I forgot to mention the most important thing.. both Mesa and VNC are distributed under the GPL. These are two great gifts to us all, so please mail award-nominations@gnu.org and put in your vote like I did!:)
My nominations are: Brian Paul for the excellent crossplatform OpenGL compatible graphics library MESA. It provides a real alternative to commercial OpenGL and gives Linux a competitive 3D language.
The Olivetti Research Laboratory (now at AT&T UK) for a program I use every day - VNC. This program is used for remote control much like PC Anywhere or even X-Windows and it runs on Unix and Windows. Clients for Unix, Win, Mac and Java.
The post was only redundant for those who feel there is no place for humour. Who cares if some of them are obviously mainly meant as 'first post' replacement when the one liner is funny. Okay this was not a particularly good post but IMHO a waste of moderation points unless you're a misanthrope looking to make a statement.
The Hamburg patent lawyers Hauck, Graalfs, Wehnert have claimed the word "Linux" at the German patent office. This was acknowledged today by an employee of the 'Sozietat' upon a request from C'T. The German 'Markenblatt' (Listing of brand names) also lists the trademark. In edition number 36, published on 9.9.1999 (page 9919), Linux is listed under the document reference 399 36 517,6 in the category software.
Which aims trademark owner Roy Boldt has with the registration is unclear. The managing director of a Hamburg System House and the management consultation operation ChannelOne was unreachable by telephone today despite several attempts. Whether it concerns a new case of brand name snatching or perhaps an unselfish act, such as the one from an Austrian Linux trademark owner, remains unsure for the time being.
However Boldt cannot be sure of the name "Linux" just yet. According to US laws the trademarks have been property of Linux father Linus Torvalds since 1997. However, Torvalds had to take the matter to court to claim the rights for himself.
For now, the outcome of a comparable law case in Germany would be uncertain. According to information from the German patent office, trademark law is confined to the respective state borders. How things proceed in this country remains to be seen in the next weeks. On 9.12.99 the period for objections to the protection of the word "Linux" ends. Until then, everyone can make claim for a "relative obstacle to this word protection". The patent office is already prepared for such a case. The form designated "W7202" and meant for possible contenders has already been given a place on the Internet.
Disclaimer: I'm no lawyer, so I apologise for possible flaws in the technical terms.
It's a sad thing that not all humans can succeed and excel in ways that inspire us. For every Linus, there are a thousand bottom feeders looking to get an easy ride. I'm afraid Linus will eventually be forced to assume active ownership of the name.. until this matter is cleared once and for all in all territories. I hope all the bullshit won't end up distracting him too much!
The article is very tentative, the guy hasn't even passed on the idea to his boss let alone received positive feedback on it. Frankly I have a feeling this idea is going to strand somewhere in the higher echelons of GM.
It would be a shame. Linux itself is surely up to the task, even if the support structure has yet to be tested. By thinking this over thoroughly now and doing it properly, in the long run this can save tons of money. You will need to invest massively in training your own people and you will need to secure commitment from the support company that they will be up to the task. There are bound to be a great many non technical users among 7500 car dealerships, you can bet Linuxcare or whichever support they'll get is going to have to hire a lot of people to be able to deal with a customer like that.
It's going to cost a lot of money to do this properly, but not having to pay for 7500 dealerships worth of Win 2000 licenses gives you some spare change to start out with. Of course switching to Linux is a little harder than to another Windows, initially, but eventually the whole thing will be in place and then you start to win. No more paying an OS upgrade license for every employee every 3 years, instead, indefinite upgrades for nothing but the cost of the work of your own IT dept. And then all the other benefits like having the source, reliability, security, etc.
This might be a chance to get Linux some competitive SPEC scores. I was somewhat dismayed to see EGCS being beaten by up to 30% by Visual C and Intel's compiler.
