Installing on debian sid turned out to require nothing more than copying the.ttf files to/usr/share/fonts/truetype/, and they were available immediately.
Comparing to MS Verdana - looks the same, but with more styles. Unlike Verdana, the oblique isn't misnamed as italic. The serif version looks decent as a screen font at small sizes.
Good, it's as good or better than Verdana in every department, that's one sorta-free font I can lose.
I think the issue is that no one knew how fast and how easily Baghdad would fall.
That's bogus. The American army was in control at least a days before the museum was looted, and they were warned, numerous times by numerous people, including curators of the Baghdad museum, and curators of American museums.
This wasn't just a tragedy, it was a flagrant violation of the Geneva convention, please don't be an apologist for it.
"why the US would spend $100+ billion to control Iraqi oil revenues that are a twentieth of that annually... surely one could get a higher return elsewhere?"
First, you have to realize that it's not the US Government that directly benefits. It's the energy industry that reaps the benefits. Cheap oil benefits refineries and power plants.
Well, don't get mislead by the big lie either:
a) It didn't cost $100 billion
b) The money that was spent, was mainly spent on themselves.
Money spent on oneself is an entirely different kind of money from money that comes from selling oil. If the Bush administration succeeds in diverting Iraq's oil revenue into its own pocket - and at this point, it's looking like a fait accompli - we are talking about 80% pure profit, straight into the piggy bank.
Besides that, I'll predict that Iraqi oil production will be rapidly goosed to 3 million barrels/day by American engineers. On critical examination, things are often not as they seem.
Still, it sure sounds like Theo screwed this up. You'd think he could keep his mouth shut until he cashed the cheque...
It depends on your world view. If money is the only thing that matters to you, you might call it a screw-up. However, for someone whose integrity and reputation, and perhaps place in history, are more important, you could call it a masterful stroke. In my eyes, Theo's stature has increased enormously.
Anyway, you can be sure that Darpa will continue to ride on Theo's work, whether it contributes or not.
I use Office for a variety of data analysis tasks, and I rarely have a document more complicated than a letter that doesn't get corrupted in some way when making the transition. Even simple graphs lose their axes (or worse). More complicated plots get completely corrupted. I've never had a powerpoint presentation that opened correctly.
That's odd, it's quite different from my experience, particularly with regard to Powerpoint presentations, with which OpenOffice has been a real help.
I've had zero instances in the last two years or so where I've had to resort to decoding a document by booting a Microsoft operating system, and I have dealt with a lot of Microsoft documents.
I say we all start a world wide campain to force all programmers to use 2 generations slower computer hardware (except device driver writers, they get the good stuff) to force these prima-donnas to actually write good code.
In fact if this guy keeps his hardware low-end and makes it useable.. he will out-code all the other schmucks out there that call themselves programmers.
and the remark by the article's editor about the TNT2 is proof that many people have no clue about computers even so called geeks.
No, it's proof that you didn't bother to read the article, in which the author clearly states:
"* Implement more graphics primitives using OpenGL instead of cfb. This currently is kind of stalled since I only have a poor TNT2 which lacks pbuffer support and has a buggy implementation of Copy[Sub]TexImage2d. So rendering to textures is kind of hard with this hardware."
"And they gain the whole net as an R&D department for their card, a clear win."
Not really. Most developers cannot write drivers for modern and complex GPUs,
And some can.
especially if they don't have access to the specifications. I remember reading an older interview with a NVidia employee, he said they don't even have real specs for their chips.
Didn't you just trash your own argument, by pointing out that the problem of inadequate specs applies to NVidia employees as well as voluntary developers?
Take a look at the work that's already been done by the DRI developers under adverse conditions, then try to tell me that NVidia's drivers wouldn't be better with these people helping out, and NVidia cooperating.
Luckily, I am still employed, but I know that if the current economic conditions don't change for the better, I will be looking for work in a few months myself. It seems to me that one of the most irresponsible, even stupid, things that I could do now is to dip into my savngs to "improve my skill set" because a bunch of experts with books to sell have convinced the Chicago Tribune that there is another high tech boom just around the corner!
