Oh, i agree that it would be nicer to be an open codec, but my bet is that they've got better things to do than concern themselves with the colour of the bicycle shed;)
I can see them just using the *easiest* tool that will be viewable by 90% of the public because they're simply not video geeks and have better things to do... like improve their 3d printer....
We still ask for "pints" of beer in metric countries, because it's a traditional size. Pint = decent sized glass, no one really cares accurately how big it is.
However, anything that as far as accurate measurement goes, is metric.
All the standard scientific units are metric. It's an international standard. Metric "just works" nicely in conversions/calculations. Fair enough if the US wants to keep it's general populace crippled with the imperial units - but science really is better off with metric.
Note that you don't see any movements to "bring back the imperial system" elswhere in the world, because metric *works*.
You'd be wrong. In any case, the proper response to Microsoft or whoever "stealing" public domain code is, "Good! I hope it works well for them." It doesn't cost you anything if they use your public domain code (now THAT's an oxymoron), so you really shouldn't expect anything in return.
Hoorah, the first time I've actually seen a post by someone else who understands the BSD-license way of thinking.
Commercial use of my BSD code does not remove my BSD code from distribution. If someone paid coders to improve it, they deserve the right to sell their improved version.
The difference between GPL and BSD is that GPL is a politically motivated license bent on taking over the software industry. BSD is a license in the interests if improving the quality of software in all segments of the market (by stopping wheel re-invention).
Work-around? Start mapping network drives from Z, backwards. I agree, the windows handling of this is retarded, but then so is the whole concept of drive letters in the first place...
1. if you are a newbie and just need a windows replacement, use Gnome. only MacOS has better GUI than Gnome.
Funny. When i'm using gnome, compared to KDE (or even Windows) i feel like my legs have been cut off and part of my brain has been removed. A "better" gui is a crock of shit. The "better" gui is the one that allows me to get my work done quicker and more comfortably.
Gnome has nothing to compare to KDE's ioslaves or kicker.
if you are nerd, why do you need a desktop environment at all?
Need? Why do you need X at all? I run it because I can, and it has a few cool features I like. I'm willing to trade 5% of my RAM for it. You realise Linus runs KDE right?:D
Why install a piece of crap when all you need is a bunch of cool apps?
This goes for gnome equally (more in my opinion, but opinion is divided). Personally I'd rather be running openstep (I'm wanting to play with GORM when I get some free time), but it's just not quite there yet.
if you a serious user worried about memory etc, use xfce or other light weight desktops.
If you're a "serious user", get out of your parent's basement, get a job, and spend the $50 on some more RAM if it's that much of an issue.
... My bet is that 99% of the general public didn't even know about the sony rootkit or that sony was behind the laptop battery problem - Dell, etc took most of the heat on that one. It's only the fringe nerd crowd who really know or care about such details.
Was amusing actually, one of the Mac people here giving us crap about how Dell are bad because of the battery thing, he shut up when apple did a recall as well...:D
I don't think WiFi companies will ever Open Source the drivers since this will allow *anyone* to change the chip's power and communication frequency; This ultimately allows *anyone* to listen on any frequency, including the military's.
If the military is still running unencrypted comms over wireless, and relying on the fact that no one has reverse-engineered wireless card drivers yet, there's more serious trouble afoot...
Last I heard, our state police force in Western Australia was switching to digital encrypted radio shortly (so scanners won't work any more), surely the military is significantly ahead of that...
Because you buy a CPU to run software, and like it or not, x86 has the biggest availability. Modern compilers hide much of the ugliness of x86, and 99% of the world does not program in assembly any more.
X86 performance is decent, and performance per $ and per watt is excellent. RISC code can use more memory (and thus, consume more cache) due to the increased number of instructions to do simple tasks, as opposed to a single more complex instruction.
Unfortunately, unless you're starting from scratch and throwing away backwards compatibility (which will never happen unless there's *real* compelling reasons to do so), it's a no-brainer.