Couldn't agree more, and I would like to point out that I didn't post to question Bruce Schneier's authority, only to point out that the comments themselves were not all that informative. I mentioned credentials because I didn't know him and I figured his word must carry some weight if they're putting him on the front page in the first place. As a follower of the threads here on Slashdot about the second key issue I had seen the same type of estimates and guesses in them like in Bruce's comments, mainly about human character ('noone would be that stupid'), but not any real new data. And some of the questions he poses had already been answered in the Microsoft press response. I figured most people agree the whole thing is a non issue by now, which is why the word 'redundant' came up in my mind.
Maybe it would be an interesting addition if we could indeed rate the original articles themselves, just like we can rate comments and moderation. Although often written by professional journalists and scientists, they're still just as subject to quality variations as the comments. I've seen unsatisfying articles about interesting subjects. Anything for making reading more efficient, no? It might be a chance to promote particularly well written articles about the subjects that typically get a little less feedback than others (non-Linux advocacy like stuff, for instance;))
I would've at least considered tagging this with 'redundant'. The comments do not seem to contain any new evidence that we've not been able to distill from earlier discussion and the Microsoft press release, and the author's opinions aren't accompanied by any proof. I don't know the author's credentials, but you'll find as much speculation in any longer reply to a typical Slashdot article. Maybe as next step we'll get links on the main page to particularly interesting slashdot comments..
It sucks to be stuck at -8 man, feel your pain and all but I don't really want to see my old karma fade.. not positive karma anyway. We could make this into a fun game, let's have that highscore list for the most karmic slashdotters and really give the ACs something to bitch at!
On my PC I had to resort to Internet Explorer 5 to be able to click a parent link and then use the back button to come back to the same 10 questions, with Netscape Communicator 4.51 I'd get a new set every time. I am using Windows NT *duck*. I was waiting around for others to report this, but I haven't seen mention in any of the discussions about M2 so.. anyone else?
Hi, I have tried two days of meta moderating now and I came up with a couple of observations and questions about the process.
First of all, I must admit that I hit the back button and rehit the meta moderate link a couple of times until I got a batch of moderations I felt comfortable with. There were always one or two questions I didn't feel sure about, and I feel that leaving them unrated is just a third choice indicating neutrality. Like when you feel a moderation isn't really unfair, but perhaps just unnecessary. Maybe I gave the whole thing too much thought in general, I looked at the parent link 7 out of 10 times or so.
I proceeded carefully, I just didn't want to ruin my chance at getting normal moderator status. In a way, the whole meta moderation worries me a bit.. it seems, you can lose eligibility to moderate if you do badly, but you don't win anything noticeable for doing well. Or do you? The way I see it, now, it seems best to do it just once and try to do it best you can.
At times I wasn't sure about distinctions between several positive or several negative moderations. Unfortunately I can't go back to the moderation page to get the link for an example because I've already done a meta moderation today. But I'll try to describe it.
For instance the question would be "is this +1 for 'insightful' a good moderation" and although the article moderated on provided an anecdote that I would certainly have qualified as 'interesting' or maybe 'informative', it was not an article that provided a good overview of or new insight into the larger topic, i.e. what I would call an 'insightful' article. It was just a description of a real life example implementation of something that was being discussed.
I did agree with the positive moderation in general, and I might have rewarded the article with moderation myself if I'd had points, but I would not have put it in the category 'insightful'. For that reason I should've judged the moderation 'unfair', but I agreed with the general sentiment and didn't want to be overly critical so I left them unrated.
Am I taking things too seriously? Maybe I'm just not a good meta moderator. I don't find it to be an easy thing to do. Often I'm not satisfied with just clicking the buttons and I want to add a commentary of my thoughts on the moderation. But that's probably taking the moderation issue too far, it's really more interesting to just discuss a real article instead.
As others have pointed out, the differences between Java and Linux are so large that a comparison of the succes of these two technologies is essentially useless. If you need to compare the impact of Linux to something roughly comparable, OS/2 would have been a far more logical candidate, and the gist of the article might have ended up much the same.
