Having spent a good few hours yesterday finding out just what it was going to take to join some of my colleagues in a game of Unreal, I can tell you that wine does support DirectX 5 anyway, and that unreal delivered windows level performance (i.e. it was perfectly playable at reasonable resolutions) on my non-3d accelerated Linux box. The only unfortunate thing was I ended up having to point my wine.conf to the Win98 drive on my PC (which was brought into VMWare about a month ago and hasn't natively booted since).
I cannot disagree more!
All that has happened here is that someone has taken their scanner, plugged it into a computer, scanned some barcodes, seen what they got, figured out how it was converting the barcode into the data it supplied and finally wrote a bit of code to turn the data from the device into something useful. They didn't go near the distributors software (it wasn't even close to being complicated enough to need that) so all they did was use the hardware the manufacturer gave away for free as it was intended with different software.
Now ask yourself this, if Ford gave away car fresheners for their Fiesta and then asked people to remove from websites the instructions for how to fit the freshener to other models of cars would you say "the right channels have to be used when dealing with other peoples work is concerned"?
I think this is a simple case of a company who are trying to implement a business plan with a potential flaw ("the WINDOW for the BIG companies to come in and control and profit from this process we have created"). Guess they should have made sure that door was closed BEFORE they handed the things out. Besides, do you really think that MS would need the Open Source community to help them crack this OR that MS would be deterred from rolling drivers for this into their software by claims of infringment of IP rights.
Bottom line I think they are stupid....not mallicious just stupid.....ah well so much for another dot.com dream!
There is no denying that McDonalds (well I don't think so but that is another argument) caused the old lady some real misery and damages (hospital bills and loss of quality of life for......). The point is that MS have caused even more misery the world over and incurred far more costs. You think all the miserable computer users ICL found are all using Mac, *nix and Be? How long before MS pay?
You draw some good points and blow it all by extrapolating out 2+2=-1.42323431!!!
I just don't see how the lack of MPAA and RIAA and petrol AND drug companies AND department stores AND fast food AND government (well ok maybe just maybe we could fall to this if everyone stopped paying all taxes but I think the civil wars that would erupt would have done far more damage to civilisation before then) leads to
sitting around an open fire, swatting mosquitos, and roasting a freshly killed rabbit
Yep, everyone should vote with their wallets and to me that means no MPAA (any movie and mercahndising that supports them), RIAA (any cd and mercahndising that supports), Major Sports footwear companies, slave labourers in my own land (i.e. the people I know pay £2-£3/hour in a tipless environment) and thats about it for my current ban list. I try to avoid a few others McDonalds and Shell and Nestlé but wont beat myself up over it if I give them some money....once its less than what I would spend on them otherwise.
I will go and see Star Wars II cause he hasn't released a DVD yet (which in turn pees me off though you can't win on that one cause I want DVDs but I wont buy them while I can't play them with any freedom). If someone shows me how Mr. Lucas is supporting the MPAA (i.e. his membership and preferably any activity on his part for them) than that will be me out of going to movies, or renting them or giving a penny to them until this farce is sorted out.
To all those with influence, take note that you are not getting as much money out of me as you want (it is rapidly approaching nothing) and it is nowhere near what I would spend were in not for "personal politics", and many many more people will be voting with their wallets and giving you less and less cash until you can't pay your lawyers anymore so grow up and come with us intop the new frontier.
In the last 6 months I have seen 0 movies in the cinema and about 4 on video (none rented or encouraged by me) and purchased one CD single for $2 to see what codec they used for the video on it.
In the previous 6 months I saw perhaps 12 movies in the cinema and about 20 on video (many rented or encouraged by me) along with about 4 CDs.
So in six months their taking from me are down from about £120-£150 to £2.
The key is for everyone who hates what their doing to avoid giving them money....if you "have to" see Natalie Portmans new film so do it, if your "thinking" of going to see X-Men...don't!
Ever since the mobile phone industry began (at least in UK and Ireland) it has all been about subsidising phones to get new cutomers on networks. This has now reached near saturation.
Without a new network to sell to people, all the mobile phone companies can do is to produce smaller models and maybe integrate in more features BUT as most people won't be subsidised to buy these phones they are not going to sell many unless they have a killer app (how many of us would swap to another phone if it was running a Free Flashable OS?, or if it incorporated a 128Mb mp3 man, WAP is not a killer app, it'll just get let them eeek out a few more millions). The mobile phone companies will be back to pulling in the cash as soon as significant numbers of newer model phone requiring networks appear...until then they have a quiet time.
let this be a lesson to you! Next time when checking for valid information...USE THE SOURCE!
And remind that Kurt the debian reviewer while your at it:-)
Hi Troll (or is it flamebait merchant),
yes in many ways I really am that much of a RMS suckhole, I belive in Free software.
I have in turn a question to ask you, what software are you going to recompile with your bcc32? Is it going to be a commercial unix or a "Linux" distribution? If it is a linux distribution you can delight in running a non-gcc system but you will still be running GNU/Linux. I think the point of GNU/Linux (as opposed to Linux) is extermely valid as only a very, very, very few people would ever run a system featuring Linux without GNU tools (maybe a linux router project or the like). If you are going to do a slackware/BSD style compile from source just check how many of those packages/projects/files come from the GNU project. I'd sure be interested to hear all about the system you are going to put together sans-GNU.
My favourite (by miles) was and is "Running Debian GNU/Linux" by Bill McCarty (published by O'Reilly). Not only is this a great introduction to the GNU OS which comes with Debian GNU/Linux (oh well I guess slink is finally out of date...a bit better than all those RedHat 5.2 and 6.0 books out there though) but it is also published under the Open Publication License. Not a for dummies book, I'd be far happier to give this to a dummy than any for dummies book I have ever seen. It Rocks
So the singles market is falling rapidly while the album market is booming......does that mean everyone is just downloading a sinlge if they like it, maybe downloading some more tracks by the artist and finally having had a chance to live with some of their music, going and buying the full album instead.
Alternatively the kiddies they have been marketing the Bwitney Spwears swingles at for the last few decades have either a got stronger parenting that won't let them be led by the marketeers or the parents have weekened further and are giving them the dough to buy albums instead of singles.
