Re:This isn't the old Amiga - it's a Mac on steroi
on
Amiga Technology Brief
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Thank you, I thought I was the only one.:) The old amiga architecture rocked. They even had wiring diagrams in the back of the manual! They actually *let* you know how everything was hooked up! wow! I was thinking, that maybe if the new amiga turns out to be what you mentioned, we should start our own in the same concept as the old. Some ideas that I think would be fun to play around with:
-extensive SMP, maybe using one of the newer technologies than SMP for multiprocessor support. Depending on how much everything costs. design it in such a way that processors/processor boards can be dropped in and out easily. Maybe use a daisy chain type system or something, with a replacable bus to scale with the number of processors. A crossbar scheme might work better? Something similar to HP's in the V class boxes?
-modular design, multiple buses for mem/proc/io/etc. Central ram pool and central cpu pool. Ability for components to grab cpu and ram for specific tasks. More exotic implementations could perhaps use fpgas if the price/prof would end up being useful. DSPs could probably be made of use quite a bit. Perhaps have it setup in a way that you could drop either cpu or dsp/fpga on the bus until the bus is saturated, so that you can have different levels of fpu/int/dsp depending on what kind of machine you want. Central ram pool has already been done, similar concept as uma.
-Object Oriented OS. If you've ever heard of oGMo's design called "Unity", you know what I'm talking about. OS and hardware are designed to be very very modular.
-components independant of each other. Each component should be able to do a minimal amount of work on it's own without interfering with any other component in the machine. Only when central ram/cpu resources become scarce should you notice a slow down. This should go hand in hand with the ability to drop in different kinds of processors, depending on what you want to be doing.
From everything I've done, and all the designs I've already drawn up, the absolutely most vital thing in this setup is the speed of the multiple busses. It will need to be able to scale so that it can pump and incredibly large amount of data around, and it won't be cheap. This certainly won't be the "budget" computer that people seem to want these days. There are some questions as to overhead with the bus designs, how to implement an efficent control mechanism, and wether or not the whole thing can even built to preform well. I think it can, but it will take a *lot* of work, and it'd need some backing to get it off the ground. Later when I take a comp arch course, I'm thinking about working with the design on a real low level, maybe use 68000 chips and see what I can do with a fast bus. it'd be an interesting experiment.
Ok, so I got *way* off topic, but essentially, this is what I want the new amiga to be.;)
mohohahaha! I'm running E right now *with* gnome-panel at 1024x768 on a 486dx2/66!!!:)~ teeheehee... Granted, this isn't any ordinary 486dx2/66, it's got 32megs of parity *60* ns memory, and 2 1.35gig scsi drives. The most surprising thing, is that it still runs fairly well. It's usable. Even transparent window moves arn't too bad as long as it's not a huge window like netscape. Gnome stuff I just leave going, I don't touch it, it doesn't bother me (besides having slashapp) and it all works out good.;)
Well, I have mixed feelings on this whole affair. QNX sounded like a really great OS, and I really would why they are scraping it. It doesn't make very much sense, especially with all the work that has been put in. At the same time, He really says some flattering things about linux, that I'm not sure are completely true. I'm a linux advocate all the way, but linux being the most stable OS out there? I really think BSD gives it a run for it's money.
The next thing is that he says linux already has good hardware support. That's good, if you are planning to use PC hardware. Lets think about this for a minute though. In the linux kernel, the most extensive list of drivers are there for sound, network, and scsi, with some others thrown in. Now I don't know about you, but it seems like it would be silly to take a box, and support all the pc hardware under the sun, when it would be easier to just build it into the machine. It'd be nice to have upgrade options, and I think it's worth supporting the pci bus, but honestly, if your building in 100BT, 4speaker 3d sound, and a scsi controller already, and can do it outside of the pci bus in a better way, why bother? From what I've seen in driver development, Videocards seem to be some of the most important, but unless they are planning to run X or GGI, they are going to have to do it all anyway. I guess this is just wearing away at my hopes that we would see a really revolutionary box with a really cool hardware design, rather than just using your run of the mill PC components. It really sounds like Amiga is trying to take the "safe" "garanteed" road, and in doing so, isn't going to come out with anything spectacular like they did back with the original 1000.:(
This is fairly odd. I was under the impression that there would be a native version of the notes client that would run under linux. Around here at my work, we have some ibm/hp reps, and while perhaps they arn't really in the know more than anyone else, they were saying that it was pretty likely we would see one come out in next year or so. I believe one of them mentioned 5.0, though I don't remember precisely. Anyway, I suppose time will tell...
