evidence does not imply proof of non-existence; merely proof of a lack of knowledge.
* Besides the fact that they are reconstructed from just a few bones, they all are recognized to be whether an ape or a human.
That, of course, depends on how you define an 'ape' or a 'human.' There are fossils that are not what we consider 'human' by any right; neanderthal, cro-magnon, 'java' man... the bones are clearly *not* homo-sapien, or human. They are also clearly *not* an ape. Moreover, there can be no clear links, as evolution is simply a series of many small, microevolutionary changes. Give it a couple hundred-thousand years and the differences can be clear. Watch it the whole time and it's like watching grass grow - you don't notice the differences appearing.
* Use of microevolution as explanation for macroevolution is a stretch.
Well, there's plenty of time to stretch it in. In fact, the whole theory of evolution is not about single, huge, 'macro' evolutions... but a series of small microevolutions.
The main point here is: At what point do we consider a series of microevolutions on a species to create enough differences to 'create' entirely new species? A hundred? A thousand? A million? There is no 'line in the sand' to define this.
For saying there's no proof: Lack of proof does not imply a proof of lack. And, also - again, how is a macroevolution any different than thousands of microevolutions compounded over time? There is no difference, because macroevolution implies thousands (or millions) of microevolutionary changes over time.
You did do a good job of showing that there are suspicions about the Theory of Evolution; unfortunately, many are assumptions that are made from bad or insufficient knowledge. I note espescially the sections reguarding the big bang, and physical laws; many of these assumptions are based off of newtonian rules, and an infinite universe, of which newtonian rules do not hold true for the energies involved in the big bang. We have no clue if we live in an 'open' or infinite universe, or a 'closed' or finite universe.
I would like to again re-iterate: The lack of fact, evidence, or proof is *not*, nor does it connotate, prove, or show, a lack of existence.
Finally: Remember that the scientific community is trying to make sense of and understand the universe. These theories are based off of what knowledge we have. Contrary to what many would like to believe, they are not made lightly. Evolution was a bold theory when Darwin presented it. There has been a growing amount of evidence and facts that prove evolution is a correct theory. However, there has been no evidence to show that it is false; there has only been insufficient evidence to irrefutably convince the most zealous that evolution is fact.
And, from a religious standpoint, as I am a very religious man, it is sheer arrogance and pride for *US* to dictate how God should create us, and the world around us.
Various religious records state that God created the world - NOT how. He said 'let there be light', however details on how light was formed are not disclosed. God created man 'from the dust of the Earth'. Again - no details on how he created us, over what timeframe, and what intermediate steps (if any) were made.
And about the Earth being made in 6 days - well, we have an all-powerful God; why can't He create a 'time bubble' of sorts so that millions of years to us seems like a day to Him?
We create our cars, computers, pottery... all from 'the dust of the earth' there are intermediate steps we take to get from 'dust' to 'computer'. There is no reason to assume that God did not create man the same way; with evolution as a series of intermediate steps. There is no reason to assume that dirt rose out of the ground into man.
To say that you cannot have God and Science shows that you do not understand enough of at least one, or that you are making assumptions about how God does things that are undocumented, and may not be true.
God created Man, the Heavens and the Earth. The Bible, Koran, and many other religions teach that. (I cannot at this moment remember the name of the Jewish equivalent of the Old Testament; sorry.)
None give specific details as to how He did it. It's arrogant of us to dictate to Him or to ourselves how God does His work.
To those who are always looking down on americans for their views:
At least we have a constitutional right to free speech, unlike many other contries where free speech is simply an indulgence granted by the local government, and can be taken away at any time.
Of course Allchin is a looney - he thinks that Windows is the best OS available. You gotta be a loon to honestly believe that!
And in the same scentence gives a tacit nod to Linux's quality by saying that Microsoft "can" build a better operating system... not that they have done, plan to, or will.
I look at it from this standpoint: Free/OSS software != Free/OSS hardware. Not even by paradigm.
1.) In the vast majority of the consumer world (Meaning the Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX), not only are the drivers closed-source, but this is an acceptable practice. Drivers are provided free of charge (gratis); drivers aren't a source of income.
2.) To have a truly 'Open' 3D Driver of high performance, it is necessary to include the 3D code, or at least the hardware interface to the Graphics API (in the case of Linux, Mesa, or OpenGL). nVIDIA chose to use certified OpenGL, not Mesa. I'm not entirely current on Mesa's status; nevertheless, OpenGL is seen as a better option to many buyers, as it is a guaranteed "OpenGL ARB"-compliant implementation, rather than a non-"OpenGL ARB" certified implementation of OpenGL. A certified OpenGL implementation cannot, I believe, be released as 'free' software.
3.) Having the hardware interface for their card published (as Open-Source) makes it easier to reverse-engineer the hardware. ATI wouldn't care about doing so, but about every other manufacturer would, as even Matrox's 3D is lacking. This is essentially a 'security-through obscurity' scheme, but in the hardware world, it's all you have.
4.) nVIDIA is a *HARDWARE* company. R&D on hardware isn't anywhere near the curve that it is on software. It's much more difficult to design a chip than write code. Chip fab is so obscenely expensive that it isn't really possible to have the Free-Software equivalent of hardware. Unlike software, the machines & tooling to fab hardware can't be duplicated on a whim, and they are extremely expensive. The source materials also cost money (although trivial after machinery & tooling costs). The tooling to make the chip is at least $250k... forget energy, materials, labor, environmental regulations, etc. costs accumulated in physical production. So if there are any bugs, it costs millions.