Sure, you might *feel* better not running such an inherently brain-damaged architecture, but in reality the reasons just aren't there.
Actually that's probably a little unfair. I suspect that intel really wasn't counting on the success of the 8080 (and thus, 8086 -> x86) - given that the market has wanted backwards compatibility, they've done an amazing job all things considered.
This is how I compare: In those days (late 80s, not early 90s by the way...no Amigas or Atari ST in the early 90s)
Oh btw... I can't get to wikipedia at the moment (wierd), but I think you're forgetting the Amiga 600/1200/3000/4000, all of which were on sale in 1990 or later. Shit, I bought my Amiga 500 in 1989, a mate bought his 1200 in 1993.
Well, given that we're talking in the context of gaming console, yes.
Or would you rather compare the range of business applications on the Amiga to on the PC?
First up, I'm talking about the early to mid 90s, not the late 80s. I used to own an amiga and dabbled in 68k assembler on it, i'm fully aware of it's capabilities. I sold it for a PC in 1992, specifically because of it's lack of processing power, which was most apparent on Wing Commander (which didn't even come out for the amiga until a few years later, and was a disappointment after playing the PC version and WC2 years beforehand), Indy 500, Microprose F1GP and virtually any other polygon based game you care to mention.
What killed the Amiga (for me in any case) was:
VGA - the AGA chipset was too little, too late
3d processing / lack of cpu power. All of the amiga's custom chips for moving sprites are totally useless for processing polygons, and by the early/mid 90s, this is where games were heading. I re-iterate - go play wing commander on a 386 and then compare to the experience you get on an Amiga 1200. The A1200 is like a slide-show, the 386 is fluid. Also, chances are you'll be swapping 3.5" floppies on the amiga, unless you're one of the very few who had a hard drive
Expensive hard disks - The A500/2000 were SCSI only, requiring an expensive SCSI adapter. The A1200/4000 were IDE, but the 4000 was an expensive machine, and the 1200 required laptop hard drives, which again, for the size, are expensive. Also, the 1200 was released far too late, and by the time it came out, a 14mhz 68020 was mediocre.
I'll agree with you - in the 80s, the amiga reigned supreme, and was awesome for 2d sprite based gaming. However, as the 90s rolled on (when the PC really started to dominate), 3d became more important, and the amiga's custom chips were no use for it.
If the A1200 came out 1-2 years before it did, and included a 68030 processor at a competitive price, maybe it would have evened the score a little bit. It didn't and commodore went broke.
The PC didn't have a "raw power" advantage in those days. What it had was a monopoly in the business world.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Compare Wing Commander, Falcon3, Strike Commander, Doom, Ultima Underworld, etc to anything available on any other platform in 1992-1994. The only desktop machine with enough power to run games like that was the PC. The mac was still mostly 68k based, which, although a nice CPU to code for, is under-powered compared to the 486s of the day.
Segmented memory - yes, you can use 16 bit segmented memory, but why would you? Most applications post-Win95 use 32 bit flat addressing.
Back when the PC started to take over the computer-gaming market, it was still using segmented memory with EMS, XMS, or protected mode DOS-extenders. There was no direct-X api, no openGL (well it existed, but not on the PC), etc. Think Wing Commander, Falcon 3, Strike Commander, Privateer, Doom, Quake, etc.
Of course, now things are different, but when the PC first started making inroads (before Windows 95) it was painful to deal with. When the 486 came out, it wiped the floor with most of the desktop computer competition in regards to CPU horsepower. Go try playing Wing Commander on an Amiga, and compare to the experience you get on a 386DX with Sound Blaster.
My point is that the PC "took off" as a gaming platform long before the ease-of-programming arrived.
The real point of heel-toe is not the possible loss of control, it's having the engine at the top of the power curve at all times.
Incorrect. It's about keeping the car under control. If you're turning slightly while braking and don't heel+toe when you downshift, depending on how aggressive your clutch is, you can unsettle the rear wheels and cause the car to spin (in a rear wheel drive car at least).