I'd agree with you in most cases, generally pg-13 movies are much better to air than R rated movies. However, south park has the popularity behind it, and regardless of how the writers wrote it, it should generate a good deal of revenue. Had the writers watered the movie down, would people still want to go see it as bad? Now, if I remember correctly, this is aproximately how paramount makes money. They lease the copies of the film to a theater for a given number of shows regardless of how many tickets are sold. That means that as long as theaters keep playing the movie, they get money. Now, Paramount wants to keep people watching the movie so the theaters keep it playing, so it's a mutual relationship, but paramount doesn't really need to worry if a given show doesn't fill up, they are getting thier money. For this reason, it's important for them to make sure the theaters keep playing it.
The flip side to this is President Clinton's recent condemning of the movie industry for not being strict enough on enforcing the R rating. South Park is exactly the type of movie that would be perfect for him to use as an identifier as to how the movie industry is doing. It basically came at a really bad time. The last thing Paramount, and the movie theaters in general want is for the government to come in and start forcing thier hand in things, so the theaters are making sure to put on a good show. Once the topic has cooled down and the guys over in washington move over to something else like the video game market, then they'll probably relax thier guard a bit, and carry on more like usual. In the end, they would make more money by sacrificing some of the south park funds, than to have washington get up in arms. besides, the kids will eventually see it, if only on video, and paramount knows that. It might mean less revenue, but it won't be totally lost.
Very good post, I like your points. I'd like to just say that not all of us, as christians, readily accept our morals handed to us on plates. I like to think mine are well thought out. You are correct in saying we all are hypocrites, especially we as christians, in that we still do evil, though we teach not to do it. I'd content that this isn't necessarily a bad thing, in that effort is made to follow what we believe to be correct.
Btw, I found your reference to the church of South Park particularly humerous..:) Wether your having hot flashes or cold flashes, ultimately it still means your sick.
I agree with some of what your saying here. I think you make very good points in relation to why children shouldn't see it. I think in the same way though, we as adults need to realize that we arn't immune to it's effects either. Certainly more so than children, but adults in the same ways as children get caught up in the emotional response that such films promote. It might not even be that the ideas are bad, but that it's an emotional response rather than a well thought out response.
This is were we factor in those notions that you mentioned earlier, specifically rebellion. South Park is the visible, and probably one of the most dramatic examples of the feelings of rebellion in our society today. So much so, that as long as they can portray what they are rebelling against in a bad light, people will find it humerous, and form opinions based on that. It's one of the best forms of propaganda that exists. The ironic thing, is that often times rebellion's object is to be to rid hypocrasy, propoganda, and those who are power hungry from being in control. At the same time, shows like these are the very tools used to affect how people might feel about a specific group or thing. Perhaps South Park isn't used to this extent, but I'm reminded of the 3 minute hates that exist in the book 1984. While the hate is to be directed at goldberg, it's easily transfered to other targets, even Big Brother, then back at goldberg again. It's disgusting in a way, because of it's extremity. If a movie can portray a group of people in a way they choose, that re-enforces other people's ideas about that group, even if it is all done in satire, that gives those who made that movie an encredible amount of power, doesn't it?
Well, I'm in the minority here, but I really don't like South Park all that much. At times the show is funny, they have some talented people working on it. At the same time though, the shock value isn't terribly appealing to me. When I've watched it in the past with some other friends, I think to myself sometimes why people find it so funny, and like it so much. It seems to be a way to rebel against the establishment in a way, both through the right to make choices, but also because it goes against what many of those in power claim to represent. (I think most are being hypocritical anyway, and really don't care.) It seems that this is mostly brought out with emotion though, and that bothers me, because emotions can easily be controlled. Paramount released the movie to make money, and because it's what people, specifically, teenagers want. Any kind of political message is there because it's agreeable to the crowd that would be interested in watching the movie for the shock value and cynicism. Indulgance, wether in power, hate, sex, or rebellion seems to me to be a scary thing.
