if you hate drive failures (20 Deathstar failures in 3 years here!) stop buying junk first then move up to a RAID
Oh, wow, the IBM Deskstar 75GXP drives have a high failure rate?
Man, screw IDE then. Because all IDE drives must be the same exact quality as those Deskstar drives. I mean, at the exact same time WD, Maxtor, and every other vendor were having massive failure rates too, right?
And, of course, we all know that no manufacturer has ever had a bad batch of SCSI drives, right? Uh huh.
Disks fail. End of story. If you want to protect yourself, have backups and/or drive redundancy. If you're particularly worried about it, buy disks from different batches or (better) different manufacturers.
Yeah, I'm sure SCSI drives have a marginally lower failure rate over time than IDE does. But it's not worth the price premium. If you need one of the other advantages of SCSI -- like speed -- then that's fine, but I seriously doubt you do for home file server usage. Spending the extra money on SCSI over IDE for reliability just shows that you're gullible.
Any vendor who tries to transistion these users risks their taking the plunge to an already mature product. These users feel in their bones that ANY transition will break things. Force one on them and they may just decide to get the pain over with; preferably with a product that is developmentally stable and has a blue chip behind it.
Yes, but you're presuming that the vendor won't be one with a POS background. I'd contend that the most likely purchaser for the assets isn't a RedHat or Novell, but someone who is already in the POS game.
Speaking of which, do you have any idea how big POS is for IBM?
They're hardly the only suitor, but they're probably the best -- IBM could easily segment out SCO's customers and transition them appropriately. POS would go to IBM's POS solutions, servers would go to AIX or Linux, and stand-alone applications would go to Linux (or maybe AIX, but I pity anyone who does that... yeah, we use AIX here, to my everlasting displeasure).
I responded that I doubted whoever bought the IP would continue to offer UnixWare but would rather buy it to be able to controll their own Unix product entirely and would drop UnixWare. They didn't seem too pleased with that assesment.
Probably because your assesment showed a lack of knowledge about the size of UnixWare's deployment.
UnixWare (and OpenServer) licensing represents >$40M of revenue. You think anyone who buys it is just going to kiss that goodbye? Hell no. Anyone with a clue will buy it and then promptly offer a transition program over a course of 2-5 years for existing customers.
Yeah, in a decade UnixWare may only be running on a few systems without support (and perhaps a lot of systems still with support -- if all you have to do is employ a half dozen employees for tech support and patches, and you have customer willing to pay you $1M/year for that, hey... a 50%+ profit margin isn't bad), but it's not like they're going to vanish overnight. Nor will product support. There will be a transitional phase, just like there is for any product where the vendor didn't simply go Chapter 7/11 and nobody bought the remains.
Realistically we know that there is no value to the SCO source. UnixWare and OpenServer are both archaic by modern standards, not to mention buggy. So why would anyone buy the products except to get the existing user base? And if you get the user base, what freaking good does it do you to then tell them to bend over and enjoy the ride?
I can think of few other reasons to justify my spending time to reinstall my browser.
Well, how's about Blocking Flash and fewer security worries?
There's tons of other reasons, of course, but those are what hooked me. Yeah, I still use IE on occasion -- mostly Windows Update and for the exceptionally few pages that simply don't render properly (less than 1% of where I surf... YMMV), but at least there's an extension to help with that as well.
As for "reinstalling your browser" -- that makes no sense. Yes, you have to download Firefox. It's down to 4.6MB though and that's pretty trivial to anyone except dialup users. And it's a Windows installer, so it takes 1 minute to actually install. The time saved afterwards, in my experience, is immeasurable.
There's also a new extension that you can install to make the old extensions visible, but the old extensions are still not removable after installation, unlike the new extensions.
That's rather exceedingly silly.
I'm glad they've upgraded the extension support and handling, and since this is still in beta breaking things between revisions is acceptable. But the way they're handling it is piss poor.
I agree with much of the bugzilla entry comments -- namely that Firefox should either reject extensions that haven't been rewritten, or issue a warning about them during installation, or just freaking show them in the extension manager. No, I haven't looked at the code in question, so maybe things have changed so dramatically that nothing but the first would be viable. But this is ridiculous... particularly since there's pretty much no chance that all the extensions are going to be rewritten by the time 1.0 comes out.
Another possible solution is to simply purge all non-0.9 compatible extensions from whitelisted sites before the 1.0 release. There are certainly downsides to this, but it's still better than what we have right now.
But what does MS have to fear from FireFox anyway? Is Mozilla.org going to cut into MS's lucrative browser sales division? Folks might quit paying hundreds of dollars for IE, all of a sudden?
Sigh.
Yeah, that's it exactly. Wow! You nailed that one.
It all has to do with lock-in. If you use IE, if you use.NET, if you use ActiveX, if you use MSHTML, if you design sites toward IE instead of toward industry standards then how are you going to move away from MS products -- be it the browser or the entire OS -- if you have to scrap everything and reimplement it?
Answer -- you're not. You're going to stick with MS. And you'll continue using MS products, and probably purchase more of them because you already have the in-house knowledge to deal with their pecularities. Not to mention the minor bit that if you want to use the more advanced features you have no choice -- it requires using IIS, which requires using MS SQL Server, both of which require using Windows (and, odds are, the latest and greatest flavor thereof).