To obtain your level 3 CAMS license in Australia (not sure what the equivalents are over seas), you need to be able to heel+toe for this reason.
If you are in teh correct gear for the speed you're doing, your RPM will be in the torque band regardless of *how* you put it into that gear:D
For a lot of people, gt4 is a "toy" as opposed to a game. sure you need to win races to earn money/cars, but that lasts a couple of months - once you've got a decent money supply, GT is more about tweaking cars and playing time-attack, drifting, racing your friends, and otherwise using the game as a sort of "simulator", for lack of a better word.
There's reasons for the lack of car damage - to be honest, it doesn't phase me. The "consequences" of crashing are that you screw up your lap time, screw up your cool drifting video, etc.
Whilst live for speed is good (yes, I have it, and yes I have a wheel), the GT series still "feels" more like a real car the way it handles.
And yes, I have a Nissan 180sx to compare it to:D
Agreed, and the more i read about objective-C, the more it seems like the "right way" to do things:) I'm no major application developer, but I do have a bit of programming experience... the flash demo for GORM that's online somewhere is very impressive.
Personally I'd love to see OpenStep take off in a big way - just yesterday in fact I was going through a bunch of old stuff in my email and was thinking "I need to try out openstep again this weekend":)
Slashdot Mirror
I can see them just using the *easiest* tool that will be viewable by 90% of the public because they're simply not video geeks and have better things to do... like improve their 3d printer....
However, anything that as far as accurate measurement goes, is metric.
This is why.
Note that you don't see any movements to "bring back the imperial system" elswhere in the world, because metric *works*.
Hoorah, the first time I've actually seen a post by someone else who understands the BSD-license way of thinking.
Commercial use of my BSD code does not remove my BSD code from distribution. If someone paid coders to improve it, they deserve the right to sell their improved version.
The difference between GPL and BSD is that GPL is a politically motivated license bent on taking over the software industry. BSD is a license in the interests if improving the quality of software in all segments of the market (by stopping wheel re-invention).
Work-around? Start mapping network drives from Z, backwards. I agree, the windows handling of this is retarded, but then so is the whole concept of drive letters in the first place...
How DARE they put mouse-click behaviour under the mouse control panel!?
Funny. When i'm using gnome, compared to KDE (or even Windows) i feel like my legs have been cut off and part of my brain has been removed. A "better" gui is a crock of shit. The "better" gui is the one that allows me to get my work done quicker and more comfortably.
Gnome has nothing to compare to KDE's ioslaves or kicker.
Need? Why do you need X at all? I run it because I can, and it has a few cool features I like. I'm willing to trade 5% of my RAM for it. You realise Linus runs KDE right? :D
This goes for gnome equally (more in my opinion, but opinion is divided). Personally I'd rather be running openstep (I'm wanting to play with GORM when I get some free time), but it's just not quite there yet.
If you're a "serious user", get out of your parent's basement, get a job, and spend the $50 on some more RAM if it's that much of an issue.
Was amusing actually, one of the Mac people here giving us crap about how Dell are bad because of the battery thing, he shut up when apple did a recall as well... :D
If the military is still running unencrypted comms over wireless, and relying on the fact that no one has reverse-engineered wireless card drivers yet, there's more serious trouble afoot...
Last I heard, our state police force in Western Australia was switching to digital encrypted radio shortly (so scanners won't work any more), surely the military is significantly ahead of that...
X86 performance is decent, and performance per $ and per watt is excellent. RISC code can use more memory (and thus, consume more cache) due to the increased number of instructions to do simple tasks, as opposed to a single more complex instruction.
Unfortunately, unless you're starting from scratch and throwing away backwards compatibility (which will never happen unless there's *real* compelling reasons to do so), it's a no-brainer.
Sure, you might *feel* better not running such an inherently brain-damaged architecture, but in reality the reasons just aren't there.
Actually that's probably a little unfair. I suspect that intel really wasn't counting on the success of the 8080 (and thus, 8086 -> x86) - given that the market has wanted backwards compatibility, they've done an amazing job all things considered.
Personally, i'm willing to trade all of that off for the simple ability to move my equipment without a forklift. :)
The precision guidance is so good that there is no need for manouvering whilst not in orbit. :)
Watch for the reallydodgy.com IPO soon :D
Here's a schematic.
Can get i get front page of slashdot now? :D
Oh btw... I can't get to wikipedia at the moment (wierd), but I think you're forgetting the Amiga 600/1200/3000/4000, all of which were on sale in 1990 or later. Shit, I bought my Amiga 500 in 1989, a mate bought his 1200 in 1993.
Who's ignorant?
Yeah no worries, my bad. I realised i should have used "was" after I hit submit :D
Or would you rather compare the range of business applications on the Amiga to on the PC?
First up, I'm talking about the early to mid 90s, not the late 80s. I used to own an amiga and dabbled in 68k assembler on it, i'm fully aware of it's capabilities. I sold it for a PC in 1992, specifically because of it's lack of processing power, which was most apparent on Wing Commander (which didn't even come out for the amiga until a few years later, and was a disappointment after playing the PC version and WC2 years beforehand), Indy 500, Microprose F1GP and virtually any other polygon based game you care to mention.
What killed the Amiga (for me in any case) was:
I'll agree with you - in the 80s, the amiga reigned supreme, and was awesome for 2d sprite based gaming. However, as the 90s rolled on (when the PC really started to dominate), 3d became more important, and the amiga's custom chips were no use for it.
If the A1200 came out 1-2 years before it did, and included a 68030 processor at a competitive price, maybe it would have evened the score a little bit. It didn't and commodore went broke.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Compare Wing Commander, Falcon3, Strike Commander, Doom, Ultima Underworld, etc to anything available on any other platform in 1992-1994. The only desktop machine with enough power to run games like that was the PC. The mac was still mostly 68k based, which, although a nice CPU to code for, is under-powered compared to the 486s of the day.
Back when the PC started to take over the computer-gaming market, it was still using segmented memory with EMS, XMS, or protected mode DOS-extenders. There was no direct-X api, no openGL (well it existed, but not on the PC), etc. Think Wing Commander, Falcon 3, Strike Commander, Privateer, Doom, Quake, etc.
Of course, now things are different, but when the PC first started making inroads (before Windows 95) it was painful to deal with. When the 486 came out, it wiped the floor with most of the desktop computer competition in regards to CPU horsepower. Go try playing Wing Commander on an Amiga, and compare to the experience you get on a 386DX with Sound Blaster.
My point is that the PC "took off" as a gaming platform long before the ease-of-programming arrived.
Incorrect. It's about keeping the car under control. If you're turning slightly while braking and don't heel+toe when you downshift, depending on how aggressive your clutch is, you can unsettle the rear wheels and cause the car to spin (in a rear wheel drive car at least).
To obtain your level 3 CAMS license in Australia (not sure what the equivalents are over seas), you need to be able to heel+toe for this reason.
If you are in teh correct gear for the speed you're doing, your RPM will be in the torque band regardless of *how* you put it into that gear :D
However, being able to apply the brakes AND accelerator at the same time is good for burnouts, which can be done in GT4 :)
There's reasons for the lack of car damage - to be honest, it doesn't phase me. The "consequences" of crashing are that you screw up your lap time, screw up your cool drifting video, etc.
My 2c.
Whilst live for speed is good (yes, I have it, and yes I have a wheel), the GT series still "feels" more like a real car the way it handles. And yes, I have a Nissan 180sx to compare it to :D
Personally I'd love to see OpenStep take off in a big way - just yesterday in fact I was going through a bunch of old stuff in my email and was thinking "I need to try out openstep again this weekend" :)