I'll first address the situation with raster. I think your right about most of what you've said about him, and yes, at times he can be immature, but I don't think he was terribly outside his rights on this. He spoke what he honestly felt at the time, and I don't think you can blame him for that. You see, back when slashdot first was around, and when enlightenment was in it's early days, a good deal of the people that would post on slashdot would be known by everyone else, off irc, or off mailing lists, etc. Perhaps it's different not actually knowing raster, but most of us had atleast talked to him, and didn't think of him as anything more than just a really good coder working on a really cool idea. I guess the point I'm getting at is that we were/are his friends first, and that it's more important to us to know what is on his mind, and if he's mad and why, than to always here fluff and graciousness, if that's not what he's really feeling. I can't speak for Rob on this, but I'd guess that this is why he's posted raster's leaving and working for VA. To me, and I think rob and a lot of the others, Raster's life is important, because he's our friend, and that it's worth letting people know about. Now of course the majority of slashdot readers these days don't know raster, and probably don't care about enlightenment, or maybe even linux for that matter. I guess I'd just ask that you cut him some slack, because he's a hardworking, and caring individual as shown by his offense at his boss insulting the E user base. He had some legitimate grips, and perhaps slashdot is not the best place for those gripes anymore, but at one time it would have been. Honestly, I'm sad to see the old way of things disappearing. At one time, raster could have said this and it would have generated some sympathy, maybe a couple critisizms, and would have been pretty much over in a day. People these days seem to be incensed over it. It's blown way out of proportion, specifically by the guys saying that it's being blown out of proportion. Believe me, it's not his friends that are continually revisting it.
Now, as to the Mindcraft emails... Unfortunately, that is something we have to expect. Out of all the linux users in the world, there are going to be ones that send nasty emails. They might not even be linux users, but kids trying to fight for the linux cause because it's the "hip" thing to do. The fact that mindcraft posted those emails I think reflects poorly on them though. Would it be right for Rob to start posting hate mail by windows users implying that all windows users are hate filled immature kids? I don't think so myself. It's an unfair representation of the majority. I'm sure that mindcraft recieved a number of well presented emails as well. I'd really be interested to find out what the number of authors that sent well-thought email vs hatemail were. (I say authors because it's more probable that hatemail would be sent multiple times by the same person.)
I also want to thank you for the well thought out post. It's good to know what people think, especially the newer crowd that hasn't been around as long as some of us. I guess something that we as the old crowd need to realize is that wether or not we choose it, we are being put into roles of responsibility that affect many more people than we had ever dreamed of even 2 years ago. Something that I think you, and many of the others in the newer crowd need to do, is to realize that the linux culture wasn't based on advertising, or marketing, or being politically correct. Things never used to really make too many waves. You did your own thing, and it was all cool. Now that linux is in the limelight, we need to clean up our acts in some ways, and it's something that isn't going to come in a split instant, and probably won't ever completely change. Raster is gonna still be Raster, Rob is gonna still be Rob, and Nite_Hawk is gonna still be Nite_Hawk..:) Anyway, I must have typed a page by now, so it's probably time to shutup.;)
What is up with you guys? Shesh, Raster is a friend to some of us, and personally, I think it's great that he got a job at VA. They are great guys, and Raster is a great guy as well. CmdrTaco, Enlightenment, Raster, linux, and a number of us go back before slashdot even existed, so if Cmdrtaco and the gang want to post about him getting a new job, then why the heck shouldn't they be able to? If you don't like it, don't read it. It's not like every news story out there has to be some mind boggling new technology or corperate lawsuit. Raster is one of us, and he doesn't deserve some of the crap he's been getting on these forums. Some of the critisizm is legitimate, but the flames and pot shots certainly are not.
Well, rather than just leaving the same aspect ratio you'd probably want to increase the resolution of the screen while keeping a relatively constant physical size. It'd be worth while for fonts, and maybe still images depending on what your doing. I think most animation/game stuff isn't going to need much more than 1280x1024 though.:)
Nope, your post isn't flamebait, it's a troll. Your already dismissing mozilla before a stable release even comes out, and only because netscape supposedly only has 25% or less of the market. I might add, that 25% of the market is far from dead, even if those numbers happen to be true. (I somewhat doubt it.) now, if you want to go and use IE on windows, go for it. As long as microsoft obeys standards (ha) I really don't care how many people use it. It's their problem, not mine. I'd keep using mozilla, and the same goes for most people running linux. (ok, so I do run lynx sometimes ). Until something better comes along for both linux and unix though, netscape/mozilla can only be as dead as linux is, and well, if you want to make the claim that linux is dead, I think there are plenty of peole here that would be willing to argue that point.:)
Well, Neanderthals had a very thick area of bone in the top of the skulls, though I don't really see how the thickness of the bone would change the fact that the brain cavity is still larger. (IE you could make the bone 6 feet thick, and if it still had a capacity of 1400-1700cc, it would still have a larger brain than a human assuming the brain completely filled it.) As to the size ratio question, I'm simply saying that it would be a better method to use than just trying to directly compare brain size. Larger humans (if I remember correctly) tend to have larger brains than smaller humnans, simply because larger organisms tend to have larger brains. That would probably make a lot of people on here angry, that the 7' 300lb football player could be considered by some to be smarter because he might happen to have a larger brain (cranial capacity). Personally I don't think either method is terribly accurate, but using ratios seems like it would atleast be somewhat better, if not always right.
