You're just begging to get marked down as a flamebait aren't you? I guess #PHP, #PERL, and #CGI are just 'warez' and 'child porn' rooms with no use but to harm society. Before making such erroneous assumptions, please do some research.
Well i'm still in college and have no experience in this, but these stories are really frightening me. What i'm wondering is, why aren't there any IT unions?
I think games are just a bi-product though. Ever since the IBM-PC was reverse engineered and clones came about, PC's were cheaper than macs so everyone bought them. In turn, companies focused more on developing applications (and yes, games!) for the PC. Although i think you do bring up a valid point about games.
I don't think for profit companies would do that for their games, that would hurt their bottom line. But who knows, we might see more Open Source games by the community.
You know, this has crossed my mind several times, but i think slashdot is just a front to 'legally' commit DOS attacks against unwitting websites, hence the slashdot effect:-)
I seriously hope that they aren't trying to grab the 'linux console gaming' market. The console market is already cutthroat as it is. The japanese virtually have control of the market, and Microsoft is looking for a piece of the pie. Not to be pessimistic, but this new console sounds like another 3D0 or Jaguar...
Does anyone here agree with me that R.A.D. is really a bad reflection of our times? In our fast paced economy, we MUST do everything fast in order to survive. Programming used to be considered an art, we used to actually put our ideas on paper before we even entered a key stroke. Now what do we do? We spew out half baked code in order to meet demand.
Honestly, this is more of a pity post more than anything else. I work for a company that almost demands that i put speed ahead of quality, and i have friends in the same situation as well. Anyone else have this problem?
... given their financial situation. This is basically Custard's last stand here. I pray to God that they do well though, cuz if they don't, we'll be seeing the vanilla nvidia cards going for today's high end prices. Actually, i'm debating on whether to get stock or not, this could be a real gamble on my part, but since the stock is so low, why not? I already missed the NVidia stock wave, so it'd suck to miss it again heh.
... and for good reason. Because 3dfx is basically reusing the same old architecture, and the fact that they're processing chips cannot really go any faster than they already are, they decided to just slap on multiple chips in order to compensate for their lack of engineering. The voodoo 5 has like 4 VSA 100 chips on it i believe (correct me if i'm wrong).
Of course since you increase the number of processors, you also have to increase the ammount of memory. That is why 3dfx's cards are getting bigger and bigger. However, with the release of napalm, the card will be 'normal size' since it's an entirely new architecture.
actually, the 32 bit controversy was almost as big a stumbling block to 3dfx as the T&L one, because almost EVERYONE heard about it. If you aren't the type of company that likes to be first in their industry, you're likely to fail. Even if the new feature isn't particularly useful, or isn't useful at that particular time, if the consumer sees it as being a big plus, you're going to be in deep trouble. I mean, 3dfx was almost like free marketing for Nvidia, because ALL the websites and magazines published their blunders in comparison to Nvidia's innovation.
And don't worry about T&L not comming soon to games. While it is true that the only games that support it right now are the lesser known titles, we should see more mainstream titles that support it by the time napalm rolls around. Hey, doesn't soldier of fortune support it? That's a good sign already...
Above an average of about 40FPS, nobody notices anymore - they can't!
As others have mentioned, the top end is probably closer to 60fps than 40.
More important, though, is the headroom you get with a faster card. A game like Q3 has a standard deviation of about 7fps, which means over 15% of your frames are under 33fps, and about 3% are under 26fps. These are very noticeable slowdowns.
At 80fps mean, your standard deviation may jump to 14 fps (it's not a linear progression in real life, but for argument's sake...), 97% of your frames are at 52fps+, and 99.85% above 38fps. So it's smooth all the time, not just when you're standing around with nothing happening.
No, the voodoo 2 was 3dfx's most successful card and it's also the card that most people associate with 3dfx's success. ANYONE who wanted good 3d graphics bought one, even though they were somewhat pricey. The Banshee is the product that started giving the consumer doubts about 3dfx's future though.