Too many people don't realize the difference between hardware and software when it comes to Intellectual Property. The software business gets many rights that hardware makers don't; and they have far fewer of the penalties.
Free software takes only a compiler, time, and a coder to generate a useful, reliable, high-quality product.
You *CAN'T* do that with hardware. But, we'll suppose you have a Free Hardware design.
Now 'compile' it from the design code to a useful, reliable, high-quality chunk of silicon.
... For under $250,000.00 US.
Free software exists because it's inexpensive enough to be a hobby... a passion. All it takes is time and effort.
Free hardware can't say that. Only Billionaires have the resources to create free hardware.
So give nVIDIA some credit and a chance to get a return on their investment in hardware and tooling to create the chip. The only ones who are really able to take advantage of an open-source driver are the other hardware manufacturers, who would use it to reverse-engineer the hardware, or the users of an OS without a driver. Since Windows, Mac, and Linux covers all but the smallest part of the OS world that uses 3D, and he *BSD clones are used (and advocated) primarily as a server that doesn't even need X... not a graphics workstation or gaming station, it shouldn't even be an issue to anyone... except for QNX and BeOS users.
Many of the arguments one way or another over this subject miss one point completely:
Free market or no, insurance companies or no -- as long as doctors and hospitals are accessible, people WILL have health care. And the cost WILL be distributed across all levels of health and affluence. It already is.
In the United States, the people will not stand for such actions. If it gets to the point where people even perceive the risk that they might not have health insurance because of being turned down for genetic (or any other reason) - espescially if it is the 'future risk', the public will not stand for it. They will lobby the government, elect officials that promise, and do everything they can to either regulate the industry, or get the goverment to provide health care to every man, woman, and child, reguardless of their condition.
The only reason socialized medicine was fought off in the United States was because the insurance companies weren't doing a bad job, and it's at least a percieved fact that government healthcare would be inferior to private healthcare.
But if a large part of the populace had no access to affordable medical care, simply because they may develop a disease in the future - the Medical community would lose a LOT of business.
If the insurance company won't insure a guy who is a perfectly healthy and PAYING client now, who would normally go in for annual checkups, dental care, immunizations, etc - with his/her children. With genetic screening, the children won't be insured either (having inherited this defect) If this were the case, a very large amount of the populace wouldn't seek health care unless absolutely necessary.
And the medical community loses revenue in a very big way because of the reduced number of patients.
So, you would have two major forces - an even greater proportion of the populace demanding insurance reform, or government health care, and a growing number of health care companies demanding the same.
In the end, everybody WILL have health care. The difference is whether we will have responsible, self-policing insurance companies, heavily regulated and untrusted insurance companies, or the Government.
It is simply not in the insurance companies (or the people's) long-term interest to deny people based on pre-existing conditions of any kind.
Even a pure capitalist would agree it is not just to punish someone based off of conditions that were never a choice of the affected.
Only the already wealthy would try to forge an argument that would make it sound like a Good Thing TM to willfully deny health care to people - not because there is an insufficient amount of care in the area - but because of willfully denying that care because it hurts THEIR already overflowing pocketbook... And then they try to convince as many people as they can that it will take money from everybody else's pocketbook too. It simply isn't the case.
In a modern civilization, the rich will pay for the poor - whether by choice, by tax, or by gunpoint. The rich are always in the minority, and they already have all they need. It's an enevitable consequence of democracy that the voice of the people will outnumber the voice of the rich, and the voice of the people will force the rich to pay to support the poor's needs.
Scoff now - but the concept of public schools, social security, welfare, medicare... all programs that are firmly in place now - these programs would have been scoffed at as ruinous, revolutionary, and completely stoppable by the Vanderbuilts and Rockefellers of a century ago. The rich didn't have their way then, nor will they now.
We won't stand for it, and we'll get our respective governments to intervene before it does.
How ironic, it seems, that a community that is so very (and often vehemently) biased towards the righteousness of the GPL, villify another software licence. How can anybody expect a court to uphold the GPL if its very adherents refuse to uphold any other software licences?
Does anybody else see the hypocracy?
The fact of the matter is, the GPL protects the rights of its author, while maintaining a 'freeness' of its work, disallowing it to be used for commercial gain without the copyright holder's consent. We all agree to this licence when we use our beloved free software. Some even take their belief in the GPL as to make it a quasi-religion.
And yet so many who are this supportive of the GPL feel that any other licence is morally wrong. This is akin to 'I can kill anybody and be morally right, but you can't kill anybody because for you, it's wrong.
Even stranger are those who believe in the GPL, and refrain from purchasing, or pirating proprietary software due to the price, or nature of the propriatary software; they refuse to pirate the software because they feel it is wrong to violate the terms of the propriatary licence.
Yet, they complain when there is a proprietary software, and it's proprietary licence that they want to use. (And, to no suprise, it's often entertainment software) And, in the case of EverQuest, it clearly states in the licence agreement that sale of characters/items is a violation of the licence agreement.