I'm surprised no one has harped on this a bit more, but brain size doesn't necessarily mean greater intelegence. Neanderthals had brain cases that were roughly 1400-1700cc, which on the average is a bit larger than human brains. As someone else mentioned, whales also have bigger brains than we do. Whales though, have very large bodies, and a large amount of sensory input to monitor and process. What might be a somewhat better, if not totally accurate measurement would be brainsize in relation to body size, also taking into account the amount of processing the brain has to do for other tasks. It reminds me of how well the amiga (2000) could do with a 7mhz 68000. It wasn't a fast chip by 386 standards, but the system could run just about as fast, because it had optimized code, and other processors helping it along.
Back when Raster started working at Redhat I was kinda wondering how it would turn out. I'm not terribly surprised to see the outcome, but a bit disappointed in Redhat. I don't use the distribution myself, but with the price raise to $80 for 6.0 (At the local Best Buy anyway), and Raster's comments here, it really seems like they may be headed towards being exactly what so many of us feared. This isn't to say that Redhat is going to become some kind of dictator, but that thier goals as a business, not just succeeding, but excessively growing, seem to be getting higher priority than than just developing cool software.
I understand that making sure you have a good business model is certainly important, but when any company, or even a group of people, target to have a monopoly on the interface to linux, i.e. what a person sees, when they see it, how they interact with it, that strikes me as being rather scary. This is, imho, why Enlightenment seems such a good concept. Provide the backbone to allow any interface, but do everything behind the scenes. Don't market the default interface as the end all. Actively promote diversity to accomplish the best results. I truely hope in the future that linux doesn't simply become the underlying archetecture to propriatary interfaces. Even with opensourced code, the concept of an end-all interface with it's own agenda can be damaging. Unfortunatly, it appears that this is the road that many companies, (and individuals) desire. Hopefully the most open design in the end will win, and that the people who work for companies investing in linux, will not abuse thier positions.
If you take a look at www.pricewatch.com, it can be seen that the K6-3 450 is indeed slightly higher priced than the PII and PIII at the same clock speed. However, if you compare the K6-2 at 450mhz, you'll see that the K6-2 is over $225 cheaper than either of those chips. The K6-3 at 450mhz is currently the fastest processor by AMD that is on that page, and if you look at the K6-3 at 400mhz rather than 450mhz, the price is $170 less. ($235 vs $405) Now, if you look at say a 500mhz PIII xeon with 1meg of cache, the chip costs $2067. If you go for the highest end K7 that comes out the first day it's out, you'll probably pay quite a bit, but the lower end of the K7 spectrum should bottom out rather nicely to match what else is out there after a week or two. As to the benchmark situation, I think enough other people have shown the architecture benefits of the K7 cpu over current offerings, and why this test logically doesn't make very much sense.
It mentions in the article that the manuals are sold out right now, and that they are behind on supplies (due to slashdot however) If this is the case, then it's certainly not a fault of the linux (or bsd/irix) community that they arn't making any money. Honestly I'm surprised that they have gotten as many people interested in it as they have. It's good software, but it's been buggy in the past, and the interface is tough for most amatures to stick with. I mean honestly, they are aiming at a small percent of the computer market (linux users) and then taking an even smaller percent of those users (3d graphics linux users) and giving them an interface that only experienced 3d graphics linux users could learn to use for anything professional. It's powerful software, but from a business standpoint they are making software that shouldn't be aimed at the amature graphics community, which really most of us linux artists are. I think it's great that they did, every free program out there that they want to give me I'll gladly take. They just need to make sure that they are creating the right software for the right community. I don't know too many people that have used the bones structures and inverse kinematics functions in blender (ok ok, I do know some.) but I do know a lot of people looking for something like blender that would let them easily start working with 3d graphics, and see them see results relatively quickly. That's something that blender doesn't let you do. It can take someone unfamiliar with the program an hour to figure out how to move and scale objects. Granted, this DOES give you a reason to buy the manual, though atleast basic functions should be easy..;)
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Thank you, I thought I was the only one. :) The old amiga architecture rocked. They even had wiring diagrams in the back of the manual! They actually *let* you know how everything was hooked up! wow! I was thinking, that maybe if the new amiga turns out to be what you mentioned, we should start our own in the same concept as the old. Some ideas that I think would be fun to play around with:
;)
-extensive SMP, maybe using one of the newer technologies than SMP for multiprocessor support. Depending on how much everything costs. design it in such a way that processors/processor boards can be dropped in and out easily. Maybe use a daisy chain type system or something, with a replacable bus to scale with the number of processors. A crossbar scheme might work better? Something similar to HP's in the V class boxes?
