Correct me if I'm wrong...
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Rumours
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· Score: 1
The NDA will clearly apply if it worded the correct way ("may not disclose any information not available to the general public" or something to that effect). They might be afraid that they can't stop further redistribution of the code, but since they never released it, they can't be held to the GPL on that point. But IANAL.
This is in no way an American only thing. I know that these sorts of contracts are used in Sweden too, and probably other countries as well. Of course, it might just be scare tactics, and it is probably illegal, but that wouldn't necessarily stop some company for suing someone for breach of contract, hoping that the courts would accept the contract. Personally I wouldn't sign a contract that said the company I worked for got any rights to things I did outside of work that are unrelated to what the company does.
I don't believe in that. If it really worked that way, I think you would have apps deadlocking all over the place. If you don't explicitly write for multithreading, it will not work reliably. From what I have understood, the BeOS has a separate thread for each window (widget?), but that is not the same thing. It might improve responsiveness, but it does not really improve performance for CPU-bound tasks. To do that, you have to take multithreading into consideration when you design your program.
Exactly what is "user-transparent multithreading/multiprocessing"? Linux supports both SMP and multithreading. SMP is completely transparent (once you have a kernel compiled for it), though of marginal use if you have only one single, single-threaded process that makes heavy use of processor power. Multithreading is transparent to the user, though not to the programmer. Does BeOS have some sort of magic multithreading that the programmer doesn't need to know about?
It's hardly the Open Source community's fault that Creative (as well as other hardware manufacturers) refuse to listen to reason. People do not buy hardware because of the drivers, they buy it for the hardware. And even if they don't want to release the driver source, releasing the specs would be unlikely to hurt. Noone is going to clone your hardware interface anyway, people aren't writing to specific hardware anymore, they write to libraries.
BSD developed concurrently with Linux? You need to read up on you Unix history. BSD has been around since the late 70's. FreeBSD is younger than Linux, it started in 1993, but it is based on 4.4BSD-lite, which traces it's ancestry back to the BSD of the seventies, which in turn is a descendant of the original UNIX. So MacOS X Server is definitely based on things that, in one form or another, has been around longer than Linux. That doesn't mean it will necessarily be better at anything, though.
Tip: Learn LaTeX. Not much harder than HTML to get the same results, but far more powerful when you want to do more complex things. You also don't have to use a big, bloated graphical app just to get it printed (though some would say that TeX distributions are bloated).
OSI sucks - the article was a laugh
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OSI vs Taco Bell
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· Score: 1
Hey, don't forget Simula 67, the first language with the class concept. It was developed in Norway by Dahl and Nygaard.
According to a senior Creative engineer, from linux-kernel: "NT is mute because it is fundamentally broken, period. That any hardware works on that OS is amazing." That doesn't sound to me like they have a very good driver API.
X (and svgalib) aren't involved here.
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Parallel Mesa
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· Score: 1
No, the output comes directly from the Voodoo 2 board. That's why you have a pass through video cable. No need for a 2D board except for for 2D graphics work. Of which there is none in glquake.
X (and svgalib) aren't involved here.
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Parallel Mesa
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· Score: 1
Quake doesn't really do that much 2D, and glQuake does no 2D. Everything goes via the Voodoo, I don't think you even need a 2D card to play glquake under Linux. Not that I have actually played glquake under Linux, but there is no need for a 2D card, since the Voodoo card is directly connected to the monitor.
I don't get this. I don't think there is much of a problem with fonts in X. OK, complex fonts aren't very pretty, but the basic fonts like courier and stuff work for me. OTOH, I'm a LaTeX guy, and don't particularly care for WYSIWYG anyway, so maybe that's the thing. As long as the fonts are legible, I'm satisfied.
Why would the specs for how to get the bit stream from the DVD player to the decoder card be under NDA from the DVD consortium (or whoever)? They didn't build the decoder chip, nor the board it is on. The decryption should be in the chip, so it's not as if we would get the specs for that anyway.
OK, so assume I like one song on a CD. I'd be willing to pay $3 for that song. I'm utterly uninterested in the rest of the songs on that CD. And they aren't willing to sell me that song for $3. So I can't buy it at an acceptable price. Instead, I "pirate" it. How does this hurt anyone? Explain, please?
Yeah, like Intergraph. They really made it big on NT-based graphical workstations. They haven't been profitable since they started making NT machines... Now, SGI has a far more interesting product, IMHO, but that doesn't necessarily help.
Because (at least in this case) paying the open source developers is taking a risk (it's not sure they'll manage to get good graphics into the game) whereas buying the game is a far more limited risk - will I like the game? That can easily be answered by playing demos or pirating the game.
FreeCiv is an improved clone of Civ2, except the graphics are nowhere near as good, and I'm not sure how good the AI is, cause I almost never play single player. But it has all that Civ2 has, plus it is more tunable.
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The NDA will clearly apply if it worded the correct way ("may not disclose any information not available to the general public" or something to that effect). They might be afraid that they can't stop further redistribution of the code, but since they never released it, they can't be held to the GPL on that point. But IANAL.