Oh sure, you could avoid all of that stuff (ActiveX, MSHTML, etc.) -- but then you may find that your problem has no realistic solution. While we may bitch and rail against MS here, the reality is that they do have some offerings that do have advantages over the rest of the industry. Yes, the big disadvantage is that you get stuck with MS lock-in, but management doesn't always see that as a bad thing.
I'm witnessing it where I work right now. Our (relatively new) CIO has steadily moved us away from Unix-oriented solutions to Windows-oriented ones. I'm pretty much the last Unix coder at this point. Yes, to some extent this was necessary -- all of our customers have long since moved to Windows desktops, and our main products were still rooted in green-screen terminal origins, but he's buying the MS product line hook, line, and sinker. In a year we're going to be committed to MS whether we like it or not -- because even if he's booted and we decide that we want to move back to open standards we won't be able to do so for years . Rolling out an entirely different application interface so soon would kill our customer base, not to mention ditch somewhere close to 20 man-years of development (and related expenses). When you're a small company (we're ~50 employees) you can't afford to do that.
That said, the MS solutions have let us do things that we couldn't do with any other solution. And I say this confidently because one of the smartest guys I know was involved in picking the solutions. He's a Linux and C++ geek as well, but none of the other options evaluated (Java in any way, shape, or form, DHTML, etc) was going to provide the speed we needed -- both in development time and in end user experience. Sure, there have been hickups going down the MS path too, but we're still expecting to go from nothing to released products in just over 6 months, with minimal changes to the backend (which is still running on Unix... for now).
All of which means we might just stay in business... because we've had a hell of a time selling the old stuff to new customers, and have had our old customers slowly leave for competitors that don't require so much training or maintainence (if your entire shop is Windows except for one Unix server, that Unix server is very high maintainence).
It was Quake, not Q2, as you've already learned. It did, however, include the Q2 network code and various other bits and pieces, as well as a ton of stuff that Valve themselves created.
I distinctly remembering picking up HL when it came out and being rather royally pissed at the crappy network code. It still had bugs in it that had been fixed in the Q2 engine months prior (one thing I recall is elevators being jumpy). I must've been one of the few people who sent HL back to Sierra (Valve's distributor at the time) for a refund.
I don't neccesarily think it would have to be the valve management that got arrested. The supposed code in question was availible at several different locations on the internet and I even downloaded a copy (for novalty purposes). Distributing copy writen works of art is still ileagle and carries federal penalties.
The theory the loonies were advocating was that there was no breakin and no "illegal acquisition" of the code, but that Valve leaked it themselves (which is so absurd at so many levels).
In that case, you can bet that the FBI would be jumping down their throats once the truth came out. And it'd be questionable if it would be copyright infringement -- at least for the Valve-sourced code (there were copies of non-Valve code as well, including the Havok physics engine) -- since they would've been the ones to leak it in the first place. Failure to properly defend your copyright can lead to it being ruled invalid, and leaking the code would certainly fall under that umbrella. Again, the idea that Valve leaked the source itself is patently absurd, and anyone who suggests it should be derided until they learn something about the real world.
Also it might have been done as a publicity stunt to make a "presence" known and implant an image that those wanting to pirate the final product will be dealt with. Scary but possible.
If it was a publicity stunt then it's a poor one. No word from the FBI, no press conference, etc. The feds are playing this one close to their chest -- they may not have arrested everyone they feel is involved yet (which may, as you and others suggest, include the original crackers).
As for scary -- I don't see why it's scary. This stuff is illegal, whether it's the illicit code or the final product. Anyone who pirates knows that there's a chance -- however remote -- that they'll be caught and that there's not much of a chance in hell for them in court.
At the time I clicked there was also an article on Tom's Hardware. It managed to have less content than the GameSpot article.
Whole lot of nothing here... Valve says some people were arrested, the FBI is declining to say anything than that they arrested some people (the agent who was contacted was smart enough not to say any more than that... if the FBI wants to make a press splash on this then they will, but the desk agent in charge (or whatever their designation is) sure as hell can't make that decision).
I'm sure there will be the standard wild speculation, claims from various people that they know someone who was arrested, etc.
And, of course, the continuing claims from the looneys who say that there was no code theft and that the entire story was made up to hide the fact that the code just wasn't ready. I'm not disputing the second half of that -- the code wasn't, and Valve was stupid to say they were on target. But if they'd made the entire thing up, as the conspiracy theorists say, then the FBI would still have arrested people. Except that it'd be Gabe Newell and the rest of Valve management for filing a false report, lieing to a federal officer, and whatever else they could dredge up to charge them with.
You haven't had my In-Laws over trying to figure out how to watch the TV and then trying to figure out how to turn off the TV and the amplifier
No, but that's an entirely separate issue and isn't going to be solved by having a DirecTiVo or having a separate box and TiVo.
The solution is to get a good learning remote (I recommend the MX-500/600/700/800 series -- I have the 700 myself, and while I've been slack on programming it, it's the best solution I've used so far. And I've used a BUNCH of different learning remotes, including a Pronto).
To turn on my AV system you press On and it automatically turns on the TV and receiver, sets the receiver to VCR2 (TiVo), and gives you the remote setup for the TiVo. To turn it all off press Off twice (I'll probably make it once when I get around to it) and everything is turned off.
If your equipment doesn't support discrete codes for on/off, input selection, etc.... well... you're largely screwed. But that's a bigger issue.
what are the benefits of using firefox and thunderbird over using the normal mozilla?
The main reason I switched from Mozilla to FF/TB was because Mozilla components don't really close when you close them.