-modular design, multiple buses for mem/proc/io/etc. Central ram pool and central cpu pool. Ability for components to grab cpu and ram for specific tasks. More exotic implementations could perhaps use fpgas if the price/prof would end up being useful. DSPs could probably be made of use quite a bit. Perhaps have it setup in a way that you could drop either cpu or dsp/fpga on the bus until the bus is saturated, so that you can have different levels of fpu/int/dsp depending on what kind of machine you want. Central ram pool has already been done, similar concept as uma.
-Object Oriented OS. If you've ever heard of oGMo's design called "Unity", you know what I'm talking about. OS and hardware are designed to be very very modular.
-components independant of each other. Each component should be able to do a minimal amount of work on it's own without interfering with any other component in the machine. Only when central ram/cpu resources become scarce should you notice a slow down. This should go hand in hand with the ability to drop in different kinds of processors, depending on what you want to be doing.
From everything I've done, and all the designs I've already drawn up, the absolutely most vital thing in this setup is the speed of the multiple busses. It will need to be able to scale so that it can pump and incredibly large amount of data around, and it won't be cheap. This certainly won't be the "budget" computer that people seem to want these days. There are some questions as to overhead with the bus designs, how to implement an efficent control mechanism, and wether or not the whole thing can even built to preform well. I think it can, but it will take a *lot* of work, and it'd need some backing to get it off the ground. Later when I take a comp arch course, I'm thinking about working with the design on a real low level, maybe use 68000 chips and see what I can do with a fast bus. it'd be an interesting experiment.
Ok, so I got *way* off topic, but essentially, this is what I want the new amiga to be.
mohohahaha! I'm running E right now *with* gnome-panel at 1024x768 on a 486dx2/66!!! :)~ ;)
teeheehee... Granted, this isn't any ordinary 486dx2/66, it's got 32megs of parity *60* ns memory, and 2 1.35gig scsi drives. The most surprising thing, is that it still runs fairly well. It's usable. Even transparent window moves arn't too bad as long as it's not a huge window like netscape. Gnome stuff I just leave going, I don't touch it, it doesn't bother me (besides having slashapp) and it all works out good.
Well, I have mixed feelings on this whole affair. QNX sounded like a really great OS, and I really would why they are scraping it. It doesn't make very much sense, especially with all the work that has been put in. At the same time, He really says some flattering things about linux, that I'm not sure are completely true. I'm a linux advocate all the way, but linux being the most stable OS out there? I really think BSD gives it a run for it's money.
:(
The next thing is that he says linux already has good hardware support. That's good, if you are planning to use PC hardware. Lets think about this for a minute though. In the linux kernel, the most extensive list of drivers are there for sound, network, and scsi, with some others thrown in. Now I don't know about you, but it seems like it would be silly to take a box, and support all the pc hardware under the sun, when it would be easier to just build it into the machine. It'd be nice to have upgrade options, and I think it's worth supporting the pci bus, but honestly, if your building in 100BT, 4speaker 3d sound, and a scsi controller already, and can do it outside of the pci bus in a better way, why bother? From what I've seen in driver development, Videocards seem to be some of the most important, but unless they are planning to run X or GGI, they are going to have to do it all anyway. I guess this is just wearing away at my hopes that we would see a really revolutionary box with a really cool hardware design, rather than just using your run of the mill PC components. It really sounds like Amiga is trying to take the "safe" "garanteed" road, and in doing so, isn't going to come out with anything spectacular like they did back with the original 1000.
This is fairly odd. I was under the impression that there would be a native version of the notes client that would run under linux. Around here at my work, we have some ibm/hp reps, and while perhaps they arn't really in the know more than anyone else, they were saying that it was pretty likely we would see one come out in next year or so. I believe one of them mentioned 5.0, though I don't remember precisely. Anyway, I suppose time will tell...
