Let the competitor's product grow on your platform, and then break compatibility with it and allow it to fall into obscurity.
That is, allow MS Office to help Linux grow as a desktop OS. In several years, after it begind to become more mainstream (as IDG predicts), drop in your own IBM or Open/StarOffice replacement as the free/cheap alternative. By that time, who could argue that all of the opensource office suites wouldn't totally surpass Office anyway. It's very likely.
Keep in mind that source code for most Linux/BSD has been available from the start, with millions of eyes viewing it daily.
In comparison, Windows source code has been viewed daily by only a select few coders. There is greater potential of finding new exploits in the Windows source code than say - the Linux kernel. I believe that is the issue.
Also, bear in mind that all of the countless Windows exploits have been discovered without access to a source. Compare that to open source software, of which the majority of the Internet's backbone is based. One might argue that Windows is on the majority od desktop PCs, but Unix and Linux still dominate the Internet, powered by software such as Apache.
Having access to the source does ALL of us some good. Even if you don't make use of the source specifically it is available for EVERYONE to have the opportunity to improve it. Thus, simply being able to receive updates of improved OSS software. What does this mean? It means that you won't have to wait 6 months for a patch on a critical exploit... Try six minutes or six hours.
Well, there is nothing wrong with Safari. If I am not mistaken, FireFox (then Phoenix) was around before Safari. At the time though, FireFox wasn't originally intended to become a Mac browser because of Camino, but that eventually changed. Then, soonafter, early versions of Safari were released, based on KHTML as the rendering engine.
I personally don't think that there is anything wrong with Safari. It's something that Apple should have done a LONG time ago, in my opinion. It borrows a lot from Phoenix/Firebird/FireFox in terms of features. My only complain is the inclusion of KHTML. KHTML is a great rendering engine, but I've had lots of problems with it, especially in Konqueror. I personally feel that it just does not render as well as Gecko.
As for the screwed up scrollbars and stuff... FireFox is still in a beta state, and it's even newer on MacOS.
The add-on audio connector was designed to interface with the parallel port. The parport would double as a standard paralell port or an audio output interface for things like SPDIF and line/mic input. It was just a way of extending the features for a "mobile recording/playback device" of sorts. It could have been ideal for someone in a band, or someone that needs to take a portable recording system on the road. The problem was just that it didn't work. Some of the connectors were not hardwired internally or something.
I just felt that it was unfair for them to try to sell a $250 cable that didn't function. I think it was a SPDIF connector or something. Some guy on the web hacked the interface and posted schematics that would allow someone to build the interface cable for $5.
I'm pretty sure that it was the 200A5. Here is the cable that I was talking about.
It'll be a problem only for those companies WHEN Linux becomes more mainstream, and the GPL applications have become superior to their commercial products. Maybe then, they'll wish that they had supported alternative platforms like Linux.
Nothing stops Adobe from putting Photoshop on Linux - Except for Adobe. GPL has nothing to do with it. Lack of such an app on alternative operating systems have spawned FREE creations. GIMP and OpenOffice come to mind. Apache comes to mind. Several database systems come to mind. Mozilla/Firefox comes to mind.
See a patern here? Almost all of the above applications are as good or better than the commercial alternatives. What will happen when these apps become the mainstream? Don't tell me that they won't, because a few already have.
My buddy has a VPR Matrix. We call it his "Porsche."
It really could be a fantastic product, but for the money I am unimpressed. The build quality isn't all that fantastic for such a costly product. The notebook suffers from very poor cooling due to its unique design. There are also several hardware flaws that seem to negate what could be some of its best features. VPR Matrix sold an audio cable for $250 (discontinuted). The only problem was that it DIDN'T WORK as advertised. At least one of the I/Os (I forget which one) didn't even function due to a design flaw in the notebook. Finally, the 802.11 range is totally subpar. It's probably got one of the worst I've seen.
You think that they'd test these things.