Well, you are lucky then, that it costs nothing to improve your skill set.
This is why OpenGL ES is being developed. Go to www.khronos.org
Certainly, a standard OpenGL subset for embedded use would be a useful thing, though not in any way essential, since straight-up OpenGL 1.4 (say) will already fit comfortably in today's relatively fat handhelds. What is essential is a software renderer that does a particularly good job on the common render paths needed for these embedded applications. There's no technical obstacle to this, it's just a lot of hard work.
Apparently Japan is ahead of the game with a relatively standardized 3d render engine.
OpenGL is perfectly suited to 3D rendering on handelds, with the caveat that software rendering for OpenGL, which is to say, Mesa, has not been seriously optimized for this purpose. This is only because there hasn't been much manpower focussed on the job, to date. What's needed is some more thinking like this.
BTW: Is it possible to run 64bit software on an 32bit OS? Maybe without the possibility of addressing all that memory but with 64bit arithmetic?
It's possible, but with limitations, for example, you would not be able to memory-map a file larger than a gig or two. Yes, it matters.
In my opinion, such a hack is not worth expending any effort on, given that a proper 64 bit OS is already available. (And by this I do not mean Windows...)
A slashdot story where Microsoft are the good guys!
Good guys? I don't see anything altruistic about it. This is simply a response to the fact that failing to properly support x86/64 would just concede that market to Linux.
In any event, they already managed to wound themselves in the foot pretty severely. I'd call this damage control.
If you are right about what Keith wants to do, this sounds very good. I have heard though he is not too hot on merging the 2D and 3D drawing code and I have not been thrilled with how the interface to XRender looks (it is MUCH more complex than I think necessary).
I wouldn't suggested merging 2D and 3D either, just letting the 2D interface drive the 3D hardware. Besides that, I'd like to see subpixel positioning in the 2D interface.
I'm not deeply clued in to XFree politics, but my off-the-cuff impression is that this would be a good fork. XFree, for all it's great qualities, could definitely be more forward-looking, especially in the rendering area (i.e., aa, subpixel, alpha etc) Keith's speciality. I don't know how it might work out, but it would be nice to see more competition/openness on the display driver front as well, especially 3D, and especially, 3D used for 2D rendering, which I'm sure Keith has some ideas about.
You could also just download the free MS Word viewer that Microsoft provides here
You don't need it, openoffice works perfectly well. Abiword does a decent job most of the time, and starts faster.
That said, it's evident that.doc is beginning to lose relevance. The number of.docs I have to deal with has fallen off rapidly over the last year, after steadily rising up to that point. Most of what I see coming my way now are pdfs. I do not doubt that once a decent zipped xml standard is finalized, it will catch on exponentially.
It's just stupid to send people.docs if you don't need them to edit them. Chances are, you'll be sending a bunch of stuff you never wanted them to see, embedded in the.doc history.
Heh...personally, I say if the EU pushes it, MS should pull back every fricking license there is in europe and let them all suffer.
They don't own the software they paid for, they paid to license it...take eaway the lcienses, and if they don't remove all the MS software, MS can sue the EU and it's members, and individuals, and businesses who used the software, now, illegally...
Another important fact that is being overlooked is that although Microsoft has had antitrust troubles since 1997, they've also remained profitable every year since 1997 - very profitable. This EU thing isn't going to change that,
Unlike the Bush-defanged DOJ, the EU commission has real teeth. I suppose that if MS plays its usual games of evading things they agree to, it may be in for some of that "10% of worldwide income" treatment. That's real money, it's going to hurt....MS will not be gone in your lifetime, no matter how much you wish it.
I'm considering quitting my current job, without another one lined up, because I have a moral dilemma (seriously) developing with Microsoft's products. I feel support of their products is support of their actions, some of which I consider immoral. I was just given my first.NET project to work on, but I'm quickly looking for something elsewhere with Linux or Unix. As a last resort I might just quit within a few weeks and look for something while living off savings for 6 months.
