The fact that is is similar to IRC should tell you (and any person who writes apps for Linux) something.
The user interface and user experience is key. Yes, this technology is like IRC. But, it probably doesn't have all of the cruft and baggage of IRC. No obscure server names to remember, no Ops, kicks, bots, channel storms, etc... Easier setup and connect, etc... The list of IRC woes is long. IRC was (is) a medium made by geeks for geeks. It's not an easy thing to understand and it's learning curve is practically vertical. The problems are a shame too, as the underlying concept of communication channels/rooms is valid and useful.
Dynamix did a lot to clean up IRC and make it easy to understand in their Tribes2 pre-game UI. 3deg of Separation sounds like an excellent attempt by Microsoft to make IRC style communications go mainstream.
Anyone who's ever written an IRC client should sit back and ask themselves, "Why wasn't I concerned with making IRC better instead of just making yet another IRC client?"
Sun is going to be around for a long time. As many other people have pointed out, they're just retreating somewhat to more a of niche market, where they are the right tool for the job.
Sun has always served a niche market. The problem is that commodity X86 hardware, coupled with a decent OS, is making their niche smaller and smaller. Eventually commodity hardware/software will be capable of doing everything in that niche.
Sun needs to find ways to move into other markets. Retreating is not the strategy of a company that will "be around for a long time".
You take classes to learn how to drive a car because 1)You have to pass a test to get a State issued license and 2)Mistakes can kill people.
Are you mandating State issued computing licenses? If so, then you'll have to start offering classes, because 99.999999% of the people out there have absolutely no idea what in the hell etc/resolv.conf means, let alone does.
Unix is unnecessarily hard because it was designed by computer engineers for computer enginners. People don't have to edit \\etc\blender\speeds.conf to get their blender to puree something. They sure as hell don't want to have to edit \etc\resolv.conf in order to get connected to the internet.
Use your blender....push a button User your VCR....push a button. Set your DNS settings...push a button on a window.
Computers, while generally more of an issue to use than a microwave do not have to be has hard to use as most Linux zealots want them to be.
It's pretty hypocritical of the Linux zealot crowd to say, "Microsoft sucks" on the one hand but yet refuse to give up the elistist club and make Linux easy for everyone. As long as you keep that "It's our treehouse" attitude Microsoft will continue to dominiate. Why? Because Windows allows you to configure your system by clicking buttons...and one of those buttons is always "cancel". There is less fear that you are going to screw something up.
Average consumers don't care about the components of a Unix based operating system. They don't care that there are a metric butt-load of Unix varients. They don't care that Linux is a kernel, the GNU tools are what you use to make the kernel useful, that X drives the display and that KDE or GNOME drive the desktop. Technical discussions like that will just make them feel overwhelmed and/or give them a headache.
Average consumers understand that a computer needs an OS and that Linux is an OS. To them the phrase, "Linux on the Desktop" means exactly that, the Linux OS on a desktop PC that they can buy and use.
It's unnecessary nit-picking like your post that helps promote the idea that Linux is only for propeller heads and that it is hard to use.
Where did he say the PowerMac should be called 2.84GHz?
I never said he did, genius. I was using sarcasm to point out that 2 CPUs * x speed != 1 CPU * 2*x speed.
There's enough overhead in running an SMP system that you will never have X + X = 2X
It's also a pure fanboi attitude to think that 2 mildly fast processor in a Mac will do anything to help the performanc deficit that Macs currently have against P4 machines. When digital video and image editing magazines start to do comparisons in Premiere, After Effects, and Photoshop that show P4 systems easily trouncing high end Mac boxes (and costing less, too), then you have to wonder why anyone would use a Mac. Especially in the digital content creation field, where most apps have identical UIs on the different platforms. At that point not even the UI presentation in the OS can be used as a deciding factor.
Photoshop is a trademarked proper noun, not a verb.
Adding "-ing" to the end of it does not make it a verb. Most verbs aren't capitalized unless they are at the beginning of a sentence.
How about some vocabulary that is more intelligent sounding. For example, "Should Law Enforcement be allowed to digitally enhance fingerprints?" and, "Would that make the photo retouching more credible?"
That story would be all well and good except for a few things
a) MS was behind the product, had seen it during all stages of development, and was actively interested in it.
b) After EA shut down EA Virginia MS was helping a few of the left over developers to try and buy back the code-base from EA (MS only owned the IP, not the code). EA wouldn't budge on it.