How can we support the actions of these players who are suing so they can willfully violate the software's licencing terms? Do we not realize the *dangerous* precedent this will set? If a group of gamers can sue because they disagree with a term of a software licence, then just exactly what would keep Microsoft, IBM, or any other corporation from doing the same thing to the GPL - because they disagree with its licence terms?
I'm afraid that many don't realize that in the eyes of the law, software licences must be treated equally. Agreeing to the licence is equivalent to signing a contract. Breaking that contract revokes the licence, and the right to use the software.
The LAW doesn't care about anybody's feelings of a superior licence. The LAW demands that the agreement be kept, and violators be dealt with accordingly. If it were not so, the GPL (and any other software licence) would be completely worthless. And megacorporations will begin 'stealing' and selling code that is meant to be free. But it won't be stealing. What's the point of a software licence if it doesn't matter?
At my university, the students are REQUIRED to use MS Visual Studio. Most of the programs are turned in in both binary and source format(s).
I tried to convince them to allow other compilers/operating systems; they said 'sure'. What ended up happening is I was down-graded for NOT using Visual Studio, and NOT using WIN32. "Because that's what the industry uses"
And, the CS department is . . . extremely stubborn on this point. They dropped all their UNIX/VMS - anything not Win32 based.
Were I a CS major, I would be upset about this narrow-mindedness. But I'm a Computer-Engineering major, and my coursework requires programming in other environments, operating systems, etc. And this pig-headed Win32 only attitude both enrages me, and is a serious problem to my education. Does anybody have any suggestions about what to do to get the department to change their position?
(And petitions from the FSF/GNU Linux club hasn't helped at all...)
I want to learn to use the typical UNIX ways: Makefiles, text-editors, etc. While an IDE is nice, I would like to be able to program without one.
But, sadly, finding a decent HOWTO on makefiles is difficult, and I haven't had enough time to find one; let alone read it.
I recenly upgraded from a TNT-based video card to a GeForce2 GTS on my Pentium II based system.
The result? Q3A/Linux took a leap from 640x480x16, mid-detail and probably 20 fps to 1280x1024x32 max-detail and probably 30-50 fps.
The difference was unbelieveable; I thought that I had bought a completely new machine. I was playing Q3A with max settings at higher framerates at 1280x1024 than I had seen on Quake2 (with its 16-bit color) at 800x600.
I have no doubt that I couldn't have acheived the same kind of performance bonus had I spent the same amount of money on a new CPU.
While not trying to take one side or the other on this stance, I do have one observation about what I read in the dialogue; however finding the precice way to say it isn't exactly easy for me. So, I'll use an allegory.
The situation:
You are handed a lethal weapon and told to personally kill another person.
The Consequences:
If you comply, that one person will be the only one to die. If you do not, several more people will be killed. Whether the person you are asked to kill would be killed anyway is not disclosed.
Analysis: This is, of course, a moral situation that nobody wants to be in. You don't know the person you are told to kill would end up dying anyway; so do you kill the one to save the others, or do you simply do nothing?
Depending on your ethical biases, you have a set of results.
Viewpoint #1: You refuse. You upheld your principle of not killing others. You are completely innocent of any wrongdoing.
Viewpoint #2: You refuse. You upheld your principle of not killing others. But your refusal causes many people to die, and therefore you are still directly responsible for their deaths.
Viewpoint #3: You comply. You violated your principle of not killing others. Whether you killed only one, or many makes no difference, because you violated your principle.
Viewpoint #4: You comply. While violating your principle of not killing others, you are in the moral right because you chose the path of minimal death.
Now, the situation seemed to me like Jorrit Tyberghein seemed to choose #4, and that having a proprietary plug to support a LGPL package being the better choice.
And, RMS seemed to follow the logic of #1 and #3: That the greatest good is achieved by adhering to principle.
And at least in the situation I painted, there really is no 'right' choice; just two choices, both having undesired results. From there everything counts on what matters most to you; which choice is 'best' depends on you, and your beliefs to where the greatest good is.
It's not the same as NetworkICE's BlackICE Defender; the difference there is between a product and a company with similar names.
But what kind of toolkits toes Black Ice make? To they send out unsolicited email advetisizing their products?
"Black Ice is a legitimate business," they say... well, so are a lot of companies that send out 'spam.'
(OT - I have an acquaintance who works for one... he feels it's like being an executioner, but he executes whoever comes along. It's something he feels is morally wrong, but on the other hand, he needed the job and nobody else wanted to hire him...)
Information doesn't WANT to be free, and it doesn't simply 'become' free either. We've always had to go to great lengths to come upon ANY information. Saying information wants to be free is like saying a rock wants to think; it won't happen without intervention.
That's the beauty of the GPL and BSD licences - they help release information to humanity, rather than allowing it to hide in obscurity, or to be patented, copyrighted, and succinctly forgotten.
If information would simply release itself, we would have no need for the GPL or similar licences. We would have no need for multi-million dollar research projects. We wouldn't need to send robotic probes into space to discover more information. We wouldn't need to go to school to learn. We wouldn't need to spend hours researching algorithms to make more optimized code.
No, information doesn't want to be free. One of humanity's greatest pursuits has been to acquire it, and to create it. And there's nothing any idealist can say or do to change that simple fact. We spend our lives searching for information. And information will never just 'come' to us as if it 'wants to be free.'
