I wonder how many of those involved have visited a truely LDC country. It will only result in cheap and unworthy PC toys dumped all over LDCs without addresssing real needs
AMD processors and 14 inch LCDs are not toys. From what I see, this machine is a thousand times more powerful than the original IBM PC that revolutionized the business world.
It won't play Doom III, but neither will Doom III lift a country out of poverty.
No, it's just more cynical gaming of the system by Microsoft, attempting to convince Massachusetts that Microsoft file formats are open while at the same time seeking to prevent the file formats from being usable by GPL and other open source programs.
I tried using Open Office, and after a day of trying to figure out how to do what I did in MSOffice, I just went back to using MSOffice. It does what I need it to do and how I need it done.
Yeah sure, make a grand claim without a single specific point to back it up. Fact: I use Openoffice every day and it does everything I need it to do, including handling any.doc,.ppt or.xsl formats that happen to come my way.
A better comparison would be the length of time it takes for the fix to make it into, e.g., the mainline Red Hat release. I don't know how long that usually is, but the reality is that testing takes time, so if Red Hat do extensive testing before releasing patches, there will be a significant gap.
No there won't. Security fixes are fast tracked and available here essentially on the same time frame as patch releases to the general public.
I can see an LGPL library for handling MS-OFFICE formats.
Not if all the Openoffice developers have to sign a license directly with Microsoft. If Microsoft doesn't allow sublicensing, the patent restrictions are unacceptable for open source and thus the Microsoft formats do not meet Massachusetts' or EU's criteria for openness.
Which of course we need to point out to the individuals responsible.
Anything that modifies core memory access/rights such as this needs extensive testing. It's most likely an easy fix, but you should be well aware of the outrage that would occur if they released a fix that ended up breaking things.
Sure, that's why if anything breaks Linux kernel memory protection it takes at least a month for Linux developers to release a fix. Oh wait, it doesn't.
I want to know if instead of laptops these might bring about more small form factor computers. I want something the size of a mac mini, but I won't pay for a Mac, I like my operating systems Free and Light
Makes run Linux. That said, I too would like to see both Intel and AMD get their heads out of their butts and start delivering these laptop chipsets for desktop and media machines. I've totally had it with the desktop chernobyl syndrome and will not buy another x86 until they do something about it.
"All geometry and vertex processing will be done in software in the host computer"
This is a bit disappointing. Ever played a game in S/W mode? Nightmare - last century. At least its only a part of the processing though.
It's also a fairly cheap part and well suited to SSE processing. You wouldn't want your processor to be sitting completely idle, wasting all those expensive transisters would you?
Who knows. Might actually buy one of those. But his projected price point at $200 is too high.
Sentiment seems to running around a $150 price point as a reasonable compromise. I know that for me, $150 versus $200 makes the difference between grabbing one right now or thinking hard about it.
"Guys, let's make this the standard card for non-gaming open source boxes. Especially if it's a quality piece of work."
It's going to be able to run a lot of good games. Not Doom 3 or anything that relies on programmable shaders, but it should be able to handle Quake III level engines.
I think you fill find this card goes no where. It will be slower and more expensive than the "closed" cards from nVidia.
I thought that at first as well. But I changed my mind after looking at the design drafts, the card specs, and the quality of the people involved. This is going to be the classic enthusiast's card. It's reprogrammable at the logic level! The uses aren't limited just to Linux video.
The point of this thing is to open it up to widespread hacking. I'll gladly pay considerably more than a commodity card to have it hackable. Just think, this thing could spawn a hardware demo scene for one thing.
I'm pretty sure there are enough like-minded people to make this project commercially viable. It doesn't have to take over the world, it just has to fly, then the sky's the limit. There is of course nothing stopping a spinoff card from being developed in hard silicon after the original is thoroughly debugged, which would bring the unit cost way down, and be much easier to cost justify. But as far as I can see, this is going to fly just fine as an FPGA design.
