POVRAY is a free, open source (not GPL but something similiar) ray tracing engine which has a fairly simple language for defining scenes.
It works with nearly every OS.
However it is quite a bit different from OpenGL. POVRAY is a program for creating scenes and movies while OpenGL can be used for more interactive types of programs.
The source distribution of POVRAY has a file called povuser.txt which will walk you through a tutorial of its general features and capabilities.
If Linux games are not selling why have I been waiting for an order from Loki/Digital River for the last couple of months?
I've been waiting for an order since June 20 and when ever I ask Digital River about the status of my order I get a responce like this:
"The product you ordered is currently on backorder. Our warehouse has
not yet received this item, but we will be filling orders upon arrival.
We do not have an estimated date on the arrival, however. You will
receive an email notification when your order is actually shipped. Your
credit card has not been charged at this point. We apologize for any
inconvenience this delay has caused."
If there is no demand, I wouldn't have expected the games I ordered to have gone onto backorder in the first place.
Maybe it is only the ID games that are not selling.
Baring the fact that it is a wrist watch, the core technology for this device has to have the wearable croud drooling. Remember IBM is endevering to enhance this device so it can run several days without a recharge. Add a head mounted display and externalized finger pad and up have a wearable uber toy.
Could we possibly protect our selves through a new form of licensing. If you have ever read MS licensing agreement you will find they are not responsible in any way of how well their software works or what you use it for. If someone uses IE to steal your cookies it's not MS's fault.
The GPL focuses on protecting the software, not the author. Maybe we need a more protective license.
Hmm. I see and understand your idea. I personally don't believe it to be true. Sure corporations will try their hardest to effect government, and some times they will succeed. The DMCA is a prime example of corporate America pushing bad law onto the books.
I will admit I was asleep when that one became law. The difference is we, as in the people of the US, have the power to get the DMCA removed or at least corrected. We simply need to convince enough people of this fact and get the right polititions on our side. A special interest group would be one way of getting this done. Sadly polititions seldom listen to individuals these days.
Even if what you say is true, that the corporations have taken over the US government, there is one significant difference. We still have the power to take our government back.
Last time we tuned in american_bongo said: That view, quite honestly, is retarded. It seems to me, that corporations and government are fucking the same.
I beg to differ. Microsoft is a big corporation. I can effectively boycott them by not purchasing MS software and acquiring my computer hardware through vars that do not sell MS installed computers such as VA Linux Systems for example. However, if I am effectively unable to do the same thing when it comes to the US government. Taxes are mandatory and refusal of payment can be met with force. Don't forget, governments own a legal monopoly on the use of force. No matter how much Bill Gates wants to, he can not break into my house and hold a gun up to my head and force me to install Windows on my computer. However, with a warrant (although the Ellian Gonzalez case is a counter example), the government can for the most part do what they want with me and my property.
American_bongo also wrote: We will never control the parties in America, only money will. Morales and ethics never win in politics =)
You may have a point here. Let me ask this: What do people look for in a candidate? Do the look for the person who can sling the most mud. Do they vote for the guy who promises them the most programs (possibly wealth redistribution)? Or do they vote for the candidate who reflects their views and has the most integrity?
I'd like to think I do the last of this group.
Ultimately we, the people, control who goes to office. And if the system is corrupt it is all of our faults.
The interest groups you mentioned above are not necessarily bad things. I used to be a member of the National Space Society and the primary reason I donated money to their causes was to effect government policy. It was one way to magnify my power as an individual to effect the changes I wanted to see. If their was a suitable organization that reflected my interests as a geek, I would join.
Mr. Flame Bait wrote: A sentiment I believe we all share...
I fucking hate Republicans.
OK. What makes you so sure of that? The far right tend to favor big business. I agree that does scare me. The far left believe in big government. Now that terrifies me.
I would rather go head to head with big business any day than with big government. At least taking big business head on you have a chance of winning. Taking big government head on and you go to prison.
If you are a Libertarian interested in the sanctity of personal freedom, Republicans always tend to be the lesser of the two evils.