Slashdot Mirror
Just exactly how does 16-bit/channel rendering help when compared to the 8-bit/channel rendering we're all used to? As far as I'm aware, the human eye isn't even capable of distinguishing even 1/4 of the 16M colors provided by 8-bit/channel graphics.
Does it have to do with the actual rendering process is unable to 'finish' with the proper 8-bit color unless a 16-bit color is inputted?
I know most of this is human perception; but fascinating nonetheless.
Of course, this is a fair chance to point out some of the differences between types of 3D, and how Linux is used on it.
Most users know of 3D as in the type that Gamers expect - real-time, hardware-accelerated, high-framerate polygons.
However, Houdini (and similar software) is nothing like it at all. None of it is real-time; not even close, really. A 'faster' video card won't help much here, as modelers and animators typically work with flat-shaded or wireframe models-- not fully-rendered scenes like in Quake III.
As a workstation, Linux offers an inexpensive workstation solution for the artists to work with. Many who work with 3D are already familiar with IRIX. With the multi-million dollar budgets these shops are used to having, they go with what works; not necessarily what is cheap. As far as the animators' needs go, they just need a stable, reasonably-performing system and some imagination.
But when it comes to rendering - that is where Linux has really begun to shine. Linux can cluster wonderfully and inexpensively - which has been used to great effect by animation shops (such as the famous Titanic example). Even Pixar has released their RenderMan rendering software for Linux.
Pixar has not, however, released modeling, or animation tools. In fact, as far as I'm aware, Houdini and Blender are among the very few 3D 'suites' out there for Linux. No 3DS Max, no Lightwave, no ElectricImage... not much is being done on the 'graphics workstation' side of the equation.
But rendering tools - from the lowliest student's hobby to Pixar's RenderMan abound in Linux. Again, the vast majority of what is being done in 3D on Linux is a clustered number-crunching supercomputer; not as a Desktop OS on a graphics workstation. But the time is coming.
Basically, those games that are written to use OpenGL have rather easy development paths to operating systems other than Windows.
By binding Direct3D so tightly to the Win32 API, they make porting the appliation to a non-Windows API much more difficult.
And the same goes with Macintosh computers - Apple doesn't have its own proprietary graphics API; they use OpenGL. And, just about any game you see in OpenGL appears on a Mac in no time at all. Loki can port the same app to Linux without much trouble either.
For cross-platform game development, we have to start seeing more use of OpenGL, rather than D3D.
Have you ever seen the original transistor?
It was handmade, and simple.
And, as previously posted... the actual fab machines to make computers by hand exist - for 2 micron logic devices.
It doesn't take much computer power to code what's necessary to get the 'modern' fab machines going.
It's one thing to do it by yourself...
But the people exist, and have the know-how to build everything from scratch. Rapidly. As a singular effort, it is hard.
But as a massive group of people? Easy.
I'm currently a Computer Engineering student, so I think I have some qualifications to describe the difference.
A Computer Science major deals primarily with programming and algorithms. They write programs, Operating systems, high-level drivers, etc.
An Electrical Engineer deals primarily with hardware - logic gates, and designing hardware that will perform algorithmic computations. IE. they design chips. These are the guys who work for Intel, AMD, etc. They don't worry much about programming.
A Computer Engineer is an Electrical Engineer that specializes in programmable computer devices, and therefore programming. So a CompE is mainly an Electrical Engineer, but also does a great deal of programming. Some CompE's design hardware, others write extremely low-level software, drivers, etc. Computer Engineers quite often work in the embedded market, as they have the skills to do both the hardware and software engineering involved.
Think of an Electrical Engineer as a geek who designs computer chips with a minor in math.
Think of a Computer Engineer as a geek who designs computer chips with a minor in Computer Science.
Think of a Computer Science major as a geek who programs computers, and doesn't design hardware.
And, in my opinion, it's funner to be a CompE because you can be doing hardware on one project, then software on the next.
Man, I learn more and more every day...
This is more of an observation than anything, but I thought there already was a group fighting UCITA. Espescially with all the 'Slashdot advocates' who are against UCITA.
/., just how many of us have actually written a well-reasoned letter to our elected official(s)?
./?
Is it just me or is this evidence that us xBSD/GNU/Linux advocates need to start doing more real work and having more real involvement in IP laws than we have been?
Of the number of IP laws/issues that have been discussed on
Do we write our thoughts and opinions to our government official(s), or do we just complain about it on
There isn't really a difference in the amount of effort it takes to write to the elected officials in your locale, than it does to write to Slashdot.
Writing your representatives will get noticed, and may get results. Writing the entire argument to Slashdot won't do that.
But, on the upside, Slashdot can inspire us to write our officials. Do it!!!
This article may only deal with the United States, but that doesn't mean that there aren't IP issues elsewhere in the world. (Fight software patents in the E.U., etc.)
Not to mention that for the longest time, broadband was unavailable in many areas simply because the local telco's wouldn't sell it. They had the equipment, but wouldn't sell it.
The parent of this thread mentions Utah - the state with the highest rate of home computers per capita in the US. Broadband has only recently became a reality; after the cable company secured a 100% monopoly on cable TV, they offered cable service as a means to squeeze more money from consumers.