Ok well at least the first part of that cliche is true. The turning point of 3dfx is quite ironic though. After Nvidia came out with the Tnt (which was the first consumer chip to have 32 bit color), and both Nvidia and 3dfx began revealing their plans for their next generation chips, we were all surprised by 3dfx's arrogance (or naiveness) when they announced they would not include 32 bit color.
"Speed is King"
That was 3dfx's response when everyone questioned their next product, the voodoo 3. Alright so both products were relatively compareable in speed, and 3dfx still had some clout with glide games (tribes anyone?).
Lessons (not) Learned?
Now what has happened? Nvidia introduces Hardware T&L on their chips, but the controversy is, who needs hardware T&L when there are no games supporting it (back then that is)?? 3dfx yet again sat on their laurels and decided to let Nvidia introduce it in their products first. While it's quite true that HW T&L was not really important back then, Nvidia was smart and marketed it as the next revolution in 3d acceleration. I mean, who wouldn't want to remove the CPU bottleneck and let the graphics card handle most of the 3d rendering? Sadly, 3dfx was only able to say "see? We have 32 bit now!"
The irony that is 3dfx
Now what do we have with the voodoo 5? Still, 3dfx REFUSES to incorporate onboard T&L when it's becomming more and more apparent that it is important these days. However, now 3dfx is ditching their "speed is king" philosophy and is trying to be innovative with their anti-aliasing and T-Buffer technology. But it seems that Nvidia has learned from 3dfx's mistakes and have included anti-aliasing technology of their own.
The road ahead?
After all these mistakes, has 3dfx learned their lesson yet? Who knows, perhaps 3dfx was right all along about not needing HW T&L right now (still, not many popular games support it) and they may very well outdo Nvidia with the release of the Napalm. But you have to admit, Nvidia played the marketing card extremely well with their Geforce cards, even if T&L wasn't really useful at the time. I pray to God that 3dfx will get their feet back on the ground, otherwise we may see another monopoly in the computing industry.
background: I'm currently researching this area for my company. We're trying to create a nice MS Independent infrastructure, moving away from MS Mail 3.2 post office (Using Windows Messaging/Schedule+ clients).
Standards
There are a number of standards to consider.
IMAP seems to be the thing for LAN based e-mail as it allows folders to remain on the server, shared folders etc.
LDAP The directory service to use. Allows you to create your own internal directory and seamlessly integrate with external directories (in a way not dissimilar to DNS)
VCard This is the standard for the exchange of e-mail address and other information
VCal ASCII representation of a meeting (start, end time, location etc). A Vcal message can be mailed to someone, and then stored in their diary
Calendar server If you want to look at other user's diaries then you need a calendar server. There are no open standards for this - however there does seem to be an IETF Draft - with input from both Microsoft and Netscape, which is interesting.
Non standards Currently, scheduling/caldendar information is handled by most products in a closed way. Examples of this are MS Exchange and Notes and Netscape Calendar server
Servers
IMAP Currently there is the University of Washington IMAP server (included with redhat) which supports both POP3 and IMAP. I've been using this so far but am looking at Cyrus-imapd from CMU?. This seems to be much more manageable and has some nice integration features with sendmail. There is a red hat contributed version. Search on freshmeat - there is also a commercial server free on Linux for up to 250 users...
Non-Linux MS Exchange 5.5 can expose its data via POP3/IMAP,LDAP. Netscape also have a range of servers which do the same and may be ported to linux one day.
LDAP OpenLDAP seems to be the place to go to get the patched version of the UMICH LDAP server. (Netscape and Exchange will also do this).
Calendar Servers There aren't any. Gnome/Balsa has made some mention of one but nothing developed. You can either wait or use MS or Netscape on NT.... or go and help develop it.
Clients
Netscape Communicator 4.7 supports the key standards. The professional version (available but costs money) supports calendaring. I've not tried the professional version but am using Communicator at the moment. I not happy with it though (too big, slow, clumsy and buggy). Haven't tried Mozzilla or 4.5PR2 though.
Web Interface There are at least two web front ends to IMAP servers. Not tried these yet though. Not seen a good calendar implementation either.
KDE KMail doesn't support IMAP. Korganizer looks good. Supports VCal so you can receive and send meeting requests. It is still fairly early on but seems usable. I am starting to use this for my desktop diary. It is better than ICal.