But Linux has characteristics that lift it into a category of its own. The most important one (IMHO) is that it started as a low key project and that it had a chance to surprise people in a positive way. By the time that the name Linux started to become widely known, thousands of people were already using it seriously for all sorts of purposes, and because it's essentially a reimplementation of Unix, there were a lot of experienced developers for it from day 0.
Java on the other hand was positioned as the second coming that is going to fix all your problems with portability and reusability and sex, and in retrospect how could it have done anything but fail to deliver on those promises? I'm not claiming that it is dead, mind you, but so far it definitely has not become what is was once made out to be.
But now I have customers asking me 'Do you really think this Linux thing is going to make it?' and by make it they mean 'beat Windows'. I simply respond that Linux doesn't need to beat Windows, that it can live in perfect harmony in a Windows network, that it has nothing left to prove for the purposes these customers are looking for, that I've been doing useful work with it for years and that for them to have a reliable and inexpensive server it doesn't make the slightest difference whether or not common people will decide to use it on their desktop as well. Sure, the current Linux 'hype' makes this an easier sell, but essentially the difference is that Linux is not just a promise, it's a working, proven technology.
I mean, Alpha is rather sweet and all, but I wanna run a few games in my spare time and I'm not sure if that fx32 thing is gonna be speedy enough at 1.6 ghz to run MS Solitaire 2000.. but maybe a K7.
Much as I'd hate to add to the negativity on Slashdot, with topics like Star Trek a regular recurring feature, I feel forced. I think I'll never understand what people see in this cheap looking soap in space. Is it the complete lack of human traits like fallibility or greed in the completely two-dimensional hero characters? Is is that the holodeck makes anything goes as far as plot goes not just a possibility but that they actually do it? Or perhaps simply that even the most bizarre backward alien species they'll find in any quadrant 60 million light years from earth looks like a human with rubber acne on his face? I'm sorry, I'm really not aiming to mock Trekkies (my girlfriend is one), I just really don't understand what they see that I don't.
There's nothing better than doing exactly what you like to do and then getting recognition and finally, paid. Congratulations Brian for his excellent work on Mesa and for turning it into his own job.
As the guy before me said, it is possible to use flip chip design in a PPGA package. What I'm wondering about is if these new Celerons will indeed fit into any regular socket 370 board. The article seems to suggest they will but doesn't give details. There are socket 370 boards with the 440BX, ZX-100 or 810 chipsets that could support 100 Mhz Celerons just fine, but up till now socket 370 was strictly a 66 Mhz platform.
I'll be interested to see if the new Celerons can be used in older boards. Intel isn't always considerate when it comes to backward compatibility, and they gotta sell new chipsets too.. although credit where credit is due, with the Celeron itself they came up with a fine upgrade path for old LX Pentium II boards. Anyhow, I'm hopeful that I'll eventually be able to replace the overclocked 550 Mhz Celerons on my dual slot 1 BX board, something like an 800 Mhz Celeron II might provide a good boost. I've recently learned here that I should use the Fraunhofer encoder so I'm once again waiting for my PC.
I like X but I like VNC a lot better
on
Is X The Future?
·
· Score: 1
Okay so actually I do run X, but only over VNC. If the connection fails (modem hangs up, isdn brainfart, cable modem block sync failure, whatever) I can just reconnect and all my programs will still be running. That for me makes all the difference between a usable system and an unusable one. I mean, it takes long enough for my desktop to load over a slow link (even with LBX), having to restart all my programs too is just too much. VNC fixes that fine and as a nice bonus it can also share Windows desktops. Clients are available for Unices, Windows, Mac and Java, so given half a web browser there's really no place you can't use it from. And it's just a snap to set up, compared to X' security, and probably more secure at that, at least authentication is encrypted. It's relatively speedy too, using compression by default, and to top it off the source is available.