It was not MS's actions that caused the downfall of BT3025. It was the pride and short-sightedness of EA that did it in.
Re:They work their employees like dogs...
on
EA As The Next Disney
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I worked for EA.COM/EA Virginia for about 12-18 months.
Worst work experience I've ever had. At one point they wanted us to dumb our game down to the point where the users could hit a key to have his vehicle automatically follow an enemy. Then all the user would have to do is click the mouse button to fire their weapons.
Yes, the clueless, khaki/t-shirt/black sweater management core from Redwood Shores that such an idea would make the game, "more accessable". It never dawned on them that it also removed all interactivity from an interactive entertainment product.
But, what do you expect when their CEO is from Sara Lee and gives motivational speeches with such phrases as, "Making an online game is a lot like making a quiche.".
See comments above re potential usefulness of 3D accelerated rendering in 2D graphics, but more immediately, 2D artists need to be able to run 3D animations or renderings for a variety of reasons, for example, to see their work in context (i.e., model skins or painted backdrops) or perhaps they may be provided with 3D models as a starting point from which they develop hand-painted cells.
Read the subject heading. None of your comment has anything to do with FilmGIMP. You can provide exceptions to every rule, yes. But, the original poster's claim that increased nVidia support was due to an application that doesn't use any 3D pipeline is baseless and incorrect.
of all 3 GPU companies, there is essentially no difference in the 2D quality in either chipset.
Bzzzt, wrong.
Both nVidia and ATi are using 8bit color modes for ~16million available colors (plus some alpha, some stencil, etc..). While the new ATi 9500 has a psuedo 10bit mode it is just doing internal calculations in 10bit on an 8bit input source.
Matrox, on the other-hand, offers true 10bit color modes on their cards. This is something that sets their cards apart from the consumer level commodity devices that both nVidia and ATi make.
While DirectX9/OpenGL 2.x call for 10bit color modes (e.g. colors specified as 0...1 instead of 0...256) There isn't an ATi or nVidia card out yet that truly does 10bit (GeForceFX, maybe).
There are differences between 2D output of cards, don't fool yourself. Even beyond the 10bit/8bit issues there are color quantization choices, pixel blending/dithering choices, anti-aliasing implementations....that each manufacturer does differently. These different choices do equal different output of the same source material on different cards.
And yes, both companies (ATi and nVidia)make cards, not just chipsets. 99.9999% of the nVidia cards you buy are identical. They're all based off of a reference engineering design that nVidia makes for each chipset release.
BTW, I hear that the new NVidia cards did away with hardware T&L, and instead they do it using vertex shaders, with the GL driver making it work seemlessly. I can't really confirm this from anyplace officially, but it would make sense to reduce redundancy this way.
Hardware T&L and programmable pixel/vertex shaders are not mutually exclusive.
All pixel/Vertex shaders give us is the ability to move from a fixed-function pipline (mostly in lighting) to a programmable one.
All nVidia cards before GF3 had fixed function lighting. You were given the lighting algorithms on the card and that's all you got. With programmable shaders, though, the lighting equations can be completely re-written by the devleopers. At around the GF4 timeframe they completely removed the old fixed-function pipeline transistors and just added pixel/vertex shader code that did the same equations. That is probably what you are refering to.
That's like making the assumption your photographs are bad because the paper used.
The developer, film, lens, camera, and photographer are all variables in that equation, also.
While a good monitor will certainly enhance a computer image, it's not going to be able to magically fix a crappy signal sent to it. 2D quality on video cards is not standard. And, yes, nVidia does take some liberty with high-fidelty for the sake of performance.
If you want an outstanding 2D image from a video card buy Matrox. Their 3D implementations aren't that hot, but their 10bit color cards are used almost exclusively for high quality imaging devices (think medical applications) because of the clarity and quality.
The big push is probably from big studios that use Linux tools such as Film Gimp.
Right, because workstations that use a 2D, time based, painting program need programmable pixel shaders, programmable vertex shaders, hardware transform and lighting, massive fill rate, AGP 8X transfer speeds, and astronomical triangle throughput.
No, the answer is, "Perhaps". Take it from someone who has used both mpeg and BINK to create interstitial movies for games and has written a magazine review of BINK, Smacker, and Duck TrueMotion. BINK allows you to do higher resolutions with better sound and smoother playback than MPEG on the same hardware.
There's a reason game companies shell out some many thousands of dollars for a BINK license instead of just using an open format like MPEG. It has a supported API for playback in the game and it has better performance.
