Incidentally, this is something I've been curious about. Could your friend (or anyone else reading) share any wisdom as to who makes the better CD-R media? And which varieties thereof are the best?
I'm looking more for longevity than DVD readability, but those need not be mutually exclusive . . . .
Thanks for the extraordinarily insightful comment. If there were any sensible way to do it, I'd frame your words on the wall. To say nothing of what I would do if I had moderator points (besides saying nothing;-)
I think in the long term, a positive view of sex in America will eventually prevail. It was only a few short centuries ago, after all, that blacks were considered less than human. In another hundred or so, this folly will too hopefully be relegated to old history and anthropology books.
numerical computation stuff isn't exactly the hardest thing to code up
Should have said: in comparison to *symbolic* computational stuff. There are many numeric cruncher programs out there, but in the land of nontrivial symbolic math, you can practically count them on one hand. (I looked into this a while back, esp. in the SAL pages)
Not to belittle the work that has gone into MATLAB or Octave, only that writing a free replacement for Maple or Mathematica would be a much harder undertaking. Less algorithms, more heuristics, and a much hairier problem space.
That's not the only one, but the names of the others escape me at the moment. The issue is not that a free alternative for MATLAB doesn't exist; rather, that MATLAB has yet to be displaced by one in many settings (certainly so at my institution).
I don't know if MATLAB has important features yet to be implemented in free software-- but I have to agree that numerical computation stuff isn't exactly the hardest thing to code up. It's probably more an issue of inertia (cf. MSOffice vs. StarOffice)
And to think I just recently commented on the trials of running Konqueror standalone, having to compile a good chunk of KDE and all those pesky kdeinit/kio processes that would start up and never go away.
That this will run as an (almost) self-contained binary under Qt/X11 is awesome. It greatly simplifies running Konqueror w/o KDE, and makes that a very attractive alternative to other monolithic browsers.
Given that this is targetted to embedded systems, I think the memory usage comparisons with NS4 will be rather interesting...
Interesting idea. Bring some of that KDE/Gnome panel applet goodness to the *Step dock!
I figure storing 9 16x16 icons and using the wharf icon corners (upper left and lower right) to page between them would be best. And perhaps have the panel icons which changed status pop up to the top of the pile too.
If I may make a suggestion... what if you were to multiplex them somewhat like this? (screenshot nabbed from the wmmenu site)
The row of tiles could slide out on mouseover (or a click), and slide back in on mouseout. It would let you see all the applets at once.
Has anyone had experience using Konqueror without the rest of KDE running?
One annoyance I had with 2.0 were the number of kdeinit/kio processes started up with Konqueror, that would persist even after it was terminated. (Which also made memory usage comparisons with NS4 a rather tricky affair)
Aside from that, the deluge of debugging messages and inability to display local directories turned me back to NS4, but I'm willing to give Konqy another go at it...
As interesting as the idea is, LaTeX is not a good broadcast format for the web. For one, it assumes pagination. For another, it would need a fair amount more horsepower to render, unless you pare away much of its power. (TeX/LaTeX can be a programming language all its own; compare the difference between PDF and Postscript)
LaTeX's true strength over HTML (or any other flavor of SGML) is in authoring. The language, the syntax is well-suited to manual editing. Consider seeing this in a text editor:
<thought>Where is my attaché case?</thought> he wondered.
versus this:
\thought{Where is my attach\'e case?} he wondered.
Of course, the best way to read LaTeX is with xdvi, but at least it is possible to read untypeset prose without the constant mental stops imposed by the verboseness of *ML syntax.
This is why I think LaTeX (or at least a well-defined subset thereof) would better fit a role as a source language for *ML documents. The Hyperlatex program already makes this possible, for HTML at least. (A generic LaTeX-to-SGML converter would be much more useful-- but alas, it appears such a program has yet to be written)
64-bit pixels would make sense for four-chromed, alpha-channeled graphics. Anything less than eight bits per channel makes shade variations coarse enough to be visibly noticed, so here's what I would venture:
struct {
int red : 12;
int NEW_COLOR : 12;
int green : 12;
int blue : 12;
int alpha : 16;
} pixel;
Which would probably not work well with today's generation of (32-bit) systems, but should kick ass with the next. And it gives us ordinary trichromats 36-bit RGB color resolution (very cool for GIMP and film work) *and* an ultra-fine alpha channel! Me likes!
