I do respect what you are saying; UIs are fairly primitive compared to the technology used to display them.
The point is, however, that unless KDE/GNOME/Xorg and OS X managed to keep up with Microsoft Windows, there won't be any dollars for research/development.
In this fight, at least for the immediate future, eye candy is the name of the game. Microsoft is staking its reputation on it, and it looks to me, anyways, that unless alternative operating systems do the same, they'll be run out of the majority market.
OS X uses some OpenGL stuff; a lot of 2D compositing. It doesn't totally bury the system, however, and it can move a lot of that to software rendering as well; that's why it works just fine on my Powerbook with a GeforceFX 5200, 32 MB ram.
Vista, on the other hand, uses boatloads of 3D, everywhere. Lots of texturing. The main issue with Vista is not having enough graphics ram. For the full "Avalon" "experience", you'll need 256 MB in a 32-bit environment, and possibly more in a 64-bit environment. Fill rates will also be important, in order for you to keep your windows flying around the screen in 3D.
God knows why so much is needed; Project Looking Glass provides a similar display with far more modest requirements, and thats a JAVA window manager. Not to mention that Xorg is getting really, really close to alot of these things. Xgl is currently running with all kinds of interesting shader/geometry effects, and KDE's got the window manager refraction/reflection (take a look at the CrystalGL, the big cousin of Crystal, which does it in software).
Ultimately, Linux will get there, but the problem is integration; most of these features are avaliable on X, but few of them play nicely with OpenGL, and they often don't play well together. We'll have to see a big, combined push between the KDE 4 effort, GNOME's next generation Metacity, the freedesktop XGL/Xorg 7+ people, and NVIDIA/ATI. As I understand it, much of this is occuring now; but we probably won't see releases till near the time Vista is released, and we won't see proper integration into distributions till late 2006/early 2007.
The best part is, however, that once it DOES get into Linux, it'll run just fine on 32/64 MB cards, and most likely will degrade much more gracefully than Vista; there'll be a finer set of non-functional options, rather than 3/4 main settings.
I have no fear that we'll see plenty of desktop eye candy in the near future on Linux; this is mainly attributable to the freedesktop people, who have saved X with Xorg, a product that is making progress now after years and years of stagnation.
I'm much more worried about DirectX 10 (WGF 2.0). Will OpenGL keep up? I hope so, otherwise we'll see the few Linux/Mac gaming houses there are out there (in addition to Transgaming) fail completely as they become unable to port over Windows graphics features. NVIDIA, ATI and Apple seem to be keeping the OpenGL group moving, though.
The closest thing to a "killer app" for x86_64 is any kind of encoding or compression on a 64-bit linux, or anything with lots of floating point calculations:
On AMD processors, Povray seems to experience a 25% performance improvement by going 64-bit. If you were rendering lots of complex scenes, a 25% performance improvement merely by switching from a 32-bit to a 64-bit OS is incredible.
Especially if you are a POV-ray buff; the 64-bit version seems to work not only faster, but with higher precision. I'm not sure if commercial 3D apps work the same way. I do know if I had to spend more time in 3D rendering and Video encoding, I would be very, very excited about the performance improvement I got from switching to 64-bit SuSE (which is what I run). In general, however, I don't spend a lot of time on those activites, so its not a big deal.
Even gaming seems to experience some improvement, but not as much.
The question is, how much would you pay for a 25% faster system? On Linux, going 64-bit is painless; and in doing so, I've sped up things like video encoding, compression, and complex rendering by 25-30%. That's pretty amazing, if you ask me.
No, there's no 64-bit "killer-app", and to be honest, I don't think there ever will be. What you do get, however, at least with an AMD64 processor, is an average of 15-25% performance improvement on math intensive apps. That's a pretty big deal; think about the price delta between any given processor "X" and processor "X*1.25". By switching to a 64-bit OS, you get that free; or if you are at the absolute bleeding edge, you get performance not possible in the 32-bit world. *shrug*
My Baysean spam filters work just fine, and I literally get 1000s of messages a day.
If someone tries to charge me to receive e-mail from me, they will no longer enjoy the ability to correspond with me. Yes, I'll include customers in this, too.