Bottom line, they are up 1/2 billion dollars on the first six months so obviously everyone has given up buying their CDs and is pirating their IP instead.
I am actually really seriously considering standing in an Irish election for 1 primary reason, to rip into all things farcical in Irish law. The prime example being the only way you can get your name as a domain name in Ireland (myname.ie) is to either A add a two (or more) digit number to the end of it OR be standing in the next election (this was brought in by the politicians themselves when some pornsters saw the.com domains they hadn't bothered to claim such as http://TheTaoiseach.com == ThePresident.com for Ireland! and bertieaherne.com which is his real name! Guess what my first election purchase will be:-)
My question is would anyone be interested in a "Slashdot party" or my other favourite is "The GNU Party". I'm not talking about people who would vote for me or even live in the same country, but simply that if 100/. members (for example) stood in elections worldwide every couple of years, how long before we at least manage to get some decent braodband media coverage.
There certainly seems to be a popular opinion on slashdot on a huge range of issues ('Fair Use','Cryptographic Restrictions', 'Software Patents', 'Reverse Engineering'), could we draw a manifesto from these to bombard the world with (BTW I would personally delight in helping throw idiot politicians out far more than getting in myself, and would really want to raise public awareness through humour far more than through dull education).
So what say you? We are a form of lobby (to a select subset of Internet users), how about we take it to the next level.
Also, I would happily support someone else better wuited to stand (even if it does mean sacrificing my domain name);
The Net party will happen, so who is going to be there first?
If my assumptions are wrong, fine...that's why I stated they were assumptions allowing you to correct me.
Running two desktops however does not an equivalent system make, I don't care how you try to justify it. If you add some programs that require a pre-loaded desktop environment to your NT (doesn't KDE run on NT) you will start to get an equivalency.....just because Linux allows you to tweak your system to use more memory does not mean that it takes more memory. Really I just think it is an unfair example you give...remove the KDE and tell us your results, I would believe that NT could still come out with lower memory usage, thats why I wrote the above disclaimers. Don't flame me back for questioning the validity of your statement, correct me (as a lot of your post did) and try to redress my issues. If you think KDE Beta+Gnome=NT equivalence then we'll just have to agree to disagree. If you can present some more arguments as to why you feel your situation is valid then fo gor it.
BTW I feel my memory usage ideas are fine (now the validity of my statement vis-a-vis a just finished booting system may be invalid) however I feel that the idea of keeping your memory free for applications that may be started is stupid, if you can write something else into the memory that may speed up subsequent operations then why not if it can be swapped off if an application needs the space?
My system, Slackware 7.1 with GNOME 1.2 and KDE 2 Beta3 takes up more memory at startup than WindowsNT 4.0
disclaimer: I hate NT, I don't believe OS/Free software methods corrolerate to lower resource requirements, I do believe OS/Free software methods will win (long long term)
Your NT box after booting runs nothing other than its desktop (assumption).
Your Linux box after booting runs a bunch of background servers (assumption) and a desktop AND a BETA desktop.
It would be a huge achievement for the KDE team (and slack and gnome to a lesser degree) if your linux box consumed more memory at startup. Also, don't forget that linux/*nix regards memory as a valueable resource to be filled (make sure we're using it cause we have it) where Windows regards memory as a precious resource not to use (make sure we don't waste any cause it's so valuable).
IMHO, either don't make comments like that OR qualify them (with a link even) to describe what it is your really found, I would love to see good figures whoever wins that battle.
Just a quick reality check for the moaning americans:
Ireland Internet Access Options
Regular Telephone Call charges and no ISP fees: IR£0.12 per unit, 6am-6pm = 3mins/unit, 6pm-6am = 15mins/unit
ISP Telephone Call charges and ISP subscription: IR£0.12 per unit, 6am-6pm = 5mins/unit, 6pm-6am = 15mins/unit, ISP IR£10/month
Flat Rate Off-Peak: IR£20/month
Mobile 9600: 6am-6pm = £0.25/min (best price), 6pm-6am = £0.10/min + line rental £10/month+ (with mobiles the trade off is line rental cost V call cost
None of these (bar the mombile) include the telephone line rental charges of about IR£20/month for a analog line or IR£35/month for an ISDN line.
Want some thing faster.........hope you have IR£?,000s.
All in all I have said it before and I'll say it again you Americans like to moan about how slow your country is....well you are beating mine IMHO and I ain't third world. You live in a massive country and should expect where you choose to live to significantly influence the range of options available to you. I live in a small country where the only thing that could change is if I am toooooo remote to have a phoneline or too remote/difficult to get ISDN to. Cable, DSL, ADSL etc. forget it....maybe someday soon one of the many "companies" will actually start to deliver on a promise but there are no signs of it (and I live in the largest and capital city so where is live is not delaying the roll-out to me).
IR£1=US$1.14=E0.696
perhaps that is exactly the meaning that is meant to be portrayed! Seeing as though it would require about $20 of patent payments to allow the machine decode and play a full on content scrambled DVD perhaps instead they are simply going to let the machine playback non-CSS streams. Some manufacturers have already released non CSS DVDs so perhaps this is Nintendo's way of telling the MPAA and its cohorts that it can go fuck itself if it thinks they are going to hand it any real amount of money to release a player for the titles THEY sell. Console manufacturers (and never forget that Sony is not a console manufacturer but a giant comglomerate who has every interest in making a cheap box that can play their games aswell as thier cds and dvds) make their money from selling cheap hardware and recouping the costs through licensing for game creators, do you think they are going to add more cost to the machine for a feature which will not help them sell a single extra game but will provide someone else with an improved revenue stream.
I hope Nintendo release a prototype (or the inital Japanese release) with no media support or just mpeg support (pay them some licensing, they are the not-"open" standard video format) and make a big stink over why they will not pay HOLLYWOOD. The average punter will listen if Nintendo says their console would be $20 more to play the HOLLYWOOD DVDs without any change in hardware AND that the people collecting the money are also collecting it on every DVD created (etc. etc.).