Why did they have to schedule it in October? We already have the Atlanta Linux Showcase scheduled for October 10-14. IMO ALS is the last great technical Linux conference left. I would guess the BSD one would also me a great technical conference also, which makes it such a shame that they both need to be one right after another.
Does no one do any research before scheduling these conferences?
I've noticed a pattern of software companies dropping their SCO offerings while many companies start up a Linux offering. Assuming this pattern continues, how long do you think you can continue to sell a proprietary Unix?
A related question. Will SCO someday offer their own Linux distribution?
Not hosting a Linux Expo might be in Red Hat's best interests. Last year RH came out looking like the spoiled child with the way they were acting. Escorting Turbo Linux off of the show room floor and sicking their lawyers on Linux Care when Linux Care used their name on a poster wasn't cool. I remember a lot of us were talking about how much RH was acting like jerks that year.
I'll miss it though. The Linux Expo was always a lot of fun.
For me news papers are already dead. Living in the Twin Cities I have given up on the papers. Here are a few reasons why:
a) Political bias. In my oppinion a paper should NOT endorse a political canidate. For God's sake a paper is supposed to be unbiased. I would guess that 80% of the news papers out there today have a Liberal bias while the remainder have a Conservative bias. I don't want to spend my time reading the paper when all the "articles" are really nothing more than oppionion pages.
b) Spin control. I just recently had the oppertunity to read an article about the company I work for in a local paper. A good 50% of the article was down right ficticious. The writer apparently decided he wanted to write a highly possitive article about the company with little regard for the truth. He painted the company nicely, but it wasn't news and it certainly wasn't the truth. Strangely the truth was not all that bad, it is strange that the article contained so little of it.
c) Fabrication. Considering how some writers like to spin their articles, I feel you really cannot trust the content of a paper. I don't believe you can trust the net at face value either, but at least you have more options available on a story by story basis that makes it easier to get the differing sides of the story. Take the DVD reporting for example. How many articles have described DeCSS as a copying utility rather than a decryption mechanism necessary for watching DVD's?
From the article it sounds like it is a coating that slowly turns blue after being exposed to the DVD laser. If it is just a coating, it seams logical to me it should be possible to create a bath that would desolve the coating and leave the disk in tact. Unless the coating was made of the same chemicals as the disk was, in which case you are screwed.
If it is NOT a coating, but rather some chemicals embedded in the disks material it self, then you are again screwed.
The article just doesn't have enough info to figure out if this is feasible. Lazy reporters just don't ask the right questions.
I would doubt it. It sounds like they set up a wave-length dependent litmus reaction rather than actually burning something. Litmus doesn't smell and I would doubt the reaction is an oxidation type.
You could do the same thing with Silver Nitrate in the presense of natural light. But who would want their CD to decay when exposed to sun light?
Wouldn't it be cool if people started using these bandwidths for small WANs using KISS or some other protocol? I wonder how the FCC would feel about that use. Sure you would be able to listen in on the radio, but if you like the sound of bandwidth, more power to ya.
The packets could be encrypted if you the security conscious type.
Live with it./. isn't likely to become a MicroSoft mouth piece any time soon. /. is a News for Nerds site, and face it, most of us who have been frequenting this site over the last couple of years have been alienated by MS and have grown to love Linux and Unix in general. If you don't like it you can always get your news from a MS friendly site, while the rest of us don't have that choice.
In some ways I agree with you. The US Army has been sent out to many situations that it propably shouldn't have been used for. It's current function as a "Peace Keeping" force is entirely a regime dependant function of the armed forces and may very well result in little peace.
The regime in power decides how the armed forces are used rather than the forces going off and causing havoc on there own. Unfortunately the temptation to use them for political gain always lingers. The Iraq bombing the night before the impeachment vote may be an example of their misuse.
Nonetheless the Army is needed for our national defense. Without it the US would have fallen long ago.
Their business is defense and deserves some respect.