I will not pay 10 cents to send you an e-mail. Get over it, get a real e-mail provider. I might pay 10 cents once to tell you that.
Excuse me while I dig up the storm drain in my front yard, and cut down the telephone poles in the front and back.
You see, the free market only applies when the market was established via free conditions. If the government intervened in some fashion to create a monopoly (Verizon, you get to be the telephone carrier for this area), then the government MUST intervene to keep the market sane; market failures CAN be created by government, and when they are they should be checked by the government.
Geographic monopolies are often established by the state. I have no idea why one would want a geographic monopoly to run rampant and unregulated.
Otherwise, it's MY land. I want a cut of all the profits that the phone/cable/electrical companies get by stringing their lines on MY land.
Any CEO (or high level manager) worth their salt is ALWAYS looking for snitches like this (Snitch is a bit of a loaded word, sorry.) Don't be complicit; try to change it, or, if you aren't in the position to cause change, propose changes to someone who is.
Try and think about where people who get promoted to high-up management come from; most often these are people who are good at solving problems, cutting fat, and generally making the company leaner and meaner. IT-wise or otherwise.
If this doesn't work, either put up with it (if its not that bad) or jump ship (if it is that bad). Companies that are horribly, horribly bogged down in red tape tend to fail (no matter *what* size). The exception, of course, is government jobs, either the Real (TM) government, or large (permanent) government contractors.
Actually, they can threaten you with damages and an injunction.
Incidentally, if you read the article, this is exactly what happened with the last 4 employees that EA poached from Ubisoft. Ubisoft sued, the court agreed, and issued an injuction against those employees working for EA.
I do, however, enjoy legal end-runs around the system like allofmp3.com .
Because of the way U.S. import rules work, it is most likely that downloading music from allofmp3.com is entirely legal, and at 2 cents a megabyte, entirely affordable as well.
I pirate music because I hate the record companies. Oddly enough, most of my music pirating is done via ripping my friends albums; its rare that I'll actually go out on Frostwire or something and actually search out tunes (the radio is for finding new music (internet radio, of course)). I'm more than willing to consider a new business model for music distribution, but most likely only if the RIAA is not part of it.
Think of it this way, the RIAA is more than willing to use illegal means to prosecute people, so why shouldn't I pirate music?
The only reason I can see is the same thing that occasionally discourages the RIAA. Getting Caught
You respect my rights/property, I'll do the same for you. You abuse my rights/property, and I couldn't care less about you. The only thing left is deterrence.
The important part of the story is that citizens have an active duty to stand up to organs of authority.
When the police/fbi/black suits come for you, demand to see the warrant. Don't agree to anything unofficial, don't agree to anything causal.
Demand a warrant.
Democracy and freedom only remain vibrant through active participation of the citizenry. This means more than "you have to vote". You have to actively stand up for your rights; rights that go unexercised you will most likely loose.
iTunes is definitely not one of those apps that "just works" under Wine, but you can force it.
It really depends on your needs; do you just need a music organization app that looks like iTunes? GTKpod is pretty similar, and I find Amarok to be superior to iTunes, except for the lack of music store.
I sold my girlfriend on the instant lyrics, album art, and band information, stuff that amarok just handles better than iTunes.
I would suggest allofmp3.com, simply because A)It is 100% legal, B)It's significantly cheaper than iTunes, and C)I disapprove of the existing Intellectual Property rights regime, and allofmp3.com is a wonderful end-run around it using a Russian legal loophole that's quite elegant. Importation into the U.S. is legal, except if you are using the music for public peformance. I'll quote:
(a) Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under section 501. This subsection does not apply to--.... (2) importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time, or by any person arriving from outside the United States with respect to copies or phonorecords forming part of such person's personal baggage; or.... (b) In a case where the making of the copies or phonorecords would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable, their importation is prohibited. In a case where the copies or phonorecords were lawfully made, the United States Customs Service has no authority to prevent their importation unless the provisions of section 601 are applicable.
YMMV, of course. I'm not an actual lawyer, and none of this has been tested in court, anyways. But they do accept payments regularly for MP3s, and I haven't seen the RIAA going after them (yet).