If you don't know it, here's the link to VNC> . I am completely in love this program. What does this have to do with X? Well, even though X may be a whole different beast from a design point of view (VNC just transfers images from the frame buffer, no remote graphics calls), VNC through its pervasiveness and ease of use is much better at showing just how useful networking computing really can be. It also highlights some of the biggest problems with X (or at least some of mine).
I'm just tired.. Amiga is a brand that just refuses to go away. It died once already, I don't see what is left of it worth recovering.. Once Amiga stood for a computing architecture with an at the time visionary foresight of graphics and sound coprocessing. Now what is left? They have no clear hardware direction and no operating system. It's always the same, every once in a while some new company like PIOS or Gateway or QNX pops up and says hey we're gonna make this radical new Amiga and it never goes anywhere. Let it die..
Well for a while there I was hoping they were really building something new and revolutionary up there at Transmeta, but I guess if perpetual loser Amiga is gonna be their customer they may as well call it a day now.
Michiel
Any chance of improvement on these NT SMP scores?
on
Linux Q3Test 1.07
·
· Score: 1
Some hardware sites have been releasing scores for Q3Test SMP on NT lately, such as Tresh's FiringSquad. The video card and driver seem to rapidly become the major speed bottleneck for Q3 at resolutions above 640 x 480. The second CPU doesn't come into play properly except at low detail/textures. With video card drivers and OpenGL libraries for Linux at a relatively tender stage of development and no threads in the kernel, I'm curious if you expect more, the same or less of a speed improvement in a Q3 SMP Linux.
I was running some timedemos myself on 1.07 earlier to gauge the effect of SMP. The results so far are somewhat underwhelming. I didn't take Linux results because I've only set that up to run with my old Voodoo and it has no SMP anyway. I expressly did also try a slower PCI video card to magnify the bottleneck effect.
Scores 1, 2 and 3 were timed on a Diamond Viper 330 PCI with Nvidia's 128ZX chipset and 3.37 reference drivers. Scores 4 and 5 are a Viper 550 with Nvidia TNT and 2.08 ref. drivers. Score 1 is Win98, score 2 and 4 are NT 4.0 Server SP5 with R_SMP 0, score 3 and 5 with R_SMP 1.
Epox KP6-BS / 2x550 Mhz Celeron(366) 128 MB PC100 / 3.2 gig DMA IBM HD SB32AWE / NE2000 ISA NCR875UW SCSI PCI
I usually play at NORMAL graphics setting and with only a speed improvement of around 0.6 to 1.6 frames per second depending on video card, this particular second CPU is going back to cracking RC5DES...
Hey, I wholeheartedly agree that a dual Celeron setup is a steal! I've had one going for about a week, sporting 2 Celeron 366s running at 550 Mhz (at default voltage, these are both week 15 SL35S chips, must've been a good batch) and boy it is fast (and rock stable, so far)!
However, instead of the BP6 I opted for the Epox KP6-BS with MSI 6905 rev. 1.1 slotkets. I just wouldn't feel comfortable being stuck on socket 370. With this setup I can just swap in 1 or 2 PIII-550s by the time they become cheap and get some of that SSE-loving. On the other hand, there are rumours of s370 versions of PIII coming, who knows Intel's real roadmap anyway? Everyone take their chances...
I agree.. I didn't know who Tom Christiansen is or what he did before I read all of these agitated comments, but to be honest when I first read the interview I had Coke coming back through my nose..
He worked at 3dfx before. Maybe he's going back.. Another wild guess... Nvidia. He has praised the quality of their driver writers several times in the past, and they're about as committed towards OpenGL as anyone in the industry.
Slashdot Mirror
I forgot to mention the most important thing.. both Mesa and VNC are distributed under the GPL. These are two great gifts to us all, so please mail award-nominations@gnu.org and put in your vote like I did! :)
My nominations are:
Brian Paul for the excellent crossplatform OpenGL compatible graphics library MESA. It provides a real alternative to commercial OpenGL and gives Linux a competitive 3D language.