Gnome Balsa is probably the application to track.. but seems to be very early yet.
Others XMail I've tried but don't like the interface. StarOffice 4.0 has a e-mail client which understands IMAP, but no diary. StarOffice 5.0 might do?. However StarOffice requires a pretty powerful machine to run it on. Mozilla might offer an alternative but again development seems in its early stages. Running an MS client under Wine might be an option...
Conclusions
The Windows world is far better served than the Linux world in this area. At least Today. In our company (around 12 people) we will probably use: Cyrus and OpenLDAP (rather than Exchange) for the servers, Netscape Communicator and KOrganizer for the linux desktops, Outlook 2000 for the MS Desktops. The Group diary will probably be a big shared file served up a web server into which every one records their key appointments - Or publishes their diaries as HTML or whatever.
My current project is to build a floor standing MP3 jukebox (like you would find in a tavern). It will be styled like a classic wurlitzer... crossed with an alien artifact (ala H.R. Giger). I'm shaping the exterior out of epoxy resin painted over an inverse mold made of styrofoam. After scooping out most of the styrofoam, the interior will be loaded with a linux computer and monitor. The sound will pipe through my stereo, and the entire thing will be controlled by two big dials and three buttons (which will be interpreted as mouse input by a custom written interface).
I'll be documenting the entire thing on a web page as the project gets farther along. I have all the materials, and the custom software is 75% written. Should I try to create downloadable plans so anyone can reproduce this thing?
Slashdot Mirror
Gah, i was trying to reply to a thread :(
You're just begging to get marked down as a flamebait aren't you? I guess #PHP, #PERL, and #CGI are just 'warez' and 'child porn' rooms with no use but to harm society. Before making such erroneous assumptions, please do some research.
too many carbs are bad for you and will make you fat
Which country did you move to? I heard those Europeans still have 40 hour workweeks...
Well i'm still in college and have no experience in this, but these stories are really frightening me. What i'm wondering is, why aren't there any IT unions?
Good advice, this needs to be modded up.
Oooooor, you could do something more sane like squeezing one of those rubber stress toys...
I think games are just a bi-product though. Ever since the IBM-PC was reverse engineered and clones came about, PC's were cheaper than macs so everyone bought them. In turn, companies focused more on developing applications (and yes, games!) for the PC. Although i think you do bring up a valid point about games.
I don't think for profit companies would do that for their games, that would hurt their bottom line. But who knows, we might see more Open Source games by the community.
You know, this has crossed my mind several times, but i think slashdot is just a front to 'legally' commit DOS attacks against unwitting websites, hence the slashdot effect :-)
I seriously hope that they aren't trying to grab the 'linux console gaming' market. The console market is already cutthroat as it is. The japanese virtually have control of the market, and Microsoft is looking for a piece of the pie. Not to be pessimistic, but this new console sounds like another 3D0 or Jaguar...
What we need is Star Visual C++ heh
Do they even teach pascal anymore? I heard my old highschool phased it out...
Honestly, this is more of a pity post more than anything else. I work for a company that almost demands that i put speed ahead of quality, and i have friends in the same situation as well. Anyone else have this problem?
It'll be the RAID of video cards. :o)
... given their financial situation. This is basically Custard's last stand here. I pray to God that they do well though, cuz if they don't, we'll be seeing the vanilla nvidia cards going for today's high end prices. Actually, i'm debating on whether to get stock or not, this could be a real gamble on my part, but since the stock is so low, why not? I already missed the NVidia stock wave, so it'd suck to miss it again heh.
I don't even know how to respond to this, your video card drivers must be playing a horrible trick on you.
Of course since you increase the number of processors, you also have to increase the ammount of memory. That is why 3dfx's cards are getting bigger and bigger. However, with the release of napalm, the card will be 'normal size' since it's an entirely new architecture.
And don't worry about T&L not comming soon to games. While it is true that the only games that support it right now are the lesser known titles, we should see more mainstream titles that support it by the time napalm rolls around. Hey, doesn't soldier of fortune support it? That's a good sign already...