I'd agree with you in most cases, generally pg-13 movies are much better to air than R rated movies. However, south park has the popularity behind it, and regardless of how the writers wrote it, it should generate a good deal of revenue. Had the writers watered the movie down, would people still want to go see it as bad? Now, if I remember correctly, this is aproximately how paramount makes money. They lease the copies of the film to a theater for a given number of shows regardless of how many tickets are sold. That means that as long as theaters keep playing the movie, they get money. Now, Paramount wants to keep people watching the movie so the theaters keep it playing, so it's a mutual relationship, but paramount doesn't really need to worry if a given show doesn't fill up, they are getting thier money. For this reason, it's important for them to make sure the theaters keep playing it.
The flip side to this is President Clinton's recent condemning of the movie industry for not being strict enough on enforcing the R rating. South Park is exactly the type of movie that would be perfect for him to use as an identifier as to how the movie industry is doing. It basically came at a really bad time. The last thing Paramount, and the movie theaters in general want is for the government to come in and start forcing thier hand in things, so the theaters are making sure to put on a good show. Once the topic has cooled down and the guys over in washington move over to something else like the video game market, then they'll probably relax thier guard a bit, and carry on more like usual. In the end, they would make more money by sacrificing some of the south park funds, than to have washington get up in arms. besides, the kids will eventually see it, if only on video, and paramount knows that. It might mean less revenue, but it won't be totally lost.
Very good post, I like your points. I'd like to just say that not all of us, as christians, readily accept our morals handed to us on plates. I like to think mine are well thought out. You are correct in saying we all are hypocrites, especially we as christians, in that we still do evil, though we teach not to do it. I'd content that this isn't necessarily a bad thing, in that effort is made to follow what we believe to be correct.
:) Wether your having hot flashes or cold flashes, ultimately it still means your sick.
Btw, I found your reference to the church of South Park particularly humerous..
I agree with some of what your saying here. I think you make very good points in relation to why children shouldn't see it. I think in the same way though, we as adults need to realize that we arn't immune to it's effects either. Certainly more so than children, but adults in the same ways as children get caught up in the emotional response that such films promote. It might not even be that the ideas are bad, but that it's an emotional response rather than a well thought out response.
This is were we factor in those notions that you mentioned earlier, specifically rebellion. South Park is the visible, and probably one of the most dramatic examples of the feelings of rebellion in our society today. So much so, that as long as they can portray what they are rebelling against in a bad light, people will find it humerous, and form opinions based on that. It's one of the best forms of propaganda that exists. The ironic thing, is that often times rebellion's object is to be to rid hypocrasy, propoganda, and those who are power hungry from being in control. At the same time, shows like these are the very tools used to affect how people might feel about a specific group or thing. Perhaps South Park isn't used to this extent, but I'm reminded of the 3 minute hates that exist in the book 1984. While the hate is to be directed at goldberg, it's easily transfered to other targets, even Big Brother, then back at goldberg again. It's disgusting in a way, because of it's extremity. If a movie can portray a group of people in a way they choose, that re-enforces other people's ideas about that group, even if it is all done in satire, that gives those who made that movie an encredible amount of power, doesn't it?
Well, I'm in the minority here, but I really don't like South Park all that much. At times the show is funny, they have some talented people working on it. At the same time though, the shock value isn't terribly appealing to me. When I've watched it in the past with some other friends, I think to myself sometimes why people find it so funny, and like it so much. It seems to be a way to rebel against the establishment in a way, both through the right to make choices, but also because it goes against what many of those in power claim to represent. (I think most are being hypocritical anyway, and really don't care.) It seems that this is mostly brought out with emotion though, and that bothers me, because emotions can easily be controlled. Paramount released the movie to make money, and because it's what people, specifically, teenagers want. Any kind of political message is there because it's agreeable to the crowd that would be interested in watching the movie for the shock value and cynicism. Indulgance, wether in power, hate, sex, or rebellion seems to me to be a scary thing.