Meanwhile, the telco was resolutely refusing to offer even ISDN - let alone any form of DSL. If you wanted high-speed internet, you had to shell out $800 a month for a 1.5 Mbit DS1. USWest didn't want to let go of the gravy train.
Suddenly the cable monopoly offers broadband - 500kbit for $60 a month (at first). Only AFTER there was competition did USWest decide to offer broadband. DSL came into the high population density areas only recently.
And getting DSL is, as everywhere, as much as a sick joke as a service. Call QWest (who bought USWest) for DSL - they'll tell you the phone lines in your home are too old.
I became extremely cynical of this when QWest told a friend of mine that his home is too old for DSL, and he would have to hire QWest electricians - at prime rates - to re-wire his entire home before he could get DSL.
His home's construction crews had left the lot a couple of days before. The cement on the driveway wasn't even completely dry yet.
It has nothing to do with geography. Just the super-wealthy trying to outscore the next-door neighbor's income; a neighbor who happens to live in the next county.
I mean... Windows NT/2000 use a microkernel architecture... and the microkernel is over a megabyte.
So if a megabyte is a microkernel, couldn't the 60-80k kernels of QNX/BeOS be better described as a nanokernel? A picokernel?
Maybe Microsoft got the 'micro' kernel from the same place they got the 'micro' in Microsoft. There's nothing small about that particular 'Micro' company.
Let's see if we can flood the download mirrors by all downloading the kernel at once!!!
Yaaaaay!
Big Bang: cannot be repeated or observed:
Actually, it is one of the things that many astronomers are in the process of observing and gathering facts on; During the big bang 'space' expanded at a speed far greater than the speed of light; as a result, we can still observe what happened during that time as there is still EM radiation arriving at Earth from the 'big bang'
Just because there is insufficient facts at this point in time doesn't mean too much. And replication is a nice facet of the scientific process; although it is not always possible, or necessary.
Black holes are not known to explode:
In truth, hardly anything is known about these enigmatic lumps of matter; black holes have been shown to release mass, and that they eventually burn out. This certainly doesn't account for the 'big bang', however.
The 'egg' that is the source of the big bang: Black holes are not completely inside our understanding of superdense matter. This cosmic 'egg' is beyond our understanding of superdense matter. We simply don't know if there are any physical laws that are broken or not in the 'big bang'.
Moreover, with the energies required to observe such phenomenon, even on the micro level, requires accelerating high-density particles to speeds beyond the speed of light. The aborted US supercollider project was the limit of current theory; two protons, each moving very near light speed, crash head-on in an attempt to create a high enough energy reaction to observe the behavior of superdense particles. None of these come near what a black hole is, let alone our cosmic egg.
Oft-quoted second law of thermodynamics: chaos increases
Unfortunately, the 2nd law of thermodynamics depends on one assumption that we also don't know anything about: The 2nd law depends on an assumption that we live in an 'open' universe that expands without limit. A 'closed' universe that will collapse on itself does not follow the 2nd law on a univsersal scale.
And, another fun point about the 2nd law: I've heard many a physicist state that if the 2nd law is true, God cannot exist.
Because in case of Big Bang, there's nothing to hit, the matter would fly in all directions forever:
Unfortunately, this argument falls apart because it *has* been shown that until something like a million years after the big-bang (cosmic background astronomy has shown this) the 'laws' of physics as we know them did not exist, and nothing behaved as we know things to behave now.
Also, there *was no matter* until a very long period of time after the big bang; something like 700,000 years. There was, however, gravity. And massive amounts of gravity -- enough to pull and loop the primordeal soup back upon itself to form matter -- in lumps.
As for the chemical analysis: My chemistry is a bit rusty, as it's been a few years since I did any research in it. However, I DID do research in organic chemistry. It's not entirely impossible for the correct components to form spontaneously. And water does indeed dissolve ammino acids - as it dissolves the components of all other acids.
(And, a question here: isn't referring to the compound as an 'ammino acid' a misnomer, since to truly be an 'acid' it *must* be dissolved in water?) Yeah, I know; that's just play-on-words; but that's why I call it a 'question' I said my chemistry was a bit rusty already.
* Abiogenesis - creation of life from non-life. Not proven
Not disproven either.
* 100% of fossils should be intermediate forms, with clear links. The links are missing.
Well, if we could recover 100% of any given fossil, this would hold meaning; you even stated yourself that there is insufficient data to show whether these things are ancestors or not; for all we know these incomplete fossils are the links.
To be short: Lack of evidence does not imply proof of non-existence; merely proof of a lack of knowledge.
* Besides the fact that they are reconstructed from just a few bones, they all are recognized to be whether an ape or a human.
That, of course, depends on how you define an 'ape' or a 'human.' There are fossils that are not what we consider 'human' by any right; neanderthal, cro-magnon, 'java' man... the bones are clearly *not* homo-sapien, or human. They are also clearly *not* an ape. Moreover, there can be no clear links, as evolution is simply a series of many small, microevolutionary changes. Give it a couple hundred-thousand years and the differences can be clear. Watch it the whole time and it's like watching grass grow - you don't notice the differences appearing.
* Use of microevolution as explanation for macroevolution is a stretch.
