When I was young, I developed most of my code as open source. It wasn't all that complicated or valuable, so why keep it to myself? My parents always asked me "You could be making money! Why do you give away the product of so much of your time?" I dunno, it just felt right.
Fast forward six years. Working on so much open source has gotten me a ton of experience in many different areas of software, and it also landed me a kickass job at a kickass startup who, in turn, uses and contributes to many open source projects.
Whenever I'm mentoring people who are getting into programming, open source projects are the perfect place to start. Besides, if your source is closed, how are going to benefit from the people who are willing to take a look and give you feedback?
This year (or maybe it was last? I had only heard of it until the end of 2003, at least) Infogrames and Humongous put out a game called Moonbase Commander. It's since won several awards, most of them being "Best game nobody ever played."
In short, it's a combination of Starcraft, Worms, and trees -- not the green kind, computer science trees. You start with a root hub, and from that hub, you can launch other units, including more hubs. By spreading your hubs around the map you expand your base. Here's the kicker: All units are connected to the hub that created them by something called the cord. If you destroy a hub that is farther up the tree, everything created from it blows up (in a very spectacular way:D). If your root hub is destroyed, it's game over for you.
The game seems simple, but it's incredibly well balanced and addictive, especially in multiplayer. And the best part is that it's about $10 on ebay and amazon. My brother and I got it for $5 in a bargain bin.
I have always been a huge fan of ffdshow. Open source, no adware, AND it's way faster than the official DivX codec. My aging P2 400 can watch most movies just fine with ffdshow. I'm really surprised people put up with DivX.
There are big ideas in UI research. In fact, Iowa State University is starting a human-computer interface graduate program. The desktop isn't the future though. That's all been said and done. What we're looking at is inexpensive virtual environments, wearable computing, nanocomputing, and areas where interfaces haven't been developed that much. Granted, some (a lot?) of these systems use Linux, but the "Linux desktop" isn't what the research is being based on.
For example, I know a guy who recently developed an head-tracked interface for wearable computers... The problem with wearable computing is that the displays often have very low resolutions, 640x480 or so. But if your head is tracked, you can simply move your head to look around. This interface prototype implemented exactly that using Linux and some weird window manager. Unfortunately, most of you won't actually see this interface in action, since you probably don't have a wearable computer at home.:) But the point is, clear innovation is happening in academia, and a good chunk of it runs on Linux.
Re:Sounds interesting, but
on
The Cg Tutorial
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The whole point of shaders is that you can now program the video card HARDWARE, which is much faster than doing everything in software.
The campus network here at Iowa State University is indexed by software called strangesearch. There have been a few concerns about the legality of running a network search engine which is used primarily for sharing music, movies, and porn. Recently, four students were arrested for sharing child pornography. The interesting thing is that without StrangeSearch, law enforcement would have never seen material on the students' computers! (Ever try to look at files shared on several thousand individual computers?) For this reason, nobody plans to shut down strangesearch.
I use an SGI at work with a 200 MHz MIPS CPU, and the desktop environment is easily as fast as Windows. Console windows appear immediately, menus and widgets feel responsive, and, in fact, it even feels faster than the dual 1 GHz P4's running Red Hat 7.2. It's quite incredible, really.
If SGI can make a highly responsive desktop on three-year-old hardware, why can't Linux UI developers?
...It's making a good client. If you have this great protocol and you want people to start using it, give them a good client! They've been used to sending files, images and colored text to others for _years_. If your client doesn't offer at least that, they won't switch. Jabber's got a great protocol, but for however long it has been out, nobody has made a client that works as well as AIM or Yahoo.
As our Carmack says, "Make something really cool first, and worry about the spec after you are sure it's worth it!"
Here is the coolest part: I can ssh to SGI machines at work from cygwin and run OpenGL applications! (It is kind of slow... I can't tell if it's rendered in software or my little TNT1.)
Re:Heres the post everyone should read first
on
Mozilla RC3 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
OF course IE is faster and always will be faster because its build into the damn OS.
This is something I'm tired of hearing. IE is not built into the OS. It just happens to come with it. It also happens to use a bunch of DLLs that other pieces of Windows use, rather than writing its own (*cough* XPCOM *cough*) And just because something is "built into the OS" doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be faster. On my machine (P2 400, 640 MB of RAM, Win2K), K-Meleon loads a couple seconds *faster* than IE does. It also opens new windows faster than any web browser I can remember. Not all 3rd party software is slower than MS software.
Here's what's wrong: Deployment. The reason X has a bad image is that most Linux distros by default *don't* have good fonts. Not every app has antialiased text (although with Mozilla and KDE desktops, things are starting to change). There are a lot of technologies out there that, while technologically sound, have a bad image just because they're deployed poorly. If some upstart Linux distributor built a completely solid desktop experience (WITH *good* TrueType fonts, not just allowing you to import them from your Windows install), the whole image of X would change.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was young, I developed most of my code as open source. It wasn't all that complicated or valuable, so why keep it to myself? My parents always asked me "You could be making money! Why do you give away the product of so much of your time?" I dunno, it just felt right.
