Why is it cheaper to support a proprietary driver where you have to do all the development yourself, then to help developing an open-source driver?
You can't pick and choose developers in an open source project. And it will be very expensive to support people who may be not qualified for the job. You can't expect everyone to be familiar with hardware, or with driver coding, or with industry-standard methods. If you do the programming in-house you, as a manager, simply give the job to people who know how to do it right, and it gets done right.
Actually you can pick and choose developers in an open source project. You work on the code within the company, where you have full control of the developers, release the code, and ignore any suggestions from "the community". This is much like Open Office. Sun ignores any input from outside contributors, however they provide the source they worked on, so other projects can fork it as they see fit: NeoOffice, Go-OO.
What probably makes proprietary development "cheaper" for a graphics card driver is the patent encumbered technologies in the cards, as well as code from outside firms that have NDAs attached. Legal would have to keep a close eye to make sure none of this slips out.
Just to mention: Windows sometimes does not even ship network drivers on newly installed systems. The cause, why newly bought laptops can run all the nifty stuff from-the-box today, is more or less, because manufacturers include the drivers on the laptop preinstalled. I do use a lot of linux on installing windows network drivers on a new box, because linux ships most network drivers out of the box in the kernel even on newer hardware. So it really depends on what piece of hardware we are talking about. I know this, because the wonderful Windows Vista was one of the most requested uninstalls of all time, and replacing it with Windows XP was always a game of "oh, will it have network right away, or do I have to pre download the drivers..."
How dare an 8 year old operating system not have drivers for brand new hardware! My experience with Microsoft's new offering, Windows 7, has actually been quite good as far as included network drivers. That's enough to get to Windows update where Video and sound drivers can be model specific and not generic equivalents. WindowsXP however works well out of the box on machines from the era. Strange concept.
It makes more sense to measure from the release of the next version. Part of the reason XP has been supported for so long is that it was the latest version of Windows for a way too long.
XP is 7 years, as measured from the release of an actual alternative, and that's with with a support contract. And I can't help but think that is because people have become a bit entrenched because MS hadn't updated their version in so long.
Windows 2000 (Feb2000) was succeeded by WindowsXP for client in Oct2001 and Server 2003 in Apr2003. Windows 2000 will stop extended support in July 2010, 7 years after Server2k3 was released, and over 10 years after being introduced.
And remember that "extended support" phase means there will be no new features unless you pay, however everyone will get security updates. As it is right now XP is in extended support phase.
Exactly. And then these people who revert -any- change without even looking at it. What? An anonymous contributor added a few words to make a phrase make sense? Revert it!
Reason for edit: Change a word to make a phrase make since
Not true. I actually know what the announcement is going to be, and it's going to make a lot of people who visit sites like Slashdot happy (or surprised).
Here's a hint: it's about supporting a standard that no one thought Microsoft would support.
Maybe a new version as well..
Dear Christ, while everyone else is off supporting HTML5 H.264 video they are only going to support Ogg Theora.
No, but broken browser addons can certainly break the browser, which then proceed to make it appear to have broken critical applications.
I've found the worst cause of this is if updates aren't pushed out, but rely on application updaters, Adobe releases a new version of Flash or Reader, user installs it blindly hitting "Next", Google Toolbar gets installed and the web browser comes to a full and complete stop. I've seen this happen on SEVERAL occasions
You were somehow thinking that a graphics card, running in 80x25 mode (or 80x50 or whatever) would be wasting power just sitting there. Particularly in a computer with a SpaceHeater4 CPU, so really it was an exercise in false economy.
The proper answer was to just do what everyone else does and walk over with a monitor and a PS2 or USB keyboard when you need console action. Any old graphics card would do.
Back to the topic of serial. While it (should be) obsolete for mass produced goods. In simple embedded systems where it's easy to implement (particularly if it's just being used for debugging), it will last for a while.
KMS activation will still be good for 180 days. The "phoning home every 90 days" isn't trying to re-activate. It sounds more like an "anti-virus" for activation cracks that will TRY to download new definitions every 90 days.
For workarounds, there is currently KMS Virtual Machines floating around, there's "open" KMS servers on the internet, and I know for Professional there's a 76kB program that spoofs a KMS server and will activate Professional. However there's an ID, unique to every server, given to KMS clients when they activate. Microsoft could use this to detect if it was activated using a rogue KMS server. Though the article seems to talk more about tampered licencing files. You could probably also tunnel a connection from an offsite server to your uni KMS server by port forwarding using an ssh client on a uni PC, and an ssh server on an offsite server.
I prefer the dated design to any of the colorful, bloated crap Microsoft is producing at the moment that takes up half of my workspace, thank you very much.