The Olivetti Research Laboratory (now at AT&T UK) for a program I use every day - VNC. This program is used for remote control much like PC Anywhere or even X-Windows and it runs on Unix and Windows. Clients for Unix, Win, Mac and Java.
The post was only redundant for those who feel there is no place for humour. Who cares if some of them are obviously mainly meant as 'first post' replacement when the one liner is funny. Okay this was not a particularly good post but IMHO a waste of moderation points unless you're a misanthrope looking to make a statement.
"Linux" soon no longer free?
The Hamburg patent lawyers Hauck, Graalfs, Wehnert have claimed the word "Linux" at the German patent office. This was acknowledged today by an employee of the 'Sozietat' upon a request from C'T. The German 'Markenblatt' (Listing of brand names) also lists the trademark. In edition number 36, published on 9.9.1999 (page 9919), Linux is listed under the document reference 399 36 517,6 in the category software.
Which aims trademark owner Roy Boldt has with the registration is unclear. The managing director of a Hamburg System House and the management consultation operation ChannelOne was unreachable by telephone today despite several attempts. Whether it concerns a new case of brand name snatching or perhaps an unselfish act, such as the one from an Austrian Linux trademark owner, remains unsure for the time being.
However Boldt cannot be sure of the name "Linux" just yet. According to US laws the trademarks have been property of Linux father Linus Torvalds since 1997. However, Torvalds had to take the matter to court to claim the rights for himself.
For now, the outcome of a comparable law case in Germany would be uncertain. According to information from the German patent office, trademark law is confined to the respective state borders. How things proceed in this country remains to be seen in the next weeks. On 9.12.99 the period for objections to the protection of the word "Linux" ends. Until then, everyone can make claim for a "relative obstacle to this word protection". The patent office is already prepared for such a case. The form designated "W7202" and meant for possible contenders has already been given a place on the Internet.
Disclaimer: I'm no lawyer, so I apologise for possible flaws in the technical terms.
Michiel
It's a sad thing that not all humans can succeed and excel in ways that inspire us. For every Linus, there are a thousand bottom feeders looking to get an easy ride. I'm afraid Linus will eventually be forced to assume active ownership of the name.. until this matter is cleared once and for all in all territories. I hope all the bullshit won't end up distracting him too much!
The article is very tentative, the guy hasn't even passed on the idea to his boss let alone received positive feedback on it. Frankly I have a feeling this idea is going to strand somewhere in the higher echelons of GM.
It would be a shame. Linux itself is surely up to the task, even if the support structure has yet to be tested. By thinking this over thoroughly now and doing it properly, in the long run this can save tons of money. You will need to invest massively in training your own people and you will need to secure commitment from the support company that they will be up to the task. There are bound to be a great many non technical users among 7500 car dealerships, you can bet Linuxcare or whichever support they'll get is going to have to hire a lot of people to be able to deal with a customer like that.
It's going to cost a lot of money to do this properly, but not having to pay for 7500 dealerships worth of Win 2000 licenses gives you some spare change to start out with. Of course switching to Linux is a little harder than to another Windows, initially, but eventually the whole thing will be in place and then you start to win. No more paying an OS upgrade license for every employee every 3 years, instead, indefinite upgrades for nothing but the cost of the work of your own IT dept. And then all the other benefits like having the source, reliability, security, etc.
This might be a chance to get Linux some competitive SPEC scores. I was somewhat dismayed to see EGCS being beaten by up to 30% by Visual C and Intel's compiler.
Couldn't agree more, and I would like to point out that I didn't post to question Bruce Schneier's authority, only to point out that the comments themselves were not all that informative. I mentioned credentials because I didn't know him and I figured his word must carry some weight if they're putting him on the front page in the first place. As a follower of the threads here on Slashdot about the second key issue I had seen the same type of estimates and guesses in them like in Bruce's comments, mainly about human character ('noone would be that stupid'), but not any real new data. And some of the questions he poses had already been answered in the Microsoft press response. I figured most people agree the whole thing is a non issue by now, which is why the word 'redundant' came up in my mind.