To be less obtuse -- once you start the Mozilla email client it will continue checking and retrieving email as long as any part of the Mozilla suite is open. Even after you close the email program. Since I generally leave a web browser running on my home PC this is a problem, since I can no longer use a webmail interface to check my home email -- it's all been sucked down to my PC. And having to close the browser just so the email client won't run even after I've closed it is utterly absurd.
Close Thunderbird and it's closed. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Now this was back with Mozilla 1.2... they may've fixed this in the meantime. But it was a showstopper for me at the time.
Plus Firebird loads faster and has a cleaner layout overall.
q[I would also add a "hidden" feature, better integration. If you have digital cable and TiVo you are going to have two set top boxes and more remotes, etc.]q
Er... by and large it's not that big of an issue. What do you ever need the set top box remote for? The TiVo does all of the channel changing, has its own OSD/Guide, etc. The remote for the other set top box can be stuck in a drawer somewhere.
Yes, the IR blasters suck, and there's the remote possibility of the set top box not being on when needed, but the former can be solved using a serial connection (supported on many Motorola digital cable boxes and most Sony or RCA DirecTV boxes), and the latter is a pretty damn rare problem.
The downside of DirecTiVo is that you lose HMO (viewing photos on your TiVo (including local weather and cinema listings if you use JavaHMO), MP3 playback, remote programming, and show sharing, and that if you decide to leave DirecTV you have a useless box.
Of course, DirecTiVos are cheaper. By a long shot once you include subscription costs (lifetime or monthly), so the useless box bit isn't such a big deal. The loss of HMO, however, is a larger issue. I have DirecTV and TiVo but will not go to DirecTiVo because of this. We use HMO features all the time, and there's simply no way to reasonably replace them.
Your quote comes from NDS, not from News Corp. NDS is a competitor to TiVo, so it's unsurprising that they would make such a statement. It also means that it has no relevance in reality.
The DirecTV/TiVo partnership extends until at least 2007. What happens after that is anybody's guess. But, yes, NDS could wind up being the solution after that time -- their largest shareholder is News Corp, the Sky+ boxes used by News Corp in the UK are based off NDS's XTV technology, and they're willing to license for less than TiVo (or so it appears at least; who knows what will happen by 2007 though).
I love TiVo (have two), but they've never managed to get their foot in the door when it comes to content distribution companies. DirecTV was the only one they succeeded with, and it's been their savior. If DirecTV dropped them, I question that TiVo would be able to continue independantly. The vast majority of their subscriber growth has been from DirecTV (which is good for DTV as well, since churn on DirecTiVo subscribers is 1/3 that of non-DirecTiVo subscribers)
I would be really interested if a more knowledge person replied and explained if I'm on the right track or pulling thoughts out of my ass.
Depends on your definition of a "low end" graphics card. Without saying what card/chipset you bought, it's impossible to make a realistic judgement call.
If it's an ATI Radeon 9500 or better, or an Nvidia FX-anything then you're somewhat ok. They have virtually all the features of the latest and greatest cards, but are slower. The slower bit will bite you sooner or later though, and the lower down the card the quicker that will be. Sure, your card may be able to put out 200+ fps in a Q3 engine game, or ~100 fps in UT2k4, but it may get below 30 fps in Far Cry, HL2, or D3. Without ansiotropic filtering or antialiasing.
If you bought anything earlier than those cards (anything earlier from ATI and you can't possibly be "ok" with current games, but Nvidia's GeForce4 or MX lines is in this bracket) then you've, frankly, screwed up. Yes, those games will play almost all current games just fine, with all their graphical glory, and at reasonable frame rates. But the next generation of games (which has already started, with Far Cry being the biggest thus far, but HL2 and D3 are in the same boat. So is EQ2 and World of Warcraft) will not play well, if at all, on those cards. If they do play, they'll do so without a lot of the graphical and game features that are big -- you may have to turn off dynamic shadows in D3 for instance, and that's likely to ruin gameplay.
In general, you're correct -- there's no reason to buy the fastest card out there, and often no reason to even buy the latest generation of cards (a Radeon 9800 Pro or 9800XT is likely to last for a good long while, and the former is now under $200) unless you have a very specific need.
And, no, you won't be able to play newer games at 1600x1200 w/ 16x AF and 8x AA. Woop-de-do. Both AA and AF add relatively little to the games graphically anyway and show up more in screenshots than anything else. If you're playing a fast paced game (like UT2k4) then you may not be able to notice them at all. Yeah, I'll get flamed for that by some people, but I've tried to tell the difference, as have many friends, and unless you're sitting there and looking for defects (as opposed to actually playing the game) then it's a wash.
Re:Personally... (Video poker is not the issue!)
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Geeks and Poker?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Was that comment written in english???
Yes, but with a lot of poker terminology.
If you'd like to learn the terminology you can either read some poker sites (I dunno any, but I'm sure they're out there) or watch some WPT. They have two commentators and do a good job of explaining terminology -- either the commentators will explain the term they just used, or a little explanation box will pop up in the bottom right of the screen doing so.
Yeah, I've been watching a good bit of WPT... it's fairly mindless to watch, which is good when you're waiting for a 13 week old child to finish eating, fall asleep, etc.
I dunno about you, but I get the distinct impression that this thing isn't designed for hauling a boatload of kids to soccer practice.
Who said anything about a boatload?