By the way, it's an OpenGL card. It won't support programmable shaders, at least in this version, but it will be capable of running Quake III. Of course, you will be able to implement your own shaders at the gate level if you are smart enough and some people certainly will be, I look forward to some mind-blowing demos. You could also set the gate array up to do something entirely unconnected with video, such as run a kick-ass synthesizer or image processing or encryption.
as to the "open source gpu".. it's going to be hideously expensive. chip producing takes real money and is cheaper the more you do them - it's expensive, very expensive
Read the article. It's a FPGA design, not a chip. Or do you prefer to spout first, get caught later?
Of course, this grand gesture is really nothing more than the minimum required by law to keep Gates' billions sheltered from taxes. A cynical person would suggest that this particular vehicle just allows major drug companies to sell their drugs to Gates & M foundation at full price, whereas otherwise they would have to discount. A cynical person would suggest that Gates isn't paying for the vaccines, the US taxpayer is.
Generosity? No, I don't see it here. I don't see anything beyond the legal minimum he is required to do, and I have my doubts about the chosen vehicle. Why couldn't the money be invested in building drug industries in the target countries? That would impress me. This doesn't.
You chide him for his charity in India. So would you rather have him not provide help there?
There were plenty of other charitable works that could have been done at the time without such a seamy tie to commerce. Rather blatant if you ask me. Also, note that many Indians saw it as an insult to be presented with millions of dollars worth of condoms.
And what about the millions given away to charities where there is no direct or indirect gain to himself or Microsoft? What say you about those?
I say: where there's smoke, there's fire. Many of these efforts likely tied to a high profile visit by Bill Gates to the county in question, for business reasons. Otherwise, I see Bill Gate's charitable pretensions as mere perfunctory performance of the bare minimum that is required by law. Some of the disbursements probably don't benefit Gates in any direct business way. Some do, and that's pathetic.
Hrm, he's given away $27 billion dollars. That's a capital B
No, that's B for "bullshit". $27 billion has been placed into a tax sheltered trust, from which 5% or so must be disbursed for charitable works per year. The rest is used to further Gates' own agendas, since it is under his control. Even a significant portion of the 5% is used to further Gates' corporate agenda, for example, the $100 million 'condom' donation to India with, coupled with some money Microsoft was investing in R&D in India at the time, allowed Gates to publicly claim a much bigger investment in India that was actually the case. The purpose being to sway Indian public policy, which at that time, had been announced in favor of moving towards open source.
In effect, Gates lies by encouraging or allowing the media to exaggerate the magnitude of his charitable works and not telling the whole truth. And you believe these falsehoods, or pretend to. In fact Gates is exactly as much of a philanthropist as tax laws require him to be, and not a penny more.
when someone open-sources code, don't they retain IP rights? In most cases, can't they then release their own proprietary version, altered however they want, with no legal obligation to open-source the alterations? Meaning, if AOL kept the IP rights, they don't have to open-source the changes. Or is that wrong?
We don't really care if they give the code for new features back or not. The gold is in the good ideas.
Best to keep the kernel small and let the specialized tools, (like Samba), do their job as modules or separate applications for those who need it.
Not to be pedantic or anything, but modules are part of the kernel. And by the way, Samba client is kernel-based, because it's a filesystem. The Samba server runs as a user space daemon, as it should.
Anyone can tweak and rebadge an open source project, sure they're not breaking the GPL. But you have to ask yourself why would they do it?
Excuse me, but its a basic principle of open source that you can modify it to suit yourself. AOL is working very much within the spirit of open source. I say, go ahead and tweak and fiddle. Hey, if the AOL browser comes up with anything cool, it goes straight back into Firefox, right?
The best possible result is, AOL comes up with something they like and instantly swings another, what is it, 10% of IE users over to Firefox overnight.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how many of those involved have visited a truely LDC country. It will only result in cheap and unworthy PC toys dumped all over LDCs without addresssing real needs
AMD processors and 14 inch LCDs are not toys. From what I see, this machine is a thousand times more powerful than the original IBM PC that revolutionized the business world.
It won't play Doom III, but neither will Doom III lift a country out of poverty.
This is huge. Props to Microsoft
No, it's just more cynical gaming of the system by Microsoft, attempting to convince Massachusetts that Microsoft file formats are open while at the same time seeking to prevent the file formats from being usable by GPL and other open source programs.