Well, there's plenty of time to stretch it in. In fact, the whole theory of evolution is not about single, huge, 'macro' evolutions... but a series of small microevolutions.
The main point here is: At what point do we consider a series of microevolutions on a species to create enough differences to 'create' entirely new species? A hundred? A thousand? A million? There is no 'line in the sand' to define this.
For saying there's no proof: Lack of proof does not imply a proof of lack. And, also - again, how is a macroevolution any different than thousands of microevolutions compounded over time? There is no difference, because macroevolution implies thousands (or millions) of microevolutionary changes over time.
You did do a good job of showing that there are suspicions about the Theory of Evolution; unfortunately, many are assumptions that are made from bad or insufficient knowledge. I note espescially the sections reguarding the big bang, and physical laws; many of these assumptions are based off of newtonian rules, and an infinite universe, of which newtonian rules do not hold true for the energies involved in the big bang. We have no clue if we live in an 'open' or infinite universe, or a 'closed' or finite universe.
I would like to again re-iterate: The lack of fact, evidence, or proof is *not*, nor does it connotate, prove, or show, a lack of existence.
Finally: Remember that the scientific community is trying to make sense of and understand the universe. These theories are based off of what knowledge we have. Contrary to what many would like to believe, they are not made lightly. Evolution was a bold theory when Darwin presented it. There has been a growing amount of evidence and facts that prove evolution is a correct theory. However, there has been no evidence to show that it is false; there has only been insufficient evidence to irrefutably convince the most zealous that evolution is fact.
And, from a religious standpoint, as I am a very religious man, it is sheer arrogance and pride for *US* to dictate how God should create us, and the world around us.
Various religious records state that God created the world - NOT how. He said 'let there be light', however details on how light was formed are not disclosed. God created man 'from the dust of the Earth'. Again - no details on how he created us, over what timeframe, and what intermediate steps (if any) were made.
And about the Earth being made in 6 days - well, we have an all-powerful God; why can't He create a 'time bubble' of sorts so that millions of years to us seems like a day to Him?
We create our cars, computers, pottery... all from 'the dust of the earth' there are intermediate steps we take to get from 'dust' to 'computer'. There is no reason to assume that God did not create man the same way; with evolution as a series of intermediate steps. There is no reason to assume that dirt rose out of the ground into man.
To say that you cannot have God and Science shows that you do not understand enough of at least one, or that you are making assumptions about how God does things that are undocumented, and may not be true.
God created Man, the Heavens and the Earth. The Bible, Koran, and many other religions teach that. (I cannot at this moment remember the name of the Jewish equivalent of the Old Testament; sorry.)
None give specific details as to how He did it. It's arrogant of us to dictate to Him or to ourselves how God does His work.
How 'bout some comparisons between some non-x86 processors?
I've never seen anything about how fast a fired-up Alpha can go.
Or how fast the 1.6 GHz Athlon compares to the 733 MHz G4 (Except from Apple, of course)
I use an X86 processor too... but there's better stuff out there.
To those who are always looking down on americans for their views:
At least we have a constitutional right to free speech, unlike many other contries where free speech is simply an indulgence granted by the local government, and can be taken away at any time.
Of course Allchin is a looney - he thinks that Windows is the best OS available. You gotta be a loon to honestly believe that!
And in the same scentence gives a tacit nod to Linux's quality by saying that Microsoft "can" build a better operating system... not that they have done, plan to, or will.
I look at it from this standpoint: Free/OSS software != Free/OSS hardware. Not even by paradigm.
1.) In the vast majority of the consumer world (Meaning the Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX), not only are the drivers closed-source, but this is an acceptable practice. Drivers are provided free of charge (gratis); drivers aren't a source of income.
2.) To have a truly 'Open' 3D Driver of high performance, it is necessary to include the 3D code, or at least the hardware interface to the Graphics API (in the case of Linux, Mesa, or OpenGL). nVIDIA chose to use certified OpenGL, not Mesa. I'm not entirely current on Mesa's status; nevertheless, OpenGL is seen as a better option to many buyers, as it is a guaranteed "OpenGL ARB"-compliant implementation, rather than a non-"OpenGL ARB" certified implementation of OpenGL. A certified OpenGL implementation cannot, I believe, be released as 'free' software.
3.) Having the hardware interface for their card published (as Open-Source) makes it easier to reverse-engineer the hardware. ATI wouldn't care about doing so, but about every other manufacturer would, as even Matrox's 3D is lacking. This is essentially a 'security-through obscurity' scheme, but in the hardware world, it's all you have.
4.) nVIDIA is a *HARDWARE* company. R&D on hardware isn't anywhere near the curve that it is on software. It's much more difficult to design a chip than write code. Chip fab is so obscenely expensive that it isn't really possible to have the Free-Software equivalent of hardware. Unlike software, the machines & tooling to fab hardware can't be duplicated on a whim, and they are extremely expensive. The source materials also cost money (although trivial after machinery & tooling costs). The tooling to make the chip is at least $250k... forget energy, materials, labor, environmental regulations, etc. costs accumulated in physical production. So if there are any bugs, it costs millions.
Too many people don't realize the difference between hardware and software when it comes to Intellectual Property. The software business gets many rights that hardware makers don't; and they have far fewer of the penalties.