I'll first address the situation with raster. I think your right about most of what you've said about him, and yes, at times he can be immature, but I don't think he was terribly outside his rights on this. He spoke what he honestly felt at the time, and I don't think you can blame him for that. You see, back when slashdot first was around, and when enlightenment was in it's early days, a good deal of the people that would post on slashdot would be known by everyone else, off irc, or off mailing lists, etc. Perhaps it's different not actually knowing raster, but most of us had atleast talked to him, and didn't think of him as anything more than just a really good coder working on a really cool idea. I guess the point I'm getting at is that we were/are his friends first, and that it's more important to us to know what is on his mind, and if he's mad and why, than to always here fluff and graciousness, if that's not what he's really feeling. I can't speak for Rob on this, but I'd guess that this is why he's posted raster's leaving and working for VA. To me, and I think rob and a lot of the others, Raster's life is important, because he's our friend, and that it's worth letting people know about. Now of course the majority of slashdot readers these days don't know raster, and probably don't care about enlightenment, or maybe even linux for that matter. I guess I'd just ask that you cut him some slack, because he's a hardworking, and caring individual as shown by his offense at his boss insulting the E user base. He had some legitimate grips, and perhaps slashdot is not the best place for those gripes anymore, but at one time it would have been. Honestly, I'm sad to see the old way of things disappearing. At one time, raster could have said this and it would have generated some sympathy, maybe a couple critisizms, and would have been pretty much over in a day. People these days seem to be incensed over it. It's blown way out of proportion, specifically by the guys saying that it's being blown out of proportion. Believe me, it's not his friends that are continually revisting it.
:) Anyway, I must have typed a page by now, so it's probably time to shutup. ;)
Now, as to the Mindcraft emails... Unfortunately, that is something we have to expect. Out of all the linux users in the world, there are going to be ones that send nasty emails. They might not even be linux users, but kids trying to fight for the linux cause because it's the "hip" thing to do. The fact that mindcraft posted those emails I think reflects poorly on them though. Would it be right for Rob to start posting hate mail by windows users implying that all windows users are hate filled immature kids? I don't think so myself. It's an unfair representation of the majority. I'm sure that mindcraft recieved a number of well presented emails as well. I'd really be interested to find out what the number of authors that sent well-thought email vs hatemail were. (I say authors because it's more probable that hatemail would be sent multiple times by the same person.)
I also want to thank you for the well thought out post. It's good to know what people think, especially the newer crowd that hasn't been around as long as some of us. I guess something that we as the old crowd need to realize is that wether or not we choose it, we are being put into roles of responsibility that affect many more people than we had ever dreamed of even 2 years ago. Something that I think you, and many of the others in the newer crowd need to do, is to realize that the linux culture wasn't based on advertising, or marketing, or being politically correct. Things never used to really make too many waves. You did your own thing, and it was all cool. Now that linux is in the limelight, we need to clean up our acts in some ways, and it's something that isn't going to come in a split instant, and probably won't ever completely change. Raster is gonna still be Raster, Rob is gonna still be Rob, and Nite_Hawk is gonna still be Nite_Hawk..
What is up with you guys? Shesh, Raster is a friend to some of us, and personally, I think it's great that he got a job at VA. They are great guys, and Raster is a great guy as well. CmdrTaco, Enlightenment, Raster, linux, and a number of us go back before slashdot even existed, so if Cmdrtaco and the gang want to post about him getting a new job, then why the heck shouldn't they be able to? If you don't like it, don't read it. It's not like every news story out there has to be some mind boggling new technology or corperate lawsuit. Raster is one of us, and he doesn't deserve some of the crap he's been getting on these forums. Some of the critisizm is legitimate, but the flames and pot shots certainly are not.
Well, rather than just leaving the same aspect ratio you'd probably want to increase the resolution of the screen while keeping a relatively constant physical size. It'd be worth while for fonts, and maybe still images depending on what your doing. I think most animation/game stuff isn't going to need much more than 1280x1024 though. :)
Nope, your post isn't flamebait, it's a troll. Your already dismissing mozilla before a stable release even comes out, and only because netscape supposedly only has 25% or less of the market. I might add, that 25% of the market is far from dead, even if those numbers happen to be true. (I somewhat doubt it.) :)
now, if you want to go and use IE on windows, go for it. As long as microsoft obeys standards (ha) I really don't care how many people use it. It's their problem, not mine. I'd keep using mozilla, and the same goes for most people running linux. (ok, so I do run lynx sometimes ). Until something better comes along for both linux and unix though, netscape/mozilla can only be as dead as linux is, and well, if you want to make the claim that linux is dead, I think there are plenty of peole here that would be willing to argue that point.
Well, Neanderthals had a very thick area of bone in the top of the skulls, though I don't really see how the thickness of the bone would change the fact that the brain cavity is still larger. (IE you could make the bone 6 feet thick, and if it still had a capacity of 1400-1700cc, it would still have a larger brain than a human assuming the brain completely filled it.) As to the size ratio question, I'm simply saying that it would be a better method to use than just trying to directly compare brain size. Larger humans (if I remember correctly) tend to have larger brains than smaller humnans, simply because larger organisms tend to have larger brains. That would probably make a lot of people on here angry, that the 7' 300lb football player could be considered by some to be smarter because he might happen to have a larger brain (cranial capacity). Personally I don't think either method is terribly accurate, but using ratios seems like it would atleast be somewhat better, if not always right.
