Not true. Video decoding takes a lot of work, and for that, I'd estimate DivX requires over 600MHz for the higher-quality content. Likewise, if you're like myself and working in the software development industry, you need at least that to recompile all your code in a reasonable amount of time. (I'm talking about under Microsoft Visual C++ here.)
This, of course, assumes you have a decent video card, because otherwise you have to worry about YUV->RGB conversion taking time too, when we're talking DivX. Likewise, DVD decoding needs at least 500MHz even with full hardware support. Anything less than a Duron's not gonna cut it.
Then let's not forget audio. If you've got a Soundblaster Live or Audigy, then you're fine, but for those poor souls (like myself) who're still using onboard audio like AC97, Windows 2000 and XP is always running the audio through a software mixer. So if you're listening to mp3s and you have a sound theme enabled, that's eating into it all too. (Not much, mind you, but there is a small hit. That plus the way onboard audio is so cheaply done.. I'd make an uneducated estimate of somewhere between 40-60MHz lost to audio playback. Plus 100MHz for an mp3.)
And lets not forget about USB, the BIGGEST hog of CPU ever. If you have a cheap webcam, then every time it snaps a picture you're gonna drop 100 to 250 MHz. A USB or bus mouse is likewise gonna suck some MHz, but mind you not half as many. Scanners and printers likewise suck up USB resources, but usually only when in use. Rule of thumb; if it's USB, and it's hooked up, it's slowin' something down.
Don't even get me started on modems.
So really, while you can use an older system, you're going to need to keep using the older hardware with it. You know, the hardware that actually IS hardware, and not just a bunch more wires going into the CPU. If you're using a serial mouse, an ATi or (recent) nVidia video card, a hardware modem, and a SB Live, then you're partially right, in that something around the 700-800MHz mark is sufficient. But if you've got (or are planning to have) a dozen peripherals daisychained through one of those ridiculous USB hubs, or are one of those people who insist on beta-testing^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^Bpurchasing games the day they come out...
Personally, I think anything less than 1GHz on IA86 is just stupid at this point. Anything more you want to spend, if you're not planning on playing games, get disk space and memory. 512MB is a good safety for memory. If you have DSL, then budget at least 40Gb for diskspace.
Nah, like usual, people just haven't been clicking on the link. Remember, just because someone posts on a Slashdot article doesn't mean they read what it's about. Common fallacy, that. ; )
Seriously, though, the fellow in question never tried to sue; he threatened to sue. There's a bit of a difference.
A 3D-capable desktop is infeasible, and I'll tell you why right now. (This is OT as high hell, but oh well..)
Depth perception. You look at your current desktop, and everything is using a "pieces of paper" paradigm. This is an easy to understand paradigm, and there's a reason; your brain can easily perceive and interpret it. Everything that you see can easily be transformed into a 2D image, which is how the brain processes everything it sees.
3D screws this up, because now you have to worry about depth as well; is something hiding under that pile? How big is it? Is it far away or close-up? This is hard to tell, from your brain's point of view, without further clues. To give these 3D depth cues, your brain needs a different image for each eye.
So fine, let's imagine that 3D display surfaces are ubiquitous, so we can rely on these depth queues. Now we have a new problem; visual distraction. Do an experiment for me. Sit down at your desk, and carefully place a piece of paper on the desk vertically in front of you. This is now the document you'll be working on. Now try and sit in such a way that you can see all of the paper, read it, be able to work on it, and still not be distracted by the depth of the desk around you, the wall in front of you, etc. (If you have your desk against a wall, this probably isn't too hard, because the wall isn't very far away; you'll have to pick a place with a far depth behind it.)
What you'll find is you're tending to lean in closer to the paper so you don't see as much of what's around you. This suggests that this is the best way to keep from being distracted in this manner.. but this is essentially the same as a maximized window, correct? So what added benefit does our 3D give us?
Now lets say you want to jump to another window quickly; how would you do this? Well, we'd like to take the visual hint from the Windows taskbar here, to create some sort of list of stuff opened. How would this be represented? What we want; all apps to be visible all the time (otherwise it's no better than the win 3.1 alt-tab screen) and a quick way of accessing them.... Can you come up with anything that doesn't sound like the taskbars of the 2D desktop of today?
Now let's get back to the desktop paradigm. Simply put, there are two ways you could set this up; a room paradigm, where you move around and look at/interact with stuff, or a box/pit paradigm.
The room paradigm is nice, because you can make your desktop as big as you want and then wander around it. The downside, though, is that you've again increased the complexity, adding "travel time" to get from one place to another. Of course, one could always bookmark certain 3D locations, but I'd consider this to be a bit of a kludge; I shouldn't need to bookmark common locations in my desktop just to get work done.
The box/pit idea's a bit cleaner, in that it's a lot easier to understand for someone just getting started. You don't need to worry about moving around; you're staring into your monitor, and it's kind of like a pit that goes in from the screen. You can use a 3D pointing device to move around stuff inside the pit, and pull it to the front. The downside to this is that you're essentially.. well... it's kind of reminiscient of your current desktop, don't you think?
The last big strike against a 3D desktop is the input device. The mouse is a great input device for moving around in 2D, but once we hit 3D, we have problems. For instance, take the case of moving something, using the room paradigm. How do we grab stuff and move it? Well, we could take a page from System Shock, and have an inventory, and grab stuff, move to destination, and drop it. But does this seem quicker to you than *click* drag and *unclick* drop? Plus the additionaly requirement of people needing to know how to play a 3D shooter to be able to get around..
Likewise, with the pit paradigm, we're faced with another task; we can see everywhere in the pit, but how do we specify how deep to put something? We find that we can no longer do this easily with a mouse, unless we use the wheel for depth. (And we all know how precise the mouse wheel is.) We can also rule out 3D position-based input devices; can you imagine holding your hands steady for hours without support, while working at your computer? (Talk about unergonomic.)
