"Now, which award are we going to give Linus this month?"
Folks are nominating the same old people and projects over and over again, and this award is no exception, despite its original announcement.
Yes, I am a little disappointed that David Hinds and his great PCMCIA kernel modules have not been selected in either category.
He *is* an unsung hero (now that he hasn't been selected, he's an even more unsung hero;-). Those people selected in this category don't quite fit. Some of them even have fan pages and people are actually spending time reading their personal diary.
I am also unhappy with the kernel module selection. With the exception of Video4Linux, none of them are ready for prime time yet and still *need* to improve.
I am a little bit ignorant of Be's current business status. Can someone who knows please summarize: Is Be doing well from a commercial viewpoint? Are they successful from a market viewpoint? Or is Be on the brink of destruction?
I agree (I have pointed a number of other reasons why David is a great guy in this nomination for another category).
David & Co. have created a great piece of software and he has been very supportive. Whenever I had technical trouble, he'd give solid, helpful answers within short time.
I am a long-time Linux user with different laptops and so I experienced first hand how much work David Hinds and a number of helpers have put into them.
Just look at it:
- From its early beginnings, the modules were a more and more *complete* set of hot-swap drivers long before similar hardware (usb) existed.
- David & Co. have created drivers for most every PCMCIA card on the market (I know what I talk about, I have used a number of very strange cards, a PCMCIA-connected floppy drive for the Toshiba Libretto among them). Of course, there will always be cards missing. But still, the sheer number of drivers in the PCMCIA modules are incredible.
- They have done so even for those PCMCIA cards without proper developer documentation.
- David's work was not included with the kernel for a very long time becaus of design decisions by the core kernel developers. Nevertheless, he has kept on supporting this *external* set of sources for many years and made it compatible to most kernel versions at any given time (the same source distribution was compatible with 2.0.x, 2.2.x and 2.3.x for some time).
- Also, the source's Makefile is compatible with every distribution I know of - out of the box. (The PCMCIA modules require some modified init-scripts).
So yes, the PCMCIA modules are an incredible effort that have come a long way over a long time and are very solid piece of software. I possibly wouldn't use Linux without them.
"Less than 5% of the population is normal. Or are they the exception?"
With a few friends, I recently had a long discussion on a similar subject...
Basically, it seems that "normal people" do not exist. People usually say that "normal is what everybody's doing".
But when you look around, you'll see that what we call "normal behaviour" - being polite to each other, helpful, friendly, healthy etc. etc. - is not actually "normal", but only what we desire to be normal. It is an ideal.
The things that actually are normal let's me have a rather grim view on our society.
"Unnormal" is much more common than we think. In fact, it is the norm. It is normal...
...I don't know if you would classify it as "indie", but the contemporary a cappella community has been using the internet more or less since day #1.
Really, we've been using the net for our own advantage very effectively. Thanks to the net, this small group of outcasts:-) has become a strong community with a lot of support for each other worldwide. Sounds cheesy and pathetic, but it's true...
We have a newsgroup dedicated to our music (rec.music.a-cappella), we have an organization (CASA) that works by 80% through the help of online media, there are internet mail order shops for a capella albums that were online before amazon.com was such a hype it is today. Most vocal bands have been among the earliest to set up web sites long before the mainstream music biz discovered it.
And of course, most of these bands have been using digital audio files to promote their albums from the very beginning. (I may be wrong, as I don't use Be-Os, but one now-professional group called The Housejacks is featured on the Be-Os install disks...)
So yes, MP3 (and Realaudio) have been a MAJOR factor to help contemporary a cappella find a larger audience.
I myself don't think that online music distribution is unfair. To the contrary. My own group's album had a few additional sales only due to the fact that people had a chance to hear snippets from it online.
BTW, if you happen to visit a record store, check out an a cappella album! Rockapella, Housejacks, m-pact, Nylons - you name it!:-)
But there's something else that I am looking for - a small, very light portable box that includes standard PC hardware, but that is not a laptop.
It should be just a little box with connectors for keyboard, screen, mouse, network, period.
Why? Well, for one, whereever I go, keyboards, screens and mice are already there. Also, most laptops make a lot of compromises for the sake of including everything in one box. Yet, a "normal" PC, even one in a portable case, is not light or portable enough.