I would not assume that this announcement vis-a-vis DVDs has anything to do with hardwre or software or any other technical or marketing decision......it is simply the start of a negotiation for "substantially reduced" royalty charges (i.e. none), and perhaps the thought of an extra few tens of millions of cheap DVD players out there will tempt the MPAA etc. into accepting the royalty payments from the DVD producers. Perhaps Nintendo will simply buy a special license (then what odds on the Nintendo DVDPlayer for every platform under the Sun).
/. is getting nice and confusing with Troll's aplenty but I'm still going to assume your for real and tell you how I see it.
Many of the olympic sports are contested between athletes who are heros at home, basketball is no exception to this. I personally believe that first and foremost an olympic gold medal should say you are the best, not that you are the best of all those people who aren't good enough to earn money from their sport. I love to see the NBA superstars in the Olympics because they raise the level of competition and I will love it even more the first year they lose the final (it will happen soon enough, how many great foreigners play in the NBA). I haven't read any complaints about tennis, is this because the tennis stars are more evenly distributed on an international scale? Where are the professional boxers? I would love to see Lennox Lewis, the world pro heavywieght champion stepping into an Olympic tournament with about 5 fights ahead of him against unknown opponents (will it be Tyson or Holyfield). The olympics should be about the highest quality of sport first and this will bring the IOC their revenue.
The way I see it this whole argument draws fabulous parallels to the mp3 and decss arguments, and yet again it is the forces of corporatism (the tv networks and sponsers) fighting against the new technology and its logical conclusions to try and protect their outdated revenue models. Once again they will discover that the horse has bolted and will need to refine their practices to deal with this (one Visor+camera+mobile phone = live webcam, hell you could also have a second mobile to dial a PC which encodes it to a live audio stream). I can understand that the IOC must make the noises to try and ensure they get the money they have been promised, but as long as the NBCs of this world are not covering every event locally live people will go elsewhere to see the events they want (soccer). Why not tell the sites that they can do anything they want as long as they:
don't broadcast live (event must be over before coverage starts) if a licensed broadcaster is present
Carry the official sponsor(s) of the events logo on any page which refers to the event or be sued (so you can avoid this is you make no money of the whole affair, but if you even have a banner on your page....)
Only losers are the TV companies who can lose advertising revenue directed at events they aren't even showing, or can lose revenue to people who are doing a better job of covering it online without live coverage.
Good info:-)
Where I see the problem, and what I was trying to draw attention to with my post, is not in determining which graphics card has the best 3d performance but in determining which cards support what features (on what platforms) and how these features perform. In windows land you can buy a video card to handle 2d, 3d, video IO and dual-heading and know in advance what sort of performance you should achieve. If I want to know the same for linux I can't (at least not before I buy the card and stick it in my machine)! I can find out if a card has dri support (or some other form of hardware accelerated 3d) and I can figure out what sort of 2d modes it can support, but discovering what features have hardware acceleration and which don't is a non-trivial task (I haven't spent long looking at dri opensource site but it seems to only have mailing lists). Discovering if a cards video facilities are accessable is again much more difficult, for example you may know that a card will capture video in full-screen PAL, but will the linux drivers do it and if so in what formats and at what performance loads.
In summary, 2d graphics card performance has reached a very mature level where nearly any supported card will provide reasonable performance for all but the most demanding of applications (full-screen mpeg playback may push some cards beyond their abilities and not through the MPEG decoding which could be host processor based but through drawing the volume of final data). 3d performance is starting to become formalised and as such we need information on which cards support what features and how well they perform. Video4Linux should be providing us with some control over capture and output devices, but which consumer devices are supported and what will they do. We need a linuxhardware site which says that A is supported by B and will do C with D overheads, then we can all start to make some reasonably informed decisions about what video card to buy, and stop basing our decisions on the lowest common denominator of 2d and 3d support (and perhaps some of Tom's nice Quake III stats). Bemchmarking is the second stage, figuring out what a card will do is the first.
The README file in the linked tgz states that the driver is for the Millenium (I and II) and the Mystique....no mention of the G400 or multihead or tv or........
That said, I am still dying to get my hands on a good graphics card for Linux (it would be nice if it would do BSD and Be but Linux is _my_ OS of choice) and this is starting to sound closer to the mark. Anyone able to offer any real feedback on what this can do? The one thing we are really missing now in terms of X Video Card support is a "Tom's Hardware" site which reviews the cards and drivers so that we can all find out what features we can expect to get out of modern cards under XFree and what sort of performance they offer (primarly of interest vis-a-vis OpenGL frame rates and dvd playback cpu loads, but scalability (1head - 4 heads + tv) and video capture performance (achievable undropped data rates, resolution and frame rates). Anyone able to write useful benchmarks for any of these areas...if so please do and send them to Tom GPL'd (and/or anyone else you think might take this on).
The debate over Nvidia's open V closed drivers is so virulent because we do not have any good performance comparisons, and also because support for features beyond standard 2d and 3d are essentially undocumented/unsupported and therefore it is difficult to determine what features you would get out of your ATI All in Wonder 128 (to take what I feel is a good example) if you use it under linux without just buying one.
If Linux (and really the free OSs as a whole) wants to be any more mainstream for "home" users and not simply as a second OS on a machine designed for Windows, we need to start gathering up the hardware and driver (the two are inexorably intertwined for Free OSs) information so that people buying a PC can quickly see what there machine will/should do under their OS of choice. The vital areas are video and sound, but other items such as Nics and capture cards would be beneficial.
If such a site already exists please post the url:-)
Harking back to this old slashdot story from July 16 1999 (particularly when you see that the first post, #3, says "As I understand it, Performer can be builtup under OpenInventor. So why not do it right and release OpenInventor4Linux. ") I have to ask what the relationship is between Performer and Open Inventor? An SGI employee (post #17) suggests that
"Performer focuses on maximum Performance and scalability (fast hardware, multiple
processors and multiple graphics pipes), Inventor is designed for ease of use and user manipulation of 3D data. Performer also has more of an emphasis on
features and file formats required by the simulation and training industries. "
I really can't see the woods from the trees on this one......all I do know is that anytime SGI announces Free software for Linux I feel more certain that Free software will live forever, and everytime it is a 3d tool I curse the fact that I work and can't spend the next few months pulling it apart.