It's not that I'm trying to insult you for buying one. They are pretty cool products. They've just suffered from a lot of design problems.
Has anyone tried doing this with a NAT/router system on a Linux box? I suppose that one could use some sort of forwarding to do all of the dirty work.
I have the Gamecube game, but the cheating was even worse than the DC games so I stopped playing. At least this way, we can have controlled servers with people that actually pay attention to what is going on.
Sure, the Dreamcast misses the extra stuff that is in PSO Episode 2, but version 2 is still a great DC game. I might just have to reawaken these old characters and start playing again.
Not only that, but the PS2 lacks any real support for texture compression. So in addition to its slim resources, it has to use fancy tricks for coloring textures, and the results aren't pretty. Such is the reason why many games are hindered with terrible green or brown hinting in textures. The system relies on 8 bit color tables, like those in 256 color gif files. Games like Metal Gear Solid come to mind, where everything is green. Some could say that it fits in from an artistic standpoint and blend's in with the game's mood... But when nearly ALL games are victim to this? What a silly design. I've yet to see the system do what the Dreamcast could do in its first year or two. Not that looks really matter or anything, but even Soul Calibur 2, 4 years after the DC game was released, is infrerior on the PS2 than the Dreamcast. That's just sad, considering that the PS2 game was BUILT for the system, and the DC game was a highly suped up port of a Playstation arcade game.
For individuals, there simply is no need for a different office suite.
This is definately WRONG. There is a reason. My family was using an ancient version of Mirosoft Works for Windows. The program was terrible. Instead, I hooked them up with OpenOffice and they love it.
Get the point? There is a reason. It's cost. Honest people don't want to pirate software instead of being forced into buying upgrades of expensive software for occasional home use. Sure, there is nothing wrong with a perfectly good copy of a modern version of MS Office, but *not everyone has a modern copy of MS Office.* And many folks have illegit copies at that.
I will grant you that MS Office has a feature that is typically used in businesses... A feature that OO.o is missing. It's the group capabilities. In addition, however, they require an Exchange server license which is *per seat* as well. Other than that, there are very few, if not any, features that OO.o lacks in comparison with MS Office. And it bests Office in several areas as well.
Definately! Savage is the must-have game of late 2003 - early 2004. The demo does not do it justice. I purchased my copy online, from iGames, for Linux, and I've been hooked ever since.
Savage is definately one of the best PC games that I've played for years. Give the demo a try, but don't judge it too hard. The demo is buggy, but the 2.00 version of the official game is fantastic and has a ton of extras.
I can't wait for S2's next game. I hope that a Linux game is in the future as well.
I think that you guys are getting the wrong idea here. This is about CPUs geared for embedded application. All of the targets have their own RISC CPU products, or license CPU technology for their own products from other companies.
I don't think so. Nintendo still has its own exclusive games that people want. In addition, it has the GBA which is still selling quite well. There will also be quite a few new RPGs for release on the Gamecube this year, all of which are exclusives. I don't really see this causing much of a problem for Nintendo, who definately has the market edge of Microsoft in Japan, and is still doing strong in the USA. Europe is Nintendo's only real weak area right now.
If Microsoft were to drop the price to $99, it would be purely to dethrone Nintendo from the "#2" position. Nintendo would probably retaliate with a great game pack-in or promo before dropping the price any more. The $99 price range is where the added hardware features of the XBox begin to matter a lot less. They are so cheap, most people would just buy both machines. In the end, it will be the games that matter for the number 2 position. Though the XBox does have "Live" and the wasted hard drive feature, it doesn't have the franchises that Nintendo has. All of the talk about XBox's games is "Halo this" and "Halo that." Halo alone cannot sustain a console. While people are awaiting Halo 2, I'll be playing Baten Kaitos, PSO 3, Chrystal Chronicles, and the Tales of Destiny games, Metal Gear Solid remake, Metriod Prime 2, All of which will never come out on the XBox.
Check out these games - most of which are exclusives.