My guess is, they're either using cannibalized Apple hardware (!) or Motorola boards. (Cannibalized RS/6ks would be WAY too expensive)
If I'm wrong, though, it would kick serious @$$ if they decided to offer a workstation configuration...
Re:(Yeah, well..) Darwin != Free, GNUStep is
on
No Love For Darwin?
·
· Score: 2
Amen to that. I'm really hoping OSX will lead to a surge of interest in GNUstep. It's a beautiful system that, alas, hasn't ever seen much mindshare.
I don't know about making GNUstep look like OSX-- though a good theming architecture is something the developers will be looking into someday-- but at least they have rolled in some of Apple's changes to the OpenStep API, selectable via #ifdef MACOSX (IIRC).
There has, however, been talk about possible bad blood with Apple. Steve Jobs has been quoted in the past as saying, "We will vigorously protect our IP w.r.t. NeXT/OpenStep," and if GNUstep makes it possible to build Cocoa apps off of OSX, Apple might see a benefit in squashing the project.
I don't think that in itself is too likely, because it's kind of ridiculous to sue for a rogue implementation of your API (as long as they don't call it OpenStep, of course). Some patent issues have been brought up, however, w.r.t. database interfaces in OpenStep's Enterprise Object Framework (EOF). These are important because the EOF is one of the biggest plusses of the OpenStep standard, as I've heard. (Supposedly makes writing database-capable apps incredibly easy. Not being a DB guy myself, I have to take this at face value)
Personally, I'm hoping some kind of amicable arrangement can happen between Apple and GNUstep. Doesn't have to be official, doesn't have to require any of their resources, only a tacit agreement that GNUstep's and Apple's interests are not opposed to each other's. Considering Apple has the power to change their interface to break implementation compatibity a la MS, such an arrangement would prove invaluable, both to GNUstep and to the integrity of the OpenStep/Cocoa API definition.
Aye, there was some discussion not too long ago about replacing the Mach architecture with L4. Some guy said he was going to do some thesis work involving the Hurd, and wanted to know what he could do that would be useful, and this was one of the first suggestions that came up.
Many of the debian-hurd folk were pretty excited about this possibility, as L4 is smaller and faster than Mach, is already in a working state, and is actively being worked on by its own cadre of developers.
(Man. To think-- not so many years ago, the vision for the GNU desktop system was GNUstep running on Hurd. I hope it'll still come to pass...)
Sigh... if only it didn't suit Apple's business interests to have MacOS run exclusively on their hardware...
Of course, for now, you can always get one of Motorola's ATX boards, the ones aimed for the industrial machine-control market. Only $1000+ a pop. ("These things are built like a tank," sayeth the company rep at LWCE2000)
Man, the G4 kicks ass. If only the market economy didn't get in the way:P
the CambridgeSide Galleria (an upscale mall with very expensive stores and even more expensive parking)
Uh, I've been to CambridgeSide, and the stores there aren't that expensive. (They've got Best Buy, fer crying out loud). You want expensive, go across the Charles into Boston, and visit the Prudential Center. THAT is expensive.
The parking ain't that bad, either. I think it was ~= $5 or so for two or three hours. And this is in a fairly well-kept garage, just a short way from the mall proper.
This might bring back the allure of those vector-based games of the 80s. It'll be even sharper, since back then anti-aliasing wasn't in use.
Back then, you didn't need anti-aliasing. The CRT's electron gun was directly under the control of the graphics circuitry; i.e. it drew vectors directly, no scanlines. (How else do you think Asteroids got those bullets so damn bright?:-)
Ahh, this would have been useful with an old P90/32MB motherboard/memory combo I recently gave away...
It was quite fun, running a system (FreeBSD) with a single-bit memory error. Sure, gcc would die on occasion, but then there was the oddness of having a script break because a file http_log was missing (mysteriously renamed to httx_log). The best part was actually figuring out which bit was bad...
Why is almost everyone here bringing up the long-gone-and-deadness of the old Amiga machines, and then in the same breath writing the SDK off as DOA?
This SDK has nothing to do with the old Amiga machines. They kept the name, but that and maybe a certain degree of technical unconventionality are about all this has in common with what Amiga used to be.