Anyways, you can see why I'm saying true 3D desktops are unfeasible. Sure, they look nice and everything, but where's the speed advantage? How do they make the user's life easier? The only 3D interfaces I've seen are ButtonFly and the one from Jurassic Park. In the former, the menus look cool, but they don't provide any speed advantage. Likewise in the latter example; the cast in the movie almost get eaten by the raptors 'cause the interface impeded their ability to easily/quickly find and activate the locks. Do you want to be eaten by raptors? ; )
Yes, 3D is cool, but I don't think I'd want it for my desktop. Now if the 3D were only being used for the hardware acceleration of the resizing, etc., that I can understand. But as a native environment for the desktop... no, I wouldn't like that one bit.
Re:The PS2 modchip is a wondrous thing..
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Sony vs Modchips
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· Score: 1
Sorry, I suck. (Wasn't a bios flash how those non-invasive "modchip" dongles worked?)
Re:Ease of copying killed the Dreamcast...
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Sony vs Modchips
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· Score: 1
np. There are a few major details missing, though. Like the fact that some games (Berserk, for instance) don't actually use the file routines of the Dreamcast, and access the data directly for extra speed. Which means the data you burn has to be aligned the same way on the CDR as it was on the GD-ROM.
Other games have weak copy-protection checks that can prevent you from finishing the game, (Sonic 2) or are just too frickin' big to easily put on one disc. (Skies of Arcadia)
Incidentally, good luck finding a decent CD burning software that'll let you link tracks together, or specify certain offsets on the disc.. (at least under Windows) Without one of those, you can't really do much.
Standard disclaimer, I don't support, blah blah blah.. don't even own a burner.. etc...
Carmack: *looks up from his computer, where he's reading Slashdot* Whew! Okay guys, we won't need that guy we hired to do physics. Looks like they won't care.
Stephen Hawking: *rolling out of the back room* Damn.. you.. Slashdot..
Company policy knows no borders. Just because they start in England doesn't mean they wouldn't do the same here if these chips were being sold domestically.
Re:Ease of copying killed the Dreamcast...
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Sony vs Modchips
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· Score: 2
Um, it actually is fairly trivial.
1 - purchase and hook up programmer's serial cable
2 - download dreamcast developer's kit.. if you feel like it. otherwise, acquire some dcwarez utilities (dreamrip)
3 - burn serial slave CDR, boot it up
4 - write program that sends files over serial cable (or just get dreamrip); swap in target GD-ROM and upload and run the program on Dreamcast. wait 25 hours for process to complete..
5 - take your cd-burning software, and add all files you yanked from the GD-ROM to the list
6 - find huge-looking music files. downgrade from stereo to mono using tools included in dreamrip, or just link those tracks to others, until you've got enough space for it all on the CDR + 3 megs
7 - burn to BIN image (not to disc)
8 - run bin2boot on image (this is the quickest way, but it's only available for windows afaik)
9 - burn resulting CDI to a CDR
10 - insert in Dreamcast and hit power button
You can get all the software you need from any of the irc warez channels and a visit to here. This should work for the earlier games.. don't know about later ones, because they started adding checks after a while. Those may take a little more work.
Depends on how much access Sony gives you to programming for the peripherals, I guess..
Still, you're not going to be able to do anything spectacular. The linux unit probably flashes the bios of the PS2 in such a way that it can't boot stuff from the DVD drive. (Every time you boot a disc in a PS2, the PS2's bios is flashed.) And I'll bet they don't let you flash the bios yourself from within their linux kit.
Actually, this is a case of things happening exactly how Sony wants. Here's how I see it:
Up until now, Sony has had a tough time with modchips. Each time a new one is released, they release a new way of detecting the modchip to game developers. Game developers add this check, and that modchip is defeated.
Every time a modchip is defeated, the end-user has to upgrade their modchip. Now if every user has to upgrade every time they get a new game, how often do you think it's going to be before the end-user finally gets ticked off at upgrading, and just switches to buying legit copies?
Additionally, think about this; newer games can detect old modchips. So if you have an old modchip, you can't play newer games, even if you buy them legit. Now you're forced to choose between modchip and legit.
This is what Sony's counting on; people "wasting" so much money on modchip upgrades that they go straight. If you can't buy a modchip and have it last, then you may as well not buy the modchip, right?
Enter the Messiah and NEO4. (the latter potentially; I'm not sure if it works the same way) The Messiah is a one-time upgrade that fixes your PS2 for the lifetime of the system. From what I understand, they've placed the chip in such a place that newer Sony games can't easily detect it's presence.
Sony can no longer rely on people getting tired of upgrading modchips--now they have a problem. This is where the DMCA comes in.
Arguably, this is how Sony wanted it all along. Sue them back into the stone age, using their newly-bought DMCA. Of course, they could've used this tactic at any time, but the ability to piss off pirates with a constant "upgrade your modchip" routine probably greatly amused/satisfied the people at Sony. Now that they're no longer able to do that, they'll use the more expensive--yet reliable--method of just suing them into the ground.
It's been in Sony's best interests to wait to sue, btw, because there now exists legal prescedent for using the DMCA. Before, it could've been hairy..
The PS2 modchip is a wondrous thing..
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Sony vs Modchips
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· Score: 5, Interesting
A modchip is usually a piece of hardware that contains the software to bypass the copy protection. PROM modchips are typically used because the people who make them can make a whole batch of programmable chips, and if the mod is rendered useless, they can update the software and still make modchips out of the PROMs they've got.
Old modchips worked by flashing the Playstation BIOS, or replacing parts of it on boot, so that when the game would call on the copyprotection, the new BIOS would say that every disc in the unit was good.
PS2 is different, though. See, it's meant to be flashed every single time you put in a new disc. And since the code in memory can change every time a new game comes out, it's a bit difficult to make a BIOS modchip. You need something different.
The quick and dirty solution people came up with for the PS2 is to intercept the checks as they're heading to whereever, and change the signals so that they're the proper result. Thing is, each game can do this differently. Due to the nature of the PS2, the checks could be called from a vector unit, from the memory card processor.. or even the reader unit itself. And the modchip maker has to add a wire for each signal they need to intercept.
Nowadays, PS2 modchips require 20+ connections (probably even more by now) just to cover all of the different signals that can be sent during a check. And each check is cumulative; you have to keep the old checks while adding for new ones. This is kinda ridiculous, since this introduces modchip bloat.. a new modchip defeat comes out, and they have to add more connections... it can really suck for people if they need a new modchip every time a new game comes out.
