The X-Windows interface is just a guideline.... I'm quite sure the patent (thought I don't know which one it is) doesn't specify anything specific to X-Windows.
I think the reason X was brought up is that by its nature all applications that use it can be said to be client/server based, eliminating one of the patent claims right off the bat...Then you just need proof that such an app used a backend database.
These types of completely inaccurate lumpings of technology seem to be happening more and more on Slashdot. The basic pattern is that a poster will read some article, not know very much about hardware and then lump, oh say.... AGP with Firewire. Which is crazy.
What graphics port do high end Apples (like the Dual G4) use..Firewire? No. Why..they use AGP (2X, as it were). Firewire is FAR TOO SLOW. Firewire isn't meant to be used to hook up graphics adapters.
You can debate the merits of Firewire vs USB(1.x, 2.0) without looking like a fool, as they address the same sorts of issues...but AGP is a totally different thing.
There's tons of issues with current motherboards and video cards when it comes to 4x AGP. I, for one (and I'm not alone...look around on Usenet and you can find tons of posts), cannot use my GeForce 2 GTS in 4X agp mode. Any attempt to do so will result in a system crash no matter which OS I am using.
The even more annoying issue is that in most cases, neither the video card manufacturer nor the motherboard chipset supplier is claiming responsibility.
Which rendering solution do you suppose they are using that only runs on Intel processors? Considering every major rendering software package in existence was started on other systems (generally IRIX/MIPS) and ported to Intel much later?
While they might be able to get cheap intel PCs
for $4000-$6000 what are the chances those systems have fast SCSI, RAID, 2 gigabytes of ram, 800MB/s memory bandwidth, etc... *AND* components that aren't cheap, generic and prone to failure? None.
I dont think anyone is forcing anyone else to use Windows. I'm sure the school offers access to Windows computers via the classroom or labs. What's the big deal about writing the program at home with gcc and then just doing a test compile later at school to make sure it works with CodeWarrior/Win?
When I was taking CS, the requirement was that everything had to compile under gcc for SunOS. In many ways this is *WORSE* than what the original question described because at that time, the likelyhood of any students having a UNIX system to use at home was next to nil(Linux didn't exist as a usable system at that point). So basically all the students were forced to do all their work in the labs or over slow (2400 baud) telnet connections.
Like it or not, I think its a lot more fair for such classes (remember, this is an INTRO class) to standardize on Windows -- the OS most likely to be used by the majority of students.
This *IS* a valid concern. Don't listen to anyone who would tell you otherwise. Such people have clearly never had to write a large application that was tested with different JDKs and Java VMs.
I've been using Java since 1.02, and while I love many aspects of it, "Write Once, Run Anywhere" is only about 90% (or maybe a bit less) accurate.
This is just the nature of the beast. When you have different JDKs and VMs, you're going to have different bugs in each one. Code that runs fine in one JVM (and should run fine in all) might not work, or even segfault another JVM.
MASM is free. Anyone can go download it as part of the Platform SDK from Microsoft. It shouldnt have affected the price of the book in any way.
If your co-worker said they had to use CB tools in their class, its probably because that's what the teacher was familiar with? You didn't state what kind of class it was? Not a Visual Basic class, I assume?
I'm sure Microsoft does have all kinds of deals with univerisites to supply hardware and software with the idea of getting students experienced with their systems. However, I don't think it's anything to be paranoid about. Just about every major OS and/or systems company pursues such arrangements, including Apple, HP, Sun, Red Hat, etc.
It seems like it would be useful to make a partial distribution of the binary version available for people that can access the platform SDK, etc, through MSDN subscriptions.
The default 'sa' password for SQL Server has been blank since as long as I can remember. _I_ know this and I try to avoid databases as much as possible. I only deal with them when my code is data driven, and I almost always have someone else acting as DBA.
This isn't new, which is probably why nobody is up in arms as you'd like them to be. Its also only a vulnerability depending upon your point of view. Personally, I don't view default passwords as a problem assuming the people working with the systems have an ounce of common sense. Of course, after the dot-com rush, there's a lot of people in the business who clearly don't have common sense.
If you want to bash Microsoft, you also have to bash Interbase (Inprise's OSS db), which has a default db superuser password as well. Printed right in the documentation, just like Microsoft's.
My point here isn't to defend Microsoft, but just to note that default passwords for superusers of operating systems and other software (including databases) has a long history within the industry. And whether or not such default passwords are a security problem or not is the stuff of long debates and flamewars.
How do you know its LIVE in the first place, and not post-processed and passed off as being live? At some point you just have to trust what you are told by those publishing information, or you can choose to live in a state of X-files-ish paranoia.
I really don't think this is bad in any way. Like any technology it will have great uses and also be abused.
open source (and the GPL) doesn't even really factor into this, legally. If its deemed illegal to reverse engineer and write your own DVD decrypt/player without permission, then its illegal to do that with an open source project as well as a closed source project.
Lucasarts has been using lots of external development teams for a long time now. Totally Games does the X-Wing series. Ronin did Force Commander...this isn't anything new.