Also, they actually provide music in a better format than iTunes. Default, non-drm 192kbps MP3s. You pay by the meg ($0.02 per meg). You can choose from MP3, WMA, OGG, MPC, or AAC, and you can select whatever bitrate you want, up to 384 kbps, I believe. Of course, you don't get one integrated portal for music, but you do get music in your format of choice, sans-DRM, at a significantly better price, one that I think is much more in-line with the economic realities of online distribution.
BTW: When you say "Check" after WoW, you are aware it works great under Cedega, right?
Slashdot Mirror
I do respect what you are saying; UIs are fairly primitive compared to the technology used to display them.
The point is, however, that unless KDE/GNOME/Xorg and OS X managed to keep up with Microsoft Windows, there won't be any dollars for research/development.
In this fight, at least for the immediate future, eye candy is the name of the game. Microsoft is staking its reputation on it, and it looks to me, anyways, that unless alternative operating systems do the same, they'll be run out of the majority market.
It's talking about the hardware market.
Apple is now the #1 computer hardware supplier in the EU education market.
It's not comparing Apple to MS; its comparing Apple to Dell.
How many systems did Microsoft ship last quarter; oh, that's right: Zero.
It's a performance thing.
64-bit linux benchmarks in math intensive apps run 20-25% faster than 32-bit linux benchmarks on the same exact hardware.
It's not about addressing; its about performance.
Of course, the Core Duo might just be all that; it might just be fast enough to get over the performance delta of the x86_64 instruction set.
Then again, it might not. Neck and neck with similar Athlon 64 X2s, but only competitive on the low range of the X2 lineup, and slower in gaming.
This is in 32-bit mode, only. Expect an Athlon X2 to win out in 64-bit mode.
It's too bad;
64-bit Linux shows about a 20-25% performance improvement on math intensive apps versus the same configuration on 32-bit Linux.
I guess part of it is that 64-bit Linux is pretty painless, compared to 64-bit Windows.
A graphics card with DirectX 10, and less than 256 MB ram will not run the full "Aeroglass" "Avalon" experience.
Does that still count as flying?
BTW: Here are some BE-AU-TI-FUL Xgl videos. Real videos, as in captured with a camcorder ;-)
l #3081186
http://forums.gentoo.org//viewtopic-p-3081186.htm
You've got it backwards ;-)
OS X uses some OpenGL stuff; a lot of 2D compositing. It doesn't totally bury the system, however, and it can move a lot of that to software rendering as well; that's why it works just fine on my Powerbook with a GeforceFX 5200, 32 MB ram.
Vista, on the other hand, uses boatloads of 3D, everywhere. Lots of texturing. The main issue with Vista is not having enough graphics ram. For the full "Avalon" "experience", you'll need 256 MB in a 32-bit environment, and possibly more in a 64-bit environment. Fill rates will also be important, in order for you to keep your windows flying around the screen in 3D.
God knows why so much is needed; Project Looking Glass provides a similar display with far more modest requirements, and thats a JAVA window manager. Not to mention that Xorg is getting really, really close to alot of these things. Xgl is currently running with all kinds of interesting shader/geometry effects, and KDE's got the window manager refraction/reflection (take a look at the CrystalGL, the big cousin of Crystal, which does it in software).
Ultimately, Linux will get there, but the problem is integration; most of these features are avaliable on X, but few of them play nicely with OpenGL, and they often don't play well together. We'll have to see a big, combined push between the KDE 4 effort, GNOME's next generation Metacity, the freedesktop XGL/Xorg 7+ people, and NVIDIA/ATI. As I understand it, much of this is occuring now; but we probably won't see releases till near the time Vista is released, and we won't see proper integration into distributions till late 2006/early 2007.
The best part is, however, that once it DOES get into Linux, it'll run just fine on 32/64 MB cards, and most likely will degrade much more gracefully than Vista; there'll be a finer set of non-functional options, rather than 3/4 main settings.
I have no fear that we'll see plenty of desktop eye candy in the near future on Linux; this is mainly attributable to the freedesktop people, who have saved X with Xorg, a product that is making progress now after years and years of stagnation.
I'm much more worried about DirectX 10 (WGF 2.0). Will OpenGL keep up? I hope so, otherwise we'll see the few Linux/Mac gaming houses there are out there (in addition to Transgaming) fail completely as they become unable to port over Windows graphics features. NVIDIA, ATI and Apple seem to be keeping the OpenGL group moving, though.