I have a 3 month old daughter. How, exactly, am I supposed to get her anywhere if I had a single-seater car? An infant seat is required by law in most (all?) states and European countries, and a child seat once they grow out of that. Some states (I don't know about EU countries) are now requiring booster seats up to the age of 8 (or XX lbs, whichever comes first). Even if all you have is one kid then this kind of transport becomes utterly useless.
If you're submitting to the kernel, you should be *sure* there is nothing that can come back and bite you in the ass.
That's infeasible. In today's world with software patents, you expect every developer to do a patent search whenever they submit code? That's essentially what you're proposing you know. Requiring that everyone perform a $5k-50k search is going to cause a bit of a drop in kernel development I suspect.
In some cases I agree that the people shouldn't submit code -- particularly the intellectual property contract one (who owns the code on and off the clock). If you have an issue with that kind of contract, then strike the phrase before signing. Most companies won't care. Hell, if you're in a place with that contract alreaady, then talk to your management. Most of them will release you from that clause (mine has, at least verbally. If I was to ever want to excercise that right I'd have something a bit more substantial, if only email, prior to contributing). If they still won't, well, get your resume/CV prepared and start looking (no, don't be stupid and quit... just start looking for an alternative).
I'm all for the accountability, but, realistically, this is just a cover-your-ass move. It just means that if someone comes after OSDL in the future they may be able to disclaim legal liability.... straight onto the head of whoever did contribute the code.
Can we search that computer for kiddie porn? You have nothing to hide, right?
Uh. Yes, sure. Why not?
Ok. Hope you don't mind being without a computer for an indefinite period of time. Don't worry -- we'll get to it shortly. The guys down at the lab say they're only 3 months behind in data analysis at the moment.
Oh, and we'd like to check your tax records for the past 7 years. Please provide all receipts that are applicable during that time period. If you donated any items to charity and claimed that as a deduction, you will need to provide proof of your cost basis as well as proof of value of the item at the time you donated it.
Oh, I'm sure you didn't do anything wrong. We just like to check from time to time. I do hope this doesn't inconvienece you. Of course, if you can't provide this information, then I'm afraid some penalties may apply...
Figured it out yet? It's not about having something to hide -- it's about wasting other people's time and money for no good reason.
In the case of police work, it's known as a fishing expedition -- you have no idea what the hell you're looking for, but everyone breaks the law sooner or later.
Unless you are planning not to bother going to see it, which as geeks and nerds, I frankly don't believe.
I'd rather not see it honestly. But I know my friends and (probably) my wife will want to go see it. That's the only reason I saw Ep 2 (which, frankly, I thought was as bad or worse than Ep 1).
Maybe I'll just watch our kid instead (she'll be ~15 months old by the time it comes out). It'd certainly be more entertaining.
I think the message is a bit more muddled than that if that's what you think the message is.
From the article: BayStar managing partner Larry Goldfarb [...] wants SCO to drop its remaining Unix business, jettison its current management, husband its resources, focus on pursuing its IP claims and mind its Ps and Qs in what it says publicly.
And, a bit further down: that despite his disapproval with the way SCO is run he is convinced of the legitimacy of its IP claims and of its winning its case against IBM.
What BayStar wants is not for SCO to drop its lawsuits -- it wants to expand them, if anything. And it wants SCO to drop the irrelevant parts of its business while doing so -- meaning everything but the lawyers.
Problem is, current SCO management doesn't want to do this. Worse yet, the management is criminally incompetent when it comes to knowing when to shut the fuck up and is garnering additional ill will by saying silly things. (Which, in a worst case scenario could be admitted as evidence by the judge -- highly doubtful though).
Anyone that thinks Baystar is a friend to the Linux or OSS crowd is not reading. It's not even legal meanderings -- it's plain English folks! Baystar feels the only "real" business SCO has is in the courts. And that's precisely what we don't want, because it will mean a long, drawn out court fight.
Given all this, we should be cheering for McBride. He's much more likely to cock things up than Baystar is.
The current implementation splits the screen in half, assigning rendering for each half to one of two cards using a software load balancer to try and ensure proper synchronization.
Ewww.
You definitely should be able to see a number of artifacts comparing the top of your screen to the bottom
You'll be able to see artifacts even with two identical cards. There will be a disconnect between the two, since things like antialiasing, ansiotropic filtering, pixel and vertex shaders, and virtually every other modern feature bases "what does this pixel look like" on what adjacent pixels look like.
It'll get really ugly for some effects too -- waves could abruptly terminate and start, fog and smoke could have different outlines, etc.
It's still boggling to me that anyone would shell out so much for a new system in order to game (my PS2 does relatively well, thank you, and even my old StarMax with Voodoo 3 plays Team Fortress quite well in 2004)
I'm not touting Alienware, but please don't compare apples and oranges. The PS2 runs virtually all games at a wonderful resolution of ~640x240 @60fps. There are a handful of games that it can do 640x480 @60fps with (requires component video cables and an HDTV). And even then it's rendering stuff that can be easily handled by a GeForce. TeamFortress is ancient... it doesn't have anything close to the graphical goodies in the upcoming games.
If you have the time, download the 700MB HL2 trailer from this year's E3 (it's 25 minutes long). We're rapidly closing in on photorealism.
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if you hate drive failures (20 Deathstar failures in 3 years here!) stop buying junk first then move up to a RAID
Oh, wow, the IBM Deskstar 75GXP drives have a high failure rate?
Man, screw IDE then. Because all IDE drives must be the same exact quality as those Deskstar drives. I mean, at the exact same time WD, Maxtor, and every other vendor were having massive failure rates too, right?