This is a cross-platform, hosted application environment. It has a virtual-processor architecture, such that the same binary will work for all platforms (through dynamic recompilation). Everything is based around the Taos kernel, which is (supposedly) the only thing that actually has to be ported to a new architecture for the entire system to support it.
So what this really is is something like Java on steroids, or GNUstep sans native binaries. I love that the core system is quite compact (apparently the Taos kernel is 12kB!), and that it is highly geared toward efficient parallel processing. That the whole thing is called Amiga is a bit odd, but looking into this, one explanation becomes clear: What Amiga boxen were to the hardware peers of its day, this seems to be to the software of today. This really does look like advanced stuff. Read more about it.
I am disappointed, however, that the system is proprietary. Don't wanna go there. But then, hey, these guys are way ahead of the curve. And who knows, maybe the AROS folks will begin their own implemetation of the new API once they finish with the old one:-)
(I keep this info on an index card under my phone)
The TCPAo1991 requires that companies keep a "no-call" list, which you can request to be added to. If you hear from them again, you are legally entitled to sue for $500 per incident. And this is federal law.
Man, what a nifty idea. Especially if the term "solar sail" conjures up for you images of kilometer-sized sheets of gold foil.
One thing I wished the article would have explained better: How is it that plasma can expand a magnetic field in that way? I mean, I see how you could block an EM field-- we see that everyday-- but intensify it? (without increasing the coil voltage, at that). Could anyone comment?
This looks real good for ObjC. You now what ? NeXTstep really did have 10 years of advance. He's only getting mainstream now...:-)
I'd *love* to see ObjC gain a mainstream-ish following. It's everything C++ and Java should have been.
This would also bode well for the GnuSTEP project and GCC's ObjC front end. GnuSTEP is already integrating some of Apple's OSX changes to the OpenSTEP API, and is already the closest thing out there to OSX (that isn't owned by Apple).
Of course, assuming a desktop application, x86 is the best bet in performance/price. Far and away. I also inquired into motherboards for Sparc and Alpha chips at LWCE, and in both cases the board alone was again around $1000 (entry-level models at that!)
I was interested in PPC mostly out of curiosity/novelty, and a desire to have a top-quality machine, more so than any specific plans to do something with Altivec. (And I don't mind the sound of fans-- heck, I don't sleep as well at nights without it;-) If I was a cold, emotionless pencil pusher, I wouldn't have given PPC a second thought. Unless there is some specific advantage PPC gives you, it's more an issue of getting a higher-quality system (and all the associated warm fuzzies) versus nailing that global perf/$$$ maxima.
P.S.: Building a G4 Linux system would present an even more complex issue with drivers. The boards have a regular PCI bus, so you can slip in just about any card you like, but you have to ensure that you can compile the driver source. Vendor-supplied binary drivers are useless as they are almost invariably x86-only.
granted people here don't like shelling out money for anything let alone as OS but I for one will be shelling out my (insert $$ value here) for a version of NeXTSTEP running on big hardware. I don't think I'll need the seperate partition for linux anymore.
Can't say much about the hardware and core OS (though I've heard my share of good things about the NeXTCubes, and gosh they looked killer), but for the working environment, you could always go with GnuStep.
Hmmm... perhaps if you had some Mac hardware, installed [the microkernel-based] Darwin, and built GnuStep... that would probably be as close to a free OSX/OpenStep as one can get, yes?
That goes for architecture design, thermal properties, size, and (alas) price.
I recently built myself a new workstation. It ended up being AthlonTB-based, but boy did I look hard for a reasonably priced non-Apple G4/CHRP motherboard. The things don't exist. I asked a Motorola rep at LWCE2000 about the company's line of PPC ATX boards. Their most inexpensive model is over a thousand dollars!
Then again, he said those were made for controlling industrial equipment, so the manufacturing tolerances are a little tighter than necessary for a desktop system. But the rep did say something quite enlightening: the reason you don't see cheap G4 boards is that Apple would never EVER allow MacOS to run on them, and because of that, no one sees a market. It's a damn shame....
Slashdot Mirror
Incidentally, this is something I've been curious about. Could your friend (or anyone else reading) share any wisdom as to who makes the better CD-R media? And which varieties thereof are the best?