The actions of the US Army are decided by the US Congress and the President of the US. Sure the Pres. is a prick, but you can't blame the Army for that.
I think you are only talking about individual income tax solutions, right?
For enterprise level income tax software, BSI had ported their BSI Tax Factory to Linux.
http://www.bsihq.com/
It doesn't help those of us who just want to print out a 1040, but it might be of use to some of the IT profesionals out their that are trying to push Linux into their enterprise environments.
Yes! I started using Linux back in '93 because I wanted to get my hands on an Open Source Unix. If Linux had been closed source at that time I would have gone with one of the BSD varients.
It just so happened I chose Linux over the BSD's because I thought the name sounded cooler. Yes, I know that was a very stupid reason. But there wasn't much differense between the free Unixes except the BSD's might have been a little farther along.
Although I don't hack the kernel these days. Back in the early '94 I modified some of the start up assembly to set the registers needed to get my cache to work on my broken mother board. Something I could never do with a closed source OS. With that modification, a practicly worthless computer all of a sudden became a useful tool! Current Linux kernels have proper code to detect broken BIOS/mother board combo's and set the registers correctly, but I didn't notice this had been fixed until some time in '96.
Remember, Linux wasn't cool in '93. It had to be open to attract the right people who would rave about it so people like you would think: "Hey, this Linux thing sounds like a cool OS. I should try it out."
I keep on seeing people talk about e-commerse when the topic is e-business.
Here is the difference: e-commerse: makeing sales over the internet. e-bussiness: doing ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) through a browser interface.
Very different animals. This wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't for the fact that I work for a company that does e-business software but no e-comerse software.
You notice I don't mention the company name. Why, not open source so it is not relevent to the topic.
Slashdot Mirror
The only part of SCO Caldera didn't bye was the Tarantella subsidiary.
Tarantella was an independant subsidery long before Caldera bought SCO.
http://www.povray.org
POVRAY is a free, open source (not GPL but something similiar) ray tracing engine which has a fairly simple language for defining scenes.
It works with nearly every OS. However it is quite a bit different from OpenGL. POVRAY is a program for creating scenes and movies while OpenGL can be used for more interactive types of programs.
The source distribution of POVRAY has a file called povuser.txt which will walk you through a tutorial of its general features and capabilities.
If Linux games are not selling why have I been waiting for an order from Loki/Digital River for the last couple of months?
I've been waiting for an order since June 20 and when ever I ask Digital River about the status of my order I get a responce like this:
"The product you ordered is currently on backorder. Our warehouse has
not yet received this item, but we will be filling orders upon arrival.
We do not have an estimated date on the arrival, however. You will
receive an email notification when your order is actually shipped. Your
credit card has not been charged at this point. We apologize for any
inconvenience this delay has caused."
If there is no demand, I wouldn't have expected the games I ordered to have gone onto backorder in the first place.
Maybe it is only the ID games that are not selling.
Baring the fact that it is a wrist watch, the core technology for this device has to have the wearable croud drooling. Remember IBM is endevering to enhance this device so it can run several days without a recharge. Add a head mounted display and externalized finger pad and up have a wearable uber toy.
I think it is cool.
Could we possibly protect our selves through a new form of licensing. If you have ever read MS licensing agreement you will find they are not responsible in any way of how well their software works or what you use it for. If someone uses IE to steal your cookies it's not MS's fault.
The GPL focuses on protecting the software, not the author. Maybe we need a more protective license.
I will admit I was asleep when that one became law. The difference is we, as in the people of the US, have the power to get the DMCA removed or at least corrected. We simply need to convince enough people of this fact and get the right polititions on our side. A special interest group would be one way of getting this done. Sadly polititions seldom listen to individuals these days.
Even if what you say is true, that the corporations have taken over the US government, there is one significant difference. We still have the power to take our government back.