And, of course, we all know that no manufacturer has ever had a bad batch of SCSI drives, right? Uh huh.
Disks fail. End of story. If you want to protect yourself, have backups and/or drive redundancy. If you're particularly worried about it, buy disks from different batches or (better) different manufacturers.
Yeah, I'm sure SCSI drives have a marginally lower failure rate over time than IDE does. But it's not worth the price premium. If you need one of the other advantages of SCSI -- like speed -- then that's fine, but I seriously doubt you do for home file server usage. Spending the extra money on SCSI over IDE for reliability just shows that you're gullible.
Any vendor who tries to transistion these users risks their taking the plunge to an already mature product. These users feel in their bones that ANY transition will break things. Force one on them and they may just decide to get the pain over with; preferably with a product that is developmentally stable and has a blue chip behind it.
Yes, but you're presuming that the vendor won't be one with a POS background. I'd contend that the most likely purchaser for the assets isn't a RedHat or Novell, but someone who is already in the POS game.
Speaking of which, do you have any idea how big POS is for IBM?
They're hardly the only suitor, but they're probably the best -- IBM could easily segment out SCO's customers and transition them appropriately. POS would go to IBM's POS solutions, servers would go to AIX or Linux, and stand-alone applications would go to Linux (or maybe AIX, but I pity anyone who does that... yeah, we use AIX here, to my everlasting displeasure).
I responded that I doubted whoever bought the IP would continue to offer UnixWare but would rather buy it to be able to controll their own Unix product entirely and would drop UnixWare. They didn't seem too pleased with that assesment.
Probably because your assesment showed a lack of knowledge about the size of UnixWare's deployment.
UnixWare (and OpenServer) licensing represents >$40M of revenue. You think anyone who buys it is just going to kiss that goodbye? Hell no. Anyone with a clue will buy it and then promptly offer a transition program over a course of 2-5 years for existing customers.
Yeah, in a decade UnixWare may only be running on a few systems without support (and perhaps a lot of systems still with support -- if all you have to do is employ a half dozen employees for tech support and patches, and you have customer willing to pay you $1M/year for that, hey... a 50%+ profit margin isn't bad), but it's not like they're going to vanish overnight. Nor will product support. There will be a transitional phase, just like there is for any product where the vendor didn't simply go Chapter 7/11 and nobody bought the remains.
Realistically we know that there is no value to the SCO source. UnixWare and OpenServer are both archaic by modern standards, not to mention buggy. So why would anyone buy the products except to get the existing user base? And if you get the user base, what freaking good does it do you to then tell them to bend over and enjoy the ride?
I can think of few other reasons to justify my spending time to reinstall my browser.
Well, how's about Blocking Flash and fewer security worries?
There's tons of other reasons, of course, but those are what hooked me. Yeah, I still use IE on occasion -- mostly Windows Update and for the exceptionally few pages that simply don't render properly (less than 1% of where I surf... YMMV), but at least there's an extension to help with that as well.
As for "reinstalling your browser" -- that makes no sense. Yes, you have to download Firefox. It's down to 4.6MB though and that's pretty trivial to anyone except dialup users. And it's a Windows installer, so it takes 1 minute to actually install. The time saved afterwards, in my experience, is immeasurable.
There's also a new extension that you can install to make the old extensions visible, but the old extensions are still not removable after installation, unlike the new extensions.
That's rather exceedingly silly.
I'm glad they've upgraded the extension support and handling, and since this is still in beta breaking things between revisions is acceptable. But the way they're handling it is piss poor.
I agree with much of the bugzilla entry comments -- namely that Firefox should either reject extensions that haven't been rewritten, or issue a warning about them during installation, or just freaking show them in the extension manager. No, I haven't looked at the code in question, so maybe things have changed so dramatically that nothing but the first would be viable. But this is ridiculous... particularly since there's pretty much no chance that all the extensions are going to be rewritten by the time 1.0 comes out.
Another possible solution is to simply purge all non-0.9 compatible extensions from whitelisted sites before the 1.0 release. There are certainly downsides to this, but it's still better than what we have right now.
But what does MS have to fear from FireFox anyway? Is Mozilla.org going to cut into MS's lucrative browser sales division? Folks might quit paying hundreds of dollars for IE, all of a sudden?
.NET, if you use ActiveX, if you use MSHTML, if you design sites toward IE instead of toward industry standards then how are you going to move away from MS products -- be it the browser or the entire OS -- if you have to scrap everything and reimplement it?
Sigh.
Yeah, that's it exactly. Wow! You nailed that one.
It all has to do with lock-in. If you use IE, if you use
Answer -- you're not. You're going to stick with MS. And you'll continue using MS products, and probably purchase more of them because you already have the in-house knowledge to deal with their pecularities. Not to mention the minor bit that if you want to use the more advanced features you have no choice -- it requires using IIS, which requires using MS SQL Server, both of which require using Windows (and, odds are, the latest and greatest flavor thereof).
Oh sure, you could avoid all of that stuff (ActiveX, MSHTML, etc.) -- but then you may find that your problem has no realistic solution. While we may bitch and rail against MS here, the reality is that they do have some offerings that do have advantages over the rest of the industry. Yes, the big disadvantage is that you get stuck with MS lock-in, but management doesn't always see that as a bad thing.