I'm looking more for longevity than DVD readability, but those need not be mutually exclusive . . . .
Thanks for the extraordinarily insightful comment. If there were any sensible way to do it, I'd frame your words on the wall. To say nothing of what I would do if I had moderator points (besides saying nothing ;-)
I think in the long term, a positive view of sex in America will eventually prevail. It was only a few short centuries ago, after all, that blacks were considered less than human. In another hundred or so, this folly will too hopefully be relegated to old history and anthropology books.
numerical computation stuff isn't exactly the hardest thing to code up
Should have said: in comparison to *symbolic* computational stuff. There are many numeric cruncher programs out there, but in the land of nontrivial symbolic math, you can practically count them on one hand. (I looked into this a while back, esp. in the SAL pages)
Not to belittle the work that has gone into MATLAB or Octave, only that writing a free replacement for Maple or Mathematica would be a much harder undertaking. Less algorithms, more heuristics, and a much hairier problem space.
Have you heard of Octave?
That's not the only one, but the names of the others escape me at the moment. The issue is not that a free alternative for MATLAB doesn't exist; rather, that MATLAB has yet to be displaced by one in many settings (certainly so at my institution).
I don't know if MATLAB has important features yet to be implemented in free software-- but I have to agree that numerical computation stuff isn't exactly the hardest thing to code up. It's probably more an issue of inertia (cf. MSOffice vs. StarOffice)
Sure, not Qt/Embedded, but you can build this against Qt/X11. So, for all intents and purposes, this is a cut-down Konq without the KDE stuff!
And to think I just recently commented on the trials of running Konqueror standalone, having to compile a good chunk of KDE and all those pesky kdeinit/kio processes that would start up and never go away.
That this will run as an (almost) self-contained binary under Qt/X11 is awesome. It greatly simplifies running Konqueror w/o KDE, and makes that a very attractive alternative to other monolithic browsers.
Given that this is targetted to embedded systems, I think the memory usage comparisons with NS4 will be rather interesting...
Interesting idea. Bring some of that KDE/Gnome panel applet goodness to the *Step dock!
I figure storing 9 16x16 icons and using the wharf icon corners (upper left and lower right) to page between them would be best. And perhaps have the panel icons which changed status pop up to the top of the pile too.
If I may make a suggestion... what if you were to multiplex them somewhat like this? (screenshot nabbed from the wmmenu site)
The row of tiles could slide out on mouseover (or a click), and slide back in on mouseout. It would let you see all the applets at once.
Has anyone had experience using Konqueror without the rest of KDE running?
One annoyance I had with 2.0 were the number of kdeinit/kio processes started up with Konqueror, that would persist even after it was terminated. (Which also made memory usage comparisons with NS4 a rather tricky affair)
Aside from that, the deluge of debugging messages and inability to display local directories turned me back to NS4, but I'm willing to give Konqy another go at it...
As interesting as the idea is, LaTeX is not a good broadcast format for the web. For one, it assumes pagination. For another, it would need a fair amount more horsepower to render, unless you pare away much of its power. (TeX/LaTeX can be a programming language all its own; compare the difference between PDF and Postscript)
LaTeX's true strength over HTML (or any other flavor of SGML) is in authoring. The language, the syntax is well-suited to manual editing. Consider seeing this in a text editor:
<thought>Where is my attaché case?</thought> he wondered.
versus this:
\thought{Where is my attach\'e case?} he wondered.
Of course, the best way to read LaTeX is with xdvi, but at least it is possible to read untypeset prose without the constant mental stops imposed by the verboseness of *ML syntax.
This is why I think LaTeX (or at least a well-defined subset thereof) would better fit a role as a source language for *ML documents. The Hyperlatex program already makes this possible, for HTML at least. (A generic LaTeX-to-SGML converter would be much more useful-- but alas, it appears such a program has yet to be written)
64-bit pixels would make sense for four-chromed, alpha-channeled graphics. Anything less than eight bits per channel makes shade variations coarse enough to be visibly noticed, so here's what I would venture:
struct {
int red : 12;
int NEW_COLOR : 12;
int green : 12;
int blue : 12;
int alpha : 16;
} pixel;
Which would probably not work well with today's generation of (32-bit) systems, but should kick ass with the next. And it gives us ordinary trichromats 36-bit RGB color resolution (very cool for GIMP and film work) *and* an ultra-fine alpha channel! Me likes!
