There are lots of climatologists with PHDs who _don't_ think humans have much to do with the current warming trend.
Hey look, it's a creationist... I mean an anti-climatologist. They use the same tactics! I wonder if there's a 200-Steve petition out to sneeringly "prove" that the climate is changing.
Once you realize that you realize that how FAST you burn it doesn't really matter that much. It just means you need to develop an alterntive energy source in 25 years instead of 50.
It's really not an excellent point. Carbon sinks (eg, trees, oceans) have a maximum rate of carbon consumption. If you release all the carbon in 25 years instead of 50 years then the sinks won't remove the carbon twice as quickly; they'll just leave the excess carbon in the atmosphere until they "get around to it".
You're better off releasing no carbon into the atmosphere and developing a "clean" energy source today. The crazy thing is the clean energy source exists. It even powers your SUV and your diesel trucks. It's called bio-diesel. The technology is here, it works, it is "carbon-neutral", and it doesn't require any infrastructure changes. The only two faults are that it doesn't cut back on other forms of pollution, and it costs a little more. But hey, it's worth destroying countries and ecosystems to save a buck; that's the American way:-(
"Global warming" is a myth. A popular one, but a myth nonetheless. "Global cooling" - which was popular a few centuries ago - is actually more likely to happen.
Hey look, it's an astroturfer. I thought they were just a myth.
I don't expect people to watch a TV show about me getting recognized for doing what I'm paid to do. I don't need an emmy, a grammy, an oscar, an MTV award, a Blockbuster award, a golden globe, or a people's choice award to know whether I'm good at what I do or not.
But software does get moderated. There are software awards. There are software ratings. You can buy magazines that compare software products. There are TV shows that discuss software. I flick through PC magazines (wouldn't bother paying for them!) to read the ratings so I know what software products are the pick of the crop.
So don't pretend that there aren't awards. There are! It's just the entertainment industry does a far better job of promoting the awards ceremony than other groups do. It's not as if Best Software Product Of The Year doesn't exist; it's just so poorly marketted that not many people hear about it. I think that says more about Hollywood's skill than it says about their ego.
And when someone raises the point that something Windows is being criticized for is true of Linux, it suddenly becomes a matter of a personal decision and I should just not use Linux and butt out of the discussion?
I'd say the same thing if somebody started whinging about dropped hardware support in Windows XP. Don't accuse me of being a hypocrite.
For the record, there are several other versions of UNIX that I prefer over Linux these days anyhow. But that's immaterial.
It's immaterial, but you felt the need to mention it anyway. In other words you want everybody to hear your opinion of how "inferior" Linux is. Sounds like a whinger to me.
No, you had no point, you were just whinging. Nobody is forcing you to use Linux. Nobody is forcing you to upgrade. If you don't like it then don't use it. Whinging achieves nothing.
In my years of coding, I've been mistaken in thinking there was ONE TRUE WAY in terms of coding style. I was wrong, and so are you. Style is only perpheral to other *important* qualities in software.
Yeah, important qualities are things like which editor you used to write the code. Anybody who uses EMACS is producing shoddy code! Repent! Repent now!
Another question: how feasible is doing what OS X is doing on XFree wrt using the OpenGL/DRI pipeline to do much of the rendering? I know Evas exists and uses OpenGL, but will one still have the neat client/server stuff?
100% feasible. Right now. No more XFree86 code required. The OpenGL implementation in XFree86 is not perfect but it is fairly robust. A Linux desktop environment that exclusively used OpenGL is possible today. When used locally it would exploit direct rendering for maximum performance. When used remotely it will automatically fall back to indirect rendering via the GLX extension in XFree86; retaining the neat client/server stuff.
Indirect rendering in XFree86 unfortunately is currently only software rendering. This isn't a design flaw; it just requires somebody to write in the missing code in the XFree86 server.
Direct Rendering is a bit of a misnomer. It still uses the batching mechanism of XFree86, and yes, that's a good thing. The AGP bus on most system is so slow, you wouldn't want to tuoch the bare metal anyway. It's better to have bursts of commands to the graphics hardware in a batched fashion anyway. There are some very good posts about it in this story somewhere. Some explain it better than I can.
I'm sorry, you're completely wrong. Direct Rendering means the client renders directly to the hardware. I've no idea what you think a "batching mechanism" is, but your use of the word "still" suggests that you think DRI clients use the XFree86 server to speak to the hardware. That is wrong. The client speaks directly to the hardware.