Line up your new job before you quit. Continue to perform your current work competently, but spend no more of your valuable time on it than you are legally obliged to. Take inventory of all your holiday time, schedule it as soon as possible, and spend your holidays contacting potential employers, and if possible, interviewing. Use your remaining time on your job to learn as much as possible that may be of use to you in your new career, with an ethical employer bright enough to act in their own interest by leveraging free software, and moral enough not to support the business methods of a convicted and unrepentant monopolist.
They don't have to convince judges that Linux is 'a derivative of' UNIX. At least not for patent infringement lawsuits. With patents, you are still infringing even if you independently come up with the same idea.
This has got nothing whatsoever to do with patents. Did you read the claim?
If SuSE drops out, do the "UnitedLinux" gang have anything left? Isn't UnitedLinux based upon SuSE 8.1?
As far as I know, United Linux was Ransom "All your codes are belong to us" Love's idea. Personally, I think everybody should stay as far away from Caldera/SCO as possible, now that they've revealed themselves.
Suse and Conectiva are both excellent companies that contribute a lot to the community, deliver fine products, and deserve to succeed. If anybody should pool resources, it's these two. It helps a lot that their target markets are completely separate.
Slashdot Mirror
Installing on debian sid turned out to require nothing more than copying the .ttf files to /usr/share/fonts/truetype/, and they were available immediately.
Comparing to MS Verdana - looks the same, but with more styles. Unlike Verdana, the oblique isn't misnamed as italic. The serif version looks decent as a screen font at small sizes.
Good, it's as good or better than Verdana in every department, that's one sorta-free font I can lose.
I think the issue is that no one knew how fast and how easily Baghdad would fall.
That's bogus. The American army was in control at least a days before the museum was looted, and they were warned, numerous times by numerous people, including curators of the Baghdad museum, and curators of American museums.
This wasn't just a tragedy, it was a flagrant violation of the Geneva convention, please don't be an apologist for it.
"why the US would spend $100+ billion to control Iraqi oil revenues that are a twentieth of that annually... surely one could get a higher return elsewhere?"
First, you have to realize that it's not the US Government that directly benefits. It's the energy industry that reaps the benefits. Cheap oil benefits refineries and power plants.
Well, don't get mislead by the big lie either:
a) It didn't cost $100 billion
b) The money that was spent, was mainly spent on themselves.
Money spent on oneself is an entirely different kind of money from money that comes from selling oil. If the Bush administration succeeds in diverting Iraq's oil revenue into its own pocket - and at this point, it's looking like a fait accompli - we are talking about 80% pure profit, straight into the piggy bank.
Besides that, I'll predict that Iraqi oil production will be rapidly goosed to 3 million barrels/day by American engineers. On critical examination, things are often not as they seem.
Still, it sure sounds like Theo screwed this up. You'd think he could keep his mouth shut until he cashed the cheque...
It depends on your world view. If money is the only thing that matters to you, you might call it a screw-up. However, for someone whose integrity and reputation, and perhaps place in history, are more important, you could call it a masterful stroke. In my eyes, Theo's stature has increased enormously.
Anyway, you can be sure that Darpa will continue to ride on Theo's work, whether it contributes or not.
I use Office for a variety of data analysis tasks, and I rarely have a document more complicated than a letter that doesn't get corrupted in some way when making the transition. Even simple graphs lose their axes (or worse). More complicated plots get completely corrupted. I've never had a powerpoint presentation that opened correctly.
That's odd, it's quite different from my experience, particularly with regard to Powerpoint presentations, with which OpenOffice has been a real help.
I've had zero instances in the last two years or so where I've had to resort to decoding a document by booting a Microsoft operating system, and I have dealt with a lot of Microsoft documents.
I say we all start a world wide campain to force all programmers to use 2 generations slower computer hardware (except device driver writers, they get the good stuff) to force these prima-donnas to actually write good code.
Have you ever contributed any code to anything?