Enter the Messiah. You wire it into the DVD-ROM reading hardware, rather than throughout the rest of the unit. Since all checks have to go through the DVD system anyways, this is only logical.. thing is, Sony made it really tough to figure it out. Which is why it took them over two years to get the chip made.
Without a link to NEO4, I can't say whether or not they've gone the same route, but if they have, these two chips could spell the end for Sony's PS2. Since all PS2 consoles use the same BIOS, flashed every time a game starts, Sony can't easily change the hardware design of any newer units coming onto the market. So if this modchip is undetectable, and it does all the things they're saying it does in hardware, this could be checkmate.
Not likely. You need the kit in order to be able to run anything you make with the kit. What you make is stored on the (proprietary) hard drive, and I don't exactly see a CDR or DVDR burner being sold for the PS2 any time soon.
Also, I suspect you have to have the linux boot dvd that's included with the dev kit in order to run anything off of the hard drive. It all comes down to being the same old matter of needing the boot codes/format in order to boot whatever the stuff is in a PS2. I'd say you're out of luck.
Heheheh, thanks for the heads-up. I should've guessed.. : )
Incidentally, does everyone with moderation points moderate while they're at +1, or something? Whatever happened to the days of moderating up Anonymous Coward posts..? ; P
- a 3-month testing phase before any code is released to the world as being "stable"
- dselect
- the best distro name
- speaking of which, a name that inspires trust from it's user base. It has the most stable "stable" out there.
- it's the first (and only?) linux distro NASA's used in outer space
- the only distro out there that's looking towards alternate free kernels, with an experimental GNU/Hurd distro available.
- the most flexible default linux configuration
What the hell are you talking about? The tail was probably one of the neatest things about this show, in terms of character designs. You have a character that nobody knows anything about, but who looks like a cross between pre-evolved humans and is evolved beyond that to high hell. It's part of her character design, and in my opinion, it was just really, really cool. If the fact that she lost it was part of the plot, then.. fine.. okay.. I can deal. Because the way this show works, there IS a reason. But if it was just so Sorbo could feel better, then screw him.
I'm really miffed that they got rid of her tail. This show had two things going for it; Harper, and Trance. Anyone who's seen the episode Harper 2.0 knows what I'm talking about. And anyone who saw it and still doesn't should go back to watching Voyager reruns.
Honestly, is the whole of Slashdot against Andromeda, or do you people just need something to bitch about? I'll bet that 90% of the people who're complaining in here haven't watched half the episodes. I've watched them all; every single episode since it started. And yes, there is a large plot arc over the whole thing, and that's part of what makes this show so fricking cool. Sure it's not as deep as Babylon 5, but this is the closest thing to the deep plots of anime that Canada and the US are going to pump out any time soon without being a soap opera.
Btw, what are you people talking about, calling the character designs ugly? You wanted some innovation in character designs--you got it. Quit complaining. The designs here have got to be some of the most original (and logical, evolution-wise) that we've seen in decades. A species that blinds then predigests their food outside of their body, and then a religion that attempts to curb this behaviour and make the race more civilized. A species of intergalactic purple genetically-engineered superbeings who will occasionally destroy civilizations out of boredom. The Nietscheans.. if you've taken any philosophy or religious studies at all, and enjoyed it, then it's really interesting to see the whole dynamic of a religion on a species, or at least the series' take on this idea, from a viewpoint where the religion is so completely different that you can have no prejudices about it.
This show is deep, because it examines not how humans interact, but how entities interact. These aren't people in alien costumes, these are aliens coming to grips with the divide between theory and practice in their personal philosophies. It's about the clashes between their philosophies. The Andromeda is a place where people of completely different philosophies and hopes for the future are all working together for a common goal; peace. This show is about how they'll reach that goal, despite their personal and societal differences. That is the plot; not how many Nietscheans Hunt can kick the butts of in a week.
This show isn't about good versus evil. This show is about people versus themselves. It's about self-discovery, a shared voyage with a common purpose, and the internal clashes that result. Honestly, I think it's about everything that Voyager promised, but never delivered on. Perhaps that's just too deep for some of the people out there to grasp, but this is a show for thinkers, not for people with an "oo! I like swords!" mentality. Go find a show of your own, if you don't like it; don't go wrecking ours..
That was for piping IPX traffic over TCP/IP. This is for piping whatever comes out of an XBox (lan TCP/IP, I'd expect) over internet TCP/IP. Same idea, different protocol.
See, essentially you just wrap all the packets coming from the XBox in a TCP/IP packet, and throw 'em over the internet. On the other end, you unwrap 'em and send 'em on. Not too difficult. (in theory..)
Main problems are looking after people joining and quitting, and the problem of finding other people to play against. These are reasons why services like Battle.net and Kali took off; not so much because of the software, but because of the meet-others service that they provided.
j00 r rit3 d00d. I learned to r34d & rit3 on the net, and I 0wn3d 4ll my b00ks 0nlin3 t00. 3v3r r34d th3 h4ck3r's c00kb00k? Frickin' A, man, frickin' A!!
The advantage of the written word is that it is generally spell and grammar checked, and that the stuff that gets printed is usually half-decent. On the internet, you get a lot of stuff, and it's hard to filter out the crack.
..er, I mean crap.
That having been said, anyone who thinks "Harry Potter'll bring kids back to books!" is a complete twit. "But kids like it!" They like porn too; I say that if you really want to reel the kids back in, give 'em porno novels.
No, the Harry Potter books don't suck; I'm with all you rabid fans on this one. They're fairly decent. From the first one, which I've read, I think they're well written, have some involving characters and a reasonably deep plot. But that's no reason to force kids to read the books. Or to make it a core novel for a grade-school level course.
The last thing we want is teachers teaching kids how they should think about these characters. It's only a matter of time, parents, before your kids are being taught that Harry's uncle was obviously abused as a child, or that Ron was an Irish immigrant whose parents should learn to use birth control. Your teachers will have invaded yet another fun place where your child's imigination used to reside, and mold it to match their own. I'm all for molding youths into upstanding citizens, but leave their frickin' imaginations alone, willya?