You are possibly confused because the DRI uses command queues to "batch" multiple commands before dispatching to the hardware. This is purely for performance reasons; instructing a card to receive commands is expensive. The XFree86 server is not involved with these queues. They are handled entirely by the client and the DRM.
To summarise. The client does touch the bare metal. The client does not "batch" through XFree86. The phrase "Direct Rendering" is not a misnomer. Rather than referring to "posts in this story" why don't you read the design documents on dri.sourceforge.net? They are accurate. The posts in this story apparently are not.
Something like DRI (which is 3D-specific), would be extremely impractical for 2D.
You're talking out your arse. The DRI is a direct rendering infrastructure. It applies just as well to 2D as 3D. For example, from the DRI website
"The term direct rendering infrastructure does not only imply 3D graphics support. From the beginning, the DRI was designed with flexibility such that it may also be used in other areas such as video I/O. That's a potential future project." [http://dri.sourceforge.net/doc/DRIintro.html]
The DRI provides a direct rendering path. It's a mistake to think that the only library that could use that path is Mesa. Xlib (aka 2D) currently goes through a slow path; encode to socket to decode to DIX to XAA to DDX to hardware. A DRI/Xlib implementation could go straight from the client to the hardware. Practically you'd only use DRI/Xlib for bandwidth intensive requests. For everything else there's no real value in bypassing XAA.
Your misunderstanding actually highlights a deeper problem. So many people are calling for XFree86 to be scrapped in favour of a direct rendering windowing system. That windowing system already exists and it's called XFree86.
ACK. And local sockets are very simple. Effectively slightly slower but almost as fast as direct memcpy calls to video memory. In fact, local sockets _are_ just all memcpy calls to some memory address:) Very fast under many unixen. Heck, we can have client-server and it costs virtually nothing. I say we keep it.
There are other costs. Encoding/Decoding are the big ones. Context switching is another.
The real question is, if you removed these two sources of inefficiency, what would be the actual speedup in terms of graphics performance. For 3D it was lots, therefore the creation of the DRI to provide direct rendering. For 2D? Best guess is almost no improvement at all; the hardware is not capable of going faster. The only exceptions are bandwidth beasts like video that have been solved in other ways.
If somebody wanted to prove the point they could write DRI/X11 as a complement to DRI/MESA.
I've been saying this for a while. X has always been a complete pain in the ass for desktop users.
The problem is that you have no authority. There is a large difference between white trailer trash rednecks saying "i hatez the damn gubberment" and a reasoned treatise by a political spokesman. Similarly there is a huge difference between you saying "X sucks!" and somebody like Keith stating specific grievances.
I think the appropriate quote is "Even fools are right sometimes, but only a fool would listen to them".
The recent Slashdot story about kernel tweaking (kernel tweaking!) to make X more responsive underscores this perfectly. First you start tweaking the kernel... and then you realize that you have to move the graphics subsystem closer to ring 0 to make the thing work at sufficient speed.
The very thing that Windows has been criticized for since NT 3.51 came out.
NT moved the windowing system to ring 0. That's like putting GNOME in the damn kernel. That's why it was considered silly.
Putting graphics into the kernel isn't stupid and XFree86 already did so. It's called the DRM kernel module. It's a very tiny kernel module that does very little (mostly grants hardware access to user space applications). That's all you need.
I recently saw somebody try to contribute a new driver to XFree86. He was told that he was welcome to contribute the driver, but that he wouldn't be allowed write access to it once he had handed it over. What a ridiculous policy!
It's no different to the Linux kernel. If your driver gets accepted into Linus's tree you don't automatically get BK write access to the tree. You have to submit patches through Linus (or another Core Member).
Any RF technician or audiophile can tell you that if you want to focus in on a specific frequency or range, you need good/better AC filters.
Actually only the RF technician could tell you that. The audiophile would say that AM sounds warmer than FM but only if you're using oxygen-free radio waves. Then they'd start blithering on about how the crystals in their radio were hand-picked by virgins during the winter solstice.
VNC/RDP both export the whole desktop. Your remote view of the computer is a window containing the entire remote desktop; start bar, explorer, window manager, everything. X11 remotely views a single application. You have a single desktop which integrates applications from multiple sources.