;))
Maybe it would be an interesting addition if we could indeed rate the original articles themselves, just like we can rate comments and moderation. Although often written by professional journalists and scientists, they're still just as subject to quality variations as the comments. I've seen unsatisfying articles about interesting subjects. Anything for making reading more efficient, no? It might be a chance to promote particularly well written articles about the subjects that typically get a little less feedback than others (non-Linux advocacy like stuff, for instance
I would've at least considered tagging this with 'redundant'. The comments do not seem to contain any new evidence that we've not been able to distill from earlier discussion and the Microsoft press release, and the author's opinions aren't accompanied by any proof. I don't know the author's credentials, but you'll find as much speculation in any longer reply to a typical Slashdot article. Maybe as next step we'll get links on the main page to particularly interesting slashdot comments..
It sucks to be stuck at -8 man, feel your pain and all but I don't really want to see my old karma fade.. not positive karma anyway. We could make this into a fun game, let's have that highscore list for the most karmic slashdotters and really give the ACs something to bitch at!
On my PC I had to resort to Internet Explorer 5 to be able to click a parent link and then use the back button to come back to the same 10 questions, with Netscape Communicator 4.51 I'd get a new set every time. I am using Windows NT *duck*. I was waiting around for others to report this, but I haven't seen mention in any of the discussions about M2 so.. anyone else?
Flo
Hi,
I have tried two days of meta moderating now and I came up with a couple of observations and questions about the process.
First of all, I must admit that I hit the back button and rehit the meta moderate link a couple of times until I got a batch of moderations I felt comfortable with. There were always one or two questions I didn't feel sure about, and I feel that leaving them unrated is just a third choice indicating neutrality. Like when you feel a moderation isn't really unfair, but perhaps just unnecessary. Maybe I gave the whole thing too much thought in general, I looked at the parent link 7 out of 10 times or so.
I proceeded carefully, I just didn't want to ruin my chance at getting normal moderator status. In a way, the whole meta moderation worries me a bit.. it seems, you can lose eligibility to moderate if you do badly, but you don't win anything noticeable for doing well. Or do you? The way I see it, now, it seems best to do it just once and try to do it best you can.
At times I wasn't sure about distinctions between several positive or several negative moderations. Unfortunately I can't go back to the moderation page to get the link for an example because I've already done a meta moderation today. But I'll try to describe it.
For instance the question would be "is this +1 for 'insightful' a good moderation" and although the article moderated on provided an anecdote that I would certainly have qualified as 'interesting' or maybe 'informative', it was not an article that provided a good overview of or new insight into the larger topic, i.e. what I would call an 'insightful' article. It was just a description of a real life example implementation of something that was being discussed.
I did agree with the positive moderation in general, and I might have rewarded the article with moderation myself if I'd had points, but I would not have put it in the category 'insightful'. For that reason I should've judged the moderation 'unfair', but I agreed with the general sentiment and didn't want to be overly critical so I left them unrated.
Am I taking things too seriously? Maybe I'm just not a good meta moderator. I don't find it to be an easy thing to do. Often I'm not satisfied with just clicking the buttons and I want to add a commentary of my thoughts on the moderation. But that's probably taking the moderation issue too far, it's really more interesting to just discuss a real article instead.
Flo
As others have pointed out, the differences between Java and Linux are so large that a comparison of the succes of these two technologies is essentially useless. If you need to compare the impact of Linux to something roughly comparable, OS/2 would have been a far more logical candidate, and the gist of the article might have ended up much the same.
