Parallels doesn't really need to add support for a Linux client coherency feature in OSX. You can do pretty much the same thing right now.
Start up X11 on your Mac and start up a Linux image in Parallels. Configure an account in Linux to use the ip address of your Mac as it's X Server and there you go. All the programs you run in Linux will show up as their own windows in OSX. This is actually better than what Parallels does with MS Windows because the UI drawing is handled by OSX and thus it should be more responsive.
It would be nice if they added some sort of tool to automate this process. But given the variety of Linux distros, it's probably easier to just tell people how to do it than try to support an executable tool that would run reliably across all the distros.
3. Enterprises using Skype risk a communication barrier with countries
and institutions that have already banned the service.
Really? Are you serious? That's what you guys came up with? Should we ban blackberry pagers because not all employees have mobile email access and thus might face a communication barrier with those who do?
"Mako says that phones like my P900, which can play MP3s as ringtones, are bad for the cellphone economy, because it'll put the extortionate
ringtone sellers out of business. What Mako is saying is that just because you bought the CD doesn't mean that you should expect to have the ability to listen to it on your MP3 player, and just because it plays on your MP3 player is no reason to expect it to run as a ringtone. I wonder how they feel about alarm clocks that will play a CD to wake you up in the morning? Is that strangling the nascent "alarm tone" market?"
Great, so you can get quadrillions of improperly decoded versions and one good one, hidden in there somewhere. For any good encryption, I don't see how that helps much.
You could get an iRiver. Not quite as slick as the iPod, but it is comparable (and a bit cheaper if you get it online). It has line in and digital in and can record wavs or mp3s up to 320kbs. It would be a lot better than carrying a DAT around at least.
Just a suggestion. I own both a 3G iPod (10gig) and an iRiver (40gig) and think they are both great. I would have stuck with the iPod if Apple ever added significant new features to it. I'm a little tired of Apple releasing minor revisions with nothing new and driving upgrade sales based on minor software improvements that could easily be back-ported to older devices.
Apple doesn't force you to ditch your 3 month old Powerboook and buy a new one to install the latest iTunes version. Likewise, you shouldn't have to throw away a 3G iPod to get a largely identical 4G iPod to be able to have multiple on-the-go playlists.
I got the feeling Apple was pretty much phoning it in on the 4G release. Maybe the real team was doing leap-frog development on this new revision. Of course, the color screen photo-displaying iRiver is already shipping.
"But why do we talk about a "protocol" ? Isn't X a program for displaying stuff ? I know we can use remote display on a network with X, but why isn't it only a feature ? Why is X so focused on network terminology?"
The fundamental design of X is different than say, MS Windows. It is always network-based. We have to talk about a network protocol because that is how every X client program communicates, even locally. It's not just an optional feature. Its the entire design.
In MS Windows, you write a program that calls functions in a.h file to create windows, draw primitives, etc. Your program is compiled against some libraries that contain this drawing code directly. If you want to do remote displays across a network, you have to use some sort of add-on software or custom library. If you are coming from this paradigm, what you are asking is a very good question.
The difference is that every application that runs on X communicates over a "network". Whether you are opening Firefox on your own desktop or running an application on a remote server thousands of miles away, the application you are running connects to your X server and sends drawing commands over the "network". There is never any direct link to drawing code like there is in Windows - all commands pass over the "network". Of course if the application is local, optimizations are in place to make this communication very fast and not pass through the OS's networking stack.
This lets you do a very neat thing: Every graphical X-based program you have on your linux desktop can be run on any other X server. I'm not talking about just the few special ones that support it or link some special library. I mean every single program. Since you have to use the network even if you are running locally, to run on a remote server you just tell it to use a different IP address for the display. This is true network computing. The display is just an IP address and a port/desktop number.
Download an X server for your MS Windows desktop. Then log in to a Sun/Linux/BSD/etc box and you can run most any X application. There are a very small number of exceptions (like a program that requires an extention that your X server does not have, I.E. OpenGL for Quake3), but those are very rare.
In many ways, X is the most conceptually advanced and "network aware" desktop display system, despite being designed in the 1980s. Unfortunately, it is also painfully old in a lot of ways and painfully lacking in other, non-networking areas. The concept is really great and it works pretty well, but it would be nice to have a crack at redesigning the protocol based on other advances in computing. But failing that, I'm really glad that X.org is pushing things along and modernizing. The XFree86.org team had basically stalled out in a quagmire of politics and a need to cling to the past.