In what circumstances would you WANT disparate remote applications, from potentially multiple remote machines, integrating invisibly in your current desktop ?
If you have multiple computers on your network (as I do at home and at work) then you don't ask this question. You just do. I have openoffice running on one computer, mozilla on another, and GNOME on the computer in front of me. I've effectively got 3 computers combined on my desktop.
I was wondering the same thing. Are XFree86 drivers modular?
Yes, they are. All drivers are dynamically loadable objects. The dynamic loader system is even independent of operating system so the same driver will work on Linux/x86, Solaris/x86, SCO/x86, BSD/x86, etc. Unfortunately still tied to CPU but that limitation is difficult to avoid:-)
Hell, yeah. I think you've hit the nail right on the head. If you write an open-source product and release it with your name attached then any mistakes are your fault. You look like the boob if (when) it blows up. And the shame of receiving a patch from another programmer is basically the same as being told "you're wrong, nyah". It's embarrassing. Nobody wants that so they put in extra effort to avoid the shame. This also explains why maintainers (eg, Linus) are so hard nosed about accepting patches; it's their reputation on the line if they accept a shoddy patch.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey look, it's a creationist... I mean an anti-climatologist. They use the same tactics! I wonder if there's a 200-Steve petition out to sneeringly "prove" that the climate is changing.
It's really not an excellent point. Carbon sinks (eg, trees, oceans) have a maximum rate of carbon consumption. If you release all the carbon in 25 years instead of 50 years then the sinks won't remove the carbon twice as quickly; they'll just leave the excess carbon in the atmosphere until they "get around to it".
You're better off releasing no carbon into the atmosphere and developing a "clean" energy source today. The crazy thing is the clean energy source exists. It even powers your SUV and your diesel trucks. It's called bio-diesel. The technology is here, it works, it is "carbon-neutral", and it doesn't require any infrastructure changes. The only two faults are that it doesn't cut back on other forms of pollution, and it costs a little more. But hey, it's worth destroying countries and ecosystems to save a buck; that's the American way :-(
As I watch the "War on Iraq" on the news, I think to myself, what a very ironic question.
Hey look, it's an astroturfer. I thought they were just a myth.
The funniest part of this post is that it got moderated "insightful". Hahaha.
Too late. It's called High Memory Support in the Linux kernel and it lets you use 64GB ram on high-end x86.
But software does get moderated. There are software awards. There are software ratings. You can buy magazines that compare software products. There are TV shows that discuss software. I flick through PC magazines (wouldn't bother paying for them!) to read the ratings so I know what software products are the pick of the crop.
So don't pretend that there aren't awards. There are! It's just the entertainment industry does a far better job of promoting the awards ceremony than other groups do. It's not as if Best Software Product Of The Year doesn't exist; it's just so poorly marketted that not many people hear about it. I think that says more about Hollywood's skill than it says about their ego.
The funniest part of your post is realising that probably only half a dozen people on Slashdot know what the Goon Show was.
You use a FFT anytime you ENCODE a .jpg, or an .mp3, or a DVD. When you view or listen or watch you are using an Inverse FFT.
And to be very specific, I think all your examples use DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) and not FFT. JPEG definitely does. Very good overview here
I'd say the same thing if somebody started whinging about dropped hardware support in Windows XP. Don't accuse me of being a hypocrite.
It's immaterial, but you felt the need to mention it anyway. In other words you want everybody to hear your opinion of how "inferior" Linux is. Sounds like a whinger to me.
No, you had no point, you were just whinging. Nobody is forcing you to use Linux. Nobody is forcing you to upgrade. If you don't like it then don't use it. Whinging achieves nothing.
Yeah, important qualities are things like which editor you used to write the code. Anybody who uses EMACS is producing shoddy code! Repent! Repent now!
100% feasible. Right now. No more XFree86 code required. The OpenGL implementation in XFree86 is not perfect but it is fairly robust. A Linux desktop environment that exclusively used OpenGL is possible today. When used locally it would exploit direct rendering for maximum performance. When used remotely it will automatically fall back to indirect rendering via the GLX extension in XFree86; retaining the neat client/server stuff.
Indirect rendering in XFree86 unfortunately is currently only software rendering. This isn't a design flaw; it just requires somebody to write in the missing code in the XFree86 server.