2) find an OpenSource or simple way to convert them to mpg, play them. Unlikely.
Why in the world would they do that? This isn't a reverse-engineering job. They made the game, so they probably have all of the source data for the movies. Why wouldn't they just recreate the movies in a format that is Linux friendly?
The problem is that MPEG doesn't have the same performance as BINK does. Just making the files MPEG doesn't mean that NWN-Linux will magically have the same video performance as the Windows version.
we don't get the jackbooted source code police busting down your door after trying to make an honest buck selling your own improvements to their source code.
Gee, thanks, you little theiving bastard. How do you consider selling someone else's code as your own to be "making an honest buck?"
Except for one thing: Any time you use any Microsoft technology, you HAVE to sign-up for a passport license.
Really? How odd. I have WindowsXP at work and at home. I have Office 2000 at work. I have MS Flight Simulator 200x at home. Yet, I do not have a Passport account. I've never been forced to get one.
How many MSN user's HAVEN'T signed-up for passport?
And how many AOL users don't have a ScreenName? Exactly 0. Passport is how MSN authenticates their users. If you don't like it then don't use MSN.
How about Hotmail users?
Again, if you don't like the service, go elsewhere. Yahoo! doesn't use Passport, so get an email address there.
Do you use PayPal? Then you use passport.
No, no you don't.
It's getting very difficult to sign-up for services without having to sign-up for passport!
That should read, "It's getting very difficult to sign-up(sic) for Microsoft services without having to sign-up(sic) for passport(sic)!"
If you use The Zone, MSN Messenger, MSN, Hotmail, or any other Microsoft service then, yes, you will probably have to get a Passport account. Microsoft invented a user authentication system and they are using it on their services. That's their business choice. That doesn't mean that every computer user is being herded into Passport.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that is is similar to IRC should tell you (and any person who writes apps for Linux) something.
The user interface and user experience is key. Yes, this technology is like IRC. But, it probably doesn't have all of the cruft and baggage of IRC. No obscure server names to remember, no Ops, kicks, bots, channel storms, etc... Easier setup and connect, etc... The list of IRC woes is long. IRC was (is) a medium made by geeks for geeks. It's not an easy thing to understand and it's learning curve is practically vertical. The problems are a shame too, as the underlying concept of communication channels/rooms is valid and useful.
Dynamix did a lot to clean up IRC and make it easy to understand in their Tribes2 pre-game UI. 3deg of Separation sounds like an excellent attempt by Microsoft to make IRC style communications go mainstream.
Anyone who's ever written an IRC client should sit back and ask themselves, "Why wasn't I concerned with making IRC better instead of just making yet another IRC client?"
Only 63 more duplicates to go!
Freudian slip?
Sun has always served a niche market. The problem is that commodity X86 hardware, coupled with a decent OS, is making their niche smaller and smaller. Eventually commodity hardware/software will be capable of doing everything in that niche.
Sun needs to find ways to move into other markets. Retreating is not the strategy of a company that will "be around for a long time".
You take classes to learn how to drive a car because 1)You have to pass a test to get a State issued license and 2)Mistakes can kill people.
Are you mandating State issued computing licenses? If so, then you'll have to start offering classes, because 99.999999% of the people out there have absolutely no idea what in the hell etc/resolv.conf means, let alone does.
Unix is unnecessarily hard because it was designed by computer engineers for computer enginners. People don't have to edit \\etc\blender\speeds.conf to get their blender to puree something. They sure as hell don't want to have to edit \etc\resolv.conf in order to get connected to the internet.
Use your blender....push a button
User your VCR....push a button.
Set your DNS settings...push a button on a window.
Computers, while generally more of an issue to use than a microwave do not have to be has hard to use as most Linux zealots want them to be.
It's pretty hypocritical of the Linux zealot crowd to say, "Microsoft sucks" on the one hand but yet refuse to give up the elistist club and make Linux easy for everyone. As long as you keep that "It's our treehouse" attitude Microsoft will continue to dominiate. Why? Because Windows allows you to configure your system by clicking buttons...and one of those buttons is always "cancel". There is less fear that you are going to screw something up.
You completely missed the point of the article.
Average consumers don't care about the components of a Unix based operating system. They don't care that there are a metric butt-load of Unix varients. They don't care that Linux is a kernel, the GNU tools are what you use to make the kernel useful, that X drives the display and that KDE or GNOME drive the desktop. Technical discussions like that will just make them feel overwhelmed and/or give them a headache.