I'm surprised no one has harped on this a bit more, but brain size doesn't necessarily mean greater intelegence. Neanderthals had brain cases that were roughly 1400-1700cc, which on the average is a bit larger than human brains. As someone else mentioned, whales also have bigger brains than we do. Whales though, have very large bodies, and a large amount of sensory input to monitor and process. What might be a somewhat better, if not totally accurate measurement would be brainsize in relation to body size, also taking into account the amount of processing the brain has to do for other tasks. It reminds me of how well the amiga (2000) could do with a 7mhz 68000. It wasn't a fast chip by 386 standards, but the system could run just about as fast, because it had optimized code, and other processors helping it along.
Nite_Hawk
Back when Raster started working at Redhat I was kinda wondering how it would turn out. I'm not terribly surprised to see the outcome, but a bit disappointed in Redhat. I don't use the distribution myself, but with the price raise to $80 for 6.0 (At the local Best Buy anyway), and Raster's comments here, it really seems like they may be headed towards being exactly what so many of us feared. This isn't to say that Redhat is going to become some kind of dictator, but that thier goals as a business, not just succeeding, but excessively growing, seem to be getting higher priority than than just developing cool software.
;)
I understand that making sure you have a good business model is certainly important, but when any company, or even a group of people, target to have a monopoly on the interface to linux, i.e. what a person sees, when they see it, how they interact with it, that strikes me as being rather scary. This is, imho, why Enlightenment seems such a good concept. Provide the backbone to allow any interface, but do everything behind the scenes. Don't market the default interface as the end all. Actively promote diversity to accomplish the best results. I truely hope in the future that linux doesn't simply become the underlying archetecture to propriatary interfaces. Even with opensourced code, the concept of an end-all interface with it's own agenda can be damaging. Unfortunatly, it appears that this is the road that many companies, (and individuals) desire. Hopefully the most open design in the end will win, and that the people who work for companies investing in linux, will not abuse thier positions.
Ok, I'm off my soapbox now, flame away..
If you take a look at www.pricewatch.com, it can be seen that the K6-3 450 is indeed slightly higher priced than the PII and PIII at the same clock speed. However, if you compare the K6-2 at 450mhz, you'll see that the K6-2 is over $225 cheaper than either of those chips. The K6-3 at 450mhz is currently the fastest processor by AMD that is on that page, and if you look at the K6-3 at 400mhz rather than 450mhz, the price is $170 less. ($235 vs $405) Now, if you look at say a 500mhz PIII xeon with 1meg of cache, the chip costs $2067. If you go for the highest end K7 that comes out the first day it's out, you'll probably pay quite a bit, but the lower end of the K7 spectrum should bottom out rather nicely to match what else is out there after a week or two. As to the benchmark situation, I think enough other people have shown the architecture benefits of the K7 cpu over current offerings, and why this test logically doesn't make very much sense.
I also agree that this is a very good article. I'd suggest reading if your interested in the political side of this war.
It mentions in the article that the manuals are sold out right now, and that they are behind on supplies (due to slashdot however) If this is the case, then it's certainly not a fault of the linux (or bsd/irix) community that they arn't making any money. Honestly I'm surprised that they have gotten as many people interested in it as they have. It's good software, but it's been buggy in the past, and the interface is tough for most amatures to stick with. I mean honestly, they are aiming at a small percent of the computer market (linux users) and then taking an even smaller percent of those users (3d graphics linux users) and giving them an interface that only experienced 3d graphics linux users could learn to use for anything professional. It's powerful software, but from a business standpoint they are making software that shouldn't be aimed at the amature graphics community, which really most of us linux artists are. I think it's great that they did, every free program out there that they want to give me I'll gladly take. They just need to make sure that they are creating the right software for the right community. I don't know too many people that have used the bones structures and inverse kinematics functions in blender (ok ok, I do know some.) but I do know a lot of people looking for something like blender that would let them easily start working with 3d graphics, and see them see results relatively quickly. That's something that blender doesn't let you do. It can take someone unfamiliar with the program an hour to figure out how to move and scale objects. Granted, this DOES give you a reason to buy the manual, though atleast basic functions should be easy.. ;)