I was wondering about that myself.
My guess is, they're either using cannibalized Apple hardware (!) or Motorola boards. (Cannibalized RS/6ks would be WAY too expensive)
If I'm wrong, though, it would kick serious @$$ if they decided to offer a workstation configuration...
Amen to that. I'm really hoping OSX will lead to a surge of interest in GNUstep. It's a beautiful system that, alas, hasn't ever seen much mindshare.
I don't know about making GNUstep look like OSX-- though a good theming architecture is something the developers will be looking into someday-- but at least they have rolled in some of Apple's changes to the OpenStep API, selectable via #ifdef MACOSX (IIRC).
There has, however, been talk about possible bad blood with Apple. Steve Jobs has been quoted in the past as saying, "We will vigorously protect our IP w.r.t. NeXT/OpenStep," and if GNUstep makes it possible to build Cocoa apps off of OSX, Apple might see a benefit in squashing the project.
I don't think that in itself is too likely, because it's kind of ridiculous to sue for a rogue implementation of your API (as long as they don't call it OpenStep, of course). Some patent issues have been brought up, however, w.r.t. database interfaces in OpenStep's Enterprise Object Framework (EOF). These are important because the EOF is one of the biggest plusses of the OpenStep standard, as I've heard. (Supposedly makes writing database-capable apps incredibly easy. Not being a DB guy myself, I have to take this at face value)
Personally, I'm hoping some kind of amicable arrangement can happen between Apple and GNUstep. Doesn't have to be official, doesn't have to require any of their resources, only a tacit agreement that GNUstep's and Apple's interests are not opposed to each other's. Considering Apple has the power to change their interface to break implementation compatibity a la MS, such an arrangement would prove invaluable, both to GNUstep and to the integrity of the OpenStep/Cocoa API definition.
Aye, there was some discussion not too long ago about replacing the Mach architecture with L4. Some guy said he was going to do some thesis work involving the Hurd, and wanted to know what he could do that would be useful, and this was one of the first suggestions that came up.
Many of the debian-hurd folk were pretty excited about this possibility, as L4 is smaller and faster than Mach, is already in a working state, and is actively being worked on by its own cadre of developers.
(Man. To think-- not so many years ago, the vision for the GNU desktop system was GNUstep running on Hurd. I hope it'll still come to pass...)
Sigh... if only it didn't suit Apple's business interests to have MacOS run exclusively on their hardware...
:P
Of course, for now, you can always get one of Motorola's ATX boards, the ones aimed for the industrial machine-control market. Only $1000+ a pop. ("These things are built like a tank," sayeth the company rep at LWCE2000)
Man, the G4 kicks ass. If only the market economy didn't get in the way
the CambridgeSide Galleria (an upscale mall with very expensive stores and even more expensive parking)
Uh, I've been to CambridgeSide, and the stores there aren't that expensive. (They've got Best Buy, fer crying out loud). You want expensive, go across the Charles into Boston, and visit the Prudential Center. THAT is expensive.
The parking ain't that bad, either. I think it was ~= $5 or so for two or three hours. And this is in a fairly well-kept garage, just a short way from the mall proper.
This might bring back the allure of those vector-based games of the 80s. It'll be even sharper, since back then anti-aliasing wasn't in use.
:-)
Back then, you didn't need anti-aliasing. The CRT's electron gun was directly under the control of the graphics circuitry; i.e. it drew vectors directly, no scanlines. (How else do you think Asteroids got those bullets so damn bright?
Ahh, this would have been useful with an old P90/32MB motherboard/memory combo I recently gave away...
It was quite fun, running a system (FreeBSD) with a single-bit memory error. Sure, gcc would die on occasion, but then there was the oddness of having a script break because a file http_log was missing (mysteriously renamed to httx_log). The best part was actually figuring out which bit was bad...
Why is almost everyone here bringing up the long-gone-and-deadness of the old Amiga machines, and then in the same breath writing the SDK off as DOA?
:-)
This SDK has nothing to do with the old Amiga machines. They kept the name, but that and maybe a certain degree of technical unconventionality are about all this has in common with what Amiga used to be.