Teachers love this kind of book because it "gives them something new to work with."
Children hate this kind of textbook because it's "arbitrary."
And it is. "What does the owl represent? How about Harry's scar? What is the signifigance of the flash of green Harry remembers from his childhood?" *shudder*... I'm getting shivers just thinking about it..
So please, don't make it a required read, with questions and the like. Let kids enjoy a book for a change, without having to be taught the prejudices of their forefathers as fact.
I've also heard this "making reading fun again!" poppycock so many times, and it's really starting to wear thin. I doubt this'll put any respectable dent whatsoever in illiteracy in America. People who want to read will continue to read. People who don't, won't. And any parent who can't get their kids to read has bigger problems than finding a book like Harry Potter to hold their attention.
Although.. now that I think about it, it kinda makes sense. Assume for a moment that you are an illiterate parent. Your kid doesn't want to read either. You really don't know what to force them to read because you keep giving them crap, or whatever, because you have no experience to base your reading selections for them on. And you don't want to ask for help, because you're too proud. (..or you ran your phone bill too high and it was disconnected.)
Then Harry Potter shows up, and all your troubles are solved. You buy your kid some books, and spend the rest of the month watching Jerry Springer re-runs on television.
Amazing. Harry Potter will solve the problem of white trash. Whoo. I'm sold.:-P
Just a few quick notes about X.
- it's fairly simple to implement
- it's a standard
- it works
- it's here now
A few notes in DirectFB's favour
- a modern, and hopefully clean, implementation
- good object-oriented principles
- as a result, fast and easy to program in
So the solution, as I see it, is a little different. I've looked at Berlin and all those other windowing environments. Look, if what you want is direct access to one video console, then go with DirectFB. But if you want a windowed system, stick with X. Just reimplement it yourself.
(Although I don't know what to say about Window Managers.. they still seems like a nasty hack to me..)
XFree86 is old, and is carrying a lot of baggage functionality. What should happen is that it be rewritten to abstract the windowing portions away from the hardware level. I figure that if this is done, it'll be a drastic improvement, stability and OO-wise, over the current arrangement.
This is the main gripe I've heard, time and again, and it's the one that annoys me, too. So I think someone should do something about it. Start removing this functionality from XFree86, and stuff as much of it as possible into kernel drivers. (These wouldn't have to be included with the standard kernel; it would be enough to have a set of loadable drivers you could download from somewhere else and load into the kernel.)
I doubt this'll happen, though, because it's too OO. The current linux kernel is monolithic as high hell, and the people behind it support that mind-set. Perhaps there's hope for the GNU/Hurd.
(When you install the dev kit that comes with kos, it comes with two compilers. One of them's called "SH" and the other "ARM," so I figured that the AICA's audio coprocessor was ARM and the main one was probably MIPS. But I'm wrong, so, um, nm..)
Dreamcast is still a goodie, though; even if you don't want to program the DC itself, you can always program the VMUs. There are compilers and emulators out there, so it's not too hard to get started even if you don't have a DC..
The Dreamcast is an ARM and MIPS-based machine, and highly hackable. It's also nice and cheap, so you could even suggest it as something your kids could split in on for you. (As long as they don't pull a fast one and be the ones who end up using it all the time.;-)
..sorry, I know how Slashdot abhors me-too posts, but I just had to agree. I'm too distracted by that black bar crap to be able to concentrate on the episodes and what's happening onscreen. Note to TNN: if I wanted banner ads, I'd be on the internet--not watching television.
Which raises an interesting question; anyone have the entire series DivX'd? TNN has sparked my interest in this series again, but if they won't deliver, then I'm all for pirating decent copies of the eps..
You can't just convert everything over to advertising. The companies have to make a sale somewhere to recoup their advertising costs.. Do you think online companies are really going to enjoy a business model that requires that they rely on other businesses for their income? The buck has to stop somewhere. Someone has to fork over the money to power the corporate machine.
Re:doing the same to other movies?
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Review: Zoolander
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You mean any pictures of the WTC where they aren't blowing up or already blown up, right? Because right now, you can flip to pretty much any news channel, and see what the WTC looks like destroyed. And if you wait long enough, they'll replay the planes crashing, for dramatic effect or whatever..
Personally, I think it's all propoganda. The media feel that it's their responsibilty to make sure that when the public thinks of the WTC, they only think of it as being blown up. There seems to be a need in today's media to reinforce fact in everybody's mind. (Maybe they think we're all stupid and we'll forget..?) They want us so we won't forget, and so that they'll be in full support of whatever the president decides.
Now I'm not saying this is a gov't conspiracy. Far from it; I think the media honestly believes that this is their responsibility. They feel that they should be doing everything in their power to make sure that their viewers feel the devestation just as strongly as their reporters did. Which I don't think is a bad thing, if you're only giving a special report. But whenever you have continuing coverage for more than.. oh.. say.. two weeks? That's when you get into brainwashing territory.
I noticed something equally disturbing in the first few days, however, and that was how the media was already taking it upon itself to question the usefulness of the country's intelligence bureaus. This is not the job of the media--especially in a time of crisis. The job of the media is to report the news, not make suppositions about it. It should be a watchdog group who's doing that kind of report, and presenting it to the media for reporting to the public. Having the media making such observations and suggestions on their own is completely unprofessional.
The problem is that it's not the gov't that runs the country in cases like this; it's national opinion. The gov't doesn't actually make decisions on foreign policy; they follow the lead of the american populace. And when they want to find out the national opinion, who do they turn to? CNN.
So allow me to put this into perspective for you; when the gov't wants our opinion, they watch CNN. Whenever we want to find out what our leaders are doing, we turn to CNN, fox, etc. So who's really running the country?
And people wonder about buildings being removed from movies.. here's a question for you; who owns CNN? AOL Time Warner. And what do they own? Warner Bros., New Line Cinema..
Wait, sorry, that is a conspiracy theory.. oh, never mind...