Slightly OT, but we have all been talking about how the nVidia cards have the best consumer OpenGL ICD and that they will not release it to help Matrox and ATI etc. catch up........what chance of SGI (who MUST have the best OpenGL ICDs period) helping everyone play catchup instead.....then we can all have some Schweeeeeeeeeeet Free ICDs.
The real question is if they do GPL ALL code and therefore do not make any money from licensing, will we all be delighted at the chance to buy at the increased price for the benefit of anyone (including ourselves) being able to create a program (let's face it it is not going to do games only) to run on the machine? How many more playstations would have been sold if it COULD have had free games!
The only "good" reason I can think of for them to bring in this change is that they don't like not being able to sniff all the information on your/their connections.
The only bad reason I can think of for them to bring in this change is that they don't like people using their service because that means they need more real bandwidth, so instead they are just banning anything you could possibly want to use it for other than surfing and email (and even email they are not generous about) because if they banned these they wouldn't be able to convince anyone that it was a good deal:-)
Vorbis was an inquisitor who believed he would be the next profit of the Great God Mighty Horns Om. Nanny Ogg is the matriarchal nymphomaniac of the Ramtop town of Bad Ass. I just can't imagine them ever having a kid!
I must admit I am overplaying the devil's advocate role to a degree (though not much), but thank you also for recognising that I am not trying to flame or troll, but simply to reveal how I see these things.
You say that "I don't believe that poverty+nuclear power=ability to hold the world hostage. The entire world would unite against any country that tried to do that. " but can it not be argued that the entire rich world has been holding the poor world to hostage? I was trying to simply evoke the realisation on people that we (the people lucky enough to be born in the richer section of the planet) should be in a vulnerable position, we are the minority. Instead we are holding all the "money" and living our luxurious lives at the expense of others (ask all the kids in your country who wear Nike's if they profit from capitalism, and do not try to argue with me that we are providing good jobs to the workers just because it is better than nothing, would you work for the equivalent of those wages their or in your own country?).
From your remaining points, the capitalist ideals (sorry but my upbringing refuses to let me believe they are truly American ideals) you claim are "responsible for the greatest increase in wealth and prosperity, for the greatest number of people, harming the least amount of people, in history" may be, however as you so simply put it "Can it be
replaced by something better? I certainly hope so!". I personally feel disgust with the corporatist tack that I feel the American (and in this case I have no problem singling America for particular though not solitary attention) policy makers have taken, and my readings of slashdot certainly agree with this (Napster, 2600, etc.). I just always feel that/. (and I regard/. as it's posters) for some reason seems to always defend the capitalist ideals while slating the coporationist. Corporationism is the logical conclusion of capitalism and it is not acceptable.
I have to say that the one aspect of this I feel you (Moofie) are missing is that we are all on an evolutionary chain, and just because the system we rich slashdot readers have has the best history, does not mean that it even came close to being good. I do not have the answers, but I feel strongly that the attitude we (rich people) have collectively taken is sickening, and I for one would be willing to sacrifice my posessions (I would still have the extreme privilege of an education to degree level) to bring a level of equality. To the people who asked me to give these up, I refuse to do this in isolation as it would be a token gesture of meaningless consequence, but I am happy to sacrifice another 10-30% of my income to help force the world bank to drop the debts they have promised to, to give even more to all the people in my society (Ireland) worse off than I am, and to grow the pool of money that my already quite generous country offers internationally to the needy (I have no problem making my country subsantially poorer to make hundreds of poor countries minorly richer). I get sick every time I hear someone slam a "welfare" system or taxation for wealth redistribution, quite simply, the current systems work well for us on the best side and do not destory the less well off, however we can and should do better, for the equlaity of humanity.
And to finish (because I feel that this deserves an on-topic story to itself) what genuinely makes me sick to the pits of my stomach is the ideals frequently esposed which state "fuck anyone poorer than me, I deserve it", to each of you (and this is NOT directed at Moofie) be very very afraid, someday those souls you feel happy to leave ground down (and you repluse at the idea of aiding in any way, even any form of "socialist" welfare system) will rise, and you will fall as a consequence (even if only to approach their level from above) and who do you think they (the majority) will want to shaft? Maybe it won't be you, but if not it will be your ancestors. Let us all build for a happier future now.
How much does it cost to have minor ills cured? However much the market will bear.
I was replying and refering to the original comment (troll?) of "I'm confident that humanity can rise to whatever challenges it meets as soon as they start affecting us rich straight white American folks. (I may not be rich, but I fit the rest pretty well.) Like impotence, and baldness." Which I personally think is a really brilliant attitude!
I agree with your practical comments on Africa, but refering to another comment of mine "do you belive in the eternal ownership of property?" in particular the "american" continent is owned by? If the poorer contries of the world gained the power to truly threaten the rich ones, would the money grabbing commercialists happily kill them all off because "they don't buy or products anyway"?
I am a white man, and I also have not enslaved anyone directly, but my simple presence in a nation such as Ireland, buying clothes made in sweatshops etc. etc. (I try to put my money where my conscience is, but as we all know it can be very hard to really tell who is who when you are handing over money). I live in a rich country in a poor world, and my richness is perpetuated by the continued suffering (in relative terms) of the majority of the planet. If I gave away every penny I earned I would still be rich to most of the planet, the only way I could resolve this problem would be to give away everything I own and live in one of the coutries with a more average wealth, and this is not what I am advocating.
I'm a citizen of a country that produces enough food to feed every human on the
planet, and shows every indication of providing the economic engine to run the world.
Two questions, if you have so much food and money, why are so many people hungry? What makes you believe that your countries economic engine can run the world?
I have never suggested a "crazy back-to-Nature love fest" all I would ask is that we try to remeber that this planet belongs to all of us and as you say we must show far more respect for it. I don't want to revert to hunter gatherers, I am not luddite, I just entirely agree with you that:
I don't like what capitalism is becoming. I don't like the way companies seem to want to curtail my freedom to enhance their bottom line.
We just don't seem to agree on the simple fact that capitalist ideals must be compromised to prevent this.
I absolutely agree that the arguments are unclear, but does that mean that we should all shut up and just grin and bear it?