The parent post is correct in that modern games are much, much harder to create than old side-scrollers from the 80s. And you are correct that despite that fact, it would be possible to find everyone with the correct skills to form a team and still produce a quality product even today.
But there is another piece to the puzzle. Most games are played through only once or twice by a player. iD software put 4 years into Doom 3 and many people went on to finish the game in a single day.
The artists at iD probably put hours and hours of work into each and every room, pipe, box, etc in Doom 3. The art/level development process probably goes something like this:
1. Design a level on paper 2. Get the rough rooms modeled 3. Start texturing the rooms 4. Start adding decorations, crates, etc. 5. Populate it with monsters, supplies, etc. 6. Revise many times.
Now, just like testing software, they would have to test each level to make sure textures line up, actions trigger, difficulty is appropriate, and so on. It works just like testing versions of software, from development, to debugging, and then release.
Unfortunately, "content-based" games are pretty much a one time experience. You can't experience a game on an emotional level if you are playing through the same level hundreds of times to see minor improvements and new features. That works for spreadsheets and word processors, not games.
In other words, the open-source development process pretty much does not work for "content-based" games. In an application, a user will send you a patch to add a feature they really needed and took the time to create. And if the program really helps them do a job, they might keep working on it to make it better. In the case of a game, a game player is going to say "this game sucks", not send you a patch to relocate decorations in a level in order to increase the moody atmosphere. Or atleast they won't keep sending patches over any period of time. They will quickly lose interest, because they have completed the game experience.
Open source/Free/etc software makes sense because it allows the very intense, but globally tiny work of a few people to benefit all indefinately. If you create a really useful spreadsheet, businesses can benefit for years to come. The benefit of the work is ((users * useful_lifespan) - work_to_create). That model just doesn't make sense for most game development because the useful life span is very short.
The only case where it does work well is in multiplayer games. In those cases, the games can be fun for months or years. And that is exactly were projects like this have succeeded wildly (Counterstrike!).
For what it is worth, I think your program is awesome. Yes, some UI work would be great at some point, but high-end software in any industry tends to be complex because the functions being performed are complex. I don't think there is anything on linux that can touch what you are doing for the high-end pro audience. As a recording hobbyist who gets to use pro-quality software for free, I could not be happier:)
From what I've heard the devices are a loss leader that are supposed to push sales of music. That may be, but you're naive if you expect people to line up and do as they're told. And if you claim you're the company for people who don't line up, you're being disingenuous to do so.
You have it backwards. The iTunes Music Store is a loss-leader (ok, break even) for the highly-profitable iPods. They make almost nothing from the music store. It all goes to infrastructure costs and (the majority) RIAA payments.
iPods are high-margin items for both Apple and retailers. Retail stores want to mark down iPods to drive sales, but to do so will cause Apple to stop supplying that store with more iPods to sell.
I use Thunderbird on OSX instead of Mail.app because I like the interface better. For some reason I always found Mail.app awkward with the accounts tray on the right. I have a lot of email accounts and I can manage them all fast and confortably with Thunderbird (and the "Check All" extension installed - why is this not default?) while I found that somewhat awkward in Mail.app.
That being said, Mail.app is fine and I'm sure I could have liked it if I got used to it. To be honest, I would really just like to have KMail for OSX more than anything. It's so fast and slick.
Although it is obvious to many slashdot readers, the summary doesn't even mention the word "Linux".
So maybe we should point out that this is a whitepaper on upgrading Linux systems to kernel 2.6. (And no, I don't think the icon is enough - not everyone has a stuffed Tux on their desk).
Re:Another reason why this is great for Jimmy Page
on
The Self-Tuning Guitar
·
· Score: 1
In the '98 Page/Plant tour he was actually using the auto-tuner to twist the knobs during the 'Whole lot ta love' solo (in addition do also doing it manually at other points). Flipping through a few presents gets a pretty nifty effect.
Most professionals (who make any sort of real income playing) have roadies who tune their guitars for them. That way they can have the roadie tune an extra guitar between songs and they can switch for the next song without delaying the show.