Average consumers understand that a computer needs an OS and that Linux is an OS. To them the phrase, "Linux on the Desktop" means exactly that, the Linux OS on a desktop PC that they can buy and use.
It's unnecessary nit-picking like your post that helps promote the idea that Linux is only for propeller heads and that it is hard to use.
Right because it only sounds good if it's a first generation rip-off.
"Come Get Some" only sounds good if Ash is saying it.
I've got my terrabyte array setup. Your, "Worlds of Warcraft" data will be completely secure on my backup node.
Go ahead, send it.
I'm waiting....
Breakout, Super Breakout, ...photoshop...
Where did he say the PowerMac should be called 2.84GHz?
I never said he did, genius. I was using sarcasm to point out that 2 CPUs * x speed != 1 CPU * 2*x speed.
There's enough overhead in running an SMP system that you will never have X + X = 2X
It's also a pure fanboi attitude to think that 2 mildly fast processor in a Mac will do anything to help the performanc deficit that Macs currently have against P4 machines. When digital video and image editing magazines start to do comparisons in Premiere, After Effects, and Photoshop that show P4 systems easily trouncing high end Mac boxes (and costing less, too), then you have to wonder why anyone would use a Mac. Especially in the digital content creation field, where most apps have identical UIs on the different platforms. At that point not even the UI presentation in the OS can be used as a deciding factor.
as they did with SMP (that "1.4GHz" sounds a lot more impressive next to a 3GHz P4 when you realize there are two of the suckers in there)
Because 2.8GHz sounds so comparable to my 16.8GHz P4 XEON box (2.4GHz * 2 (# of CPUs) * 2 because each are set for HyperThreading).
Yeah, I know that's not valid math. It's about as valid as saying to G4 chips at 1.4GHz equals a P4 at 3GHz, though.
Photoshop is a trademarked proper noun, not a verb.
Adding "-ing" to the end of it does not make it a verb. Most verbs aren't capitalized unless they are at the beginning of a sentence.
How about some vocabulary that is more intelligent sounding. For example, "Should Law Enforcement be allowed to digitally enhance fingerprints?" and, "Would that make the photo retouching more credible?"
That story would be all well and good except for a few things
a) MS was behind the product, had seen it during all stages of development, and was actively interested in it.
b) After EA shut down EA Virginia MS was helping a few of the left over developers to try and buy back the code-base from EA (MS only owned the IP, not the code). EA wouldn't budge on it.
It was not MS's actions that caused the downfall of BT3025. It was the pride and short-sightedness of EA that did it in.
I worked for EA.COM/EA Virginia for about 12-18 months.
Worst work experience I've ever had. At one point they wanted us to dumb our game down to the point where the users could hit a key to have his vehicle automatically follow an enemy. Then all the user would have to do is click the mouse button to fire their weapons.
Yes, the clueless, khaki/t-shirt/black sweater management core from Redwood Shores that such an idea would make the game, "more accessable". It never dawned on them that it also removed all interactivity from an interactive entertainment product.
But, what do you expect when their CEO is from Sara Lee and gives motivational speeches with such phrases as, "Making an online game is a lot like making a quiche.".
(I am so glad I'm out of that environment.)
See comments above re potential usefulness of 3D accelerated rendering in 2D graphics, but more immediately, 2D artists need to be able to run 3D animations or renderings for a variety of reasons, for example, to see their work in context (i.e., model skins or painted backdrops) or perhaps they may be provided with 3D models as a starting point from which they develop hand-painted cells.
Read the subject heading. None of your comment has anything to do with FilmGIMP. You can provide exceptions to every rule, yes. But, the original poster's claim that increased nVidia support was due to an application that doesn't use any 3D pipeline is baseless and incorrect.
of all 3 GPU companies, there is essentially no difference in the 2D quality in either chipset.
Bzzzt, wrong.
Both nVidia and ATi are using 8bit color modes for ~16million available colors (plus some alpha, some stencil, etc..). While the new ATi 9500 has a psuedo 10bit mode it is just doing internal calculations in 10bit on an 8bit input source.
Matrox, on the other-hand, offers true 10bit color modes on their cards. This is something that sets their cards apart from the consumer level commodity devices that both nVidia and ATi make.