Slashdot Mirror
Not true. Video decoding takes a lot of work, and for that, I'd estimate DivX requires over 600MHz for the higher-quality content. Likewise, if you're like myself and working in the software development industry, you need at least that to recompile all your code in a reasonable amount of time. (I'm talking about under Microsoft Visual C++ here.)
This, of course, assumes you have a decent video card, because otherwise you have to worry about YUV->RGB conversion taking time too, when we're talking DivX. Likewise, DVD decoding needs at least 500MHz even with full hardware support. Anything less than a Duron's not gonna cut it.
Then let's not forget audio. If you've got a Soundblaster Live or Audigy, then you're fine, but for those poor souls (like myself) who're still using onboard audio like AC97, Windows 2000 and XP is always running the audio through a software mixer. So if you're listening to mp3s and you have a sound theme enabled, that's eating into it all too. (Not much, mind you, but there is a small hit. That plus the way onboard audio is so cheaply done.. I'd make an uneducated estimate of somewhere between 40-60MHz lost to audio playback. Plus 100MHz for an mp3.)
And lets not forget about USB, the BIGGEST hog of CPU ever. If you have a cheap webcam, then every time it snaps a picture you're gonna drop 100 to 250 MHz. A USB or bus mouse is likewise gonna suck some MHz, but mind you not half as many. Scanners and printers likewise suck up USB resources, but usually only when in use. Rule of thumb; if it's USB, and it's hooked up, it's slowin' something down.
Don't even get me started on modems.
So really, while you can use an older system, you're going to need to keep using the older hardware with it. You know, the hardware that actually IS hardware, and not just a bunch more wires going into the CPU. If you're using a serial mouse, an ATi or (recent) nVidia video card, a hardware modem, and a SB Live, then you're partially right, in that something around the 700-800MHz mark is sufficient. But if you've got (or are planning to have) a dozen peripherals daisychained through one of those ridiculous USB hubs, or are one of those people who insist on beta-testing^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^Bpurchasing games the day they come out...
Personally, I think anything less than 1GHz on IA86 is just stupid at this point. Anything more you want to spend, if you're not planning on playing games, get disk space and memory. 512MB is a good safety for memory. If you have DSL, then budget at least 40Gb for diskspace.
Nah, like usual, people just haven't been clicking on the link. Remember, just because someone posts on a Slashdot article doesn't mean they read what it's about. Common fallacy, that. ; )
Seriously, though, the fellow in question never tried to sue; he threatened to sue. There's a bit of a difference.
A 3D-capable desktop is infeasible, and I'll tell you why right now. (This is OT as high hell, but oh well..)
... Can you come up with anything that doesn't sound like the taskbars of the 2D desktop of today?
.. well ... it's kind of reminiscient of your current desktop, don't you think?
Depth perception. You look at your current desktop, and everything is using a "pieces of paper" paradigm. This is an easy to understand paradigm, and there's a reason; your brain can easily perceive and interpret it. Everything that you see can easily be transformed into a 2D image, which is how the brain processes everything it sees.
3D screws this up, because now you have to worry about depth as well; is something hiding under that pile? How big is it? Is it far away or close-up? This is hard to tell, from your brain's point of view, without further clues. To give these 3D depth cues, your brain needs a different image for each eye.
So fine, let's imagine that 3D display surfaces are ubiquitous, so we can rely on these depth queues. Now we have a new problem; visual distraction. Do an experiment for me. Sit down at your desk, and carefully place a piece of paper on the desk vertically in front of you. This is now the document you'll be working on. Now try and sit in such a way that you can see all of the paper, read it, be able to work on it, and still not be distracted by the depth of the desk around you, the wall in front of you, etc. (If you have your desk against a wall, this probably isn't too hard, because the wall isn't very far away; you'll have to pick a place with a far depth behind it.)
What you'll find is you're tending to lean in closer to the paper so you don't see as much of what's around you. This suggests that this is the best way to keep from being distracted in this manner.. but this is essentially the same as a maximized window, correct? So what added benefit does our 3D give us?
Now lets say you want to jump to another window quickly; how would you do this? Well, we'd like to take the visual hint from the Windows taskbar here, to create some sort of list of stuff opened. How would this be represented? What we want; all apps to be visible all the time (otherwise it's no better than the win 3.1 alt-tab screen) and a quick way of accessing them.
Now let's get back to the desktop paradigm. Simply put, there are two ways you could set this up; a room paradigm, where you move around and look at/interact with stuff, or a box/pit paradigm.
The room paradigm is nice, because you can make your desktop as big as you want and then wander around it. The downside, though, is that you've again increased the complexity, adding "travel time" to get from one place to another. Of course, one could always bookmark certain 3D locations, but I'd consider this to be a bit of a kludge; I shouldn't need to bookmark common locations in my desktop just to get work done.
The box/pit idea's a bit cleaner, in that it's a lot easier to understand for someone just getting started. You don't need to worry about moving around; you're staring into your monitor, and it's kind of like a pit that goes in from the screen. You can use a 3D pointing device to move around stuff inside the pit, and pull it to the front. The downside to this is that you're essentially
The last big strike against a 3D desktop is the input device. The mouse is a great input device for moving around in 2D, but once we hit 3D, we have problems. For instance, take the case of moving something, using the room paradigm. How do we grab stuff and move it? Well, we could take a page from System Shock, and have an inventory, and grab stuff, move to destination, and drop it. But does this seem quicker to you than *click* drag and *unclick* drop? Plus the additionaly requirement of people needing to know how to play a 3D shooter to be able to get around..
Likewise, with the pit paradigm, we're faced with another task; we can see everywhere in the pit, but how do we specify how deep to put something? We find that we can no longer do this easily with a mouse, unless we use the wheel for depth. (And we all know how precise the mouse wheel is.) We can also rule out 3D position-based input devices; can you imagine holding your hands steady for hours without support, while working at your computer? (Talk about unergonomic.)