If you're referring to the Ribbon, why don't you try collapsing it?
OO's startup times in Windows XP used to bug the crap out of me. Doubleclick on a spreadsheet, and it might be a minute or so, sometimes more, before you were off to the races. This was on a decent Athlon64 2 GHz with 1GB RAM, not exactly a slouch of a machine.
Then I tried it on my old Athlon 1.3Ghz with 384MB RAM in Linux Mint, and it started in about 10 seconds.
On my new beast (Athlon II 3.0GHz, 4GB RAM, Linux Mint) OpenOffice starts in just a few seconds.
I was utterly astonished at the speed difference of OO between Windows and Linux, and it makes perfect sense to me why Windows users don't like it as much - it's a dog. I hope they've improved its Windows performance in 3.2, for the sake of those using it on Windows.
"The OpenOffice.org included with many popular Linux distributions such as Debian, Mandriva, openSUSE, Gentoo[5] and Ubuntu[6] uses some of Go-oo patches."
Tiger is already coming up on 5 years old. By the time the 10.4-supporting versions of Firefox are phased out, it's going to be at least 6 years old, maybe older (given Mozilla's tendency to let deadlines slip), and by that time, 10.7 will probably be in beta or something.
And Windows 2000 is almost 10 years old, was succeeded 7 years ago by Server 2k3 and is still supported by Mozilla.
XP is 8 years old, succeeded 3 years ago by Vista and is still supported.
Tiger was succeeded 2 and a half years ago and is being put out to pasture.
Too bad it's Windows with forced obsolescence.
There was also the 900HA and 900HD which are a smidge thicker than the 900 or 901, but had a spinning hard drive if one wanted more mass storage space. It could also be easily swapped out with another drive or 2.5" SSD if desired. In my opinion the 9" chassis is the ultimate in portability as it easily fits into a full backpack. I like my 701 for this reason (though do wish I had 1024x600 resolution of a 9" screen in the same chassis size)
It's only in relatively recent times with the advent of computer control that the ability to hide the workings of the vehicle even became possible, and even more recently that these computers were used to try to create a "proprietary" environment where you couldn't have any random mechanic fix your car (and this attempt has largely failed).
With the likes of OBD / OBD-II Any old back yard mechanic can see what ails the car (in the electronic control system). I mean, yes, usually you can only get the computer from the OEM, but you can still rebuild the engine, transmission, alternator, lower control arm, etc. And if it tells you an Oxygen sensor is faulting, you can test and replace the sensor on your own.
With some companies, like Chrysler, you don't even need to buy a scan tool to get the codes, you can just cycle the key ON-OFF-ON-OFF-ON really quickly and it will display the codes on the digital odometer, or flash the code on the check engine light for cars not equipped with a digital odometer.
And windows users can likewise get a reasonably safe set of software from the likes of Softpedia.com or Download.com. And it gives the user choice, so they aren't tied to one specific repository only. That way if there's a custom program not available on one of those sites (but is from a trusted source), it doesn't involve pulling teeth like manual installations on Linux usually end up.
I always tell users to only download software from sites like Softpedia or Download.com. Plus you get the "choice" of what site you want. And we all know that choice is a good thing!
Well new major versions of software like Firefox and Open Office aren't backported to LTS releases. Meanwhile the latest versions of those programs continue to work on almost 10 year old, succeeded by 3 OS versions, Windows2000. Which still receives security updates from Microsoft.
The thing is at the end of the day, I don't really care about the OS. The reason for a computer is to run applications, and I want to do that with the least hassle possible. I consider upgrading OS versions (after downloading the hundreds of Megabytes necessary for such), hassle.
But I thought that Intel (as crappy as their GPUs are) is one of the most open as far as drivers compared to other GPU makers None the less, Flash is awful on all platforms, not just Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it cheaper to support a proprietary driver where you have to do all the development yourself, then to help developing an open-source driver?
You can't pick and choose developers in an open source project. And it will be very expensive to support people who may be not qualified for the job. You can't expect everyone to be familiar with hardware, or with driver coding, or with industry-standard methods. If you do the programming in-house you, as a manager, simply give the job to people who know how to do it right, and it gets done right.
Actually you can pick and choose developers in an open source project. You work on the code within the company, where you have full control of the developers, release the code, and ignore any suggestions from "the community". This is much like Open Office. Sun ignores any input from outside contributors, however they provide the source they worked on, so other projects can fork it as they see fit: NeoOffice, Go-OO.
What probably makes proprietary development "cheaper" for a graphics card driver is the patent encumbered technologies in the cards, as well as code from outside firms that have NDAs attached. Legal would have to keep a close eye to make sure none of this slips out.