The readers at/. are not angry because of your product, so there's no need to defend it. These people are p*ssed because of the behaviour of your marketing department (or at least one person of it).
While it's nice that you come here to post a message, it would have been nice to actually hear *your view* on the *actual matter*.
So thanks for coming by, but now, let's talk about the original subject.
I'd call that normal, it could probably even be called healthy.
I spend additional time at my home PC only if I have an interesting private, not work- or university-related programming challenge to hack on.
Anyway, I find that most geeks I know do use computers A LOT, but they know and they all say that they need other hobbies to compensate. I myself would go mad if *everything* I did was about computers.
BTW, some time ago when I did *only* music for a few weeks (my a cappella group(s) are semi-professional and consume a lot of time), I found out that it's the same even when it's the other way round. In my case, music helps me cope with computers and computers help me cope with music.
He did not forget, he simply did not need to. That's the point. If you spend your day at home, with no other persons to meet, you don't have to do the usual hoopla.
I can quite relate to that, in a sense. I once spent a few weeks translating a CD ROM and rarely got out or had time to do anything because of a tight schedule (it was a doomed project and it was a dumb project, but nevertheless...)
Boy, did my appartment start to get messy. And I myself started being messy too. All day at the computer, still wearing the pyjama.
I like the article. While it doesn't exactly report anything unexpected, there are a few gems in there...
"There is some good news. My shampoo and remarkably small stick of $14 deodorant just arrived by courier. By now, I'm not that interested in having a shower and I've grown to like my odour. It's kind of fruity."
By the way, the German weekly SPIEGEL magazine did a similar experiment where one of their authors spent a week trying to use the new German Pay TV network.
As others said already, the idea of a pen-shaped pointer device isn't exactly new. This particular device seems to be different because a) it is wireless and b) uses an extremely small ballpoint.
However, this pen has a big disadvantage like its predecessor - you have to pick it up, hold it and later lay it down while you use it. For people who touchtype, this is a very repetive (and thus over time more and more uncomfortable) task.
A mouse or trackball does not require that you really have to pick something up, you just grab and move it. It's a tiny, yet important difference...
Anyway, I am not sure if the current idea of a "modern ui", the user interface based on the movement of a pointer device that is used to navigate windows, pull-down menus etc., is *such* a great idea.
Most computer-illiterate people still have problems to understand the metaphore and very complex software actually makes the use of a pointer device even less impractical than the proponents of the idea claim - don't say you've never spent minutes of idly clicking and searching through multiple levels of pull-down-menus?
I am still hoping for a user interface that is completely different. Speech processing is good enough now and modern processors can handle it. When will there be the first true window-less, speech driven user interface? I can't wait to see it.
I see a problem with the fact that many vocal supporters of the open source world are basically just here because it's the underdog.
Right now, it's "cool" to do Linux so that you have a chance to diss those Windows lamers... (visit any usenet discussion about it.)
Now that Linux starts being successful, it seems that many people already look out for the next underdog. With Linux usage not being a sign of Elite anymore...
"Mass destruction - hooray hooray"... Jim's Big Ego have a hilarous song about Y2k! (I am not affiliated with them, I just like this song. Also, check out the search engine at mp3.com - there are dozens of other Y2k songs there... and no, I am not affiliated with mp3.com, either.)
Will I have to connect your company's graphics card to a cup of tea? Now that would be a change.
------------------
Re:Odd trend in PC hardware design; where's the DS
on
New ATi 3D Chip
·
· Score: 2
To answer myself: Yes, I know that some time ago, IBM manufactured a generic DSP card that was used as a modem and a soundcard, and yes, I know that it blew.
But I think that the concept is right, yet IBM failed to actually do it accordingly.
------------------
Odd trend in PC hardware design; where's the DSP?
on
New ATi 3D Chip
·
· Score: 1
I find the current obsession with 3d graphics and 3d sound rather odd.
I myself am a casual gamer and played my share of Half Live, Descent and Freespace (try Freespace, it's good).
Now if I look at any current game-capable home PC, I think those are quite a/bastard/ of a computer.
- A graphics card that generates a LOT of heat, so much that it needs its own fan.