I beg to differ. Microsoft is a big corporation. I can effectively boycott them by not purchasing MS software and acquiring my computer hardware through vars that do not sell MS installed computers such as VA Linux Systems for example. However, if I am effectively unable to do the same thing when it comes to the US government. Taxes are mandatory and refusal of payment can be met with force. Don't forget, governments own a legal monopoly on the use of force. No matter how much Bill Gates wants to, he can not break into my house and hold a gun up to my head and force me to install Windows on my computer. However, with a warrant (although the Ellian Gonzalez case is a counter example), the government can for the most part do what they want with me and my property.
American_bongo also wrote: We will never control the parties in America, only money will. Morales and ethics never win in politics =)
You may have a point here. Let me ask this: What do people look for in a candidate? Do the look for the person who can sling the most mud. Do they vote for the guy who promises them the most programs (possibly wealth redistribution)? Or do they vote for the candidate who reflects their views and has the most integrity?
I'd like to think I do the last of this group.
Ultimately we, the people, control who goes to office. And if the system is corrupt it is all of our faults.
The interest groups you mentioned above are not necessarily bad things. I used to be a member of the National Space Society and the primary reason I donated money to their causes was to effect government policy. It was one way to magnify my power as an individual to effect the changes I wanted to see. If their was a suitable organization that reflected my interests as a geek, I would join.
I fucking hate Republicans.
OK. What makes you so sure of that? The far right tend to favor big business. I agree that does scare me. The far left believe in big government. Now that terrifies me.
I would rather go head to head with big business any day than with big government. At least taking big business head on you have a chance of winning. Taking big government head on and you go to prison.
If you are a Libertarian interested in the sanctity of personal freedom, Republicans always tend to be the lesser of the two evils.
I know we all would like to vote for a "malignant carbon rod", but Jesse Ventura refuses to run.
Oh well.
"You Linux people think that you are so cool..."
Other than the fact that we are cool, many of us like BSD also. I don't see why any of you feel it is necessary to turn on the flames.
As for there being no apps, this type of attitude may be perpetuating this reality.
Long live BSD and Linux. Use which ever best fits your needs, I say.
Why did they have to schedule it in October? We already have the Atlanta Linux Showcase scheduled for October 10-14. IMO ALS is the last great technical Linux conference left. I would guess the BSD one would also me a great technical conference also, which makes it such a shame that they both need to be one right after another.
Does no one do any research before scheduling these conferences?
Was this message inspired by some particularly bad experience with a fast food franchise?
Also, did the space craft in DGHDA play anything by The Greatful Dead?
And last but not least, could the bable fish translate Eubonics?
I'd love to get answers to these questions.
I've noticed a pattern of software companies dropping their SCO offerings while many companies start up a Linux offering. Assuming this pattern continues, how long do you think you can continue to sell a proprietary Unix?
A related question. Will SCO someday offer their own Linux distribution?
Not hosting a Linux Expo might be in Red Hat's best interests. Last year RH came out looking like the spoiled child with the way they were acting. Escorting Turbo Linux off of the show room floor and sicking their lawyers on Linux Care when Linux Care used their name on a poster wasn't cool. I remember a lot of us were talking about how much RH was acting like jerks that year.
I'll miss it though. The Linux Expo was always a lot of fun.
For me news papers are already dead. Living in the Twin Cities I have given up on the papers. Here are a few reasons why:
a) Political bias. In my oppinion a paper should NOT endorse a political canidate. For God's sake a paper is supposed to be unbiased. I would guess that 80% of the news papers out there today have a Liberal bias while the remainder have a Conservative bias. I don't want to spend my time reading the paper when all the "articles" are really nothing more than oppionion pages.
b) Spin control. I just recently had the oppertunity to read an article about the company I work for in a local paper. A good 50% of the article was down right ficticious. The writer apparently decided he wanted to write a highly possitive article about the company with little regard for the truth. He painted the company nicely, but it wasn't news and it certainly wasn't the truth. Strangely the truth was not all that bad, it is strange that the article contained so little of it.
c) Fabrication. Considering how some writers like to spin their articles, I feel you really cannot trust the content of a paper. I don't believe you can trust the net at face value either, but at least you have more options available on a story by story basis that makes it easier to get the differing sides of the story. Take the DVD reporting for example. How many articles have described DeCSS as a copying utility rather than a decryption mechanism necessary for watching DVD's?