Just to mention: Windows sometimes does not even ship network drivers on newly installed systems. The cause, why newly bought laptops can run all the nifty stuff from-the-box today, is more or less, because manufacturers include the drivers on the laptop preinstalled. I do use a lot of linux on installing windows network drivers on a new box, because linux ships most network drivers out of the box in the kernel even on newer hardware. So it really depends on what piece of hardware we are talking about. I know this, because the wonderful Windows Vista was one of the most requested uninstalls of all time, and replacing it with Windows XP was always a game of "oh, will it have network right away, or do I have to pre download the drivers..."
How dare an 8 year old operating system not have drivers for brand new hardware! My experience with Microsoft's new offering, Windows 7, has actually been quite good as far as included network drivers. That's enough to get to Windows update where Video and sound drivers can be model specific and not generic equivalents. WindowsXP however works well out of the box on machines from the era. Strange concept.
It makes more sense to measure from the release of the next version. Part of the reason XP has been supported for so long is that it was the latest version of Windows for a way too long. XP is 7 years, as measured from the release of an actual alternative, and that's with with a support contract. And I can't help but think that is because people have become a bit entrenched because MS hadn't updated their version in so long.
Windows 2000 (Feb2000) was succeeded by WindowsXP for client in Oct2001 and Server 2003 in Apr2003. Windows 2000 will stop extended support in July 2010, 7 years after Server2k3 was released, and over 10 years after being introduced.
And remember that "extended support" phase means there will be no new features unless you pay, however everyone will get security updates. As it is right now XP is in extended support phase.
Real automation.
Apple has been adding more and more automated tests to their vetting process. That is, in part, why some apps are being pulled after being approved.
You'd think a slashdot poster would understand automation, but I guess Apple haters are simply too narrow-minded to think.
If you can't do it in BASH, it isn't read automation!
And ext4 finally supports defrag. So much for Linux not needing defrag!
Exactly. And then these people who revert -any- change without even looking at it. What? An anonymous contributor added a few words to make a phrase make sense? Revert it!
Reason for edit: Change a word to make a phrase make since
;)
Not true. I actually know what the announcement is going to be, and it's going to make a lot of people who visit sites like Slashdot happy (or surprised).
Here's a hint: it's about supporting a standard that no one thought Microsoft would support.
Maybe a new version as well..
Dear Christ, while everyone else is off supporting HTML5 H.264 video they are only going to support Ogg Theora.
Not until I am given the option in IE8 to revert the GUI to match IE6's EXACTLY.
There is NOTHING I hate more than a forced interface change.
If anyone knows how I can do this without installing a 3rd party application let me know.
Otherwise IE6 will remain on my machine forever...
I answered this for you last time: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1571348&cid=31366314
I don't know if this is a joke or not, but in WindowsXP, if you upgrade to ie8, navigate to c:\windows\ie8\iexplore.exe
This will load the IE6 UI, but it will be the IE8 rendering engine. It's located in c:\windows\ie7 if the computer has IE7 installed.
No, but broken browser addons can certainly break the browser, which then proceed to make it appear to have broken critical applications.
I've found the worst cause of this is if updates aren't pushed out, but rely on application updaters, Adobe releases a new version of Flash or Reader, user installs it blindly hitting "Next", Google Toolbar gets installed and the web browser comes to a full and complete stop. I've seen this happen on SEVERAL occasions
I don't know if this is a joke or not, but in WindowsXP, if you upgrade to ie8, navigate to c:\windows\ie8\iexplore.exe
This will load the IE6 UI, but it will be the IE8 rendering engine. It's located in c:\windows\ie7 if the computer has IE7 installed.
You were somehow thinking that a graphics card, running in 80x25 mode (or 80x50 or whatever) would be wasting power just sitting there. Particularly in a computer with a SpaceHeater4 CPU, so really it was an exercise in false economy.
The proper answer was to just do what everyone else does and walk over with a monitor and a PS2 or USB keyboard when you need console action. Any old graphics card would do.
Back to the topic of serial. While it (should be) obsolete for mass produced goods. In simple embedded systems where it's easy to implement (particularly if it's just being used for debugging), it will last for a while.
Floppies STILL aren't IDE/PATA. Ever notice how they use a different pin count (34 vs 40), and are configured in the BIOS separately?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_controller
KMS activation will still be good for 180 days. The "phoning home every 90 days" isn't trying to re-activate. It sounds more like an "anti-virus" for activation cracks that will TRY to download new definitions every 90 days.