Free software takes only a compiler, time, and a coder to generate a useful, reliable, high-quality product.
You *CAN'T* do that with hardware. But, we'll suppose you have a Free Hardware design.
Now 'compile' it from the design code to a useful, reliable, high-quality chunk of silicon.
... For under $250,000.00 US.
Free software exists because it's inexpensive enough to be a hobby... a passion. All it takes is time and effort.
Free hardware can't say that. Only Billionaires have the resources to create free hardware.
So give nVIDIA some credit and a chance to get a return on their investment in hardware and tooling to create the chip. The only ones who are really able to take advantage of an open-source driver are the other hardware manufacturers, who would use it to reverse-engineer the hardware, or the users of an OS without a driver. Since Windows, Mac, and Linux covers all but the smallest part of the OS world that uses 3D, and he *BSD clones are used (and advocated) primarily as a server that doesn't even need X... not a graphics workstation or gaming station, it shouldn't even be an issue to anyone... except for QNX and BeOS users.
Many of the arguments one way or another over this subject miss one point completely:
Free market or no, insurance companies or no -- as long as doctors and hospitals are accessible, people WILL have health care. And the cost WILL be distributed across all levels of health and affluence. It already is.
In the United States, the people will not stand for such actions. If it gets to the point where people even perceive the risk that they might not have health insurance because of being turned down for genetic (or any other reason) - espescially if it is the 'future risk', the public will not stand for it. They will lobby the government, elect officials that promise, and do everything they can to either regulate the industry, or get the goverment to provide health care to every man, woman, and child, reguardless of their condition.
The only reason socialized medicine was fought off in the United States was because the insurance companies weren't doing a bad job, and it's at least a percieved fact that government healthcare would be inferior to private healthcare.
But if a large part of the populace had no access to affordable medical care, simply because they may develop a disease in the future - the Medical community would lose a LOT of business.
If the insurance company won't insure a guy who is a perfectly healthy and PAYING client now, who would normally go in for annual checkups, dental care, immunizations, etc - with his/her children. With genetic screening, the children won't be insured either (having inherited this defect) If this were the case, a very large amount of the populace wouldn't seek health care unless absolutely necessary.
And the medical community loses revenue in a very big way because of the reduced number of patients.
So, you would have two major forces - an even greater proportion of the populace demanding insurance reform, or government health care, and a growing number of health care companies demanding the same.
In the end, everybody WILL have health care. The difference is whether we will have responsible, self-policing insurance companies, heavily regulated and untrusted insurance companies, or the Government.
It is simply not in the insurance companies (or the people's) long-term interest to deny people based on pre-existing conditions of any kind.
Even a pure capitalist would agree it is not just to punish someone based off of conditions that were never a choice of the affected.
Only the already wealthy would try to forge an argument that would make it sound like a Good Thing TM to willfully deny health care to people - not because there is an insufficient amount of care in the area - but because of willfully denying that care because it hurts THEIR already overflowing pocketbook... And then they try to convince as many people as they can that it will take money from everybody else's pocketbook too. It simply isn't the case.
In a modern civilization, the rich will pay for the poor - whether by choice, by tax, or by gunpoint. The rich are always in the minority, and they already have all they need. It's an enevitable consequence of democracy that the voice of the people will outnumber the voice of the rich, and the voice of the people will force the rich to pay to support the poor's needs.
Scoff now - but the concept of public schools, social security, welfare, medicare... all programs that are firmly in place now - these programs would have been scoffed at as ruinous, revolutionary, and completely stoppable by the Vanderbuilts and Rockefellers of a century ago. The rich didn't have their way then, nor will they now.
We won't stand for it, and we'll get our respective governments to intervene before it does.
This would make a WONDERFUL way to secure a notebook - an 8 MB key!!! More than gratuitous, but it could hold keys for other computers as well.
Just have to say - good show. It's nice to see somebody else believes in the Darwin awards.
I hate dealing with idiots.
How ironic, it seems, that a community that is so very (and often vehemently) biased towards the righteousness of the GPL, villify another software licence. How can anybody expect a court to uphold the GPL if its very adherents refuse to uphold any other software licences?
Does anybody else see the hypocracy?
The fact of the matter is, the GPL protects the rights of its author, while maintaining a 'freeness' of its work, disallowing it to be used for commercial gain without the copyright holder's consent. We all agree to this licence when we use our beloved free software. Some even take their belief in the GPL as to make it a quasi-religion.
And yet so many who are this supportive of the GPL feel that any other licence is morally wrong. This is akin to 'I can kill anybody and be morally right, but you can't kill anybody because for you, it's wrong.
Even stranger are those who believe in the GPL, and refrain from purchasing, or pirating proprietary software due to the price, or nature of the propriatary software; they refuse to pirate the software because they feel it is wrong to violate the terms of the propriatary licence.
Yet, they complain when there is a proprietary software, and it's proprietary licence that they want to use. (And, to no suprise, it's often entertainment software) And, in the case of EverQuest, it clearly states in the licence agreement that sale of characters/items is a violation of the licence agreement.
How can we support the actions of these players who are suing so they can willfully violate the software's licencing terms? Do we not realize the *dangerous* precedent this will set? If a group of gamers can sue because they disagree with a term of a software licence, then just exactly what would keep Microsoft, IBM, or any other corporation from doing the same thing to the GPL - because they disagree with its licence terms?