I'm sorry, you're completely wrong. Direct Rendering means the client renders directly to the hardware. I've no idea what you think a "batching mechanism" is, but your use of the word "still" suggests that you think DRI clients use the XFree86 server to speak to the hardware. That is wrong. The client speaks directly to the hardware.
You are possibly confused because the DRI uses command queues to "batch" multiple commands before dispatching to the hardware. This is purely for performance reasons; instructing a card to receive commands is expensive. The XFree86 server is not involved with these queues. They are handled entirely by the client and the DRM.
To summarise. The client does touch the bare metal. The client does not "batch" through XFree86. The phrase "Direct Rendering" is not a misnomer. Rather than referring to "posts in this story" why don't you read the design documents on dri.sourceforge.net? They are accurate. The posts in this story apparently are not.
You're talking out your arse. The DRI is a direct rendering infrastructure. It applies just as well to 2D as 3D. For example, from the DRI website
The DRI provides a direct rendering path. It's a mistake to think that the only library that could use that path is Mesa. Xlib (aka 2D) currently goes through a slow path; encode to socket to decode to DIX to XAA to DDX to hardware. A DRI/Xlib implementation could go straight from the client to the hardware. Practically you'd only use DRI/Xlib for bandwidth intensive requests. For everything else there's no real value in bypassing XAA.
Your misunderstanding actually highlights a deeper problem. So many people are calling for XFree86 to be scrapped in favour of a direct rendering windowing system. That windowing system already exists and it's called XFree86.
If you don't like Linux and/or XFree86 then don't use it. Nobody is twisting your arm.
There are other costs. Encoding/Decoding are the big ones. Context switching is another.
The real question is, if you removed these two sources of inefficiency, what would be the actual speedup in terms of graphics performance. For 3D it was lots, therefore the creation of the DRI to provide direct rendering. For 2D? Best guess is almost no improvement at all; the hardware is not capable of going faster. The only exceptions are bandwidth beasts like video that have been solved in other ways.
If somebody wanted to prove the point they could write DRI/X11 as a complement to DRI/MESA.
The problem is that you have no authority. There is a large difference between white trailer trash rednecks saying "i hatez the damn gubberment" and a reasoned treatise by a political spokesman. Similarly there is a huge difference between you saying "X sucks!" and somebody like Keith stating specific grievances.
I think the appropriate quote is "Even fools are right sometimes, but only a fool would listen to them".
NT moved the windowing system to ring 0. That's like putting GNOME in the damn kernel. That's why it was considered silly.
Putting graphics into the kernel isn't stupid and XFree86 already did so. It's called the DRM kernel module. It's a very tiny kernel module that does very little (mostly grants hardware access to user space applications). That's all you need.
It's no different to the Linux kernel. If your driver gets accepted into Linus's tree you don't automatically get BK write access to the tree. You have to submit patches through Linus (or another Core Member).
And then it was, like, "bleep bleep bleep", and it was a really good paper too.
Actually only the RF technician could tell you that. The audiophile would say that AM sounds warmer than FM but only if you're using oxygen-free radio waves. Then they'd start blithering on about how the crystals in their radio were hand-picked by virgins during the winter solstice.
VNC/RDP both export the whole desktop. Your remote view of the computer is a window containing the entire remote desktop; start bar, explorer, window manager, everything. X11 remotely views a single application. You have a single desktop which integrates applications from multiple sources.
If you have multiple computers on your network (as I do at home and at work) then you don't ask this question. You just do. I have openoffice running on one computer, mozilla on another, and GNOME on the computer in front of me. I've effectively got 3 computers combined on my desktop.
Yes, they are. All drivers are dynamically loadable objects. The dynamic loader system is even independent of operating system so the same driver will work on Linux/x86, Solaris/x86, SCO/x86, BSD/x86, etc. Unfortunately still tied to CPU but that limitation is difficult to avoid :-)
Hell, yeah. I think you've hit the nail right on the head. If you write an open-source product and release it with your name attached then any mistakes are your fault. You look like the boob if (when) it blows up. And the shame of receiving a patch from another programmer is basically the same as being told "you're wrong, nyah". It's embarrassing. Nobody wants that so they put in extra effort to avoid the shame. This also explains why maintainers (eg, Linus) are so hard nosed about accepting patches; it's their reputation on the line if they accept a shoddy patch.