The ATI DRI drivers don't support S3TC for this reason. In many ways this does cause a problem with some applications that rely on S3TC (like UT2003), but for many purposes S3TC isn't needed and the DRI (open) drivers work very well without it.
In my opinion, ATI have done a pretty good job with supplying documentation for their older cores. Pretty much everything up to R280 is supported under Linux with open-source drivers. That includes 3D. Most other features like dual-head and tv-out work as well. Video capture works too, with the GATOS variant of the DRI drivers.
I've configured nForce systems for friends, and it is *not* pretty. nVidia's nForce binary drivers are terrible. The nVnet driver for the Realtek chips is unstable and slow, and often causes brief system hangs. The audio driver is terrible, uses OSS, and indicated that the hardware doesn't support hardware mixing in any fashion. There is ALSA support, but it isn't much better. Everything seems to indicate that that the "powerful" nForce APU is just an clone of the i810 spec with uber-souped-up drivers.
Some may disagree, but I'd suggest that most people stay away from nForce on Linux unstil 2.6.x gets better support for the nVidia hardware. I heard that they were going to add open GART support for the nForce hardware, but I am not sure how it panned out. Instead, I opted to go for a VIA KT600, though marginally slower than the nForce 2, has seemed to work well for me with even the 2.4.22 kernel and my Radeon 9500 PRO. The ATI drivers have their own GART driver within the fglrx module that can support the KT600 with a minor change to the driver's source. On the other hand, the included C-Media and Realtek audio/LAN chips aren't any better than anything I've seen on the nForce, so I've disabled them and use well-supported PCI cards instead.
Though some may have had a lot of luck with nForce, I've only found the hardware to be a cause of headaches under Linux. Even though support for the hardware has dripped into the open-source portions of the kernel and ALSA, nVidia hasn't exatly shown a lot of interest in updating their own drivers. I think that the nForce software for Linux last received an update in July of 2003. And don't ever count on hardware mixing, which seems to be a limitation of the nForce hardware.
The ATI drivers are a bit slow, actually. On the other hand, they recently added a boatload of GL extensions and extra functionality in the 3.7 release. I'm hoping that next month's release is quite a bit faster. I think that they are merely trying to work on one issue at a time. Optimizations will probably be the next step.
On the other hand, my Radeon 9500 PRO has been quite suitable with the current drivers. Savage 2.00c and UT2003 play very nicely with the details cranked, and the drivers have been very stable for me so far. I'm pretty happy with my ATI card on Linux, and I hope that they continue to improve their drivers.
That isn't to say that there isn't a lot of work for them to do. I do, however, believe that the R300-350 based cards are suitable alternatives to nVidia's cards at the moment, assuming you can get them configured properly. For the $100 I spent on my 9500 PRO, it hasn't let me down yet, and is also serving me well in beta tests of several other games.
Slashdot Mirror
Because it's WordPerfect all over again.
Let the competitor's product grow on your platform, and then break compatibility with it and allow it to fall into obscurity.
That is, allow MS Office to help Linux grow as a desktop OS. In several years, after it begind to become more mainstream (as IDG predicts), drop in your own IBM or Open/StarOffice replacement as the free/cheap alternative. By that time, who could argue that all of the opensource office suites wouldn't totally surpass Office anyway. It's very likely.
Keep in mind that source code for most Linux/BSD has been available from the start, with millions of eyes viewing it daily.
In comparison, Windows source code has been viewed daily by only a select few coders. There is greater potential of finding new exploits in the Windows source code than say - the Linux kernel. I believe that is the issue.
Also, bear in mind that all of the countless Windows exploits have been discovered without access to a source. Compare that to open source software, of which the majority of the Internet's backbone is based. One might argue that Windows is on the majority od desktop PCs, but Unix and Linux still dominate the Internet, powered by software such as Apache.
Having access to the source does ALL of us some good. Even if you don't make use of the source specifically it is available for EVERYONE to have the opportunity to improve it. Thus, simply being able to receive updates of improved OSS software. What does this mean? It means that you won't have to wait 6 months for a patch on a critical exploit... Try six minutes or six hours.
In addition, a FireFox is simply another name for the red panda. They're cute little creatures too.
m ma ls/panda.html
http://www.wellingtonzoo.com/animals/animals/ma
There are no computer projects, to my knowlege, that use this name. The same could not be same for "Phoenix" or "Firebird."
I don't think that it will be an issue this time, especially since they've trademarked the name.
Well, there is nothing wrong with Safari. If I am not mistaken, FireFox (then Phoenix) was around before Safari. At the time though, FireFox wasn't originally intended to become a Mac browser because of Camino, but that eventually changed. Then, soonafter, early versions of Safari were released, based on KHTML as the rendering engine.
I personally don't think that there is anything wrong with Safari. It's something that Apple should have done a LONG time ago, in my opinion. It borrows a lot from Phoenix/Firebird/FireFox in terms of features. My only complain is the inclusion of KHTML. KHTML is a great rendering engine, but I've had lots of problems with it, especially in Konqueror. I personally feel that it just does not render as well as Gecko.
As for the screwed up scrollbars and stuff... FireFox is still in a beta state, and it's even newer on MacOS.
The add-on audio connector was designed to interface with the parallel port. The parport would double as a standard paralell port or an audio output interface for things like SPDIF and line/mic input. It was just a way of extending the features for a "mobile recording/playback device" of sorts. It could have been ideal for someone in a band, or someone that needs to take a portable recording system on the road. The problem was just that it didn't work. Some of the connectors were not hardwired internally or something.
a bl e_digital.asp
I just felt that it was unfair for them to try to sell a $250 cable that didn't function. I think it was a SPDIF connector or something. Some guy on the web hacked the interface and posted schematics that would allow someone to build the interface cable for $5.
I'm pretty sure that it was the 200A5. Here is the cable that I was talking about.
http://www.vprmatrix.com/products_accessories_c
Well, good for them.
It'll be a problem only for those companies WHEN Linux becomes more mainstream, and the GPL applications have become superior to their commercial products. Maybe then, they'll wish that they had supported alternative platforms like Linux.
Nothing stops Adobe from putting Photoshop on Linux - Except for Adobe. GPL has nothing to do with it. Lack of such an app on alternative operating systems have spawned FREE creations. GIMP and OpenOffice come to mind. Apache comes to mind. Several database systems come to mind. Mozilla/Firefox comes to mind.
See a patern here? Almost all of the above applications are as good or better than the commercial alternatives. What will happen when these apps become the mainstream? Don't tell me that they won't, because a few already have.
My buddy has a VPR Matrix. We call it his "Porsche."
It really could be a fantastic product, but for the money I am unimpressed. The build quality isn't all that fantastic for such a costly product. The notebook suffers from very poor cooling due to its unique design. There are also several hardware flaws that seem to negate what could be some of its best features. VPR Matrix sold an audio cable for $250 (discontinuted). The only problem was that it DIDN'T WORK as advertised. At least one of the I/Os (I forget which one) didn't even function due to a design flaw in the notebook. Finally, the 802.11 range is totally subpar. It's probably got one of the worst I've seen.
You think that they'd test these things.
It's not that I'm trying to insult you for buying one. They are pretty cool products. They've just suffered from a lot of design problems.
There are several companies that make them; Monster, Pelican, and some generics that come from China are just a few examples.
I got many of my Gamecube games at value prices:
Pikmin - $19.99
Eternal Darkness - $14.99
Ikaruga - $19.99
Starfox - $19.99
Resident Evil 0 - $19.99
And many more. I think that even Metroid is close to that price range right now, as are many of the other games that I once paid full price for.
Has anyone tried doing this with a NAT/router system on a Linux box? I suppose that one could use some sort of forwarding to do all of the dirty work.
I have the Gamecube game, but the cheating was even worse than the DC games so I stopped playing. At least this way, we can have controlled servers with people that actually pay attention to what is going on.
Sure, the Dreamcast misses the extra stuff that is in PSO Episode 2, but version 2 is still a great DC game. I might just have to reawaken these old characters and start playing again.
Not only that, but the PS2 lacks any real support for texture compression. So in addition to its slim resources, it has to use fancy tricks for coloring textures, and the results aren't pretty. Such is the reason why many games are hindered with terrible green or brown hinting in textures. The system relies on 8 bit color tables, like those in 256 color gif files. Games like Metal Gear Solid come to mind, where everything is green. Some could say that it fits in from an artistic standpoint and blend's in with the game's mood... But when nearly ALL games are victim to this? What a silly design. I've yet to see the system do what the Dreamcast could do in its first year or two. Not that looks really matter or anything, but even Soul Calibur 2, 4 years after the DC game was released, is infrerior on the PS2 than the Dreamcast. That's just sad, considering that the PS2 game was BUILT for the system, and the DC game was a highly suped up port of a Playstation arcade game.
This is definately WRONG. There is a reason. My family was using an ancient version of Mirosoft Works for Windows. The program was terrible. Instead, I hooked them up with OpenOffice and they love it.
Get the point? There is a reason. It's cost. Honest people don't want to pirate software instead of being forced into buying upgrades of expensive software for occasional home use. Sure, there is nothing wrong with a perfectly good copy of a modern version of MS Office, but *not everyone has a modern copy of MS Office.* And many folks have illegit copies at that.
I will grant you that MS Office has a feature that is typically used in businesses... A feature that OO.o is missing. It's the group capabilities. In addition, however, they require an Exchange server license which is *per seat* as well. Other than that, there are very few, if not any, features that OO.o lacks in comparison with MS Office. And it bests Office in several areas as well.
You could at least be more specific and say "VB script macro virus."
Have you tried Planner or Mr. Project?
r .imendio.org/
http://mrproject.codefactory.se/
http://planne
They do lack a lot of features of MS Project at the moment, but both are great tools, and should do most of what you need.
Definately! Savage is the must-have game of late 2003 - early 2004. The demo does not do it justice. I purchased my copy online, from iGames, for Linux, and I've been hooked ever since.
Savage is definately one of the best PC games that I've played for years. Give the demo a try, but don't judge it too hard. The demo is buggy, but the 2.00 version of the official game is fantastic and has a ton of extras.
I can't wait for S2's next game. I hope that a Linux game is in the future as well.
I think that you guys are getting the wrong idea here. This is about CPUs geared for embedded application. All of the targets have their own RISC CPU products, or license CPU technology for their own products from other companies.
/ m /3 /homepage2.htm/ news/article.php /2212821i ndex.php?S ubject=Home
Here are some examples.
http://www.fme.fujitsu.com/products/micro/32bit
http://www.toshiba-electronics.com.hk/eng/syste
http://siliconvalley.internet.com
http://www.necelam.com/microprocessors/
Beyond these guys, there are even more companies that have similar products. Hitachi's Super-H line comes to mind.
This is an almost *verbatim* copy of PRI's program from "The World," a radio show on public radio stations.
. sh tml1 27.sh tml
Look for it on these pages, titled "Linux Report." (WMA format only).
http://www.theworld.org/latesteditions/20040126
http://www.theworld.org/latesteditions/20040
Better yet, why not Ogg Vorbis?
I guess it's pretty bad when *even Linux users* would rather have streaming radio in Mindows Media format than Real Media format.
Oh. Wow. A post below just let me to this link:
D 10 7171185522684&w=3D2
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=3Ddri-devel&m=3
Apparently, you *can* patch the opensource DRI Radeon drivers to support S3TC after all.