I'm afraid that many don't realize that in the eyes of the law, software licences must be treated equally. Agreeing to the licence is equivalent to signing a contract. Breaking that contract revokes the licence, and the right to use the software.
The LAW doesn't care about anybody's feelings of a superior licence. The LAW demands that the agreement be kept, and violators be dealt with accordingly. If it were not so, the GPL (and any other software licence) would be completely worthless. And megacorporations will begin 'stealing' and selling code that is meant to be free. But it won't be stealing. What's the point of a software licence if it doesn't matter?
At my university, the students are REQUIRED to use MS Visual Studio. Most of the programs are turned in in both binary and source format(s).
I tried to convince them to allow other compilers/operating systems; they said 'sure'. What ended up happening is I was down-graded for NOT using Visual Studio, and NOT using WIN32. "Because that's what the industry uses"
And, the CS department is . . . extremely stubborn on this point. They dropped all their UNIX/VMS - anything not Win32 based.
Were I a CS major, I would be upset about this narrow-mindedness. But I'm a Computer-Engineering major, and my coursework requires programming in other environments, operating systems, etc. And this pig-headed Win32 only attitude both enrages me, and is a serious problem to my education. Does anybody have any suggestions about what to do to get the department to change their position?
(And petitions from the FSF/GNU Linux club hasn't helped at all...)
I want to learn to use the typical UNIX ways: Makefiles, text-editors, etc. While an IDE is nice, I would like to be able to program without one.
But, sadly, finding a decent HOWTO on makefiles is difficult, and I haven't had enough time to find one; let alone read it.
I recenly upgraded from a TNT-based video card to a GeForce2 GTS on my Pentium II based system.
The result? Q3A/Linux took a leap from 640x480x16, mid-detail and probably 20 fps to 1280x1024x32 max-detail and probably 30-50 fps.
The difference was unbelieveable; I thought that I had bought a completely new machine. I was playing Q3A with max settings at higher framerates at 1280x1024 than I had seen on Quake2 (with its 16-bit color) at 800x600.
I have no doubt that I couldn't have acheived the same kind of performance bonus had I spent the same amount of money on a new CPU.
I've been using MyRealbox for over a year; I can't rave enough about it.
While not trying to take one side or the other on this stance, I do have one observation about what I read in the dialogue; however finding the precice way to say it isn't exactly easy for me. So, I'll use an allegory.
The situation:
You are handed a lethal weapon and told to personally kill another person.
The Consequences:
If you comply, that one person will be the only one to die. If you do not, several more people will be killed. Whether the person you are asked to kill would be killed anyway is not disclosed.
Analysis: This is, of course, a moral situation that nobody wants to be in. You don't know the person you are told to kill would end up dying anyway; so do you kill the one to save the others, or do you simply do nothing?
Depending on your ethical biases, you have a set of results.
Viewpoint #1: You refuse. You upheld your principle of not killing others. You are completely innocent of any wrongdoing.
Viewpoint #2: You refuse. You upheld your principle of not killing others. But your refusal causes many people to die, and therefore you are still directly responsible for their deaths.
Viewpoint #3: You comply. You violated your principle of not killing others. Whether you killed only one, or many makes no difference, because you violated your principle.
Viewpoint #4: You comply. While violating your principle of not killing others, you are in the moral right because you chose the path of minimal death.
Now, the situation seemed to me like Jorrit Tyberghein seemed to choose #4, and that having a proprietary plug to support a LGPL package being the better choice.
And, RMS seemed to follow the logic of #1 and #3: That the greatest good is achieved by adhering to principle.
And at least in the situation I painted, there really is no 'right' choice; just two choices, both having undesired results. From there everything counts on what matters most to you; which choice is 'best' depends on you, and your beliefs to where the greatest good is.
My question is this: What does Black Ice do?!?
It's not the same as NetworkICE's BlackICE Defender; the difference there is between a product and a company with similar names.
But what kind of toolkits toes Black Ice make? To they send out unsolicited email advetisizing their products?
"Black Ice is a legitimate business," they say... well, so are a lot of companies that send out 'spam.'
(OT - I have an acquaintance who works for one... he feels it's like being an executioner, but he executes whoever comes along. It's something he feels is morally wrong, but on the other hand, he needed the job and nobody else wanted to hire him...)
Information doesn't WANT to be free, and it doesn't simply 'become' free either. We've always had to go to great lengths to come upon ANY information. Saying information wants to be free is like saying a rock wants to think; it won't happen without intervention.
That's the beauty of the GPL and BSD licences - they help release information to humanity, rather than allowing it to hide in obscurity, or to be patented, copyrighted, and succinctly forgotten.
If information would simply release itself, we would have no need for the GPL or similar licences. We would have no need for multi-million dollar research projects. We wouldn't need to send robotic probes into space to discover more information. We wouldn't need to go to school to learn. We wouldn't need to spend hours researching algorithms to make more optimized code.
No, information doesn't want to be free. One of humanity's greatest pursuits has been to acquire it, and to create it. And there's nothing any idealist can say or do to change that simple fact. We spend our lives searching for information. And information will never just 'come' to us as if it 'wants to be free.'
Life isn't that easy.