I think a lot of guitarists think of tuning as an annoyance, much like setting up amps and monitors. That being said, it's still cheaper and more efficient to buy 4 guitars for a thousand dollars each and have them tuned up for different songs than to spend 4000 on retrofitting a one thousand dollar guitar unless you change tunings during the song.
As anyone who has seen Jimmy Page live in the last 8 years or so can tell you, he uses the auto-tuner to change tunings in the middle of the song and even uses contant tuning changing as an "effect". Some of his effects would be otherwise impossible to create live.
I'm going to write a program that searches slashdot for the phrases "mysql" and "transactions" and always posts a short reply that MySQL does support transactions now. And stored procedures will be in the next version.
MySQL has a LONG way to go to be comparable to Oracle obviously, but I just wish everyone would stop repeating this same stuff about features it has had for a while now.
Also, why does everyone ignore Firebird (the database)? It supports all those features and is Free.
Re:7200, 5400 HD RPM and 52X CD-ROM RPM
on
Knoppix Tips and Tricks
·
· Score: 2, Informative
He didn't say "at the same time". He should have said "210 times per minute when reading the outer edge and 539 times per minute when reading the inner edge". That would have been more clear.
The drive spins the entire disk faster when it is reading the inner edge to maintain a constant read speed.
But like the original poster said, this is no longer true in most modern "52x" drives that just read data more slowly along the inner edge of the disk as compared to the outer edge.
'Firebird' that the parent article referred to is the Open Sourced version of Interbase.
And MySQL does support transactions in the 4.x versions now, along with many other basic features. Stored procedures and triggers are still missing though.
Karamba is a semi-clone of Samurize. SuperKaramba is a version of Karamba I'm working on that adds python scripting and lots of other enhancements. Most of the cool (in my opinion) themes require SuperKaramba. But I wish the Karamba guys the best of luck and hope we can work together to accomplish our goals for both programs.
The website for it is http://netdragon.sourceforge.net
Thats not entirely accurate. While most upper-classman (who still live on campus) mostly use their BuzzCard to get into computer labs or pay for laundry, freshman use them much more extensively. The "happy freshman living together" type thing they do at Tech requires freshmen to deposit money on their cards, usually around $1000. So there are thousands of new students each year, with around a grand each on their cards that they use up slowly. Thats money just sitting there...
And BuzzCards can be used for much more than you suggested, including buying groceries. Now what in the world would some poor college kid do with unlimited free access to cigarettes and pizza? Or what about a student who recodes a card so they can get into tech tower in the middle of the night without setting off alarms.
But remember that while students use buzzcards for all sorts of things, so do faculty and staff. What about the person who recodes a card to get into the millenium research building after hours? They do classified department of defense research on several floors. I'm sure that wouldn't interest anyone...
Trademarks (in the US at least) tend to be divided by courts into four strengths in the US. The strongest are made-up words, then the next strongest are regular words applied to product competely unrelated to the word. In other words, "Linux" or "Coca-Cola" are very strong marks because they are made up words. "Google" might be construed as a made up word, and thus very strong. But even if "Google" is interpreted as just a form of the math term "googol", it is still strong because it isn't applied to math. Thats how people can trademark regular english words with almost the same strength as a made up word. But I couldn't trademark "Red Apple" brand apples easily or at all because it just describes what it is.
The problem is that if Google doesn't actively protect their mark and it becomes a word on it's own, then in effect the word "Google" just describes "Google" because it is a word with it's own meaning, refering to a type of search engine. Then they lose the ability to renew their trademark and prevent others from using it.
So then I would be able to create www.googleit.com or www.gogoogle.com. That wouldn't be very good for their business.
According to the Free Radio Linux website the stream is only available in ogg-vorbis format.
Microsoft understands and now finally the open source community does too! It's not about having a better codec (ogg vs. wma), but making the hot content that people want avaliable. Well, I think it's obvious to everyone that with ogg's virtual monopoly on voice synth spoken linux kernel broadcasts, wma's days are numbered.
You are mixing up US and non-US stores. I was referring only to US stores. Your 14 billion number is a worldwide number. And even if it wasn't, 25 million pounds isn't a "considerable" part of 14 billion.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's a manpower issue, they could always hire this guy who looks like he is well qualified for that, skill wise.
Parallels doesn't really need to add support for a Linux client coherency feature in OSX. You can do pretty much the same thing right now.