If he owns his land, he should be able to sow salt on it or plant genetically modified
SuperCrops, if he can sell them, whatever he pleases.
Do you believe this? Do you believe in the eternal ownership of property? Has the farmer no responsibility to future generations? Personally I detest the idea of genetically modified crops, I think it is the ultimate in human arrogance to belive that we even have the remotest idea what effect our tamperings will have on our environment, but I would like to think that no-one could have the right to plant their GM crops without some form of approval.
Work. You know, that dirty word that you socialists can't stand?
I am not a socialist, though to an capitalist American I obviously would be
I work
You obviously believe that no-one would ever price an impotence cure at the maximum profit level where 90% of the worlds population would not be able to afford it. I don't, and if the impotance was caused by genetic mutations introduced by a greedy farmer who doesn't have the monetary resources to pay for all the treatments for all the people he has affected, then so what we have just made sure the poorest part of the planet can't have any more kids......more room for us to expand into in a few years
What's your solution? Think before you answer!
I have only one solution, World Government. Then we would see what all us rich folks would make of a world where equality has a chance. I accept that corruption will never be eradicated, however if the entire world was forming the rules it would be a _lot_ harder to be effective. IMHO it is time that all us rich people sitting at our luxurious PCs with internet connections, houses, jobs, money, food and a home in a wealthy nation were taken down a few pegs for the causes of equality. I have no problem with letting market forces decide, however your arguments would be like MS saying to the government (as they have) "we are playing by the rules now so why not let the market decide". We have used 1000 years of violence to achieve our "rich" positions....it is time we returned some of the wealth we have raped from the world (this from an Irish man who wants to give..... tell me who we attacked/enslaved/raped).
Slashdot Mirror
Having spent a good few hours yesterday finding out just what it was going to take to join some of my colleagues in a game of Unreal, I can tell you that wine does support DirectX 5 anyway, and that unreal delivered windows level performance (i.e. it was perfectly playable at reasonable resolutions) on my non-3d accelerated Linux box. The only unfortunate thing was I ended up having to point my wine.conf to the Win98 drive on my PC (which was brought into VMWare about a month ago and hasn't natively booted since).
I cannot disagree more!
All that has happened here is that someone has taken their scanner, plugged it into a computer, scanned some barcodes, seen what they got, figured out how it was converting the barcode into the data it supplied and finally wrote a bit of code to turn the data from the device into something useful. They didn't go near the distributors software (it wasn't even close to being complicated enough to need that) so all they did was use the hardware the manufacturer gave away for free as it was intended with different software.
Now ask yourself this, if Ford gave away car fresheners for their Fiesta and then asked people to remove from websites the instructions for how to fit the freshener to other models of cars would you say "the right channels have to be used when dealing with other peoples work is concerned"?
I think this is a simple case of a company who are trying to implement a business plan with a potential flaw ("the WINDOW for the BIG companies to come in and control and profit from this process we have created"). Guess they should have made sure that door was closed BEFORE they handed the things out. Besides, do you really think that MS would need the Open Source community to help them crack this OR that MS would be deterred from rolling drivers for this into their software by claims of infringment of IP rights.
Bottom line I think they are stupid....not mallicious just stupid.....ah well so much for another dot.com dream!
I will go and see Star Wars II cause he hasn't released a DVD yet (which in turn pees me off though you can't win on that one cause I want DVDs but I wont buy them while I can't play them with any freedom). If someone shows me how Mr. Lucas is supporting the MPAA (i.e. his membership and preferably any activity on his part for them) than that will be me out of going to movies, or renting them or giving a penny to them until this farce is sorted out.
To all those with influence, take note that you are not getting as much money out of me as you want (it is rapidly approaching nothing) and it is nowhere near what I would spend were in not for "personal politics", and many many more people will be voting with their wallets and giving you less and less cash until you can't pay your lawyers anymore so grow up and come with us intop the new frontier.
In the last 6 months I have seen 0 movies in the cinema and about 4 on video (none rented or encouraged by me) and purchased one CD single for $2 to see what codec they used for the video on it.
In the previous 6 months I saw perhaps 12 movies in the cinema and about 20 on video (many rented or encouraged by me) along with about 4 CDs.
So in six months their taking from me are down from about £120-£150 to £2.
The key is for everyone who hates what their doing to avoid giving them money....if you "have to" see Natalie Portmans new film so do it, if your "thinking" of going to see X-Men...don't!
Ever since the mobile phone industry began (at least in UK and Ireland) it has all been about subsidising phones to get new cutomers on networks. This has now reached near saturation.
Without a new network to sell to people, all the mobile phone companies can do is to produce smaller models and maybe integrate in more features BUT as most people won't be subsidised to buy these phones they are not going to sell many unless they have a killer app (how many of us would swap to another phone if it was running a Free Flashable OS?, or if it incorporated a 128Mb mp3 man, WAP is not a killer app, it'll just get let them eeek out a few more millions). The mobile phone companies will be back to pulling in the cash as soon as significant numbers of newer model phone requiring networks appear...until then they have a quiet time.
let this be a lesson to you! Next time when checking for valid information...USE THE SOURCE! :-)
And remind that Kurt the debian reviewer while your at it
Hi Troll (or is it flamebait merchant),
I have in turn a question to ask you, what software are you going to recompile with your bcc32? Is it going to be a commercial unix or a "Linux" distribution? If it is a linux distribution you can delight in running a non-gcc system but you will still be running GNU/Linux. I think the point of GNU/Linux (as opposed to Linux) is extermely valid as only a very, very, very few people would ever run a system featuring Linux without GNU tools (maybe a linux router project or the like). If you are going to do a slackware/BSD style compile from source just check how many of those packages/projects/files come from the GNU project. I'd sure be interested to hear all about the system you are going to put together sans-GNU.yes in many ways I really am that much of a RMS suckhole, I belive in Free software.
My favourite (by miles) was and is "Running Debian GNU/Linux" by Bill McCarty (published by O'Reilly). Not only is this a great introduction to the GNU OS which comes with Debian GNU/Linux (oh well I guess slink is finally out of date...a bit better than all those RedHat 5.2 and 6.0 books out there though) but it is also published under the Open Publication License. Not a for dummies book, I'd be far happier to give this to a dummy than any for dummies book I have ever seen. It Rocks
Alternatively the kiddies they have been marketing the Bwitney Spwears swingles at for the last few decades have either a got stronger parenting that won't let them be led by the marketeers or the parents have weekened further and are giving them the dough to buy albums instead of singles.