Anyways, you can see why I'm saying true 3D desktops are unfeasible. Sure, they look nice and everything, but where's the speed advantage? How do they make the user's life easier? The only 3D interfaces I've seen are ButtonFly and the one from Jurassic Park. In the former, the menus look cool, but they don't provide any speed advantage. Likewise in the latter example; the cast in the movie almost get eaten by the raptors 'cause the interface impeded their ability to easily/quickly find and activate the locks. Do you want to be eaten by raptors? ; )
Yes, 3D is cool, but I don't think I'd want it for my desktop. Now if the 3D were only being used for the hardware acceleration of the resizing, etc., that I can understand. But as a native environment for the desktop... no, I wouldn't like that one bit.
Sorry, I suck. (Wasn't a bios flash how those non-invasive "modchip" dongles worked?)
np. There are a few major details missing, though. Like the fact that some games (Berserk, for instance) don't actually use the file routines of the Dreamcast, and access the data directly for extra speed. Which means the data you burn has to be aligned the same way on the CDR as it was on the GD-ROM.
Other games have weak copy-protection checks that can prevent you from finishing the game, (Sonic 2) or are just too frickin' big to easily put on one disc. (Skies of Arcadia)
Incidentally, good luck finding a decent CD burning software that'll let you link tracks together, or specify certain offsets on the disc.. (at least under Windows) Without one of those, you can't really do much.
Standard disclaimer, I don't support, blah blah blah.. don't even own a burner.. etc...
Down at iD, new Doom division:
Carmack: *looks up from his computer, where he's reading Slashdot* Whew! Okay guys, we won't need that guy we hired to do physics. Looks like they won't care.
Stephen Hawking: *rolling out of the back room* Damn.. you.. Slashdot..
Company policy knows no borders. Just because they start in England doesn't mean they wouldn't do the same here if these chips were being sold domestically.
Um, it actually is fairly trivial.
1 - purchase and hook up programmer's serial cable
2 - download dreamcast developer's kit.. if you feel like it. otherwise, acquire some dcwarez utilities (dreamrip)
3 - burn serial slave CDR, boot it up
4 - write program that sends files over serial cable (or just get dreamrip); swap in target GD-ROM and upload and run the program on Dreamcast. wait 25 hours for process to complete..
5 - take your cd-burning software, and add all files you yanked from the GD-ROM to the list
6 - find huge-looking music files. downgrade from stereo to mono using tools included in dreamrip, or just link those tracks to others, until you've got enough space for it all on the CDR + 3 megs
7 - burn to BIN image (not to disc)
8 - run bin2boot on image (this is the quickest way, but it's only available for windows afaik)
9 - burn resulting CDI to a CDR
10 - insert in Dreamcast and hit power button
You can get all the software you need from any of the irc warez channels and a visit to here. This should work for the earlier games.. don't know about later ones, because they started adding checks after a while. Those may take a little more work.
For legal backups only, blah blah blah..
Depends on how much access Sony gives you to programming for the peripherals, I guess..
Still, you're not going to be able to do anything spectacular. The linux unit probably flashes the bios of the PS2 in such a way that it can't boot stuff from the DVD drive. (Every time you boot a disc in a PS2, the PS2's bios is flashed.) And I'll bet they don't let you flash the bios yourself from within their linux kit.
Actually, this is a case of things happening exactly how Sony wants. Here's how I see it:
Up until now, Sony has had a tough time with modchips. Each time a new one is released, they release a new way of detecting the modchip to game developers. Game developers add this check, and that modchip is defeated.
Every time a modchip is defeated, the end-user has to upgrade their modchip. Now if every user has to upgrade every time they get a new game, how often do you think it's going to be before the end-user finally gets ticked off at upgrading, and just switches to buying legit copies?
Additionally, think about this; newer games can detect old modchips. So if you have an old modchip, you can't play newer games, even if you buy them legit. Now you're forced to choose between modchip and legit.
This is what Sony's counting on; people "wasting" so much money on modchip upgrades that they go straight. If you can't buy a modchip and have it last, then you may as well not buy the modchip, right?
Enter the Messiah and NEO4. (the latter potentially; I'm not sure if it works the same way) The Messiah is a one-time upgrade that fixes your PS2 for the lifetime of the system. From what I understand, they've placed the chip in such a place that newer Sony games can't easily detect it's presence.
Sony can no longer rely on people getting tired of upgrading modchips--now they have a problem. This is where the DMCA comes in.
Arguably, this is how Sony wanted it all along. Sue them back into the stone age, using their newly-bought DMCA. Of course, they could've used this tactic at any time, but the ability to piss off pirates with a constant "upgrade your modchip" routine probably greatly amused/satisfied the people at Sony. Now that they're no longer able to do that, they'll use the more expensive--yet reliable--method of just suing them into the ground.
It's been in Sony's best interests to wait to sue, btw, because there now exists legal prescedent for using the DMCA. Before, it could've been hairy..
A modchip is usually a piece of hardware that contains the software to bypass the copy protection. PROM modchips are typically used because the people who make them can make a whole batch of programmable chips, and if the mod is rendered useless, they can update the software and still make modchips out of the PROMs they've got.
Old modchips worked by flashing the Playstation BIOS, or replacing parts of it on boot, so that when the game would call on the copyprotection, the new BIOS would say that every disc in the unit was good.
PS2 is different, though. See, it's meant to be flashed every single time you put in a new disc. And since the code in memory can change every time a new game comes out, it's a bit difficult to make a BIOS modchip. You need something different.
The quick and dirty solution people came up with for the PS2 is to intercept the checks as they're heading to whereever, and change the signals so that they're the proper result. Thing is, each game can do this differently. Due to the nature of the PS2, the checks could be called from a vector unit, from the memory card processor.. or even the reader unit itself. And the modchip maker has to add a wire for each signal they need to intercept.
Nowadays, PS2 modchips require 20+ connections (probably even more by now) just to cover all of the different signals that can be sent during a check. And each check is cumulative; you have to keep the old checks while adding for new ones. This is kinda ridiculous, since this introduces modchip bloat.. a new modchip defeat comes out, and they have to add more connections... it can really suck for people if they need a new modchip every time a new game comes out.
Enter the Messiah. You wire it into the DVD-ROM reading hardware, rather than throughout the rest of the unit. Since all checks have to go through the DVD system anyways, this is only logical.. thing is, Sony made it really tough to figure it out. Which is why it took them over two years to get the chip made.