But Linux has characteristics that lift it into a category of its own. The most important one (IMHO) is that it started as a low key project and that it had a chance to surprise people in a positive way. By the time that the name Linux started to become widely known, thousands of people were already using it seriously for all sorts of purposes, and because it's essentially a reimplementation of Unix, there were a lot of experienced developers for it from day 0.
Java on the other hand was positioned as the second coming that is going to fix all your problems with portability and reusability and sex, and in retrospect how could it have done anything but fail to deliver on those promises? I'm not claiming that it is dead, mind you, but so far it definitely has not become what is was once made out to be.
But now I have customers asking me 'Do you really think this Linux thing is going to make it?' and by make it they mean 'beat Windows'. I simply respond that Linux doesn't need to beat Windows, that it can live in perfect harmony in a Windows network, that it has nothing left to prove for the purposes these customers are looking for, that I've been doing useful work with it for years and that for them to have a reliable and inexpensive server it doesn't make the slightest difference whether or not common people will decide to use it on their desktop as well. Sure, the current Linux 'hype' makes this an easier sell, but essentially the difference is that Linux is not just a promise, it's a working, proven technology.
I mean, Alpha is rather sweet and all, but I wanna run a few games in my spare time and I'm not sure if that fx32 thing is gonna be speedy enough at 1.6 ghz to run MS Solitaire 2000.. but maybe a K7.
Uhm anyone seen my medicine
Much as I'd hate to add to the negativity on Slashdot, with topics like Star Trek a regular recurring feature, I feel forced. I think I'll never understand what people see in this cheap looking soap in space. Is it the complete lack of human traits like fallibility or greed in the completely two-dimensional hero characters? Is is that the holodeck makes anything goes as far as plot goes not just a possibility but that they actually do it? Or perhaps simply that even the most bizarre backward alien species they'll find in any quadrant 60 million light years from earth looks like a human with rubber acne on his face? I'm sorry, I'm really not aiming to mock Trekkies (my girlfriend is one), I just really don't understand what they see that I don't.
There's nothing better than doing exactly what you like to do and then getting recognition and finally, paid. Congratulations Brian for his excellent work on Mesa and for turning it into his own job.
My PC would've helped, I guess it has to go on doing boring rc5-64 instead..
As the guy before me said, it is possible to use flip chip design in a PPGA package. What I'm wondering about is if these new Celerons will indeed fit into any regular socket 370 board. The article seems to suggest they will but doesn't give details. There are socket 370 boards with the 440BX, ZX-100 or 810 chipsets that could support 100 Mhz Celerons just fine, but up till now socket 370 was strictly a 66 Mhz platform.
I'll be interested to see if the new Celerons can be used in older boards. Intel isn't always considerate when it comes to backward compatibility, and they gotta sell new chipsets too.. although credit where credit is due, with the Celeron itself they came up with a fine upgrade path for old LX Pentium II boards. Anyhow, I'm hopeful that I'll eventually be able to replace the overclocked 550 Mhz Celerons on my dual slot 1 BX board, something like an 800 Mhz Celeron II might provide a good boost. I've recently learned here that I should use the Fraunhofer encoder so I'm once again waiting for my PC.
Okay so actually I do run X, but only over VNC. If the connection fails (modem hangs up, isdn brainfart, cable modem block sync failure, whatever) I can just reconnect and all my programs will still be running. That for me makes all the difference between a usable system and an unusable one. I mean, it takes long enough for my desktop to load over a slow link (even with LBX), having to restart all my programs too is just too much. VNC fixes that fine and as a nice bonus it can also share Windows desktops. Clients are available for Unices, Windows, Mac and Java, so given half a web browser there's really no place you can't use it from. And it's just a snap to set up, compared to X' security, and probably more secure at that, at least authentication is encrypted. It's relatively speedy too, using compression by default, and to top it off the source is available.