Bottom line, they are up 1/2 billion dollars on the first six months so obviously everyone has given up buying their CDs and is pirating their IP instead.
I am actually really seriously considering standing in an Irish election for 1 primary reason, to rip into all things farcical in Irish law. The prime example being the only way you can get your name as a domain name in Ireland (myname.ie) is to either A add a two (or more) digit number to the end of it OR be standing in the next election (this was brought in by the politicians themselves when some pornsters saw the .com domains they hadn't bothered to claim such as http://TheTaoiseach.com == ThePresident.com for Ireland! and bertieaherne.com which is his real name! Guess what my first election purchase will be :-) /. members (for example) stood in elections worldwide every couple of years, how long before we at least manage to get some decent braodband media coverage.
My question is would anyone be interested in a "Slashdot party" or my other favourite is "The GNU Party". I'm not talking about people who would vote for me or even live in the same country, but simply that if 100
There certainly seems to be a popular opinion on slashdot on a huge range of issues ('Fair Use','Cryptographic Restrictions', 'Software Patents', 'Reverse Engineering'), could we draw a manifesto from these to bombard the world with (BTW I would personally delight in helping throw idiot politicians out far more than getting in myself, and would really want to raise public awareness through humour far more than through dull education).
So what say you? We are a form of lobby (to a select subset of Internet users), how about we take it to the next level.
Also, I would happily support someone else better wuited to stand (even if it does mean sacrificing my domain name);
The Net party will happen, so who is going to be there first?
If my assumptions are wrong, fine...that's why I stated they were assumptions allowing you to correct me.
Running two desktops however does not an equivalent system make, I don't care how you try to justify it. If you add some programs that require a pre-loaded desktop environment to your NT (doesn't KDE run on NT) you will start to get an equivalency.....just because Linux allows you to tweak your system to use more memory does not mean that it takes more memory. Really I just think it is an unfair example you give...remove the KDE and tell us your results, I would believe that NT could still come out with lower memory usage, thats why I wrote the above disclaimers. Don't flame me back for questioning the validity of your statement, correct me (as a lot of your post did) and try to redress my issues. If you think KDE Beta+Gnome=NT equivalence then we'll just have to agree to disagree. If you can present some more arguments as to why you feel your situation is valid then fo gor it.
BTW I feel my memory usage ideas are fine (now the validity of my statement vis-a-vis a just finished booting system may be invalid) however I feel that the idea of keeping your memory free for applications that may be started is stupid, if you can write something else into the memory that may speed up subsequent operations then why not if it can be swapped off if an application needs the space?
Your NT box after booting runs nothing other than its desktop (assumption).
Your Linux box after booting runs a bunch of background servers (assumption) and a desktop AND a BETA desktop.
It would be a huge achievement for the KDE team (and slack and gnome to a lesser degree) if your linux box consumed more memory at startup. Also, don't forget that linux/*nix regards memory as a valueable resource to be filled (make sure we're using it cause we have it) where Windows regards memory as a precious resource not to use (make sure we don't waste any cause it's so valuable).
IMHO, either don't make comments like that OR qualify them (with a link even) to describe what it is your really found, I would love to see good figures whoever wins that battle.
Ireland Internet Access Options
- Regular Telephone Call charges and no ISP fees: IR£0.12 per unit, 6am-6pm = 3mins/unit, 6pm-6am = 15mins/unit
- ISP Telephone Call charges and ISP subscription: IR£0.12 per unit, 6am-6pm = 5mins/unit, 6pm-6am = 15mins/unit, ISP IR£10/month
- Flat Rate Off-Peak: IR£20/month
- Mobile 9600: 6am-6pm = £0.25/min (best price), 6pm-6am = £0.10/min + line rental £10/month+ (with mobiles the trade off is line rental cost V call cost
None of these (bar the mombile) include the telephone line rental charges of about IR£20/month for a analog line or IR£35/month for an ISDN line.Want some thing faster.........hope you have IR£?,000s.
All in all I have said it before and I'll say it again you Americans like to moan about how slow your country is....well you are beating mine IMHO and I ain't third world. You live in a massive country and should expect where you choose to live to significantly influence the range of options available to you. I live in a small country where the only thing that could change is if I am toooooo remote to have a phoneline or too remote/difficult to get ISDN to. Cable, DSL, ADSL etc. forget it....maybe someday soon one of the many "companies" will actually start to deliver on a promise but there are no signs of it (and I live in the largest and capital city so where is live is not delaying the roll-out to me).
IR£1=US$1.14=E0.696
perhaps that is exactly the meaning that is meant to be portrayed! Seeing as though it would require about $20 of patent payments to allow the machine decode and play a full on content scrambled DVD perhaps instead they are simply going to let the machine playback non-CSS streams. Some manufacturers have already released non CSS DVDs so perhaps this is Nintendo's way of telling the MPAA and its cohorts that it can go fuck itself if it thinks they are going to hand it any real amount of money to release a player for the titles THEY sell. Console manufacturers (and never forget that Sony is not a console manufacturer but a giant comglomerate who has every interest in making a cheap box that can play their games aswell as thier cds and dvds) make their money from selling cheap hardware and recouping the costs through licensing for game creators, do you think they are going to add more cost to the machine for a feature which will not help them sell a single extra game but will provide someone else with an improved revenue stream.
I hope Nintendo release a prototype (or the inital Japanese release) with no media support or just mpeg support (pay them some licensing, they are the not-"open" standard video format) and make a big stink over why they will not pay HOLLYWOOD. The average punter will listen if Nintendo says their console would be $20 more to play the HOLLYWOOD DVDs without any change in hardware AND that the people collecting the money are also collecting it on every DVD created (etc. etc.).