Start up X11 on your Mac and start up a Linux image in Parallels. Configure an account in Linux to use the ip address of your Mac as it's X Server and there you go. All the programs you run in Linux will show up as their own windows in OSX. This is actually better than what Parallels does with MS Windows because the UI drawing is handled by OSX and thus it should be more responsive.
It would be nice if they added some sort of tool to automate this process. But given the variety of Linux distros, it's probably easier to just tell people how to do it than try to support an executable tool that would run reliably across all the distros.
The absurdity of ringtones always reminds me of this excellent quote from Cory Doctorow of the EFF's Speech to Microsoft on DRM:
"Mako says that phones like my P900, which can play MP3s as ringtones, are bad for the cellphone economy, because it'll put the extortionate ringtone sellers out of business. What Mako is saying is that just because you bought the CD doesn't mean that you should expect to have the ability to listen to it on your MP3 player, and just because it plays on your MP3 player is no reason to expect it to run as a ringtone. I wonder how they feel about alarm clocks that will play a CD to wake you up in the morning? Is that strangling the nascent "alarm tone" market?"
Great, so you can get quadrillions of improperly decoded versions and one good one, hidden in there somewhere. For any good encryption, I don't see how that helps much.
The machine knows that it found the plaintext because it looks like plaintext.
Basically, the longer the message is the less chance you have of finding a key that produces a reasonable but incorrect plaintext.
You could get an iRiver. Not quite as slick as the iPod, but it is comparable (and a bit cheaper if you get it online). It has line in and digital in and can record wavs or mp3s up to 320kbs. It would be a lot better than carrying a DAT around at least.
Just a suggestion. I own both a 3G iPod (10gig) and an iRiver (40gig) and think they are both great. I would have stuck with the iPod if Apple ever added significant new features to it. I'm a little tired of Apple releasing minor revisions with nothing new and driving upgrade sales based on minor software improvements that could easily be back-ported to older devices.
Apple doesn't force you to ditch your 3 month old Powerboook and buy a new one to install the latest iTunes version. Likewise, you shouldn't have to throw away a 3G iPod to get a largely identical 4G iPod to be able to have multiple on-the-go playlists.
I got the feeling Apple was pretty much phoning it in on the 4G release. Maybe the real team was doing leap-frog development on this new revision. Of course, the color screen photo-displaying iRiver is already shipping.
Avalon + XAML = Xamlon
Trademark infringement case in 3.. 2..
At least Lindows was only borrowing -dows from Microsoft. I'd hate to see what happens when you borrow both parts.
"But why do we talk about a "protocol" ? Isn't X a program for displaying stuff ? I know we can use remote display on a network with X, but why isn't it only a feature ? Why is X so focused on network terminology?"
.h file to create windows, draw primitives, etc. Your program is compiled against some libraries that contain this drawing code directly. If you want to do remote displays across a network, you have to use some sort of add-on software or custom library. If you are coming from this paradigm, what you are asking is a very good question.
The fundamental design of X is different than say, MS Windows. It is always network-based. We have to talk about a network protocol because that is how every X client program communicates, even locally. It's not just an optional feature. Its the entire design.
In MS Windows, you write a program that calls functions in a
The difference is that every application that runs on X communicates over a "network". Whether you are opening Firefox on your own desktop or running an application on a remote server thousands of miles away, the application you are running connects to your X server and sends drawing commands over the "network". There is never any direct link to drawing code like there is in Windows - all commands pass over the "network". Of course if the application is local, optimizations are in place to make this communication very fast and not pass through the OS's networking stack.
This lets you do a very neat thing: Every graphical X-based program you have on your linux desktop can be run on any other X server. I'm not talking about just the few special ones that support it or link some special library. I mean every single program. Since you have to use the network even if you are running locally, to run on a remote server you just tell it to use a different IP address for the display. This is true network computing. The display is just an IP address and a port/desktop number.
Download an X server for your MS Windows desktop. Then log in to a Sun/Linux/BSD/etc box and you can run most any X application. There are a very small number of exceptions (like a program that requires an extention that your X server does not have, I.E. OpenGL for Quake3), but those are very rare.