At any rate, I agree with you on the main point of what you posted. Everything out of Lucasarts, both developed in-house and by third party teams, has been grim since...well, Grim Fangando. Here's hoping Monkey Island 4 will break the rut.
I love linux, but do you really think Indrema has that much of a chance in such a crowded console market where the other players are throwing as much as $500 million dollars into the marketing blitz for launch? (As X-Box is doing).
Also, both the PS/2 and X-Box will have a ton of games at launch, where as the Indrema will have.. ?
I didn't offer Wolf or Descent as an example of what might have been the first "real time 3d environment". So I'm not sure why you foolishly assume I am talking about those games.
I think where you are confused is that the original quote in the article (which was mirrored here) didn't make the distinction that they were talking about "real-time 3d enviornments for mainstream PC games".
Real-time 3d enviornments (with real 3D) predate Quake or Descent (or hell even Wolf3D or Duke Nukem) by more than a decade. 3D game programmers (even Carmack) are mostlystanding on the shoulders of people who researched this technology many many years ago (of course, they weren't exactly using mainstream PC hardware at the time).
There are 'quite a few of us around that run Linux as their primary OS' is true if you are talking about people that read Slashdot.
However, don't forget that in the grand scheme of things, 'people that read Slashdot' is a a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of 1 percent of all people.
Linux IS a niche market. Its made inroads faster than just about anyone thought possible, but its NOT mainstream. Ask Joe Q Public what Windows is (in relation to an OS), most will know, ask the same guy what Linux is and you're likely to get a blank stare.
Descent wasn't the first 'real-time 3D environment' either. A lot of qualification has to go into that sentence whether you are talking about Wolf3d, Descent, Doom, Quake...
There's been plenty of 'real-time 3D environments' years -- hell decades, before any of these games came out.
He is most famous for Ultima Underworld and System Shock, both done while he was at Looking Glass (the people behind Theif) and now he's well known for Deus Ex too of course.
This is great news. Its all well and good to make fun of Ion Storm because of John Romero and the Daikatana fiasco, but at least he did manage to have brains enough to hire Spector, one of the true greats of PC game design.
When considering how Thief III might turn out, think about Deus Ex (Spector's game for Ion Storm), not Daikatana.
A lot of the posts thus far have focused on how cool (or how useless) such a thing would be for games.
Though the press release doesn't specifically state it, you can count on cards using this technology to costs thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars at first. This is more for desktop medical imaging, etc than for games. Of course, as with all things, I'm sure the price will come down and it will eventually find mainstream usage...but that is likely years off.
I've lost count of how many tirades I've read from Linux zealots (for example, read Simon Garfinkle's recent Salon article) about how Microsoft should abandon backwards compatibility for the sake of stability in their operating systems.
Then, when they finally start to do something about it (an attempt to further ween DOS out of existence) people create some grand conspiracy about how it has something to do with screwing Linux and/or BeOS...
He was under a multi-film contract. I don't know why he signed up for the first though, if he hated the dialog so much..Surely he must have read the script beforehand....
He says that it was his idea, and not Lucas' to kill him off in the first one so he would have minor roles in the others. I'm not sure how much truth there is to that (I don't know what Lucas' relpy to it is), but I think the fact he would even say that is pretty revealing.
I predict most of the messages in this forum will consist of tributes related to Star Wars, which is somewhat ironic because Alec was know to speak out strongly AGAINST Star Wars.
He thought it was rubbish (and I'm talking about the ones he was in, not Episode 1) and said such whenever asked about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the reason X was brought up is that by its nature all applications that use it can be said to be client/server based, eliminating one of the patent claims right off the bat...Then you just need proof that such an app used a backend database.
Given that, why is this post Insightful?
What graphics port do high end Apples (like the Dual G4) use..Firewire? No. Why..they use AGP (2X, as it were). Firewire is FAR TOO SLOW. Firewire isn't meant to be used to hook up graphics adapters.
You can debate the merits of Firewire vs USB(1.x, 2.0) without looking like a fool, as they address the same sorts of issues...but AGP is a totally different thing.
There's tons of issues with current motherboards and video cards when it comes to 4x AGP. I, for one (and I'm not alone...look around on Usenet and you can find tons of posts), cannot use my GeForce 2 GTS in 4X agp mode. Any attempt to do so will result in a system crash no matter which OS I am using.
The even more annoying issue is that in most cases, neither the video card manufacturer nor the motherboard chipset supplier is claiming responsibility.
Which rendering solution do you suppose they are using that only runs on Intel processors? Considering every major rendering software package in existence was started on other systems (generally IRIX/MIPS) and ported to Intel much later?
While they might be able to get cheap intel PCs for $4000-$6000 what are the chances those systems have fast SCSI, RAID, 2 gigabytes of ram, 800MB/s memory bandwidth, etc... *AND* components that aren't cheap, generic and prone to failure? None.