I would not assume that this announcement vis-a-vis DVDs has anything to do with hardwre or software or any other technical or marketing decision......it is simply the start of a negotiation for "substantially reduced" royalty charges (i.e. none), and perhaps the thought of an extra few tens of millions of cheap DVD players out there will tempt the MPAA etc. into accepting the royalty payments from the DVD producers. Perhaps Nintendo will simply buy a special license (then what odds on the Nintendo DVDPlayer for every platform under the Sun).
/. is getting nice and confusing with Troll's aplenty but I'm still going to assume your for real and tell you how I see it.
Many of the olympic sports are contested between athletes who are heros at home, basketball is no exception to this. I personally believe that first and foremost an olympic gold medal should say you are the best, not that you are the best of all those people who aren't good enough to earn money from their sport. I love to see the NBA superstars in the Olympics because they raise the level of competition and I will love it even more the first year they lose the final (it will happen soon enough, how many great foreigners play in the NBA). I haven't read any complaints about tennis, is this because the tennis stars are more evenly distributed on an international scale? Where are the professional boxers? I would love to see Lennox Lewis, the world pro heavywieght champion stepping into an Olympic tournament with about 5 fights ahead of him against unknown opponents (will it be Tyson or Holyfield). The olympics should be about the highest quality of sport first and this will bring the IOC their revenue.
The way I see it this whole argument draws fabulous parallels to the mp3 and decss arguments, and yet again it is the forces of corporatism (the tv networks and sponsers) fighting against the new technology and its logical conclusions to try and protect their outdated revenue models. Once again they will discover that the horse has bolted and will need to refine their practices to deal with this (one Visor+camera+mobile phone = live webcam, hell you could also have a second mobile to dial a PC which encodes it to a live audio stream). I can understand that the IOC must make the noises to try and ensure they get the money they have been promised, but as long as the NBCs of this world are not covering every event locally live people will go elsewhere to see the events they want (soccer). Why not tell the sites that they can do anything they want as long as they:
- don't broadcast live (event must be over before coverage starts) if a licensed broadcaster is present
- Carry the official sponsor(s) of the events logo on any page which refers to the event or be sued (so you can avoid this is you make no money of the whole affair, but if you even have a banner on your page....)
Only losers are the TV companies who can lose advertising revenue directed at events they aren't even showing, or can lose revenue to people who are doing a better job of covering it online without live coverage.Good info :-)
Where I see the problem, and what I was trying to draw attention to with my post, is not in determining which graphics card has the best 3d performance but in determining which cards support what features (on what platforms) and how these features perform. In windows land you can buy a video card to handle 2d, 3d, video IO and dual-heading and know in advance what sort of performance you should achieve. If I want to know the same for linux I can't (at least not before I buy the card and stick it in my machine)! I can find out if a card has dri support (or some other form of hardware accelerated 3d) and I can figure out what sort of 2d modes it can support, but discovering what features have hardware acceleration and which don't is a non-trivial task (I haven't spent long looking at dri opensource site but it seems to only have mailing lists). Discovering if a cards video facilities are accessable is again much more difficult, for example you may know that a card will capture video in full-screen PAL, but will the linux drivers do it and if so in what formats and at what performance loads.
In summary, 2d graphics card performance has reached a very mature level where nearly any supported card will provide reasonable performance for all but the most demanding of applications (full-screen mpeg playback may push some cards beyond their abilities and not through the MPEG decoding which could be host processor based but through drawing the volume of final data). 3d performance is starting to become formalised and as such we need information on which cards support what features and how well they perform. Video4Linux should be providing us with some control over capture and output devices, but which consumer devices are supported and what will they do. We need a linuxhardware site which says that A is supported by B and will do C with D overheads, then we can all start to make some reasonably informed decisions about what video card to buy, and stop basing our decisions on the lowest common denominator of 2d and 3d support (and perhaps some of Tom's nice Quake III stats). Bemchmarking is the second stage, figuring out what a card will do is the first.
The README file in the linked tgz states that the driver is for the Millenium (I and II) and the Mystique....no mention of the G400 or multihead or tv or ........
That said, I am still dying to get my hands on a good graphics card for Linux (it would be nice if it would do BSD and Be but Linux is _my_ OS of choice) and this is starting to sound closer to the mark. Anyone able to offer any real feedback on what this can do? The one thing we are really missing now in terms of X Video Card support is a "Tom's Hardware" site which reviews the cards and drivers so that we can all find out what features we can expect to get out of modern cards under XFree and what sort of performance they offer (primarly of interest vis-a-vis OpenGL frame rates and dvd playback cpu loads, but scalability (1head - 4 heads + tv) and video capture performance (achievable undropped data rates, resolution and frame rates). Anyone able to write useful benchmarks for any of these areas...if so please do and send them to Tom GPL'd (and/or anyone else you think might take this on).
The debate over Nvidia's open V closed drivers is so virulent because we do not have any good performance comparisons, and also because support for features beyond standard 2d and 3d are essentially undocumented/unsupported and therefore it is difficult to determine what features you would get out of your ATI All in Wonder 128 (to take what I feel is a good example) if you use it under linux without just buying one.
If Linux (and really the free OSs as a whole) wants to be any more mainstream for "home" users and not simply as a second OS on a machine designed for Windows, we need to start gathering up the hardware and driver (the two are inexorably intertwined for Free OSs) information so that people buying a PC can quickly see what there machine will/should do under their OS of choice. The vital areas are video and sound, but other items such as Nics and capture cards would be beneficial.
If such a site already exists please post the url:-)
Slightly OT, but we have all been talking about how the nVidia cards have the best consumer OpenGL ICD and that they will not release it to help Matrox and ATI etc. catch up........what chance of SGI (who MUST have the best OpenGL ICDs period) helping everyone play catchup instead.....then we can all have some Schweeeeeeeeeeet Free ICDs.
The real question is if they do GPL ALL code and therefore do not make any money from licensing, will we all be delighted at the chance to buy at the increased price for the benefit of anyone (including ourselves) being able to create a program (let's face it it is not going to do games only) to run on the machine? How many more playstations would have been sold if it COULD have had free games!