I'm witnessing it where I work right now. Our (relatively new) CIO has steadily moved us away from Unix-oriented solutions to Windows-oriented ones. I'm pretty much the last Unix coder at this point. Yes, to some extent this was necessary -- all of our customers have long since moved to Windows desktops, and our main products were still rooted in green-screen terminal origins, but he's buying the MS product line hook, line, and sinker. In a year we're going to be committed to MS whether we like it or not -- because even if he's booted and we decide that we want to move back to open standards we won't be able to do so for years . Rolling out an entirely different application interface so soon would kill our customer base, not to mention ditch somewhere close to 20 man-years of development (and related expenses). When you're a small company (we're ~50 employees) you can't afford to do that.
That said, the MS solutions have let us do things that we couldn't do with any other solution. And I say this confidently because one of the smartest guys I know was involved in picking the solutions. He's a Linux and C++ geek as well, but none of the other options evaluated (Java in any way, shape, or form, DHTML, etc) was going to provide the speed we needed -- both in development time and in end user experience. Sure, there have been hickups going down the MS path too, but we're still expecting to go from nothing to released products in just over 6 months, with minimal changes to the backend (which is still running on Unix... for now).
All of which means we might just stay in business... because we've had a hell of a time selling the old stuff to new customers, and have had our old customers slowly leave for competitors that don't require so much training or maintainence (if your entire shop is Windows except for one Unix server, that Unix server is very high maintainence).
It was Quake, not Q2, as you've already learned. It did, however, include the Q2 network code and various other bits and pieces, as well as a ton of stuff that Valve themselves created.
I distinctly remembering picking up HL when it came out and being rather royally pissed at the crappy network code. It still had bugs in it that had been fixed in the Q2 engine months prior (one thing I recall is elevators being jumpy). I must've been one of the few people who sent HL back to Sierra (Valve's distributor at the time) for a refund.
I don't neccesarily think it would have to be the valve management that got arrested. The supposed code in question was availible at several different locations on the internet and I even downloaded a copy (for novalty purposes). Distributing copy writen works of art is still ileagle and carries federal penalties.
The theory the loonies were advocating was that there was no breakin and no "illegal acquisition" of the code, but that Valve leaked it themselves (which is so absurd at so many levels).
In that case, you can bet that the FBI would be jumping down their throats once the truth came out. And it'd be questionable if it would be copyright infringement -- at least for the Valve-sourced code (there were copies of non-Valve code as well, including the Havok physics engine) -- since they would've been the ones to leak it in the first place. Failure to properly defend your copyright can lead to it being ruled invalid, and leaking the code would certainly fall under that umbrella. Again, the idea that Valve leaked the source itself is patently absurd, and anyone who suggests it should be derided until they learn something about the real world.
Also it might have been done as a publicity stunt to make a "presence" known and implant an image that those wanting to pirate the final product will be dealt with. Scary but possible.
If it was a publicity stunt then it's a poor one. No word from the FBI, no press conference, etc. The feds are playing this one close to their chest -- they may not have arrested everyone they feel is involved yet (which may, as you and others suggest, include the original crackers).
As for scary -- I don't see why it's scary. This stuff is illegal, whether it's the illicit code or the final product. Anyone who pirates knows that there's a chance -- however remote -- that they'll be caught and that there's not much of a chance in hell for them in court.
Hmm.. and how do you know the code wasn't ready unless you have a copy of it?
Er, because Valve themselves stated that it wasn't ready for the Sep 30 date a couple months ago?
I could understand if the game was written completely in DirectX, but it supports OpenGL which is fairly portable from one OS to another.
Er... HL2 is written in DirectX. To my knowledge (I never looked at the source leak) it does not support OpenGL whatsoever.
You must be thinking of HL1, which was based on a heavily modified Quake1 engine. That did support OpenGL.
At the time I clicked there was also an article on Tom's Hardware. It managed to have less content than the GameSpot article.
Whole lot of nothing here... Valve says some people were arrested, the FBI is declining to say anything than that they arrested some people (the agent who was contacted was smart enough not to say any more than that... if the FBI wants to make a press splash on this then they will, but the desk agent in charge (or whatever their designation is) sure as hell can't make that decision).
I'm sure there will be the standard wild speculation, claims from various people that they know someone who was arrested, etc.
And, of course, the continuing claims from the looneys who say that there was no code theft and that the entire story was made up to hide the fact that the code just wasn't ready. I'm not disputing the second half of that -- the code wasn't, and Valve was stupid to say they were on target. But if they'd made the entire thing up, as the conspiracy theorists say, then the FBI would still have arrested people. Except that it'd be Gabe Newell and the rest of Valve management for filing a false report, lieing to a federal officer, and whatever else they could dredge up to charge them with.
You haven't had my In-Laws over trying to figure out how to watch the TV and then trying to figure out how to turn off the TV and the amplifier
No, but that's an entirely separate issue and isn't going to be solved by having a DirecTiVo or having a separate box and TiVo.
The solution is to get a good learning remote (I recommend the MX-500/600/700/800 series -- I have the 700 myself, and while I've been slack on programming it, it's the best solution I've used so far. And I've used a BUNCH of different learning remotes, including a Pronto).
To turn on my AV system you press On and it automatically turns on the TV and receiver, sets the receiver to VCR2 (TiVo), and gives you the remote setup for the TiVo. To turn it all off press Off twice (I'll probably make it once when I get around to it) and everything is turned off.
If your equipment doesn't support discrete codes for on/off, input selection, etc.... well... you're largely screwed. But that's a bigger issue.
what are the benefits of using firefox and thunderbird over using the normal mozilla?