While DirectX9/OpenGL 2.x call for 10bit color modes (e.g. colors specified as 0...1 instead of 0...256) There isn't an ATi or nVidia card out yet that truly does 10bit (GeForceFX, maybe).
There are differences between 2D output of cards, don't fool yourself. Even beyond the 10bit/8bit issues there are color quantization choices, pixel blending/dithering choices, anti-aliasing implementations....that each manufacturer does differently. These different choices do equal different output of the same source material on different cards.
And yes, both companies (ATi and nVidia)make cards, not just chipsets. 99.9999% of the nVidia cards you buy are identical. They're all based off of a reference engineering design that nVidia makes for each chipset release.
BTW, I hear that the new NVidia cards did away with hardware T&L, and instead they do it using vertex shaders, with the GL driver making it work seemlessly. I can't really confirm this from anyplace officially, but it would make sense to reduce redundancy this way.
Hardware T&L and programmable pixel/vertex shaders are not mutually exclusive.
All pixel/Vertex shaders give us is the ability to move from a fixed-function pipline (mostly in lighting) to a programmable one.
All nVidia cards before GF3 had fixed function lighting. You were given the lighting algorithms on the card and that's all you got. With programmable shaders, though, the lighting equations can be completely re-written by the devleopers. At around the GF4 timeframe they completely removed the old fixed-function pipeline transistors and just added pixel/vertex shader code that did the same equations. That is probably what you are refering to.
Wouldn't that be due to your monitor?
That's like making the assumption your photographs are bad because the paper used.
The developer, film, lens, camera, and photographer are all variables in that equation, also.
While a good monitor will certainly enhance a computer image, it's not going to be able to magically fix a crappy signal sent to it. 2D quality on video cards is not standard. And, yes, nVidia does take some liberty with high-fidelty for the sake of performance.
If you want an outstanding 2D image from a video card buy Matrox. Their 3D implementations aren't that hot, but their 10bit color cards are used almost exclusively for high quality imaging devices (think medical applications) because of the clarity and quality.
The big push is probably from big studios that use Linux tools such as Film Gimp.
Right, because workstations that use a 2D, time based, painting program need programmable pixel shaders, programmable vertex shaders, hardware transform and lighting, massive fill rate, AGP 8X transfer speeds, and astronomical triangle throughput.
perhaps, perhaps not...
No, the answer is, "Perhaps". Take it from someone who has used both mpeg and BINK to create interstitial movies for games and has written a magazine review of BINK, Smacker, and Duck TrueMotion. BINK allows you to do higher resolutions with better sound and smoother playback than MPEG on the same hardware.
There's a reason game companies shell out some many thousands of dollars for a BINK license instead of just using an open format like MPEG. It has a supported API for playback in the game and it has better performance.
2) find an OpenSource or simple way to convert them to mpg, play them. Unlikely.
Why in the world would they do that? This isn't a reverse-engineering job. They made the game, so they probably have all of the source data for the movies. Why wouldn't they just recreate the movies in a format that is Linux friendly?
The problem is that MPEG doesn't have the same performance as BINK does. Just making the files MPEG doesn't mean that NWN-Linux will magically have the same video performance as the Windows version.
Don't feel bad. Most EA games I've played don't seem to have Windows support, either.
"That's not a bug....it's a feature."
but it looks like a lite sort of RPG
If you consider the entire 3rd Edition rule-set to be lite, then there is only one thing I have to say...
NERD ALERT!!! NERD ALERT!!!
we don't get the jackbooted source code police busting down your door after trying to make an honest buck selling your own improvements to their source code.
Gee, thanks, you little theiving bastard. How do you consider selling someone else's code as your own to be "making an honest buck?"
Really? How odd. I have WindowsXP at work and at home. I have Office 2000 at work. I have MS Flight Simulator 200x at home. Yet, I do not have a Passport account. I've never been forced to get one.
And how many AOL users don't have a ScreenName? Exactly 0. Passport is how MSN authenticates their users. If you don't like it then don't use MSN.
Again, if you don't like the service, go elsewhere. Yahoo! doesn't use Passport, so get an email address there.
No, no you don't.
That should read, "It's getting very difficult to sign-up(sic) for Microsoft services without having to sign-up(sic) for passport(sic)!"
If you use The Zone, MSN Messenger, MSN, Hotmail, or any other Microsoft service then, yes, you will probably have to get a Passport account. Microsoft invented a user authentication system and they are using it on their services. That's their business choice. That doesn't mean that every computer user is being herded into Passport.