When I was taking CS, the requirement was that everything had to compile under gcc for SunOS. In many ways this is *WORSE* than what the original question described because at that time, the likelyhood of any students having a UNIX system to use at home was next to nil(Linux didn't exist as a usable system at that point). So basically all the students were forced to do all their work in the labs or over slow (2400 baud) telnet connections.
Like it or not, I think its a lot more fair for such classes (remember, this is an INTRO class) to standardize on Windows -- the OS most likely to be used by the majority of students.
I've been using Java since 1.02, and while I love many aspects of it, "Write Once, Run Anywhere" is only about 90% (or maybe a bit less) accurate.
This is just the nature of the beast. When you have different JDKs and VMs, you're going to have different bugs in each one. Code that runs fine in one JVM (and should run fine in all) might not work, or even segfault another JVM.
If your co-worker said they had to use CB tools in their class, its probably because that's what the teacher was familiar with? You didn't state what kind of class it was? Not a Visual Basic class, I assume?
I'm sure Microsoft does have all kinds of deals with univerisites to supply hardware and software with the idea of getting students experienced with their systems. However, I don't think it's anything to be paranoid about. Just about every major OS and/or systems company pursues such arrangements, including Apple, HP, Sun, Red Hat, etc.
Batman always uses strong crypto. That's why he needs a wall-sized computer to print out the bat messages.
It seems like it would be useful to make a partial distribution of the binary version available for people that can access the platform SDK, etc, through MSDN subscriptions.
This isn't new, which is probably why nobody is up in arms as you'd like them to be. Its also only a vulnerability depending upon your point of view. Personally, I don't view default passwords as a problem assuming the people working with the systems have an ounce of common sense. Of course, after the dot-com rush, there's a lot of people in the business who clearly don't have common sense.
If you want to bash Microsoft, you also have to bash Interbase (Inprise's OSS db), which has a default db superuser password as well. Printed right in the documentation, just like Microsoft's.
My point here isn't to defend Microsoft, but just to note that default passwords for superusers of operating systems and other software (including databases) has a long history within the industry. And whether or not such default passwords are a security problem or not is the stuff of long debates and flamewars.
I really don't think this is bad in any way. Like any technology it will have great uses and also be abused.
The vast majority of DVD porn doesn't use CSS.
open source (and the GPL) doesn't even really factor into this, legally. If its deemed illegal to reverse engineer and write your own DVD decrypt/player without permission, then its illegal to do that with an open source project as well as a closed source project.
At any rate, I agree with you on the main point of what you posted. Everything out of Lucasarts, both developed in-house and by third party teams, has been grim since...well, Grim Fangando. Here's hoping Monkey Island 4 will break the rut.
I love linux, but do you really think Indrema has that much of a chance in such a crowded console market where the other players are throwing as much as $500 million dollars into the marketing blitz for launch? (As X-Box is doing).
Also, both the PS/2 and X-Box will have a ton of games at launch, where as the Indrema will have .. ?
I think where you are confused is that the original quote in the article (which was mirrored here) didn't make the distinction that they were talking about "real-time 3d enviornments for mainstream PC games".
Real-time 3d enviornments (with real 3D) predate Quake or Descent (or hell even Wolf3D or Duke Nukem) by more than a decade. 3D game programmers (even Carmack) are mostlystanding on the shoulders of people who researched this technology many many years ago (of course, they weren't exactly using mainstream PC hardware at the time).
However, don't forget that in the grand scheme of things, 'people that read Slashdot' is a a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of 1 percent of all people.
Linux IS a niche market. Its made inroads faster than just about anyone thought possible, but its NOT mainstream. Ask Joe Q Public what Windows is (in relation to an OS), most will know, ask the same guy what Linux is and you're likely to get a blank stare.
Descent wasn't the first 'real-time 3D environment' either. A lot of qualification has to go into that sentence whether you are talking about Wolf3d, Descent, Doom, Quake... There's been plenty of 'real-time 3D environments' years -- hell decades, before any of these games came out.
He is most famous for Ultima Underworld and System Shock, both done while he was at Looking Glass (the people behind Theif) and now he's well known for Deus Ex too of course.
When considering how Thief III might turn out, think about Deus Ex (Spector's game for Ion Storm), not Daikatana.
A lot of the posts thus far have focused on how cool (or how useless) such a thing would be for games. Though the press release doesn't specifically state it, you can count on cards using this technology to costs thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars at first. This is more for desktop medical imaging, etc than for games. Of course, as with all things, I'm sure the price will come down and it will eventually find mainstream usage...but that is likely years off.
Then, when they finally start to do something about it (an attempt to further ween DOS out of existence) people create some grand conspiracy about how it has something to do with screwing Linux and/or BeOS...
Geezus. What's wrong with you people?
He says that it was his idea, and not Lucas' to kill him off in the first one so he would have minor roles in the others. I'm not sure how much truth there is to that (I don't know what Lucas' relpy to it is), but I think the fact he would even say that is pretty revealing.
He thought it was rubbish (and I'm talking about the ones he was in, not Episode 1) and said such whenever asked about it.