Some graphics cards consume that much power that the mainboard's chipset starts behaving flaky. Some graphics cards consume more power than supported by not-that-old chipsets and can indeed create actual hardware defects on a mainboard.
- My desktop's graphics card has 32 MB of RAM. Come on, my laptop has 32 MB of system RAM and I do close to everything on it, including word processing, database development, web server stuff...
- Yet, the graphic's card awesome processing power and its RAM are being used for gaming only. I mean, most of the time at a computer I spend my time programming or using office applications. At these times, these resources are just idly wasting power.
- What do these modern graphics cards do? They speed up 3D related calculations.
- Isn't that more or less a specialized variant of what a digital signal processor does? Or am I naiive when it comes to a DSP?
- Why do we have to have specialized chips for graphics, sound, win-modems and whatever when we could have used a single type of add-on chip to help the CPU? Why did the industry still not decide to put at least *one* versatile, programmable DSP on every modern computer mainboard? Those things are cheap, they are versatile, they could be programmed to speed up a whole bag of different algorithms such as audio (think live MP3 encoding, that was possible years ago with a DSP), graphics (Photoshop filters), encryption. Again: Or am I naiive when it comes to a DSP's capabilities?
- Another related question: Why this odd decision to push 4-way sound cards for 3D sound? 5 channel home movie theatre stereos exist since a long time, why did noone in the industry decide to offer a simple card to connect with those.
Oh my. I don't claim to be an expert on DSPs or 3D audio. But still, from the little I know, I think that the last two years in PC hardware design went terribly wrong...
Slashdot Mirror
I am reading Playboy only because of its IT technology coverage.
------------------
Well, allow me to rant.
;-). Those people selected in this category don't quite fit. Some of them even have fan pages and people are actually spending time reading their personal diary.
"Now, which award are we going to give Linus this month?"
Folks are nominating the same old people and projects over and over again, and this award is no exception, despite its original announcement.
Yes, I am a little disappointed that David Hinds and his great PCMCIA kernel modules have not been selected in either category.
He *is* an unsung hero (now that he hasn't been selected, he's an even more unsung hero
I am also unhappy with the kernel module selection. With the exception of Video4Linux, none of them are ready for prime time yet and still *need* to improve.
Oh my.
------------------
I am a little bit ignorant of Be's current business status. Can someone who knows please summarize: Is Be doing well from a commercial viewpoint? Are they successful from a market viewpoint? Or is Be on the brink of destruction?
------------------
Godwin's law. You lost.
------------------
Allow me to nominate xteddy, the only desktop application you'll really need:
http://www.physik.uni-hall e.de/~e2od5/debian/xteddy.html
This version of xteddy allows you to use different teddy images, among them a rubber duck, a stuffed penguin, various other stuffed animals.
------------------
I agree (I have pointed a number of other reasons why David is a great guy in this nomination for another category).
:-)
David & Co. have created a great piece of software and he has been very supportive. Whenever I had technical trouble, he'd give solid, helpful answers within short time.
Go David!
------------------
I think this is the only logical vote.
I am a long-time Linux user with different laptops and so I experienced first hand how much work David Hinds and a number of helpers have put into them.
Just look at it:
- From its early beginnings, the modules were a more and more *complete* set of hot-swap drivers long before similar hardware (usb) existed.
- David & Co. have created drivers for most every PCMCIA card on the market (I know what I talk about, I have used a number of very strange cards, a PCMCIA-connected floppy drive for the Toshiba Libretto among them). Of course, there will always be cards missing. But still, the sheer number of drivers in the PCMCIA modules are incredible.
- They have done so even for those PCMCIA cards without proper developer documentation.
- David's work was not included with the kernel for a very long time becaus of design decisions by the core kernel developers. Nevertheless, he has kept on supporting this *external* set of sources for many years and made it compatible to most kernel versions at any given time (the same source distribution was compatible with 2.0.x, 2.2.x and 2.3.x for some time).
- Also, the source's Makefile is compatible with every distribution I know of - out of the box. (The PCMCIA modules require some modified init-scripts).
So yes, the PCMCIA modules are an incredible effort that have come a long way over a long time and are very solid piece of software. I possibly wouldn't use Linux without them.
------------------
"Less than 5% of the population is normal. Or are they the exception?"
With a few friends, I recently had a long discussion on a similar subject...