The closest thing to a "killer app" for x86_64 is any kind of encoding or compression on a 64-bit linux, or anything with lots of floating point calculations:
/ 24/1747228&mode=thread
http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=05/02
On AMD processors, Povray seems to experience a 25% performance improvement by going 64-bit. If you were rendering lots of complex scenes, a 25% performance improvement merely by switching from a 32-bit to a 64-bit OS is incredible.
Especially if you are a POV-ray buff; the 64-bit version seems to work not only faster, but with higher precision. I'm not sure if commercial 3D apps work the same way. I do know if I had to spend more time in 3D rendering and Video encoding, I would be very, very excited about the performance improvement I got from switching to 64-bit SuSE (which is what I run). In general, however, I don't spend a lot of time on those activites, so its not a big deal.
Even gaming seems to experience some improvement, but not as much.
The question is, how much would you pay for a 25% faster system? On Linux, going 64-bit is painless; and in doing so, I've sped up things like video encoding, compression, and complex rendering by 25-30%. That's pretty amazing, if you ask me.
No, there's no 64-bit "killer-app", and to be honest, I don't think there ever will be. What you do get, however, at least with an AMD64 processor, is an average of 15-25% performance improvement on math intensive apps. That's a pretty big deal; think about the price delta between any given processor "X" and processor "X*1.25". By switching to a 64-bit OS, you get that free; or if you are at the absolute bleeding edge, you get performance not possible in the 32-bit world. *shrug*
I can't think of one major software package that has reduced bloat over the years.
OS X, for one.
KDE, during major versions, for two. 3.2 was faster than 3.1, 3.5 is way faster than 3.4, or 3.2
There's a school of software development that involves making your software leaner and meaner as it "ages".
New versions are more bloated. New revisions are LESS bloated.
Guess what; if it costs money to send your parents e-mail, certain organizations won't anymore.
Dealing with AOL customers gets more and more onerous. Not because they are bad customers, but because AOL is such a pain in the ass.
Will yours?
My Baysean spam filters work just fine, and I literally get 1000s of messages a day.
If someone tries to charge me to receive e-mail from me, they will no longer enjoy the ability to correspond with me. Yes, I'll include customers in this, too.
I will not pay 10 cents to send you an e-mail. Get over it, get a real e-mail provider. I might pay 10 cents once to tell you that.
Different companies tend to release betas at different levels of quality.
For example, look at Google Talk. That's in beta.
There are bugs in Google Talk. Then again, they are incredibly minor compared to IE7.
*shrug*
And I'll do what I want with it.
Excuse me while I dig up the storm drain in my front yard, and cut down the telephone poles in the front and back.
You see, the free market only applies when the market was established via free conditions. If the government intervened in some fashion to create a monopoly (Verizon, you get to be the telephone carrier for this area), then the government MUST intervene to keep the market sane; market failures CAN be created by government, and when they are they should be checked by the government.
Geographic monopolies are often established by the state. I have no idea why one would want a geographic monopoly to run rampant and unregulated.
Otherwise, it's MY land. I want a cut of all the profits that the phone/cable/electrical companies get by stringing their lines on MY land.
AFAIK, IE7 replaced IE6.
So, if you are one of those Microsofties that refused to use alternative browsers, you could easily get stuck using IE7 for your banking.
I wonder how Linux idealists feel about their cute little OS being deployed in machinery of war?
Excuse my French, but SUPER-FUCKING-COOL.
I eagerly await our new, Linux based Robotic F/OSS Overlords!
HAHAHAHAHA
For some reason, this joke feels funnier this time.
Hear Hear!
Any CEO (or high level manager) worth their salt is ALWAYS looking for snitches like this (Snitch is a bit of a loaded word, sorry.) Don't be complicit; try to change it, or, if you aren't in the position to cause change, propose changes to someone who is.
Try and think about where people who get promoted to high-up management come from; most often these are people who are good at solving problems, cutting fat, and generally making the company leaner and meaner. IT-wise or otherwise.
If this doesn't work, either put up with it (if its not that bad) or jump ship (if it is that bad). Companies that are horribly, horribly bogged down in red tape tend to fail (no matter *what* size). The exception, of course, is government jobs, either the Real (TM) government, or large (permanent) government contractors.
That's kind of what I was getting at ;)
That's what you get with liability exclusions for software.
The only software that should be eligible for exclusion of liability of Free as in Beer or Free as in Speech software.
Everything else should have bugs be accountable to the software maker. Why not? Every other industry in the world works like that, why not software?
Perhaps its a FireFox only problem, but....
s uid=true
http://safety.live.com/site/en-US/default.htm?jgm
Gives me:
"Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete."
I guess my Powerbook is gonna get nuked on Friday, huh?
Actually, they can threaten you with damages and an injunction.
Incidentally, if you read the article, this is exactly what happened with the last 4 employees that EA poached from Ubisoft. Ubisoft sued, the court agreed, and issued an injuction against those employees working for EA.
I'm 99% with you.
I do, however, enjoy legal end-runs around the system like allofmp3.com .
Because of the way U.S. import rules work, it is most likely that downloading music from allofmp3.com is entirely legal, and at 2 cents a megabyte, entirely affordable as well.
I pirate music because I hate the record companies. Oddly enough, most of my music pirating is done via ripping my friends albums; its rare that I'll actually go out on Frostwire or something and actually search out tunes (the radio is for finding new music (internet radio, of course)). I'm more than willing to consider a new business model for music distribution, but most likely only if the RIAA is not part of it.
Think of it this way, the RIAA is more than willing to use illegal means to prosecute people, so why shouldn't I pirate music?
The only reason I can see is the same thing that occasionally discourages the RIAA. Getting Caught
You respect my rights/property, I'll do the same for you. You abuse my rights/property, and I couldn't care less about you. The only thing left is deterrence.
The important part of the story is that citizens have an active duty to stand up to organs of authority.
When the police/fbi/black suits come for you, demand to see the warrant. Don't agree to anything unofficial, don't agree to anything causal.
Demand a warrant.
Democracy and freedom only remain vibrant through active participation of the citizenry. This means more than "you have to vote". You have to actively stand up for your rights; rights that go unexercised you will most likely loose.
Having the main menu bar under the tab bar is something you don't see everyday....
Is it a good thing? Unlikely. But its MS trying something totally new.
I run Linux.
ATI has gotten better on Linux, but Nvidia vastly outperforms ATI on Linux.
I would not recommend anyone purchase an ATI card for Linux usage, and I wouldn't commit to maintaining anyone's system if they have an ATI card.
For 2D, or Video, they are okay, but they are severly lacking for OpenGL usage.
iTunes is 80% there on Codeweaver's Crossover Office. iTunes 5.0 works great, and iPod support works with caveats.
iTunes 6.0 is being worked upon.
http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/n
http://www.codeweavers.com/site/compatibility/bro
iTunes is definitely not one of those apps that "just works" under Wine, but you can force it.
It really depends on your needs; do you just need a music organization app that looks like iTunes?
GTKpod is pretty similar, and I find Amarok to be superior to iTunes, except for the lack of music store.
I sold my girlfriend on the instant lyrics, album art, and band information, stuff that amarok just handles better than iTunes.
I would suggest allofmp3.com, simply because A)It is 100% legal, B)It's significantly cheaper than iTunes, and C)I disapprove of the existing Intellectual Property rights regime, and allofmp3.com is a wonderful end-run around it using a Russian legal loophole that's quite elegant. Importation into the U.S. is legal, except if you are using the music for public peformance. I'll quote:
YMMV, of course. I'm not an actual lawyer, and none of this has been tested in court, anyways. But they do accept payments regularly for MP3s, and I haven't seen the RIAA going after them (yet).
Also, they actually provide music in a better format than iTunes. Default, non-drm 192kbps MP3s. You pay by the meg ($0.02 per meg). You can choose from MP3, WMA, OGG, MPC, or AAC, and you can select whatever bitrate you want, up to 384 kbps, I believe. Of course, you don't get one integrated portal for music, but you do get music in your format of choice, sans-DRM, at a significantly better price, one that I think is much more in-line with the economic realities of online distribution.
BTW: When you say "Check" after WoW, you are aware it works great under Cedega, right?