If you don't know it, here's the link to VNC> . I am completely in love this program. What does this have to do with X? Well, even though X may be a whole different beast from a design point of view (VNC just transfers images from the frame buffer, no remote graphics calls), VNC through its pervasiveness and ease of use is much better at showing just how useful networking computing really can be. It also highlights some of the biggest problems with X (or at least some of mine).
I'm just tired.. Amiga is a brand that just refuses to go away. It died once already, I don't see what is left of it worth recovering.. Once Amiga stood for a computing architecture with an at the time visionary foresight of graphics and sound coprocessing. Now what is left? They have no clear hardware direction and no operating system. It's always the same, every once in a while some new company like PIOS or Gateway or QNX pops up and says hey we're gonna make this radical new Amiga and it never goes anywhere. Let it die..
Michiel
Well for a while there I was hoping they were really building something new and revolutionary up there at Transmeta, but I guess if perpetual loser Amiga is gonna be their customer they may as well call it a day now.
Michiel
Some hardware sites have been releasing scores for Q3Test SMP on NT lately, such as Tresh's FiringSquad. The video card and driver seem to rapidly become the major speed bottleneck for Q3 at resolutions above 640 x 480. The second CPU doesn't come into play properly except at low detail/textures. With video card drivers and OpenGL libraries for Linux at a relatively tender stage of development and no threads in the kernel, I'm curious if you expect more, the same or less of a speed improvement in a Q3 SMP Linux.
I was running some timedemos myself on 1.07 earlier to gauge the effect of SMP. The results so far are somewhat underwhelming. I didn't take Linux results because I've only set that up to run with my old Voodoo and it has no SMP anyway. I expressly did also try a slower PCI video card to magnify the bottleneck effect.
Scores 1, 2 and 3 were timed on a Diamond Viper 330 PCI with Nvidia's 128ZX chipset and 3.37 reference drivers. Scores 4 and 5 are a Viper 550 with Nvidia TNT and 2.08 ref. drivers. Score 1 is Win98, score 2 and 4 are NT 4.0 Server SP5 with R_SMP 0, score 3 and 5 with R_SMP 1.
]timedemo 1
]demo q3testdemo1.dm3
W98, NT4, SMP, NT4, SMP
43.7 , 48.0 , 51.8 , 73.3 , 92.0 , FASTEST setting
33.9 , 34.3 , 36.7 , 65.5 , 76.5 , FAST
21.8 , 21.2 , 21.8 , 48.5 , 50.1 , NORMAL
14.7 , 14.2 , 14.2 , 20.3 , 20.3 , HIGH QUALITY
Epox KP6-BS / 2x550 Mhz Celeron(366)
128 MB PC100 / 3.2 gig DMA IBM HD
SB32AWE / NE2000 ISA
NCR875UW SCSI PCI
I usually play at NORMAL graphics setting and with only a speed improvement of around 0.6 to 1.6 frames per second depending on video card, this particular second CPU is going back to cracking RC5DES...
Michiel
Hey,
I wholeheartedly agree that a dual Celeron setup is a steal! I've had one going for about a week, sporting 2 Celeron 366s running at 550 Mhz (at default voltage, these are both week 15 SL35S chips, must've been a good batch) and boy it is fast (and rock stable, so far)!
However, instead of the BP6 I opted for the Epox KP6-BS with MSI 6905 rev. 1.1 slotkets. I just wouldn't feel comfortable being stuck on socket 370. With this setup I can just swap in 1 or 2 PIII-550s by the time they become cheap and get some of that SSE-loving. On the other hand, there are rumours of s370 versions of PIII coming, who knows Intel's real roadmap anyway? Everyone take their chances...
Cheers,
Michiel
I agree.. I didn't know who Tom Christiansen is or what he did before I read all of these agitated comments, but to be honest when I first read the interview I had Coke coming back through my nose..
Michiel
He worked at 3dfx before. Maybe he's going back..
Another wild guess... Nvidia. He has praised the quality of their driver writers several times in the past, and they're about as committed towards OpenGL as anyone in the industry.