I don't think so. Nintendo still has its own exclusive games that people want. In addition, it has the GBA which is still selling quite well. There will also be quite a few new RPGs for release on the Gamecube this year, all of which are exclusives. I don't really see this causing much of a problem for Nintendo, who definately has the market edge of Microsoft in Japan, and is still doing strong in the USA. Europe is Nintendo's only real weak area right now.
f ro mint=1
If Microsoft were to drop the price to $99, it would be purely to dethrone Nintendo from the "#2" position. Nintendo would probably retaliate with a great game pack-in or promo before dropping the price any more. The $99 price range is where the added hardware features of the XBox begin to matter a lot less. They are so cheap, most people would just buy both machines. In the end, it will be the games that matter for the number 2 position. Though the XBox does have "Live" and the wasted hard drive feature, it doesn't have the franchises that Nintendo has. All of the talk about XBox's games is "Halo this" and "Halo that." Halo alone cannot sustain a console. While people are awaiting Halo 2, I'll be playing Baten Kaitos, PSO 3, Chrystal Chronicles, and the Tales of Destiny games, Metal Gear Solid remake, Metriod Prime 2, All of which will never come out on the XBox.
Check out these games - most of which are exclusives.
http://cube.ign.com/articles/474/474953p1.html?
The ATI DRI drivers don't support S3TC for this reason. In many ways this does cause a problem with some applications that rely on S3TC (like UT2003), but for many purposes S3TC isn't needed and the DRI (open) drivers work very well without it.
In my opinion, ATI have done a pretty good job with supplying documentation for their older cores. Pretty much everything up to R280 is supported under Linux with open-source drivers. That includes 3D. Most other features like dual-head and tv-out work as well. Video capture works too, with the GATOS variant of the DRI drivers.
I've configured nForce systems for friends, and it is *not* pretty. nVidia's nForce binary drivers are terrible. The nVnet driver for the Realtek chips is unstable and slow, and often causes brief system hangs. The audio driver is terrible, uses OSS, and indicated that the hardware doesn't support hardware mixing in any fashion. There is ALSA support, but it isn't much better. Everything seems to indicate that that the "powerful" nForce APU is just an clone of the i810 spec with uber-souped-up drivers.
Some may disagree, but I'd suggest that most people stay away from nForce on Linux unstil 2.6.x gets better support for the nVidia hardware. I heard that they were going to add open GART support for the nForce hardware, but I am not sure how it panned out. Instead, I opted to go for a VIA KT600, though marginally slower than the nForce 2, has seemed to work well for me with even the 2.4.22 kernel and my Radeon 9500 PRO. The ATI drivers have their own GART driver within the fglrx module that can support the KT600 with a minor change to the driver's source. On the other hand, the included C-Media and Realtek audio/LAN chips aren't any better than anything I've seen on the nForce, so I've disabled them and use well-supported PCI cards instead.
Though some may have had a lot of luck with nForce, I've only found the hardware to be a cause of headaches under Linux. Even though support for the hardware has dripped into the open-source portions of the kernel and ALSA, nVidia hasn't exatly shown a lot of interest in updating their own drivers. I think that the nForce software for Linux last received an update in July of 2003. And don't ever count on hardware mixing, which seems to be a limitation of the nForce hardware.
The ATI drivers are a bit slow, actually. On the other hand, they recently added a boatload of GL extensions and extra functionality in the 3.7 release. I'm hoping that next month's release is quite a bit faster. I think that they are merely trying to work on one issue at a time. Optimizations will probably be the next step.
On the other hand, my Radeon 9500 PRO has been quite suitable with the current drivers. Savage 2.00c and UT2003 play very nicely with the details cranked, and the drivers have been very stable for me so far. I'm pretty happy with my ATI card on Linux, and I hope that they continue to improve their drivers.
That isn't to say that there isn't a lot of work for them to do. I do, however, believe that the R300-350 based cards are suitable alternatives to nVidia's cards at the moment, assuming you can get them configured properly. For the $100 I spent on my 9500 PRO, it hasn't let me down yet, and is also serving me well in beta tests of several other games.
ATI's drivers officially supported 2.6x kernels *before* nVidia's.