Without a link to NEO4, I can't say whether or not they've gone the same route, but if they have, these two chips could spell the end for Sony's PS2. Since all PS2 consoles use the same BIOS, flashed every time a game starts, Sony can't easily change the hardware design of any newer units coming onto the market. So if this modchip is undetectable, and it does all the things they're saying it does in hardware, this could be checkmate.
Not likely. You need the kit in order to be able to run anything you make with the kit. What you make is stored on the (proprietary) hard drive, and I don't exactly see a CDR or DVDR burner being sold for the PS2 any time soon.
Also, I suspect you have to have the linux boot dvd that's included with the dev kit in order to run anything off of the hard drive. It all comes down to being the same old matter of needing the boot codes/format in order to boot whatever the stuff is in a PS2. I'd say you're out of luck.
Heheheh, thanks for the heads-up. I should've guessed.. : )
Incidentally, does everyone with moderation points moderate while they're at +1, or something? Whatever happened to the days of moderating up Anonymous Coward posts..? ; P
Now what do they have?
Correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, but:
- a 3-month testing phase before any code is released to the world as being "stable"
- dselect
- the best distro name
- speaking of which, a name that inspires trust from it's user base. It has the most stable "stable" out there.
- it's the first (and only?) linux distro NASA's used in outer space
- the only distro out there that's looking towards alternate free kernels, with an experimental GNU/Hurd distro available.
- the most flexible default linux configuration
What the hell are you talking about? The tail was probably one of the neatest things about this show, in terms of character designs. You have a character that nobody knows anything about, but who looks like a cross between pre-evolved humans and is evolved beyond that to high hell. It's part of her character design, and in my opinion, it was just really, really cool. If the fact that she lost it was part of the plot, then.. fine.. okay.. I can deal. Because the way this show works, there IS a reason. But if it was just so Sorbo could feel better, then screw him.
I'm really miffed that they got rid of her tail. This show had two things going for it; Harper, and Trance. Anyone who's seen the episode Harper 2.0 knows what I'm talking about. And anyone who saw it and still doesn't should go back to watching Voyager reruns.
Honestly, is the whole of Slashdot against Andromeda, or do you people just need something to bitch about? I'll bet that 90% of the people who're complaining in here haven't watched half the episodes. I've watched them all; every single episode since it started. And yes, there is a large plot arc over the whole thing, and that's part of what makes this show so fricking cool. Sure it's not as deep as Babylon 5, but this is the closest thing to the deep plots of anime that Canada and the US are going to pump out any time soon without being a soap opera.
Btw, what are you people talking about, calling the character designs ugly? You wanted some innovation in character designs--you got it. Quit complaining. The designs here have got to be some of the most original (and logical, evolution-wise) that we've seen in decades. A species that blinds then predigests their food outside of their body, and then a religion that attempts to curb this behaviour and make the race more civilized. A species of intergalactic purple genetically-engineered superbeings who will occasionally destroy civilizations out of boredom. The Nietscheans.. if you've taken any philosophy or religious studies at all, and enjoyed it, then it's really interesting to see the whole dynamic of a religion on a species, or at least the series' take on this idea, from a viewpoint where the religion is so completely different that you can have no prejudices about it.
This show is deep, because it examines not how humans interact, but how entities interact. These aren't people in alien costumes, these are aliens coming to grips with the divide between theory and practice in their personal philosophies. It's about the clashes between their philosophies. The Andromeda is a place where people of completely different philosophies and hopes for the future are all working together for a common goal; peace. This show is about how they'll reach that goal, despite their personal and societal differences. That is the plot; not how many Nietscheans Hunt can kick the butts of in a week.
This show isn't about good versus evil. This show is about people versus themselves. It's about self-discovery, a shared voyage with a common purpose, and the internal clashes that result. Honestly, I think it's about everything that Voyager promised, but never delivered on. Perhaps that's just too deep for some of the people out there to grasp, but this is a show for thinkers, not for people with an "oo! I like swords!" mentality. Go find a show of your own, if you don't like it; don't go wrecking ours..
That was for piping IPX traffic over TCP/IP. This is for piping whatever comes out of an XBox (lan TCP/IP, I'd expect) over internet TCP/IP. Same idea, different protocol.
See, essentially you just wrap all the packets coming from the XBox in a TCP/IP packet, and throw 'em over the internet. On the other end, you unwrap 'em and send 'em on. Not too difficult. (in theory..)
Main problems are looking after people joining and quitting, and the problem of finding other people to play against. These are reasons why services like Battle.net and Kali took off; not so much because of the software, but because of the meet-others service that they provided.
j00 r rit3 d00d. I learned to r34d & rit3 on the net, and I 0wn3d 4ll my b00ks 0nlin3 t00. 3v3r r34d th3 h4ck3r's c00kb00k? Frickin' A, man, frickin' A!!
... I'm getting shivers just thinking about it..
:-P
The advantage of the written word is that it is generally spell and grammar checked, and that the stuff that gets printed is usually half-decent. On the internet, you get a lot of stuff, and it's hard to filter out the crack.
..er, I mean crap.
That having been said, anyone who thinks "Harry Potter'll bring kids back to books!" is a complete twit. "But kids like it!" They like porn too; I say that if you really want to reel the kids back in, give 'em porno novels.
No, the Harry Potter books don't suck; I'm with all you rabid fans on this one. They're fairly decent. From the first one, which I've read, I think they're well written, have some involving characters and a reasonably deep plot. But that's no reason to force kids to read the books. Or to make it a core novel for a grade-school level course.
The last thing we want is teachers teaching kids how they should think about these characters. It's only a matter of time, parents, before your kids are being taught that Harry's uncle was obviously abused as a child, or that Ron was an Irish immigrant whose parents should learn to use birth control. Your teachers will have invaded yet another fun place where your child's imigination used to reside, and mold it to match their own. I'm all for molding youths into upstanding citizens, but leave their frickin' imaginations alone, willya?
Teachers love this kind of book because it "gives them something new to work with."
Children hate this kind of textbook because it's "arbitrary."