I tried using Open Office, and after a day of trying to figure out how to do what I did in MSOffice, I just went back to using MSOffice. It does what I need it to do and how I need it done.
.doc, .ppt or .xsl formats that happen to come my way.
Yeah sure, make a grand claim without a single specific point to back it up. Fact: I use Openoffice every day and it does everything I need it to do, including handling any
A better comparison would be the length of time it takes for the fix to make it into, e.g., the mainline Red Hat release. I don't know how long that usually is, but the reality is that testing takes time, so if Red Hat do extensive testing before releasing patches, there will be a significant gap.
No there won't. Security fixes are fast tracked and available here essentially on the same time frame as patch releases to the general public.
The GPL is about linking, not distribution
Wrong, the GPL is all about distribution.
I can see an LGPL library for handling MS-OFFICE formats.
Not if all the Openoffice developers have to sign a license directly with Microsoft. If Microsoft doesn't allow sublicensing, the patent restrictions are unacceptable for open source and thus the Microsoft formats do not meet Massachusetts' or EU's criteria for openness.
Which of course we need to point out to the individuals responsible.
Yeah, it's kind of silly for them to focus on a problem with software DEP instead of hardware DEP.
:-)
I mean, hardware DEP is available on 5 years old at that time. But that's crazy talk - I mean, everyone replaces their system every 6 months.
Mod parent up
Anything that modifies core memory access/rights such as this needs extensive testing. It's most likely an easy fix, but you should be well aware of the outrage that would occur if they released a fix that ended up breaking things.
Sure, that's why if anything breaks Linux kernel memory protection it takes at least a month for Linux developers to release a fix. Oh wait, it doesn't.
Err, Macs run Linux
I want to know if instead of laptops these might bring about more small form factor computers. I want something the size of a mac mini, but I won't pay for a Mac, I like my operating systems Free and Light
Makes run Linux. That said, I too would like to see both Intel and AMD get their heads out of their butts and start delivering these laptop chipsets for desktop and media machines. I've totally had it with the desktop chernobyl syndrome and will not buy another x86 until they do something about it.
"All geometry and vertex processing will be done in software in the host computer"
This is a bit disappointing. Ever played a game in S/W mode? Nightmare - last century. At least its only a part of the processing though.
It's also a fairly cheap part and well suited to SSE processing. You wouldn't want your processor to be sitting completely idle, wasting all those expensive transisters would you?
Who knows. Might actually buy one of those. But his projected price point at $200 is too high.
Sentiment seems to running around a $150 price point as a reasonable compromise. I know that for me, $150 versus $200 makes the difference between grabbing one right now or thinking hard about it.
"Guys, let's make this the standard card for non-gaming open source boxes. Especially if it's a quality piece of work."
It's going to be able to run a lot of good games. Not Doom 3 or anything that relies on programmable shaders, but it should be able to handle Quake III level engines.
I think you fill find this card goes no where. It will be slower and more expensive than the "closed" cards from nVidia.
I thought that at first as well. But I changed my mind after looking at the design drafts, the card specs, and the quality of the people involved. This is going to be the classic enthusiast's card. It's reprogrammable at the logic level! The uses aren't limited just to Linux video.
The point of this thing is to open it up to widespread hacking. I'll gladly pay considerably more than a commodity card to have it hackable. Just think, this thing could spawn a hardware demo scene for one thing.
I'm pretty sure there are enough like-minded people to make this project commercially viable. It doesn't have to take over the world, it just has to fly, then the sky's the limit. There is of course nothing stopping a spinoff card from being developed in hard silicon after the original is thoroughly debugged, which would bring the unit cost way down, and be much easier to cost justify. But as far as I can see, this is going to fly just fine as an FPGA design.
By the way, it's an OpenGL card. It won't support programmable shaders, at least in this version, but it will be capable of running Quake III. Of course, you will be able to implement your own shaders at the gate level if you are smart enough and some people certainly will be, I look forward to some mind-blowing demos. You could also set the gate array up to do something entirely unconnected with video, such as run a kick-ass synthesizer or image processing or encryption.