Basically, it seems that "normal people" do not exist. People usually say that "normal is what everybody's doing".
But when you look around, you'll see that what we call "normal behaviour" - being polite to each other, helpful, friendly, healthy etc. etc. - is not actually "normal", but only what we desire to be normal. It is an ideal.
The things that actually are normal let's me have a rather grim view on our society.
"Unnormal" is much more common than we think. In fact, it is the norm. It is normal...
------------------
...I don't know if you would classify it as "indie", but the contemporary a cappella community has been using the internet more or less since day #1.
:-) has become a strong community with a lot of support for each other worldwide. Sounds cheesy and pathetic, but it's true...
:-)
Really, we've been using the net for our own advantage very effectively. Thanks to the net, this small group of outcasts
We have a newsgroup dedicated to our music (rec.music.a-cappella), we have an organization (CASA) that works by 80% through the help of online media, there are internet mail order shops for a capella albums that were online before amazon.com was such a hype it is today. Most vocal bands have been among the earliest to set up web sites long before the mainstream music biz discovered it.
And of course, most of these bands have been using digital audio files to promote their albums from the very beginning. (I may be wrong, as I don't use Be-Os, but one now-professional group called The Housejacks is featured on the Be-Os install disks...)
So yes, MP3 (and Realaudio) have been a MAJOR factor to help contemporary a cappella find a larger audience.
I myself don't think that online music distribution is unfair. To the contrary. My own group's album had a few additional sales only due to the fact that people had a chance to hear snippets from it online.
BTW, if you happen to visit a record store, check out an a cappella album! Rockapella, Housejacks, m-pact, Nylons - you name it!
------------------
Hi,
There was that ambitious hardware project of a Linux-only computer by Corel. I recall that it was later made an independent company from Corel.
Anyway, what happened to the device? Is it successful?
------------------
That device is interesting.
But there's something else that I am looking for - a small, very light portable box that includes standard PC hardware, but that is not a laptop.
It should be just a little box with connectors for keyboard, screen, mouse, network, period.
Why? Well, for one, whereever I go, keyboards, screens and mice are already there. Also, most laptops make a lot of compromises for the sake of including everything in one box. Yet, a "normal" PC, even one in a portable case, is not light or portable enough.
Does anyone know where to find such a box?
------------------
...another parody site: Phrasemonger. Thanks for your attention.
------------------
> Hanno asked to hear *my view* on
> the *actual matter*. And you've
> heard it.
Yip. And I'd like to thank you for the straightforward answer. Kudos.
------------------
The readers at /. are not angry because of your product, so there's no need to defend it. These people are p*ssed because of the behaviour of your marketing department (or at least one person of it).
While it's nice that you come here to post a message, it would have been nice to actually hear *your view* on the *actual matter*.
So thanks for coming by, but now, let's talk about the original subject.
------------------
Let me rehash my question that I already asked about Q3...
How does the Linux version of UT compare to the Windows when running on the same hardware?
------------------
I'd call that normal, it could probably even be called healthy.
I spend additional time at my home PC only if I have an interesting private, not work- or university-related programming challenge to hack on.
Anyway, I find that most geeks I know do use computers A LOT, but they know and they all say that they need other hobbies to compensate. I myself would go mad if *everything* I did was about computers.
Luckily, I have my a cappella music which helps me stay sane.
BTW, some time ago when I did *only* music for a few weeks (my a cappella group(s) are semi-professional and consume a lot of time), I found out that it's the same even when it's the other way round. In my case, music helps me cope with computers and computers help me cope with music.
------------------
> He forgot to bathe? Give me a break.
He did not forget, he simply did not need to. That's the point. If you spend your day at home, with no other persons to meet, you don't have to do the usual hoopla.
I can quite relate to that, in a sense. I once spent a few weeks translating a CD ROM and rarely got out or had time to do anything because of a tight schedule (it was a doomed project and it was a dumb project, but nevertheless...)
Boy, did my appartment start to get messy. And I myself started being messy too. All day at the computer, still wearing the pyjama.
------------------
I like the article. While it doesn't exactly report anything unexpected, there are a few gems in there...
"There is some good news. My shampoo and remarkably small stick of $14 deodorant just arrived by courier. By now, I'm not that interested in having a shower and I've grown to like my odour. It's kind of fruity."