This is a cross-platform, hosted application environment. It has a virtual-processor architecture, such that the same binary will work for all platforms (through dynamic recompilation). Everything is based around the Taos kernel, which is (supposedly) the only thing that actually has to be ported to a new architecture for the entire system to support it.
So what this really is is something like Java on steroids, or GNUstep sans native binaries. I love that the core system is quite compact (apparently the Taos kernel is 12kB!), and that it is highly geared toward efficient parallel processing. That the whole thing is called Amiga is a bit odd, but looking into this, one explanation becomes clear: What Amiga boxen were to the hardware peers of its day, this seems to be to the software of today. This really does look like advanced stuff. Read more about it.
I am disappointed, however, that the system is proprietary. Don't wanna go there. But then, hey, these guys are way ahead of the curve. And who knows, maybe the AROS folks will begin their own implemetation of the new API once they finish with the old one
He meant to say that the timestamp gets written into the kernel, thus making MD5 not feasible for comparing the earlier-built kernel to the new one.
(I keep this info on an index card under my phone)
The TCPAo1991 requires that companies keep a "no-call" list, which you can request to be added to. If you hear from them again, you are legally entitled to sue for $500 per incident. And this is federal law.
Look here for more information.
Man, what a nifty idea. Especially if the term "solar sail" conjures up for you images of kilometer-sized sheets of gold foil.
One thing I wished the article would have explained better: How is it that plasma can expand a magnetic field in that way? I mean, I see how you could block an EM field-- we see that everyday-- but intensify it? (without increasing the coil voltage, at that). Could anyone comment?
This looks real good for ObjC. You now what ? NeXTstep really did have 10 years of advance. He's only getting mainstream now... :-)
I'd *love* to see ObjC gain a mainstream-ish following. It's everything C++ and Java should have been.
This would also bode well for the GnuSTEP project and GCC's ObjC front end. GnuSTEP is already integrating some of Apple's OSX changes to the OpenSTEP API, and is already the closest thing out there to OSX (that isn't owned by Apple).
Of course, assuming a desktop application, x86 is the best bet in performance/price. Far and away. I also inquired into motherboards for Sparc and Alpha chips at LWCE, and in both cases the board alone was again around $1000 (entry-level models at that!)
;-) If I was a cold, emotionless pencil pusher, I wouldn't have given PPC a second thought. Unless there is some specific advantage PPC gives you, it's more an issue of getting a higher-quality system (and all the associated warm fuzzies) versus nailing that global perf/$$$ maxima.
I was interested in PPC mostly out of curiosity/novelty, and a desire to have a top-quality machine, more so than any specific plans to do something with Altivec. (And I don't mind the sound of fans-- heck, I don't sleep as well at nights without it
P.S.: Building a G4 Linux system would present an even more complex issue with drivers. The boards have a regular PCI bus, so you can slip in just about any card you like, but you have to ensure that you can compile the driver source. Vendor-supplied binary drivers are useless as they are almost invariably x86-only.
(Has a nice ring to it... :-)
granted people here don't like shelling out money for anything let alone as OS but I for one will be shelling out my (insert $$ value here) for a version of NeXTSTEP running on big hardware. I don't think I'll need the seperate partition for linux anymore.
Can't say much about the hardware and core OS (though I've heard my share of good things about the NeXTCubes, and gosh they looked killer), but for the working environment, you could always go with GnuStep.
Hmmm... perhaps if you had some Mac hardware, installed [the microkernel-based] Darwin, and built GnuStep... that would probably be as close to a free OSX/OpenStep as one can get, yes?
PPC >> x86
That goes for architecture design, thermal properties, size, and (alas) price.
I recently built myself a new workstation. It ended up being AthlonTB-based, but boy did I look hard for a reasonably priced non-Apple G4/CHRP motherboard. The things don't exist. I asked a Motorola rep at LWCE2000 about the company's line of PPC ATX boards. Their most inexpensive model is over a thousand dollars!
Then again, he said those were made for controlling industrial equipment, so the manufacturing tolerances are a little tighter than necessary for a desktop system. But the rep did say something quite enlightening: the reason you don't see cheap G4 boards is that Apple would never EVER allow MacOS to run on them, and because of that, no one sees a market. It's a damn shame....