Fast forward six years. Working on so much open source has gotten me a ton of experience in many different areas of software, and it also landed me a kickass job at a kickass startup who, in turn, uses and contributes to many open source projects.
Take a look:
http://imvu.com/technology
Whenever I'm mentoring people who are getting into programming, open source projects are the perfect place to start. Besides, if your source is closed, how are going to benefit from the people who are willing to take a look and give you feedback?
s/3DLabs/Creative/
s/royalties/no royalties/
http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/7113
This year (or maybe it was last? I had only heard of it until the end of 2003, at least) Infogrames and Humongous put out a game called Moonbase Commander. It's since won several awards, most of them being "Best game nobody ever played."
:D). If your root hub is destroyed, it's game over for you.
In short, it's a combination of Starcraft, Worms, and trees -- not the green kind, computer science trees. You start with a root hub, and from that hub, you can launch other units, including more hubs. By spreading your hubs around the map you expand your base. Here's the kicker: All units are connected to the hub that created them by something called the cord. If you destroy a hub that is farther up the tree, everything created from it blows up (in a very spectacular way
The game seems simple, but it's incredibly well balanced and addictive, especially in multiplayer. And the best part is that it's about $10 on ebay and amazon. My brother and I got it for $5 in a bargain bin.
If possible, find a copy while you can!
I have always been a huge fan of ffdshow. Open source, no adware, AND it's way faster than the official DivX codec. My aging P2 400 can watch most movies just fine with ffdshow. I'm really surprised people put up with DivX.
There's also XviD...
There are big ideas in UI research. In fact, Iowa State University is starting a human-computer interface graduate program. The desktop isn't the future though. That's all been said and done. What we're looking at is inexpensive virtual environments, wearable computing, nanocomputing, and areas where interfaces haven't been developed that much. Granted, some (a lot?) of these systems use Linux, but the "Linux desktop" isn't what the research is being based on.
:) But the point is, clear innovation is happening in academia, and a good chunk of it runs on Linux.
For example, I know a guy who recently developed an head-tracked interface for wearable computers... The problem with wearable computing is that the displays often have very low resolutions, 640x480 or so. But if your head is tracked, you can simply move your head to look around. This interface prototype implemented exactly that using Linux and some weird window manager. Unfortunately, most of you won't actually see this interface in action, since you probably don't have a wearable computer at home.
The whole point of shaders is that you can now program the video card HARDWARE, which is much faster than doing everything in software.
The campus network here at Iowa State University is indexed by software called strangesearch. There have been a few concerns about the legality of running a network search engine which is used primarily for sharing music, movies, and porn. Recently, four students were arrested for sharing child pornography. The interesting thing is that without StrangeSearch, law enforcement would have never seen material on the students' computers! (Ever try to look at files shared on several thousand individual computers?) For this reason, nobody plans to shut down strangesearch.
A version of FreeNet for colleges/LAN, however...
Also, the end of the article notes in passing that SquareSoft has been aquired by rival RPG manufacturer Enix.
:)
RPG manufacturer? Are they really that stale nowadays?
It would be very interesting to see MAS compared with similar systems such as NAS and aRts...
Is it really X's fault?
I use an SGI at work with a 200 MHz MIPS CPU, and the desktop environment is easily as fast as Windows. Console windows appear immediately, menus and widgets feel responsive, and, in fact, it even feels faster than the dual 1 GHz P4's running Red Hat 7.2. It's quite incredible, really.
If SGI can make a highly responsive desktop on three-year-old hardware, why can't Linux UI developers?
...It's making a good client. If you have this great protocol and you want people to start using it, give them a good client! They've been used to sending files, images and colored text to others for _years_. If your client doesn't offer at least that, they won't switch. Jabber's got a great protocol, but for however long it has been out, nobody has made a client that works as well as AIM or Yahoo.
As our Carmack says, "Make something really cool first, and worry about the spec after you are sure it's worth it!"
Here is the coolest part: I can ssh to SGI machines at work from cygwin and run OpenGL applications! (It is kind of slow... I can't tell if it's rendered in software or my little TNT1.)
This is something I'm tired of hearing. IE is not built into the OS. It just happens to come with it. It also happens to use a bunch of DLLs that other pieces of Windows use, rather than writing its own (*cough* XPCOM *cough*) And just because something is "built into the OS" doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be faster. On my machine (P2 400, 640 MB of RAM, Win2K), K-Meleon loads a couple seconds *faster* than IE does. It also opens new windows faster than any web browser I can remember. Not all 3rd party software is slower than MS software.
Here's what's wrong: Deployment. The reason X has a bad image is that most Linux distros by default *don't* have good fonts. Not every app has antialiased text (although with Mozilla and KDE desktops, things are starting to change). There are a lot of technologies out there that, while technologically sound, have a bad image just because they're deployed poorly. If some upstart Linux distributor built a completely solid desktop experience (WITH *good* TrueType fonts, not just allowing you to import them from your Windows install), the whole image of X would change.
My friend's Radiohead CD (Kid A) had this 'encryption' used on it. He didn't notice until he tried playing his newly ripped Ogg Vorbis files.