I am slashdot, that is, i am one of the many people that read and believe in slashdot and its ideas about open source. I feel that if microsoft would release the source code for its products they COULD be improved drasticly. But about this whole DirectX thing
DirectX is a standard that is not perfect, but does its job quite well. only problem is that it is ONLY windows. If the DOJ breaks up microsoft then EPIC may not be able to pull back together enough to improve their games using OpenGL or something. They are jumping into a TRUST relationship with microsoft saying "you can do it, and we will make our shate for your shate only"
my solution, the DOJ make microsoft release source code for the technologies that give it an advantage. DirectX for one. Microsoft gives the Linux comunity the source for DirectX, next day there is a custome installer for GNOME or KDE, BeOS can run every game windows can with perfect memory protection, and Macs can play more than solitair on their proprietary OS. Next step DOJ looks at Intel and says Monopoly, you must turn over all of your proprietary technology and Open-source the plans, suddenly the AMD thunderbird is socket370 on a Alpha bus at 200MhzFSB and you can still clock it down to 66MhzFSB to run your old celeron366.
Overclockers are happy because they have BUS options up to 200-or 400mhz later on- and still use the chip they have today, and then they can upgrade down the road. They know that their socket370 chip will work in any new motherboard. Servers are running the same socket370-or socket A if your diehard AMD- so you can strap in your new AMD Athlon Xeon-which just happens to support first generation SIMD and advanced 3Dnow- and you can swap it out for the new 1.5Ghz Intel whillimet Xeon-which has a better SIMD but its 3Dnow aint quite as good.
Standards are good, and there is something to be said about open source, final thoughts: open source every standard, not to be modified necesarily, but to MAKE it standard. Game developers would only have to make one rendering engine, it would run on Mac, linux, BeOS, BSD, windows, java, the new amiga, everything. they would just need some poor, boored hacker to port the executable over.
first off, why go bleeding edge with new technology that is untested when a simple upgrade of the only technology would work cheaper, faster, quicker?
DIMMS were an upgrade on SIMMS(double insertion Mem mod,single insertion Mem mod) that saved us from pairing SIMMS together and also upped the speed of the RAM chips.
SDRAM goes to DDRAM(single data rateRAM, double data rateRAM). i think they should just go all out and quadrouple the assossiation of a DDRAM, double the pincount for bandwidth sank, and also up the size, 200Mhz DDRAM would act like 1.6GHz allowing 32GB/s+ memory bandwidth which is enough for a processor up to say 2.5Ghz before memory bandwidth is an issue again, then just 4xassossiation and size and your good to go. Also, motherboards should have oldschool cache slots on the main board for a "level4" cache module that would be a standard DDRAM DIMM that would run at FSB speed. Or just do a massive convert of the current computer standards and go to all RISC and DDRAM on a new style bus more like an EV6 alpha bus
hmmm, first off, no windows on dreamcast, more of an altered version of the new WinCE called pocketPC, Which has no similar code to the windows9x or win2k line of products.
Second, a PC emulates a playstations custom chips on one or two standard chips.
The pentium is made to do many things well, not one thing really well. a dreamcast has plenty of custom chips that can emulate the playstations custom chips quite well or even better than the original PSX. Windows emulates PSX sound through a pentium, also emulates the core OS on a pentium. The only thing the pentium can be free from is 3dfx or 3d accelerator card emulating the PSX graphics chip. The dreamcasts GPU can more than adiquitly emulate the slow ass PSX chip, the CPU can handle emulating the PSX 33mhz chip, and the onboard sound will more than easily run PSX crappy 16bit sound. Bleem! is a completely software emulation on a single CPU system. It would not so much be software "emulation" as a playstation software "layer" to translate between the chips, not emulate the chips. similar to WINE, Wine is Not an emulator. just a software layer between Unices and Windows programs.