The main reason I switched from Mozilla to FF/TB was because Mozilla components don't really close when you close them.
To be less obtuse -- once you start the Mozilla email client it will continue checking and retrieving email as long as any part of the Mozilla suite is open. Even after you close the email program. Since I generally leave a web browser running on my home PC this is a problem, since I can no longer use a webmail interface to check my home email -- it's all been sucked down to my PC. And having to close the browser just so the email client won't run even after I've closed it is utterly absurd.
Close Thunderbird and it's closed. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Now this was back with Mozilla 1.2... they may've fixed this in the meantime. But it was a showstopper for me at the time.
Plus Firebird loads faster and has a cleaner layout overall.
q[I would also add a "hidden" feature, better integration. If you have digital cable and TiVo you are going to have two set top boxes and more remotes, etc.]q
Er... by and large it's not that big of an issue. What do you ever need the set top box remote for? The TiVo does all of the channel changing, has its own OSD/Guide, etc. The remote for the other set top box can be stuck in a drawer somewhere.
Yes, the IR blasters suck, and there's the remote possibility of the set top box not being on when needed, but the former can be solved using a serial connection (supported on many Motorola digital cable boxes and most Sony or RCA DirecTV boxes), and the latter is a pretty damn rare problem.
The downside of DirecTiVo is that you lose HMO (viewing photos on your TiVo (including local weather and cinema listings if you use JavaHMO), MP3 playback, remote programming, and show sharing, and that if you decide to leave DirecTV you have a useless box.
Of course, DirecTiVos are cheaper. By a long shot once you include subscription costs (lifetime or monthly), so the useless box bit isn't such a big deal. The loss of HMO, however, is a larger issue. I have DirecTV and TiVo but will not go to DirecTiVo because of this. We use HMO features all the time, and there's simply no way to reasonably replace them.
Your quote comes from NDS, not from News Corp. NDS is a competitor to TiVo, so it's unsurprising that they would make such a statement. It also means that it has no relevance in reality.
The DirecTV/TiVo partnership extends until at least 2007. What happens after that is anybody's guess. But, yes, NDS could wind up being the solution after that time -- their largest shareholder is News Corp, the Sky+ boxes used by News Corp in the UK are based off NDS's XTV technology, and they're willing to license for less than TiVo (or so it appears at least; who knows what will happen by 2007 though).
I love TiVo (have two), but they've never managed to get their foot in the door when it comes to content distribution companies. DirecTV was the only one they succeeded with, and it's been their savior. If DirecTV dropped them, I question that TiVo would be able to continue independantly. The vast majority of their subscriber growth has been from DirecTV (which is good for DTV as well, since churn on DirecTiVo subscribers is 1/3 that of non-DirecTiVo subscribers)
I would be really interested if a more knowledge person replied and explained if I'm on the right track or pulling thoughts out of my ass.
Depends on your definition of a "low end" graphics card. Without saying what card/chipset you bought, it's impossible to make a realistic judgement call.
If it's an ATI Radeon 9500 or better, or an Nvidia FX-anything then you're somewhat ok. They have virtually all the features of the latest and greatest cards, but are slower. The slower bit will bite you sooner or later though, and the lower down the card the quicker that will be. Sure, your card may be able to put out 200+ fps in a Q3 engine game, or ~100 fps in UT2k4, but it may get below 30 fps in Far Cry, HL2, or D3. Without ansiotropic filtering or antialiasing.
If you bought anything earlier than those cards (anything earlier from ATI and you can't possibly be "ok" with current games, but Nvidia's GeForce4 or MX lines is in this bracket) then you've, frankly, screwed up. Yes, those games will play almost all current games just fine, with all their graphical glory, and at reasonable frame rates. But the next generation of games (which has already started, with Far Cry being the biggest thus far, but HL2 and D3 are in the same boat. So is EQ2 and World of Warcraft) will not play well, if at all, on those cards. If they do play, they'll do so without a lot of the graphical and game features that are big -- you may have to turn off dynamic shadows in D3 for instance, and that's likely to ruin gameplay.
In general, you're correct -- there's no reason to buy the fastest card out there, and often no reason to even buy the latest generation of cards (a Radeon 9800 Pro or 9800XT is likely to last for a good long while, and the former is now under $200) unless you have a very specific need.
And, no, you won't be able to play newer games at 1600x1200 w/ 16x AF and 8x AA. Woop-de-do. Both AA and AF add relatively little to the games graphically anyway and show up more in screenshots than anything else. If you're playing a fast paced game (like UT2k4) then you may not be able to notice them at all. Yeah, I'll get flamed for that by some people, but I've tried to tell the difference, as have many friends, and unless you're sitting there and looking for defects (as opposed to actually playing the game) then it's a wash.
Was that comment written in english???
Yes, but with a lot of poker terminology.
If you'd like to learn the terminology you can either read some poker sites (I dunno any, but I'm sure they're out there) or watch some WPT. They have two commentators and do a good job of explaining terminology -- either the commentators will explain the term they just used, or a little explanation box will pop up in the bottom right of the screen doing so.
Yeah, I've been watching a good bit of WPT... it's fairly mindless to watch, which is good when you're waiting for a 13 week old child to finish eating, fall asleep, etc.
Yes, but that post was from CmdrTaco.
This one is from timothy.
Completely different.
Do you take your daughter on the morning commute everyday?
Yes.
And most evenings my wife picks her up from daycare.
Feel free to try and resolve that issue with one of us having something like this.
Now realize that a rather large number of families do the same thing.