In many ways, X is the most conceptually advanced and "network aware" desktop display system, despite being designed in the 1980s. Unfortunately, it is also painfully old in a lot of ways and painfully lacking in other, non-networking areas. The concept is really great and it works pretty well, but it would be nice to have a crack at redesigning the protocol based on other advances in computing. But failing that, I'm really glad that X.org is pushing things along and modernizing. The XFree86.org team had basically stalled out in a quagmire of politics and a need to cling to the past.
Frozen Bubble? nah...
:)
My Exceptions would be BZFlag, Battle for Wesnoth, and FreeCiv.
I used BZFlag and FreeCiv as the two exceptions in the last paragraph of the actual article. Did you read it?
Adam Geitgey
The parent post is correct in that modern games are much, much harder to create than old side-scrollers from the 80s. And you are correct that despite that fact, it would be possible to find everyone with the correct skills to form a team and still produce a quality product even today.
But there is another piece to the puzzle. Most games are played through only once or twice by a player. iD software put 4 years into Doom 3 and many people went on to finish the game in a single day.
The artists at iD probably put hours and hours of work into each and every room, pipe, box, etc in Doom 3. The art/level development process probably goes something like this:
1. Design a level on paper
2. Get the rough rooms modeled
3. Start texturing the rooms
4. Start adding decorations, crates, etc.
5. Populate it with monsters, supplies, etc.
6. Revise many times.
Now, just like testing software, they would have to test each level to make sure textures line up, actions trigger, difficulty is appropriate, and so on. It works just like testing versions of software, from development, to debugging, and then release.
Unfortunately, "content-based" games are pretty much a one time experience. You can't experience a game on an emotional level if you are playing through the same level hundreds of times to see minor improvements and new features. That works for spreadsheets and word processors, not games.
In other words, the open-source development process pretty much does not work for "content-based" games. In an application, a user will send you a patch to add a feature they really needed and took the time to create. And if the program really helps them do a job, they might keep working on it to make it better. In the case of a game, a game player is going to say "this game sucks", not send you a patch to relocate decorations in a level in order to increase the moody atmosphere. Or atleast they won't keep sending patches over any period of time. They will quickly lose interest, because they have completed the game experience.
Open source/Free/etc software makes sense because it allows the very intense, but globally tiny work of a few people to benefit all indefinately. If you create a really useful spreadsheet, businesses can benefit for years to come. The benefit of the work is ((users * useful_lifespan) - work_to_create). That model just doesn't make sense for most game development because the useful life span is very short.
The only case where it does work well is in multiplayer games. In those cases, the games can be fun for months or years. And that is exactly were projects like this have succeeded wildly (Counterstrike!).
For what it is worth, I think your program is awesome. Yes, some UI work would be great at some point, but high-end software in any industry tends to be complex because the functions being performed are complex. I don't think there is anything on linux that can touch what you are doing for the high-end pro audience. As a recording hobbyist who gets to use pro-quality software for free, I could not be happier :)
You have it backwards. The iTunes Music Store is a loss-leader (ok, break even) for the highly-profitable iPods. They make almost nothing from the music store. It all goes to infrastructure costs and (the majority) RIAA payments.
iPods are high-margin items for both Apple and retailers. Retail stores want to mark down iPods to drive sales, but to do so will cause Apple to stop supplying that store with more iPods to sell.
I use Thunderbird on OSX instead of Mail.app because I like the interface better. For some reason I always found Mail.app awkward with the accounts tray on the right. I have a lot of email accounts and I can manage them all fast and confortably with Thunderbird (and the "Check All" extension installed - why is this not default?) while I found that somewhat awkward in Mail.app.
That being said, Mail.app is fine and I'm sure I could have liked it if I got used to it. To be honest, I would really just like to have KMail for OSX more than anything. It's so fast and slick.
Although it is obvious to many slashdot readers, the summary doesn't even mention the word "Linux".
So maybe we should point out that this is a whitepaper on upgrading Linux systems to kernel 2.6. (And no, I don't think the icon is enough - not everyone has a stuffed Tux on their desk).
In the '98 Page/Plant tour he was actually using the auto-tuner to twist the knobs during the 'Whole lot ta love' solo (in addition do also doing it manually at other points). Flipping through a few presents gets a pretty nifty effect.
Most professionals (who make any sort of real income playing) have roadies who tune their guitars for them. That way they can have the roadie tune an extra guitar between songs and they can switch for the next song without delaying the show.