I want it now.
as to the "open source gpu".. it's going to be hideously expensive. chip producing takes real money and is cheaper the more you do them - it's expensive, very expensive
Read the article. It's a FPGA design, not a chip. Or do you prefer to spout first, get caught later?
Of course, this grand gesture is really nothing more than the minimum required by law to keep Gates' billions sheltered from taxes. A cynical person would suggest that this particular vehicle just allows major drug companies to sell their drugs to Gates & M foundation at full price, whereas otherwise they would have to discount. A cynical person would suggest that Gates isn't paying for the vaccines, the US taxpayer is.
Generosity? No, I don't see it here. I don't see anything beyond the legal minimum he is required to do, and I have my doubts about the chosen vehicle. Why couldn't the money be invested in building drug industries in the target countries? That would impress me. This doesn't.
You chide him for his charity in India. So would you rather have him not provide help there?
There were plenty of other charitable works that could have been done at the time without such a seamy tie to commerce. Rather blatant if you ask me. Also, note that many Indians saw it as an insult to be presented with millions of dollars worth of condoms.
And what about the millions given away to charities where there is no direct or indirect gain to himself or Microsoft? What say you about those?
I say: where there's smoke, there's fire. Many of these efforts likely tied to a high profile visit by Bill Gates to the county in question, for business reasons. Otherwise, I see Bill Gate's charitable pretensions as mere perfunctory performance of the bare minimum that is required by law. Some of the disbursements probably don't benefit Gates in any direct business way. Some do, and that's pathetic.
Ciphire might be 'the good guys' but how can you tell?
You can tell the contrary easily enough. No source code. In fact, no point to this whole article. Ciphire does not compete with GPG.
Hrm, he's given away $27 billion dollars. That's a capital B
No, that's B for "bullshit". $27 billion has been placed into a tax sheltered trust, from which 5% or so must be disbursed for charitable works per year. The rest is used to further Gates' own agendas, since it is under his control. Even a significant portion of the 5% is used to further Gates' corporate agenda, for example, the $100 million 'condom' donation to India with, coupled with some money Microsoft was investing in R&D in India at the time, allowed Gates to publicly claim a much bigger investment in India that was actually the case. The purpose being to sway Indian public policy, which at that time, had been announced in favor of moving towards open source.
In effect, Gates lies by encouraging or allowing the media to exaggerate the magnitude of his charitable works and not telling the whole truth. And you believe these falsehoods, or pretend to. In fact Gates is exactly as much of a philanthropist as tax laws require him to be, and not a penny more.
I don't recall Scrooge McDuck being the greatest philanthropist of all time
I don't recall Bill Gates being that either. Perhaps you have confused "greatest philanthropist" with "greatest tax shelter".
when someone open-sources code, don't they retain IP rights? In most cases, can't they then release their own proprietary version, altered however they want, with no legal obligation to open-source the alterations? Meaning, if AOL kept the IP rights, they don't have to open-source the changes. Or is that wrong?
We don't really care if they give the code for new features back or not. The gold is in the good ideas.
Best to keep the kernel small and let the specialized tools, (like Samba), do their job as modules or separate applications for those who need it.
Not to be pedantic or anything, but modules are part of the kernel. And by the way, Samba client is kernel-based, because it's a filesystem. The Samba server runs as a user space daemon, as it should.
Anyone can tweak and rebadge an open source project, sure they're not breaking the GPL. But you have to ask yourself why would they do it?
Excuse me, but its a basic principle of open source that you can modify it to suit yourself. AOL is working very much within the spirit of open source. I say, go ahead and tweak and fiddle. Hey, if the AOL browser comes up with anything cool, it goes straight back into Firefox, right?
The best possible result is, AOL comes up with something they like and instantly swings another, what is it, 10% of IE users over to Firefox overnight.
It's mindnumbingly pathetic that Microsoft's kernel actually loads cursor files, let alone gets itself crashed/compromised by them.
I just thought I'd mention OpenCascade
Very much underappreciated: