Speed is not a big issue with encrypted file systems. A loopback encryption may be plenty good enough for you.
Why? Because you don't encrypt everything. Or at least, the vast majority of people do not need to encrypt everything. You do not need to encrypt any binaries that came with your Linux system. You probably do need to encrypt source files (and resulting executables) if you are a programmer but who cares if it takes a tiny bit longer to load in an encrypted source file. And your encrypted binary would probably be cached anyway.
So really, all you need to do is sit down and figure out exactly what to encrypt. And you'll discover speed isn't a big issue.
I encrypt sensitive source files. And my email. And a few other things. I do not even notice a difference in speed.
While I can understand where you are coming from, I must say that I do not agree.
Have you tried landing your jet in Falcon 4? Particularly before the patch made it easier? Have you got all the realism settings maxed? I'd hate to see a FPS that required as much management of radar as Falcon 4 does.:).
Now, if you are saying that, for pure flying, you prefer the civilian sims, I'll grant you that. Falcon 4 emphasises military flying. I think it has a very strong model of the falcon aircraft but if you are just interested in flight, you don't really care about the different radar modes and that kind of thing.
I always found civilian flight sims boring. But hey, I remember playing Aces of the Pacific and trying to land on a carrier... blindfolded. Someone standing beside me gave verbal cues. It was very difficult.
AES is fundamentally unsuitable for SDMI. Read up on what they are trying to do. If it was just a matter of encrypting the data, that would be easy. But they want watermarks.
In my opinion, there are better computer games available now than in the past (say, in the 80s). Certainly there is a lot more crap available now as well, but that doesn't mean that there aren't gems to be found.
I much prefer Baldur's Gate 2 over Rogue, for example. There's a lot more depth to the game. And Civilization, when it came out, eclipsed everything else from the 80s. Falcon 4 is much better than any flight game produced three or more years prior.
Now, the question we should be asking is what makes for a better game? Because there's too much software being produced now that looks pretty but isn't worth even the cost of a bargain bin purchase.
Is it better graphics? Bigger worlds? No. Better graphics are necessary to keep me interested in the game. But graphics is not what makes the game good. More immersion in the game, better plots, tuning done well enough such that I feel I should play just one more turn (until the sun comes up). Games deep enough for me to ponder strategies while I am far away from my computer.
All of these things are easier now with bigger teams and more powerful computers. Unfortunately, while they result in more fun for the consumer and better reviews in the magazines, better graphics and bigger worlds is what tends to sell the game off the shelf.
I've been playing computer games since early 1982. I loved games back then. Some of them were really amazing. Some of them, such as Starflight, I'm sure I would still enjoy today. But in general, I am much happier living now. The graphics are better (so what?). The worlds are bigger (sometimes good, sometimes bad). The games are (occasionally) deeper, more enthralling, more complex (definitely good).
Actually, it is often cheaper now to buy
the magazines on the rack in Canada than to
pay for a subscription. I know Computer
Gaming World has been cheaper to buy off the
rack for at least the last ten years.
Yes, there *are* some machines with only 16
colours (4 bit colour). And heck, even
monochrome (1 bit) 'colour'. Many web
sites worked fine on this computer with
only black and white, but a large number
did not.
If you want to be truly safe, you need enough
contrast between your background and your
foreground so that it works on machines with
1-bit colour.
But why bother? Nobody would seriously use
such a machine to browse the web, as useful
as it could be for other things. Similarly,
do you really need to appeal to users with
only 8-bit colour? I mean, so long as they
can see something, is it really
worth making it look perfect?
There are *significant* problems. That's not
to say you should ignore this possibility,
though.
Working with, say, programmers in India, you have several issues. Language is very different, as is the timezone. Indian programmers are not generally as good at producing code, nor can you expect them to put in overtime. You will have to go down and visit them from time to time. And their infrastructure is severely lacking at the moment... share ONE dial-up connection per office and even that will be down rather a lot.
There are a lot of challenges. You spend a lot more time managing them than you would European
or American programmers. They are absolutely
not capable of being dropped in to your
project, despite claims to the contrary.
But if you have a year or so to ramp them up,
you may well find excellent return on your
investment. There are some good programmers
down there and even with the cost of extra
management (and extra design), you may win out
in the long-term.
Trust me. Do not consider this a
worth-while short-term investment. Because
it does not work in the short-term.
I live in Edmonton. Nice enough
city but the winters are generally
brutal. Only two major
cities in the world have worse
winters than Edmonton. Winnipeg
and Moscow.
The FAQ says that they are developing
for Linux as well. That is certainly
true. And the interview says that
it hasn't been sorted out yet.
Once again, I remind you that they hope
to release a Linux version as well but they
are simply not promising it at the moment.
I'm sorry I cannot substantiate this any
further. I have no official quotes on
this. But, living in Edmonton and knowing
several people who work there, I do get to
hear the occasional piece of gossip.
On the other hand, I didn't hear that they
were working on the Star Wars game until
literally the minute the press release
went out.
This is somewhat misleading. BioWare has
not guaranteed that Neverwinter
Nights will be available for Linux as well
as Windows. They just hope it will. Of
course, at the moment, it works. But BioWare
simply does not have the budget to ensure
that the Linux version is tested as thoroughly
as the Windows version and they won't ship a
game that has not been adequately tested.
Besides, it is easy to find professional
Windows testers. It is far harder to find
professional Linux testers. Of course, I'm
sure we would all test it for free (and
heck, probably submit bug fixes to them)
but that is the state of things.
BioWare hopes to release Neverwinter
Nights for Linux as well as Windows (and,
presumably, the Mac) but are absolutely
not promising.
(By the way, I live in Edmonton. It is
amazing what you hear when anonymous visitors
from BioWare come into the lab and chat.)
Get them to explore neural nets. Neural nets are generally overrated in the field of AI, at least among those people not directly working in AI, but they can do some pretty neat things and, also important, you can program one from scratch with almost no effort.
You would, of course, need to provide some tasks for their neural nets. Simple character recognition based on 8x8 input matrices may be good. I think I did something like that a while back.
Of course, if this doesn't grab their attention, you can be sure that programming simple games will. Just be very careful to scale back your or their plans for such a game. They'll have too high hopes for such a project and you are far better off making them write a small and simple game.
I was talking to someone who works at Bioware (and has for a long time) and while they certainly are developing Neverwinter Nights for Windows and Linux, there are serious doubts as to whether they'll actually ship the Linux version, either with the game proper or as a separate version. The reason he gave me was that they simply do not have enough people around to adequately test the Linux version so they are still concentrating on their core market.
Do not misunderstand me... they are still developing for Linux as well. However, the Linux version may not see the light of day.
But Microsoft has already announced that it isn't planning on selling the hardware directly. Instead, they'll license out the requirements to other companies.
Microsoft would then make money on licensing their operating system.
This is always assuming the Microsoft will ever get the damn thing out there. Talking to some folks from Electronic Arts reminded me that Microsoft has a pretty pitiful track record on this sort of thing.
O'Reilly has a new book due out this summer on Palm development. Last time I checked, it hadn't been announced yet but if I was you, I'd wait until it is available, probably later this summer.
For what it is worth, you should know that licenses to Microsoft Windows are no longer transferable. That means that if you have Windows 98 installed on one of your machines and you buy a new one, you cannot use your copy of Win98 EVEN IF you remove it from the old system entirely.
They exist, you just can't see the majority of them because they are servlets. And there are a fair number of them out there. I've used Perl and Java on the server side and much as I love Perl, I prefer Java for most tasks like hooking up to a database. Sure, Java is lacking the text parsing that Perl has but I only occasionally miss that.
As to where Java is for applets, that's a pretty sorry state. Java support in browsers is pitiful. On top of that, caching classes is a real pain in the ass, resulting in huge downloads (often over 100K, killer for 56k modems) for applets. This is not just Microsoft's fault, either. Netscape dropped the ball and Sun wasn't much better.
Anyone know if the Sun Java plug-in is usable now? I used it back in the 1.0 and 1.1 and it actually didn't work on over half the Windows boxes I tried it on.
This letter is excellent. I am going to send one myself.
Remember, guys, if we aren't polite about this, NVidia may opt to stop supporting Linux. While this certainly does not make good business sense for them, it is a very real possibility. We, as a community, are far better of with NVidia on our side and in order to do so, we should try to politely convince them of the errors of their ways rather than yelling and screaming.
I, too, highly recommend the logitech devices. I've been using the logitech marble trackball (the precursor to this one, without the scroll wheel) for well over a year and I love it. Very responsive, never needs cleaning, and feels great.
A friend of mine swore by this trackball but I could never get comfortable with it.
While I don't much care for mice, I've used logitech mice on campus and their ergonomic mice are certainly better than average.
Whatever you decide upon, get a mouse or a trackball that is comfortable. Ergonomic works for me but some people don't like it. Remember, though, that you will be using your pointing device a lot. It just isn't worth your while to save a couple of bucks if your wrists are going to complain.
While I can certainly see a lot of uses for this memory, particularly when it comes to portable music players and the like, instant-on just doesn't thrill me.
I see uptimes measured in months on my system. The time I lose due to reboots is miniscule. And if I was running Windows, would I really get instant-on? Windows spends most of its bootup time determining which disk clusters are messed up and initialising the hardware devices.
Sell the hardware either with a mandatory service plan (at a loss) or sans service plan for one lump sum payment. Expect to make most of the money selling to newbies so you can keep the price low (while still making a profit) on pure hardware sales.
Of course, you'd definitely do well to sell mod kits so that customers do not need much technical skill to plug in a hard drive.
Consider upping the screen resolution. That would be sweet. Definitely an option worth paying money for.
Definitely allow extensive feedback (preferably in a web-based discussion board) for people running Linux et al on the hardware. It could serve as free advertising and tech support.
Basically, have the option of selling the hardware for a profit for those people who want to run Linux on them. That's all we ask for.
Dists like Storm Linux are very easy to get installed. Easier, in fact, than Windows 98 (too many patches to install) or Windows 2000 Professional (too many drivers to track down, none of which are available yet). I hear OpenLinux is also pretty easy to install.
Personally, I stick with Debian. I find it very easy to upgrade which is far more important for me. I don't need to install Linux every couple of months like my roommate does with Windows. But then, I'm hardly a casual Linux user.
The question comes down to what you consider viable.
I use Linux as my primary desktop operating system and have for a while now. With KDE and a decent office suite, the only reason I ever want to boot back to Windows is to run games. And even here, Linux is catching up. In addition, I find Linux easier to install than either Windows 98 or Windows 2000 Professional, assuming of course that I pick a decent distribution.
So for me, Linux on the desktop is here now. But what about my mother? She isn't concerned about installing Linux (she wouldn't, nor would she install Windows) and Linux does have a lot to offer. But it also offers her no compelling reason to switch. She has all the software she needs and is comfortable with it. The few times that she buys new hardware, she knows it will work in Windows. She doesn't have to worry about recompiling a kernel or anything like that.
Linux is viable for her. But not yet compelling. She doesn't want to tinker with her system and she would end up having to learn how to edit config files and the like if she switched. Dists like Storm Linux go a long way to making everything easy to use but the Linux world still lags behind Windows.
We are getting there. We have the stability. We have the general ease-of-use if you don't need to tinker too much. We have the MS Office compatibility. We are starting to get the games (though the APIs lag significantly). Linux on the desktop is coming (and soon) but it isn't here yet. We're probably 80% of the way there.
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Why? Because you don't encrypt everything. Or at least, the vast majority of people do not need to encrypt everything. You do not need to encrypt any binaries that came with your Linux system. You probably do need to encrypt source files (and resulting executables) if you are a programmer but who cares if it takes a tiny bit longer to load in an encrypted source file. And your encrypted binary would probably be cached anyway.
So really, all you need to do is sit down and figure out exactly what to encrypt. And you'll discover speed isn't a big issue.
I encrypt sensitive source files. And my email. And a few other things. I do not even notice a difference in speed.
Have you tried landing your jet in Falcon 4? Particularly before the patch made it easier? Have you got all the realism settings maxed? I'd hate to see a FPS that required as much management of radar as Falcon 4 does. :).
Now, if you are saying that, for pure flying, you prefer the civilian sims, I'll grant you that. Falcon 4 emphasises military flying. I think it has a very strong model of the falcon aircraft but if you are just interested in flight, you don't really care about the different radar modes and that kind of thing.
I always found civilian flight sims boring. But hey, I remember playing Aces of the Pacific and trying to land on a carrier... blindfolded. Someone standing beside me gave verbal cues. It was very difficult.
AES is fundamentally unsuitable for SDMI. Read up on what they are trying to do. If it was just a matter of encrypting the data, that would be easy. But they want watermarks.
I much prefer Baldur's Gate 2 over Rogue, for example. There's a lot more depth to the game. And Civilization, when it came out, eclipsed everything else from the 80s. Falcon 4 is much better than any flight game produced three or more years prior.
Now, the question we should be asking is what makes for a better game? Because there's too much software being produced now that looks pretty but isn't worth even the cost of a bargain bin purchase.
Is it better graphics? Bigger worlds? No. Better graphics are necessary to keep me interested in the game. But graphics is not what makes the game good. More immersion in the game, better plots, tuning done well enough such that I feel I should play just one more turn (until the sun comes up). Games deep enough for me to ponder strategies while I am far away from my computer.
All of these things are easier now with bigger teams and more powerful computers. Unfortunately, while they result in more fun for the consumer and better reviews in the magazines, better graphics and bigger worlds is what tends to sell the game off the shelf.
I've been playing computer games since early 1982. I loved games back then. Some of them were really amazing. Some of them, such as Starflight, I'm sure I would still enjoy today. But in general, I am much happier living now. The graphics are better (so what?). The worlds are bigger (sometimes good, sometimes bad). The games are (occasionally) deeper, more enthralling, more complex (definitely good).
Actually, it is often cheaper now to buy the magazines on the rack in Canada than to pay for a subscription. I know Computer Gaming World has been cheaper to buy off the rack for at least the last ten years.
Baldur's Gate 2, that is pretty much a given.
Rio 500 MP3 player, which you can pick up for cheap at Audible.com, last time I checked.
A subscription to Wired.
VMWare for the geek in all of us.
A new video card, though I don't know specifics.
If you want to be truly safe, you need enough contrast between your background and your foreground so that it works on machines with 1-bit colour.
But why bother? Nobody would seriously use such a machine to browse the web, as useful as it could be for other things. Similarly, do you really need to appeal to users with only 8-bit colour? I mean, so long as they can see something, is it really worth making it look perfect?
Working with, say, programmers in India, you have several issues. Language is very different, as is the timezone. Indian programmers are not generally as good at producing code, nor can you expect them to put in overtime. You will have to go down and visit them from time to time. And their infrastructure is severely lacking at the moment... share ONE dial-up connection per office and even that will be down rather a lot.
There are a lot of challenges. You spend a lot more time managing them than you would European or American programmers. They are absolutely not capable of being dropped in to your project, despite claims to the contrary.
But if you have a year or so to ramp them up, you may well find excellent return on your investment. There are some good programmers down there and even with the cost of extra management (and extra design), you may win out in the long-term.
Trust me. Do not consider this a worth-while short-term investment. Because it does not work in the short-term.
I live in Edmonton. Nice enough city but the winters are generally brutal. Only two major cities in the world have worse winters than Edmonton. Winnipeg and Moscow.
Once again, I remind you that they hope to release a Linux version as well but they are simply not promising it at the moment.
I'm sorry I cannot substantiate this any further. I have no official quotes on this. But, living in Edmonton and knowing several people who work there, I do get to hear the occasional piece of gossip.
On the other hand, I didn't hear that they were working on the Star Wars game until literally the minute the press release went out.
Besides, it is easy to find professional Windows testers. It is far harder to find professional Linux testers. Of course, I'm sure we would all test it for free (and heck, probably submit bug fixes to them) but that is the state of things.
BioWare hopes to release Neverwinter Nights for Linux as well as Windows (and, presumably, the Mac) but are absolutely not promising.
(By the way, I live in Edmonton. It is amazing what you hear when anonymous visitors from BioWare come into the lab and chat.)
You would, of course, need to provide some tasks for their neural nets. Simple character recognition based on 8x8 input matrices may be good. I think I did something like that a while back.