I think a lot of guitarists think of tuning as an annoyance, much like setting up amps and monitors. That being said, it's still cheaper and more efficient to buy 4 guitars for a thousand dollars each and have them tuned up for different songs than to spend 4000 on retrofitting a one thousand dollar guitar unless you change tunings during the song.
As anyone who has seen Jimmy Page live in the last 8 years or so can tell you, he uses the auto-tuner to change tunings in the middle of the song and even uses contant tuning changing as an "effect". Some of his effects would be otherwise impossible to create live.
I'm going to write a program that searches slashdot for the phrases "mysql" and "transactions" and always posts a short reply that MySQL does support transactions now. And stored procedures will be in the next version.
MySQL has a LONG way to go to be comparable to Oracle obviously, but I just wish everyone would stop repeating this same stuff about features it has had for a while now.
Also, why does everyone ignore Firebird (the database)? It supports all those features and is Free.
He didn't say "at the same time". He should have said "210 times per minute when reading the outer edge and 539 times per minute when reading the inner edge". That would have been more clear.
The drive spins the entire disk faster when it is reading the inner edge to maintain a constant read speed.
But like the original poster said, this is no longer true in most modern "52x" drives that just read data more slowly along the inner edge of the disk as compared to the outer edge.
'Firebird' that the parent article referred to is the Open Sourced version of Interbase.
And MySQL does support transactions in the 4.x versions now, along with many other basic features. Stored procedures and triggers are still missing though.
Texstar's packages are often patched with cool/new features that aren't in the standard distribution.
For example, install his KDE packages and you will have options for drop shadows on your desktop text, drop shadows on windows, etc.
However these features are not always production quality so keep that in mind.
For those of you who don't know the details:
Karamba is a semi-clone of Samurize. SuperKaramba is a version of Karamba I'm working on that adds python scripting and lots of other enhancements. Most of the cool (in my opinion) themes require SuperKaramba. But I wish the Karamba guys the best of luck and hope we can work together to accomplish our goals for both programs.
The website for it is http://netdragon.sourceforge.net
Thats not entirely accurate. While most upper-classman (who still live on campus) mostly use their BuzzCard to get into computer labs or pay for laundry, freshman use them much more extensively. The "happy freshman living together" type thing they do at Tech requires freshmen to deposit money on their cards, usually around $1000. So there are thousands of new students each year, with around a grand each on their cards that they use up slowly. Thats money just sitting there...
And BuzzCards can be used for much more than you suggested, including buying groceries. Now what in the world would some poor college kid do with unlimited free access to cigarettes and pizza? Or what about a student who recodes a card so they can get into tech tower in the middle of the night without setting off alarms.
But remember that while students use buzzcards for all sorts of things, so do faculty and staff. What about the person who recodes a card to get into the millenium research building after hours? They do classified department of defense research on several floors. I'm sure that wouldn't interest anyone...
Trademarks (in the US at least) tend to be divided by courts into four strengths in the US. The strongest are made-up words, then the next strongest are regular words applied to product competely unrelated to the word. In other words, "Linux" or "Coca-Cola" are very strong marks because they are made up words. "Google" might be construed as a made up word, and thus very strong. But even if "Google" is interpreted as just a form of the math term "googol", it is still strong because it isn't applied to math. Thats how people can trademark regular english words with almost the same strength as a made up word. But I couldn't trademark "Red Apple" brand apples easily or at all because it just describes what it is.
The problem is that if Google doesn't actively protect their mark and it becomes a word on it's own, then in effect the word "Google" just describes "Google" because it is a word with it's own meaning, refering to a type of search engine. Then they lose the ability to renew their trademark and prevent others from using it.
So then I would be able to create www.googleit.com or www.gogoogle.com. That wouldn't be very good for their business.
According to the Free Radio Linux website the stream is only available in ogg-vorbis format.
Microsoft understands and now finally the open source community does too! It's not about having a better codec (ogg vs. wma), but making the hot content that people want avaliable. Well, I think it's obvious to everyone that with ogg's virtual monopoly on voice synth spoken linux kernel broadcasts, wma's days are numbered.
You are mixing up US and non-US stores. I was referring only to US stores. Your 14 billion number is a worldwide number. And even if it wasn't, 25 million pounds isn't a "considerable" part of 14 billion.