And it is. "What does the owl represent? How about Harry's scar? What is the signifigance of the flash of green Harry remembers from his childhood?" *shudder*
So please, don't make it a required read, with questions and the like. Let kids enjoy a book for a change, without having to be taught the prejudices of their forefathers as fact.
I've also heard this "making reading fun again!" poppycock so many times, and it's really starting to wear thin. I doubt this'll put any respectable dent whatsoever in illiteracy in America. People who want to read will continue to read. People who don't, won't. And any parent who can't get their kids to read has bigger problems than finding a book like Harry Potter to hold their attention.
Although.. now that I think about it, it kinda makes sense. Assume for a moment that you are an illiterate parent. Your kid doesn't want to read either. You really don't know what to force them to read because you keep giving them crap, or whatever, because you have no experience to base your reading selections for them on. And you don't want to ask for help, because you're too proud. (..or you ran your phone bill too high and it was disconnected.)
Then Harry Potter shows up, and all your troubles are solved. You buy your kid some books, and spend the rest of the month watching Jerry Springer re-runs on television.
Amazing. Harry Potter will solve the problem of white trash. Whoo. I'm sold.
Anyone else have flashbacks, upon reading this slashticle, to the movie Batteries Not Included?
Believe me, you don't want them recharging themselves. Not always a good thing. It's all fun and games until you get the electric bills..
Just a few quick notes about X.
- it's fairly simple to implement
- it's a standard
- it works
- it's here now
A few notes in DirectFB's favour
- a modern, and hopefully clean, implementation
- good object-oriented principles
- as a result, fast and easy to program in
So the solution, as I see it, is a little different. I've looked at Berlin and all those other windowing environments. Look, if what you want is direct access to one video console, then go with DirectFB. But if you want a windowed system, stick with X. Just reimplement it yourself.
(Although I don't know what to say about Window Managers.. they still seems like a nasty hack to me..)
XFree86 is old, and is carrying a lot of baggage functionality. What should happen is that it be rewritten to abstract the windowing portions away from the hardware level. I figure that if this is done, it'll be a drastic improvement, stability and OO-wise, over the current arrangement.
This is the main gripe I've heard, time and again, and it's the one that annoys me, too. So I think someone should do something about it. Start removing this functionality from XFree86, and stuff as much of it as possible into kernel drivers. (These wouldn't have to be included with the standard kernel; it would be enough to have a set of loadable drivers you could download from somewhere else and load into the kernel.)
I doubt this'll happen, though, because it's too OO. The current linux kernel is monolithic as high hell, and the people behind it support that mind-set. Perhaps there's hope for the GNU/Hurd.
Yeah, sorry, you're right.
(When you install the dev kit that comes with kos, it comes with two compilers. One of them's called "SH" and the other "ARM," so I figured that the AICA's audio coprocessor was ARM and the main one was probably MIPS. But I'm wrong, so, um, nm..)
Dreamcast is still a goodie, though; even if you don't want to program the DC itself, you can always program the VMUs. There are compilers and emulators out there, so it's not too hard to get started even if you don't have a DC..
The Dreamcast is an ARM and MIPS-based machine, and highly hackable. It's also nice and cheap, so you could even suggest it as something your kids could split in on for you. (As long as they don't pull a fast one and be the ones who end up using it all the time. ;-)
Gene Roddenbury Timeline:
(reposted on Slashdot in an obvious attempt at karma whoring)
- Earth: Final Conflict
- Star Trek
- Andromeda
All were supposed to originally be Star Trek universe.
HELL YEAH.
..sorry, I know how Slashdot abhors me-too posts, but I just had to agree. I'm too distracted by that black bar crap to be able to concentrate on the episodes and what's happening onscreen. Note to TNN: if I wanted banner ads, I'd be on the internet--not watching television.
Which raises an interesting question; anyone have the entire series DivX'd? TNN has sparked my interest in this series again, but if they won't deliver, then I'm all for pirating decent copies of the eps..
You can't just convert everything over to advertising. The companies have to make a sale somewhere to recoup their advertising costs.. Do you think online companies are really going to enjoy a business model that requires that they rely on other businesses for their income? The buck has to stop somewhere. Someone has to fork over the money to power the corporate machine.
You mean any pictures of the WTC where they aren't blowing up or already blown up, right? Because right now, you can flip to pretty much any news channel, and see what the WTC looks like destroyed. And if you wait long enough, they'll replay the planes crashing, for dramatic effect or whatever..
Personally, I think it's all propoganda. The media feel that it's their responsibilty to make sure that when the public thinks of the WTC, they only think of it as being blown up. There seems to be a need in today's media to reinforce fact in everybody's mind. (Maybe they think we're all stupid and we'll forget..?) They want us so we won't forget, and so that they'll be in full support of whatever the president decides.
Now I'm not saying this is a gov't conspiracy. Far from it; I think the media honestly believes that this is their responsibility. They feel that they should be doing everything in their power to make sure that their viewers feel the devestation just as strongly as their reporters did. Which I don't think is a bad thing, if you're only giving a special report. But whenever you have continuing coverage for more than.. oh.. say.. two weeks? That's when you get into brainwashing territory.
I noticed something equally disturbing in the first few days, however, and that was how the media was already taking it upon itself to question the usefulness of the country's intelligence bureaus. This is not the job of the media--especially in a time of crisis. The job of the media is to report the news, not make suppositions about it. It should be a watchdog group who's doing that kind of report, and presenting it to the media for reporting to the public. Having the media making such observations and suggestions on their own is completely unprofessional.
The problem is that it's not the gov't that runs the country in cases like this; it's national opinion. The gov't doesn't actually make decisions on foreign policy; they follow the lead of the american populace. And when they want to find out the national opinion, who do they turn to? CNN.
So allow me to put this into perspective for you; when the gov't wants our opinion, they watch CNN. Whenever we want to find out what our leaders are doing, we turn to CNN, fox, etc. So who's really running the country?
And people wonder about buildings being removed from movies.. here's a question for you; who owns CNN? AOL Time Warner. And what do they own? Warner Bros., New Line Cinema..
Wait, sorry, that is a conspiracy theory.. oh, never mind...