And no, we don't drive SUVs (both cars are 4 door sedans).
I dunno about you, but I get the distinct impression that this thing isn't designed for hauling a boatload of kids to soccer practice.
Who said anything about a boatload?
I have a 3 month old daughter. How, exactly, am I supposed to get her anywhere if I had a single-seater car? An infant seat is required by law in most (all?) states and European countries, and a child seat once they grow out of that. Some states (I don't know about EU countries) are now requiring booster seats up to the age of 8 (or XX lbs, whichever comes first). Even if all you have is one kid then this kind of transport becomes utterly useless.
If you're submitting to the kernel, you should be *sure* there is nothing that can come back and bite you in the ass.
That's infeasible. In today's world with software patents, you expect every developer to do a patent search whenever they submit code? That's essentially what you're proposing you know. Requiring that everyone perform a $5k-50k search is going to cause a bit of a drop in kernel development I suspect.
In some cases I agree that the people shouldn't submit code -- particularly the intellectual property contract one (who owns the code on and off the clock). If you have an issue with that kind of contract, then strike the phrase before signing. Most companies won't care. Hell, if you're in a place with that contract alreaady, then talk to your management. Most of them will release you from that clause (mine has, at least verbally. If I was to ever want to excercise that right I'd have something a bit more substantial, if only email, prior to contributing). If they still won't, well, get your resume/CV prepared and start looking (no, don't be stupid and quit... just start looking for an alternative).
I'm all for the accountability, but, realistically, this is just a cover-your-ass move. It just means that if someone comes after OSDL in the future they may be able to disclaim legal liability.... straight onto the head of whoever did contribute the code.
Can we search that computer for kiddie porn? You have nothing to hide, right?
Uh. Yes, sure. Why not?
Ok. Hope you don't mind being without a computer for an indefinite period of time. Don't worry -- we'll get to it shortly. The guys down at the lab say they're only 3 months behind in data analysis at the moment.
Oh, and we'd like to check your tax records for the past 7 years. Please provide all receipts that are applicable during that time period. If you donated any items to charity and claimed that as a deduction, you will need to provide proof of your cost basis as well as proof of value of the item at the time you donated it.
Oh, I'm sure you didn't do anything wrong. We just like to check from time to time. I do hope this doesn't inconvienece you. Of course, if you can't provide this information, then I'm afraid some penalties may apply...
Figured it out yet? It's not about having something to hide -- it's about wasting other people's time and money for no good reason.
In the case of police work, it's known as a fishing expedition -- you have no idea what the hell you're looking for, but everyone breaks the law sooner or later.
Unless you are planning not to bother going to see it, which as geeks and nerds, I frankly don't believe.
I'd rather not see it honestly. But I know my friends and (probably) my wife will want to go see it. That's the only reason I saw Ep 2 (which, frankly, I thought was as bad or worse than Ep 1).
Maybe I'll just watch our kid instead (she'll be ~15 months old by the time it comes out). It'd certainly be more entertaining.
I think the message is a bit more muddled than that if that's what you think the message is.
From the article:
BayStar managing partner Larry Goldfarb [...] wants SCO to drop its remaining Unix business, jettison its current management, husband its resources, focus on pursuing its IP claims and mind its Ps and Qs in what it says publicly.
And, a bit further down:
that despite his disapproval with the way SCO is run he is convinced of the legitimacy of its IP claims and of its winning its case against IBM.
What BayStar wants is not for SCO to drop its lawsuits -- it wants to expand them, if anything. And it wants SCO to drop the irrelevant parts of its business while doing so -- meaning everything but the lawyers.
Problem is, current SCO management doesn't want to do this. Worse yet, the management is criminally incompetent when it comes to knowing when to shut the fuck up and is garnering additional ill will by saying silly things. (Which, in a worst case scenario could be admitted as evidence by the judge -- highly doubtful though).
Anyone that thinks Baystar is a friend to the Linux or OSS crowd is not reading. It's not even legal meanderings -- it's plain English folks! Baystar feels the only "real" business SCO has is in the courts. And that's precisely what we don't want, because it will mean a long, drawn out court fight.
Given all this, we should be cheering for McBride. He's much more likely to cock things up than Baystar is.
The current implementation splits the screen in half, assigning rendering for each half to one of two cards using a software load balancer to try and ensure proper synchronization.
Ewww.
You definitely should be able to see a number of artifacts comparing the top of your screen to the bottom
You'll be able to see artifacts even with two identical cards. There will be a disconnect between the two, since things like antialiasing, ansiotropic filtering, pixel and vertex shaders, and virtually every other modern feature bases "what does this pixel look like" on what adjacent pixels look like.
It'll get really ugly for some effects too -- waves could abruptly terminate and start, fog and smoke could have different outlines, etc.
It's still boggling to me that anyone would shell out so much for a new system in order to game (my PS2 does relatively well, thank you, and even my old StarMax with Voodoo 3 plays Team Fortress quite well in 2004)
I'm not touting Alienware, but please don't compare apples and oranges. The PS2 runs virtually all games at a wonderful resolution of ~640x240 @60fps. There are a handful of games that it can do 640x480 @60fps with (requires component video cables and an HDTV). And even then it's rendering stuff that can be easily handled by a GeForce. TeamFortress is ancient... it doesn't have anything close to the graphical goodies in the upcoming games.
If you have the time, download the 700MB HL2 trailer from this year's E3 (it's 25 minutes long). We're rapidly closing in on photorealism.