Also, i have seen words of a "Dreamux." yes, linux on a dreamcast as well as some other OSs that will port over easily like the embeded BeAI(mini-beos)
::My opinions on the definitions:: -=Hacker=-:innocent individual acting upon personal oppinion by accessing DATA on other computer systems, this means that "Hackers" are just people looking and searching through DATA files on other peoples computers. These people are not criminals, just believers in intelectual freedom and who dislike the deception of hiding relevant information. -=Cracker=-:non-inocent person acting as a hacker, then damaging or changing the information they have found in a want that could alter on-line content or even copy-protection on software. "Crackers" goals are leaning toward anarchy of the digital world. To get free game"z" and program"z" from their "c00l warez friendz" and 0-day sites online. Also credit card fraud could fit into this category. -=Phreaker=-:person who commits illegal acts to get free services and merchandise by means of an electronic device. "Phreakers" use an assortment of techniques and devices commonly called *boxes(the star representing a color/function) to get phone calls, money from pop machines and pay-phones, credit card fraud by means of generating false cards, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I am slashdot, that is, i am one of the many people that read and believe in slashdot and its ideas about open source. I feel that if microsoft would release the source code for its products they COULD be improved drasticly. But about this whole DirectX thing
DirectX is a standard that is not perfect, but does its job quite well. only problem is that it is ONLY windows. If the DOJ breaks up microsoft then EPIC may not be able to pull back together enough to improve their games using OpenGL or something. They are jumping into a TRUST relationship with microsoft saying "you can do it, and we will make our shate for your shate only"
my solution,
the DOJ make microsoft release source code for the technologies that give it an advantage. DirectX for one. Microsoft gives the Linux comunity the source for DirectX, next day there is a custome installer for GNOME or KDE, BeOS can run every game windows can with perfect memory protection, and Macs can play more than solitair on their proprietary OS. Next step
DOJ looks at Intel and says Monopoly, you must turn over all of your proprietary technology and Open-source the plans, suddenly the AMD thunderbird is socket370 on a Alpha bus at 200MhzFSB and you can still clock it down to 66MhzFSB to run your old celeron366.
Overclockers are happy because they have BUS options up to 200-or 400mhz later on- and still use the chip they have today, and then they can upgrade down the road. They know that their socket370 chip will work in any new motherboard. Servers are running the same socket370-or socket A if your diehard AMD- so you can strap in your new AMD Athlon Xeon-which just happens to support first generation SIMD and advanced 3Dnow- and you can swap it out for the new 1.5Ghz Intel whillimet Xeon-which has a better SIMD but its 3Dnow aint quite as good.
Standards are good, and there is something to be said about open source, final thoughts:
open source every standard, not to be modified necesarily, but to MAKE it standard. Game developers would only have to make one rendering engine, it would run on Mac, linux, BeOS, BSD, windows, java, the new amiga, everything. they would just need some poor, boored hacker to port the executable over.
my comments:
first off, why go bleeding edge with new technology that is untested when a simple upgrade of the only technology would work cheaper, faster, quicker?
DIMMS were an upgrade on SIMMS(double insertion Mem mod,single insertion Mem mod) that saved us from pairing SIMMS together and also upped the speed of the RAM chips.
SDRAM goes to DDRAM(single data rateRAM, double data rateRAM). i think they should just go all out and quadrouple the assossiation of a DDRAM, double the pincount for bandwidth sank, and also up the size, 200Mhz DDRAM would act like 1.6GHz allowing 32GB/s+ memory bandwidth which is enough for a processor up to say 2.5Ghz before memory bandwidth is an issue again, then just 4xassossiation and size and your good to go. Also, motherboards should have oldschool cache slots on the main board for a "level4" cache module that would be a standard DDRAM DIMM that would run at FSB speed. Or just do a massive convert of the current computer standards and go to all RISC and DDRAM on a new style bus more like an EV6 alpha bus
"AMD to the bank"
hmmm, first off, no windows on dreamcast, more of an altered version of the new WinCE called pocketPC, Which has no similar code to the windows9x or win2k line of products.
Second, a PC emulates a playstations custom chips on one or two standard chips.
The pentium is made to do many things well, not one thing really well. a dreamcast has plenty of custom chips that can emulate the playstations custom chips quite well or even better than the original PSX. Windows emulates PSX sound through a pentium, also emulates the core OS on a pentium. The only thing the pentium can be free from is 3dfx or 3d accelerator card emulating the PSX graphics chip.
The dreamcasts GPU can more than adiquitly emulate the slow ass PSX chip, the CPU can handle emulating the PSX 33mhz chip, and the onboard sound will more than easily run PSX crappy 16bit sound. Bleem! is a completely software emulation on a single CPU system. It would not so much be software "emulation" as a playstation software "layer" to translate between the chips, not emulate the chips. similar to WINE, Wine is Not an emulator. just a software layer between Unices and Windows programs.
Also, i have seen words of a "Dreamux." yes, linux on a dreamcast as well as some other OSs that will port over easily like the embeded BeAI(mini-beos)
-=Hacker=-:innocent individual acting upon personal oppinion by accessing DATA on other computer systems, this means that "Hackers" are just people looking and searching through DATA files on other peoples computers. These people are not criminals, just believers in intelectual freedom and who dislike the deception of hiding relevant information.
-=Cracker=-:non-inocent person acting as a hacker, then damaging or changing the information they have found in a want that could alter on-line content or even copy-protection on software. "Crackers" goals are leaning toward anarchy of the digital world. To get free game"z" and program"z" from their "c00l warez friendz" and 0-day sites online. Also credit card fraud could fit into this category.
-=Phreaker=-:person who commits illegal acts to get free services and merchandise by means of an electronic device. "Phreakers" use an assortment of techniques and devices commonly called *boxes(the star representing a color/function) to get phone calls, money from pop machines and pay-phones, credit card fraud by means of generating false cards, etc.