More important, though, is the headroom you get with a faster card. A game like Q3 has a standard deviation of about 7fps, which means over 15% of your frames are under 33fps, and about 3% are under 26fps. These are very noticeable slowdowns.
At 80fps mean, your standard deviation may jump to 14 fps (it's not a linear progression in real life, but for argument's sake...), 97% of your frames are at 52fps+, and 99.85% above 38fps. So it's smooth all the time, not just when you're standing around with nothing happening.
And that's why NVidia is still in business.
No, the voodoo 2 was 3dfx's most successful card and it's also the card that most people associate with 3dfx's success. ANYONE who wanted good 3d graphics bought one, even though they were somewhat pricey. The Banshee is the product that started giving the consumer doubts about 3dfx's future though.
Ok well at least the first part of that cliche is true. The turning point of 3dfx is quite ironic though. After Nvidia came out with the Tnt (which was the first consumer chip to have 32 bit color), and both Nvidia and 3dfx began revealing their plans for their next generation chips, we were all surprised by 3dfx's arrogance (or naiveness) when they announced they would not include 32 bit color.
"Speed is King"
That was 3dfx's response when everyone questioned their next product, the voodoo 3. Alright so both products were relatively compareable in speed, and 3dfx still had some clout with glide games (tribes anyone?). Lessons (not) Learned?
Now what has happened? Nvidia introduces Hardware T&L on their chips, but the controversy is, who needs hardware T&L when there are no games supporting it (back then that is)?? 3dfx yet again sat on their laurels and decided to let Nvidia introduce it in their products first. While it's quite true that HW T&L was not really important back then, Nvidia was smart and marketed it as the next revolution in 3d acceleration. I mean, who wouldn't want to remove the CPU bottleneck and let the graphics card handle most of the 3d rendering? Sadly, 3dfx was only able to say "see? We have 32 bit now!"
The irony that is 3dfx
Now what do we have with the voodoo 5? Still, 3dfx REFUSES to incorporate onboard T&L when it's becomming more and more apparent that it is important these days. However, now 3dfx is ditching their "speed is king" philosophy and is trying to be innovative with their anti-aliasing and T-Buffer technology. But it seems that Nvidia has learned from 3dfx's mistakes and have included anti-aliasing technology of their own.
The road ahead?
After all these mistakes, has 3dfx learned their lesson yet? Who knows, perhaps 3dfx was right all along about not needing HW T&L right now (still, not many popular games support it) and they may very well outdo Nvidia with the release of the Napalm. But you have to admit, Nvidia played the marketing card extremely well with their Geforce cards, even if T&L wasn't really useful at the time. I pray to God that 3dfx will get their feet back on the ground, otherwise we may see another monopoly in the computing industry.
Standards
There are a number of standards to consider.
Non standards Currently, scheduling/caldendar information is handled by most products in a closed way. Examples of this are MS Exchange and Notes and Netscape Calendar server
Servers
Conclusions The Windows world is far better served than the Linux world in this area. At least Today. In our company (around 12 people) we will probably use: Cyrus and OpenLDAP (rather than Exchange) for the servers, Netscape Communicator and KOrganizer for the linux desktops, Outlook 2000 for the MS Desktops. The Group diary will probably be a big shared file served up a web server into which every one records their key appointments - Or publishes their diaries as HTML or whatever.
It looks like a glorified WebTv with a CD/Dvd player heh. I'm sure Microsoft/Aol would be interested in buying out this company.
My current project is to build a floor standing MP3 jukebox (like you would find in a tavern). It will be styled like a classic wurlitzer... crossed with an alien artifact (ala H.R. Giger). I'm shaping the exterior out of epoxy resin painted over an inverse mold made of styrofoam. After scooping out most of the styrofoam, the interior will be loaded with a linux computer and monitor. The sound will pipe through my stereo, and the entire thing will be controlled by two big dials and three buttons (which will be interpreted as mouse input by a custom written interface). I'll be documenting the entire thing on a web page as the project gets farther along. I have all the materials, and the custom software is 75% written. Should I try to create downloadable plans so anyone can reproduce this thing?