Rest in peace papers.
You know you do have a point.
From the article it sounds like it is a coating that slowly turns blue after being exposed to the DVD laser. If it is just a coating, it seams logical to me it should be possible to create a bath that would desolve the coating and leave the disk in tact. Unless the coating was made of the same chemicals as the disk was, in which case you are screwed.
If it is NOT a coating, but rather some chemicals embedded in the disks material it self, then you are again screwed.
The article just doesn't have enough info to figure out if this is feasible. Lazy reporters just don't ask the right questions.
I would doubt it. It sounds like they set up a wave-length dependent litmus reaction rather than actually burning something. Litmus doesn't smell and I would doubt the reaction is an oxidation type.
You could do the same thing with Silver Nitrate in the presense of natural light. But who would want their CD to decay when exposed to sun light?
Wouldn't it be cool if people started using these bandwidths for small WANs using KISS or some other protocol? I wonder how the FCC would feel about that use. Sure you would be able to listen in on the radio, but if you like the sound of bandwidth, more power to ya.
The packets could be encrypted if you the security conscious type.
Live with it. /. isn't likely to become a MicroSoft mouth piece any time soon.
/. is a News for Nerds site, and face it, most of us who have been frequenting this site over the last couple of years have been alienated by MS and have grown to love Linux and Unix in general.
If you don't like it you can always get your news from a MS friendly site, while the rest of us don't have that choice.
just my $.02 worth.
In some ways I agree with you. The US Army has been sent out to many situations that it propably shouldn't have been used for. It's current function as a "Peace Keeping" force is entirely a regime dependant function of the armed forces and may very well result in little peace.
The regime in power decides how the armed forces are used rather than the forces going off and causing havoc on there own. Unfortunately the temptation to use them for political gain always lingers. The Iraq bombing the night before the impeachment vote may be an example of their misuse.
Nonetheless the Army is needed for our national defense. Without it the US would have fallen long ago.
Their business is defense and deserves some
respect.
The actions of the US Army are decided by the US
Congress and the President of the US. Sure the
Pres. is a prick, but you can't blame the Army
for that.
What ever happened to get the nick name "maddog"?
Must have a pretty interesting story behind that, eh?
I think you are only talking about individual income tax solutions, right?
For enterprise level income tax software, BSI had ported their BSI Tax Factory to Linux.
http://www.bsihq.com/
It doesn't help those of us who just want to print out a 1040, but it might be of use to some of the IT profesionals out their that are trying to push Linux into their enterprise environments.
Yes! I started using Linux back in '93 because I wanted to get my hands on an Open Source Unix. If Linux had been closed source at that time I would have gone with one of the BSD varients.
It just so happened I chose Linux over the BSD's because I thought the name sounded cooler. Yes, I know that was a very stupid reason. But there wasn't much differense between the free Unixes except the BSD's might have been a little farther along.
Although I don't hack the kernel these days. Back in the early '94 I modified some of the start up assembly to set the registers needed to get my cache to work on my broken mother board. Something I could never do with a closed source OS. With that modification, a practicly worthless computer all of a sudden became a useful tool! Current Linux kernels have proper code to detect broken BIOS/mother board combo's and set the registers correctly, but I didn't notice this had been fixed until some time in '96.
Remember, Linux wasn't cool in '93. It had to be open to attract the right people who would rave about it so people like you would think: "Hey, this Linux thing sounds like a cool OS. I should try it out."
Closed source indeed!
I keep on seeing people talk about e-commerse when the topic is e-business.
Here is the difference:
e-commerse: makeing sales over the internet.
e-bussiness: doing ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) through a browser interface.
Very different animals. This wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't for the fact that I work for a company that does e-business software but no e-comerse software.
You notice I don't mention the company name. Why, not open source so it is not relevent to the topic.
Stepping off my high horse.