Of course, if this doesn't grab their attention, you can be sure that programming simple games will. Just be very careful to scale back your or their plans for such a game. They'll have too high hopes for such a project and you are far better off making them write a small and simple game.
Do not misunderstand me... they are still developing for Linux as well. However, the Linux version may not see the light of day.
Microsoft would then make money on licensing their operating system.
This is always assuming the Microsoft will ever get the damn thing out there. Talking to some folks from Electronic Arts reminded me that Microsoft has a pretty pitiful track record on this sort of thing.
O'Reilly has a new book due out this summer on Palm development. Last time I checked, it hadn't been announced yet but if I was you, I'd wait until it is available, probably later this summer.
For what it is worth, you should know that licenses to Microsoft Windows are no longer transferable. That means that if you have Windows 98 installed on one of your machines and you buy a new one, you cannot use your copy of Win98 EVEN IF you remove it from the old system entirely.
As to where Java is for applets, that's a pretty sorry state. Java support in browsers is pitiful. On top of that, caching classes is a real pain in the ass, resulting in huge downloads (often over 100K, killer for 56k modems) for applets. This is not just Microsoft's fault, either. Netscape dropped the ball and Sun wasn't much better.
Anyone know if the Sun Java plug-in is usable now? I used it back in the 1.0 and 1.1 and it actually didn't work on over half the Windows boxes I tried it on.
Remember, guys, if we aren't polite about this, NVidia may opt to stop supporting Linux. While this certainly does not make good business sense for them, it is a very real possibility. We, as a community, are far better of with NVidia on our side and in order to do so, we should try to politely convince them of the errors of their ways rather than yelling and screaming.
A friend of mine swore by this trackball but I could never get comfortable with it.
While I don't much care for mice, I've used logitech mice on campus and their ergonomic mice are certainly better than average.
Whatever you decide upon, get a mouse or a trackball that is comfortable. Ergonomic works for me but some people don't like it. Remember, though, that you will be using your pointing device a lot. It just isn't worth your while to save a couple of bucks if your wrists are going to complain.
Netrek's homepage is here, not here.
I see uptimes measured in months on my system. The time I lose due to reboots is miniscule. And if I was running Windows, would I really get instant-on? Windows spends most of its bootup time determining which disk clusters are messed up and initialising the hardware devices.
Of course, you'd definitely do well to sell mod kits so that customers do not need much technical skill to plug in a hard drive.
Consider upping the screen resolution. That would be sweet. Definitely an option worth paying money for.
Definitely allow extensive feedback (preferably in a web-based discussion board) for people running Linux et al on the hardware. It could serve as free advertising and tech support.
Basically, have the option of selling the hardware for a profit for those people who want to run Linux on them. That's all we ask for.
It seems to me that the effort would have been better spent on OpenBSD. Does anyone know why they skipped OpenBSD?
Personally, I stick with Debian. I find it very easy to upgrade which is far more important for me. I don't need to install Linux every couple of months like my roommate does with Windows. But then, I'm hardly a casual Linux user.
I use Linux as my primary desktop operating system and have for a while now. With KDE and a decent office suite, the only reason I ever want to boot back to Windows is to run games. And even here, Linux is catching up. In addition, I find Linux easier to install than either Windows 98 or Windows 2000 Professional, assuming of course that I pick a decent distribution.
So for me, Linux on the desktop is here now. But what about my mother? She isn't concerned about installing Linux (she wouldn't, nor would she install Windows) and Linux does have a lot to offer. But it also offers her no compelling reason to switch. She has all the software she needs and is comfortable with it. The few times that she buys new hardware, she knows it will work in Windows. She doesn't have to worry about recompiling a kernel or anything like that.
Linux is viable for her. But not yet compelling. She doesn't want to tinker with her system and she would end up having to learn how to edit config files and the like if she switched. Dists like Storm Linux go a long way to making everything easy to use but the Linux world still lags behind Windows.
We are getting there. We have the stability. We have the general ease-of-use if you don't need to tinker too much. We have the MS Office compatibility. We are starting to get the games (though the APIs lag significantly). Linux on the desktop is coming (and soon) but it isn't here yet. We're probably 80% of the way there.