The only "good" reason I can think of for them to bring in this change is that they don't like not being able to sniff all the information on your/their connections. :-)
The only bad reason I can think of for them to bring in this change is that they don't like people using their service because that means they need more real bandwidth, so instead they are just banning anything you could possibly want to use it for other than surfing and email (and even email they are not generous about) because if they banned these they wouldn't be able to convince anyone that it was a good deal
Vorbis was an inquisitor who believed he would be the next profit of the Great God Mighty Horns Om. Nanny Ogg is the matriarchal nymphomaniac of the Ramtop town of Bad Ass. I just can't imagine them ever having a kid!
Is this really about trying to bring support to Star Office or a genuine colaborative effort from Sun?
I must admit I am overplaying the devil's advocate role to a degree (though not much), but thank you also for recognising that I am not trying to flame or troll, but simply to reveal how I see these things. /. (and I regard /. as it's posters) for some reason seems to always defend the capitalist ideals while slating the coporationist. Corporationism is the logical conclusion of capitalism and it is not acceptable.
You say that "I don't believe that poverty+nuclear power=ability to hold the world hostage. The entire world would unite against any country that tried to do that. " but can it not be argued that the entire rich world has been holding the poor world to hostage? I was trying to simply evoke the realisation on people that we (the people lucky enough to be born in the richer section of the planet) should be in a vulnerable position, we are the minority. Instead we are holding all the "money" and living our luxurious lives at the expense of others (ask all the kids in your country who wear Nike's if they profit from capitalism, and do not try to argue with me that we are providing good jobs to the workers just because it is better than nothing, would you work for the equivalent of those wages their or in your own country?).
From your remaining points, the capitalist ideals (sorry but my upbringing refuses to let me believe they are truly American ideals) you claim are "responsible for the greatest increase in wealth and prosperity, for the greatest number of people, harming the least amount of people, in history" may be, however as you so simply put it "Can it be replaced by something better? I certainly hope so!". I personally feel disgust with the corporatist tack that I feel the American (and in this case I have no problem singling America for particular though not solitary attention) policy makers have taken, and my readings of slashdot certainly agree with this (Napster, 2600, etc.). I just always feel that
I have to say that the one aspect of this I feel you (Moofie) are missing is that we are all on an evolutionary chain, and just because the system we rich slashdot readers have has the best history, does not mean that it even came close to being good. I do not have the answers, but I feel strongly that the attitude we (rich people) have collectively taken is sickening, and I for one would be willing to sacrifice my posessions (I would still have the extreme privilege of an education to degree level) to bring a level of equality. To the people who asked me to give these up, I refuse to do this in isolation as it would be a token gesture of meaningless consequence, but I am happy to sacrifice another 10-30% of my income to help force the world bank to drop the debts they have promised to, to give even more to all the people in my society (Ireland) worse off than I am, and to grow the pool of money that my already quite generous country offers internationally to the needy (I have no problem making my country subsantially poorer to make hundreds of poor countries minorly richer). I get sick every time I hear someone slam a "welfare" system or taxation for wealth redistribution, quite simply, the current systems work well for us on the best side and do not destory the less well off, however we can and should do better, for the equlaity of humanity.
And to finish (because I feel that this deserves an on-topic story to itself) what genuinely makes me sick to the pits of my stomach is the ideals frequently esposed which state "fuck anyone poorer than me, I deserve it", to each of you (and this is NOT directed at Moofie) be very very afraid, someday those souls you feel happy to leave ground down (and you repluse at the idea of aiding in any way, even any form of "socialist" welfare system) will rise, and you will fall as a consequence (even if only to approach their level from above) and who do you think they (the majority) will want to shaft? Maybe it won't be you, but if not it will be your ancestors. Let us all build for a happier future now.
I agree with your practical comments on Africa, but refering to another comment of mine "do you belive in the eternal ownership of property?" in particular the "american" continent is owned by? If the poorer contries of the world gained the power to truly threaten the rich ones, would the money grabbing commercialists happily kill them all off because "they don't buy or products anyway"?
I am a white man, and I also have not enslaved anyone directly, but my simple presence in a nation such as Ireland, buying clothes made in sweatshops etc. etc. (I try to put my money where my conscience is, but as we all know it can be very hard to really tell who is who when you are handing over money). I live in a rich country in a poor world, and my richness is perpetuated by the continued suffering (in relative terms) of the majority of the planet. If I gave away every penny I earned I would still be rich to most of the planet, the only way I could resolve this problem would be to give away everything I own and live in one of the coutries with a more average wealth, and this is not what I am advocating.
Two questions, if you have so much food and money, why are so many people hungry? What makes you believe that your countries economic engine can run the world?
I have never suggested a "crazy back-to-Nature love fest" all I would ask is that we try to remeber that this planet belongs to all of us and as you say we must show far more respect for it. I don't want to revert to hunter gatherers, I am not luddite, I just entirely agree with you that: We just don't seem to agree on the simple fact that capitalist ideals must be compromised to prevent this.
Do you believe this? Do you believe in the eternal ownership of property? Has the farmer no responsibility to future generations? Personally I detest the idea of genetically modified crops, I think it is the ultimate in human arrogance to belive that we even have the remotest idea what effect our tamperings will have on our environment, but I would like to think that no-one could have the right to plant their GM crops without some form of approval.
- I am not a socialist, though to an capitalist American I obviously would be
- I work
- You obviously believe that no-one would ever price an impotence cure at the maximum profit level where 90% of the worlds population would not be able to afford it. I don't, and if the impotance was caused by genetic mutations introduced by a greedy farmer who doesn't have the monetary resources to pay for all the treatments for all the people he has affected, then so what we have just made sure the poorest part of the planet can't have any more kids......more room for us to expand into in a few years
I have only one solution, World Government. Then we would see what all us rich folks would make of a world where equality has a chance. I accept that corruption will never be eradicated, however if the entire world was forming the rules it would be a _lot_ harder to be effective. IMHO it is time that all us rich people sitting at our luxurious PCs with internet connections, houses, jobs, money, food and a home in a wealthy nation were taken down a few pegs for the causes of equality. I have no problem with letting market forces decide, however your arguments would be like MS saying to the government (as they have) "we are playing by the rules now so why not let the market decide". We have used 1000 years of violence to achieve our "rich" positions....it is time we returned some of the wealth we have raped from the world (this from an Irish man who wants to give..... tell me who we attacked/enslaved/raped).