By the way, the German weekly SPIEGEL magazine did a similar experiment where one of their authors spent a week trying to use the new German Pay TV network.
------------------
As others said already, the idea of a pen-shaped pointer device isn't exactly new. This particular device seems to be different because a) it is wireless and b) uses an extremely small ballpoint.
However, this pen has a big disadvantage like its predecessor - you have to pick it up, hold it and later lay it down while you use it. For people who touchtype, this is a very repetive (and thus over time more and more uncomfortable) task.
A mouse or trackball does not require that you really have to pick something up, you just grab and move it. It's a tiny, yet important difference...
Anyway, I am not sure if the current idea of a "modern ui", the user interface based on the movement of a pointer device that is used to navigate windows, pull-down menus etc., is *such* a great idea.
Most computer-illiterate people still have problems to understand the metaphore and very complex software actually makes the use of a pointer device even less impractical than the proponents of the idea claim - don't say you've never spent minutes of idly clicking and searching through multiple levels of pull-down-menus?
I am still hoping for a user interface that is completely different. Speech processing is good enough now and modern processors can handle it. When will there be the first true window-less, speech driven user interface? I can't wait to see it.
"Computer: tea, earl grey, hot."
------------------
...will the Chinese send a manned craft there?
...will the Chinese launch a cyber attack against that planet? Of course, using modified, evil closed-source seti@home clients?
------------------
I see a problem with the fact that many vocal supporters of the open source world are basically just here because it's the underdog.
Right now, it's "cool" to do Linux so that you have a chance to diss those Windows lamers... (visit any usenet discussion about it.)
Now that Linux starts being successful, it seems that many people already look out for the next underdog. With Linux usage not being a sign of Elite anymore...
------------------
"Mass destruction - hooray hooray"... Jim's Big Ego have a hilarous song about Y2k! (I am not affiliated with them, I just like this song. Also, check out the search engine at mp3.com - there are dozens of other Y2k songs there... and no, I am not affiliated with mp3.com, either.)
------------------
Will I have to connect your company's graphics card to a cup of tea? Now that would be a change.
------------------
To answer myself: Yes, I know that some time ago, IBM manufactured a generic DSP card that was used as a modem and a soundcard, and yes, I know that it blew.
But I think that the concept is right, yet IBM failed to actually do it accordingly.
------------------
I find the current obsession with 3d graphics and 3d sound rather odd.
/bastard/ of a computer.
I myself am a casual gamer and played my share of Half Live, Descent and Freespace (try Freespace, it's good).
Now if I look at any current game-capable home PC, I think those are quite a
- A graphics card that generates a LOT of heat, so much that it needs its own fan.
Some graphics cards consume that much power that the mainboard's chipset starts behaving flaky. Some graphics cards consume more power than supported by not-that-old chipsets and can indeed create actual hardware defects on a mainboard.
- My desktop's graphics card has 32 MB of RAM. Come on, my laptop has 32 MB of system RAM and I do close to everything on it, including word processing, database development, web server stuff...
- Yet, the graphic's card awesome processing power and its RAM are being used for gaming only. I mean, most of the time at a computer I spend my time programming or using office applications. At these times, these resources are just idly wasting power.
- What do these modern graphics cards do? They speed up 3D related calculations.
- Isn't that more or less a specialized variant of what a digital signal processor does? Or am I naiive when it comes to a DSP?
- Why do we have to have specialized chips for graphics, sound, win-modems and whatever when we could have used a single type of add-on chip to help the CPU? Why did the industry still not decide to put at least *one* versatile, programmable DSP on every modern computer mainboard? Those things are cheap, they are versatile, they could be programmed to speed up a whole bag of different algorithms such as audio (think live MP3 encoding, that was possible years ago with a DSP), graphics (Photoshop filters), encryption. Again: Or am I naiive when it comes to a DSP's capabilities?
- Another related question: Why this odd decision to push 4-way sound cards for 3D sound? 5 channel home movie theatre stereos exist since a long time, why did noone in the industry decide to offer a simple card to connect with those.
Oh my. I don't claim to be an expert on DSPs or 3D audio. But still, from the little I know, I think that the last two years in PC hardware design went terribly wrong...
------------------