This is in no way an American only thing. I know that these sorts of contracts are used in Sweden too, and probably other countries as well. Of course, it might just be scare tactics, and it is probably illegal, but that wouldn't necessarily stop some company for suing someone for breach of contract, hoping that the courts would accept the contract.
Personally I wouldn't sign a contract that said the company I worked for got any rights to things I did outside of work that are unrelated to what the company does.
I don't believe in that. If it really worked that way, I think you would have apps deadlocking all over the place. If you don't explicitly write for multithreading, it will not work reliably.
From what I have understood, the BeOS has a separate thread for each window (widget?), but that is not the same thing. It might improve responsiveness, but it does not really improve performance for CPU-bound tasks. To do that, you have to take multithreading into consideration when you design your program.
Exactly what is "user-transparent multithreading/multiprocessing"? Linux supports both SMP and multithreading. SMP is completely transparent (once you have a kernel compiled for it), though of marginal use if you have only one single, single-threaded process that makes heavy use of processor power. Multithreading is transparent to the user, though not to the programmer. Does BeOS have some sort of magic multithreading that the programmer doesn't need to know about?
It's hardly the Open Source community's fault that Creative (as well as other hardware manufacturers) refuse to listen to reason. People do not buy hardware because of the drivers, they buy it for the hardware. And even if they don't want to release the driver source, releasing the specs would be unlikely to hurt. Noone is going to clone your hardware interface anyway, people aren't writing to specific hardware anymore, they write to libraries.
You don't listen very well, do you? The UK has been a part of the EU for a long time now.
mpg123 uses about 30% CPU on a P100. Or at least it did on my P100.
Well, I don't know about other 64 bit processors, but Alphas have 64 bit registers, which makes life a lot easier if you want huge integers.
BSD developed concurrently with Linux? You need to read up on you Unix history. BSD has been around since the late 70's. FreeBSD is younger than Linux, it started in 1993, but it is based on 4.4BSD-lite, which traces it's ancestry back to the BSD of the seventies, which in turn is a descendant of the original UNIX. So MacOS X Server is definitely based on things that, in one form or another, has been around longer than Linux. That doesn't mean it will necessarily be better at anything, though.
Do it as a cron job that checks all new files to see if they are correct HTML and sends mail to the owner if they're not. Or do it in the web server.
Tip: Learn LaTeX. Not much harder than HTML to get the same results, but far more powerful when you want to do more complex things. You also don't have to use a big, bloated graphical app just to get it printed (though some would say that TeX distributions are bloated).
Hey, don't forget Simula 67, the first language with the class concept. It was developed in Norway by Dahl and Nygaard.
Didn't OS/2 have this with Rexx? And the Amiga as well, IIRC.
According to a senior Creative engineer, from linux-kernel:
"NT is mute because it is fundamentally broken, period. That any hardware works on that OS is amazing." That doesn't sound to me like they have a very good driver API.
No, the output comes directly from the Voodoo 2 board. That's why you have a pass through video cable. No need for a 2D board except for for 2D graphics work. Of which there is none in glquake.
Quake doesn't really do that much 2D, and glQuake does no 2D. Everything goes via the Voodoo, I don't think you even need a 2D card to play glquake under Linux. Not that I have actually played glquake under Linux, but there is no need for a 2D card, since the Voodoo card is directly connected to the monitor.
I don't get this. I don't think there is much of a problem with fonts in X. OK, complex fonts aren't very pretty, but the basic fonts like courier and stuff work for me. OTOH, I'm a LaTeX guy, and don't particularly care for WYSIWYG anyway, so maybe that's the thing. As long as the fonts are legible, I'm satisfied.
X has scalable fonts already. Only monochrome, but scalable. Type 1 fonts, TrueType if you have a suitable server, Speedo IIRC, maybe others too.
Why would the specs for how to get the bit stream from the DVD player to the decoder card be under NDA from the DVD consortium (or whoever)? They didn't build the decoder chip, nor the board it is on. The decryption should be in the chip, so it's not as if we would get the specs for that anyway.
OK, so assume I like one song on a CD. I'd be willing to pay $3 for that song. I'm utterly uninterested in the rest of the songs on that CD. And they aren't willing to sell me that song for $3. So I can't buy it at an acceptable price. Instead, I "pirate" it. How does this hurt anyone? Explain, please?
Yeah, like Intergraph. They really made it big on NT-based graphical workstations. They haven't been profitable since they started making NT machines... Now, SGI has a far more interesting product, IMHO, but that doesn't necessarily help.
Because (at least in this case) paying the open source developers is taking a risk (it's not sure they'll manage to get good graphics into the game) whereas buying the game is a far more limited risk - will I like the game? That can easily be answered by playing demos or pirating the game.
FreeCiv is an improved clone of Civ2, except the graphics are nowhere near as good, and I'm not sure how good the AI is, cause I almost never play single player. But it has all that Civ2 has, plus it is more tunable.
Didn't IDG give Linux a 17% market share, and Unix about the same?
Is there anything about X that makes it inherently heavyweight that wouldn't hurt to throw overboard?