For workarounds, there is currently KMS Virtual Machines floating around, there's "open" KMS servers on the internet, and I know for Professional there's a 76kB program that spoofs a KMS server and will activate Professional. However there's an ID, unique to every server, given to KMS clients when they activate. Microsoft could use this to detect if it was activated using a rogue KMS server. Though the article seems to talk more about tampered licencing files. You could probably also tunnel a connection from an offsite server to your uni KMS server by port forwarding using an ssh client on a uni PC, and an ssh server on an offsite server.
I prefer the dated design to any of the colorful, bloated crap Microsoft is producing at the moment that takes up half of my workspace, thank you very much.
If you're referring to the Ribbon, why don't you try collapsing it?
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/microsoft-office/maximize-space-by-auto-hiding-the-ribbon-in-office-2007/
OO's startup times in Windows XP used to bug the crap out of me. Doubleclick on a spreadsheet, and it might be a minute or so, sometimes more, before you were off to the races. This was on a decent Athlon64 2 GHz with 1GB RAM, not exactly a slouch of a machine.
Then I tried it on my old Athlon 1.3Ghz with 384MB RAM in Linux Mint, and it started in about 10 seconds.
On my new beast (Athlon II 3.0GHz, 4GB RAM, Linux Mint) OpenOffice starts in just a few seconds.
I was utterly astonished at the speed difference of OO between Windows and Linux, and it makes perfect sense to me why Windows users don't like it as much - it's a dog. I hope they've improved its Windows performance in 3.2, for the sake of those using it on Windows.
That's because many Linux distros use the much speedier Go-OO fork. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-oo
"The OpenOffice.org included with many popular Linux distributions such as Debian, Mandriva, openSUSE, Gentoo[5] and Ubuntu[6] uses some of Go-oo patches."
Tiger is already coming up on 5 years old. By the time the 10.4-supporting versions of Firefox are phased out, it's going to be at least 6 years old, maybe older (given Mozilla's tendency to let deadlines slip), and by that time, 10.7 will probably be in beta or something.
And Windows 2000 is almost 10 years old, was succeeded 7 years ago by Server 2k3 and is still supported by Mozilla. XP is 8 years old, succeeded 3 years ago by Vista and is still supported. Tiger was succeeded 2 and a half years ago and is being put out to pasture. Too bad it's Windows with forced obsolescence.
You can also try looking at Google's cached results.
There was also the 900HA and 900HD which are a smidge thicker than the 900 or 901, but had a spinning hard drive if one wanted more mass storage space. It could also be easily swapped out with another drive or 2.5" SSD if desired. In my opinion the 9" chassis is the ultimate in portability as it easily fits into a full backpack. I like my 701 for this reason (though do wish I had 1024x600 resolution of a 9" screen in the same chassis size)
Meh. I just tap to click, and I have the bottom corner of my touchpad set to right click. I barely use the buttons on my 701.
It's only in relatively recent times with the advent of computer control that the ability to hide the workings of the vehicle even became possible, and even more recently that these computers were used to try to create a "proprietary" environment where you couldn't have any random mechanic fix your car (and this attempt has largely failed).
With the likes of OBD / OBD-II Any old back yard mechanic can see what ails the car (in the electronic control system). I mean, yes, usually you can only get the computer from the OEM, but you can still rebuild the engine, transmission, alternator, lower control arm, etc. And if it tells you an Oxygen sensor is faulting, you can test and replace the sensor on your own.
With some companies, like Chrysler, you don't even need to buy a scan tool to get the codes, you can just cycle the key ON-OFF-ON-OFF-ON really quickly and it will display the codes on the digital odometer, or flash the code on the check engine light for cars not equipped with a digital odometer.
And windows users can likewise get a reasonably safe set of software from the likes of Softpedia.com or Download.com. And it gives the user choice, so they aren't tied to one specific repository only. That way if there's a custom program not available on one of those sites (but is from a trusted source), it doesn't involve pulling teeth like manual installations on Linux usually end up.
I always tell users to only download software from sites like Softpedia or Download.com. Plus you get the "choice" of what site you want. And we all know that choice is a good thing!
Well new major versions of software like Firefox and Open Office aren't backported to LTS releases. Meanwhile the latest versions of those programs continue to work on almost 10 year old, succeeded by 3 OS versions, Windows2000. Which still receives security updates from Microsoft.
The thing is at the end of the day, I don't really care about the OS. The reason for a computer is to run applications, and I want to do that with the least hassle possible. I consider upgrading OS versions (after downloading the hundreds of Megabytes necessary for such), hassle.
But I thought that Intel (as crappy as their GPUs are) is one of the most open as far as drivers compared to other GPU makers None the less, Flash is awful on all platforms, not just Linux.