In fact if this guy keeps his hardware low-end and makes it useable.. he will out-code all the other schmucks out there that call themselves programmers.
and the remark by the article's editor about the TNT2 is proof that many people have no clue about computers even so called geeks.
No, it's proof that you didn't bother to read the article, in which the author clearly states:
"* Implement more graphics primitives using OpenGL instead of cfb. This currently is kind of stalled since I only have a poor TNT2 which lacks pbuffer support and has a buggy implementation of Copy[Sub]TexImage2d. So rendering to textures is kind of hard with this hardware."
I can install something in 10 minutes and then be enjoying using it for the next few day.
I typically spend much less than 10 minutes installing each new package on Linux - one minute is more like it, using Debian apt-get.
What an outpouring of bile against SCO we see here! And how richly deserved!
Do not give this company the time of day. (As if anybody needed to be told.)
"And they gain the whole net as an R&D department for their card, a clear win."
Not really. Most developers cannot write drivers for modern and complex GPUs,
And some can.
especially if they don't have access to the specifications. I remember reading an older interview with a NVidia employee, he said they don't even have real specs for their chips.
Didn't you just trash your own argument, by pointing out that the problem of inadequate specs applies to NVidia employees as well as voluntary developers?
Take a look at the work that's already been done by the DRI developers under adverse conditions, then try to tell me that NVidia's drivers wouldn't be better with these people helping out, and NVidia cooperating.
Luckily, I am still employed, but I know that if the current economic conditions don't change for the better, I will be looking for work in a few months myself. It seems to me that one of the most irresponsible, even stupid, things that I could do now is to dip into my savngs to "improve my skill set" because a bunch of experts with books to sell have convinced the Chicago Tribune that there is another high tech boom just around the corner!
Well, you are lucky then, that it costs nothing to improve your skill set.
I would not be surprised if programming job opportunities doubled in less than 3 years!
This will certainly be true for Linux programming jobs.
How can we turn someone to our side who would be in essence - by opening up thier drivers - giving thier R&D budget to the competition?
And they gain the whole net as an R&D department for their card, a clear win.
This is why OpenGL ES is being developed. Go to www.khronos.org
Certainly, a standard OpenGL subset for embedded use would be a useful thing, though not in any way essential, since straight-up OpenGL 1.4 (say) will already fit comfortably in today's relatively fat handhelds. What is essential is a software renderer that does a particularly good job on the common render paths needed for these embedded applications. There's no technical obstacle to this, it's just a lot of hard work.
Apparently Japan is ahead of the game with a relatively standardized 3d render engine.
OpenGL is perfectly suited to 3D rendering on handelds, with the caveat that software rendering for OpenGL, which is to say, Mesa, has not been seriously optimized for this purpose. This is only because there hasn't been much manpower focussed on the job, to date. What's needed is some more thinking like this.
After all, it's just a matter of programming.
BTW: Is it possible to run 64bit software on an 32bit OS? Maybe without the possibility of addressing all that memory but with 64bit arithmetic?
It's possible, but with limitations, for example, you would not be able to memory-map a file larger than a gig or two. Yes, it matters.
In my opinion, such a hack is not worth expending any effort on, given that a proper 64 bit OS is already available. (And by this I do not mean Windows...)
A slashdot story where Microsoft are the good guys!
Good guys? I don't see anything altruistic about it. This is simply a response to the fact that failing to properly support x86/64 would just concede that market to Linux.
In any event, they already managed to wound themselves in the foot pretty severely. I'd call this damage control.
If you are right about what Keith wants to do, this sounds very good. I have heard though he is not too hot on merging the 2D and 3D drawing code and I have not been thrilled with how the interface to XRender looks (it is MUCH more complex than I think necessary).
I wouldn't suggested merging 2D and 3D either, just letting the 2D interface drive the 3D hardware. Besides that, I'd like to see subpixel positioning in the 2D interface.
I'm not deeply clued in to XFree politics, but my off-the-cuff impression is that this would be a good fork. XFree, for all it's great qualities, could definitely be more forward-looking, especially in the rendering area (i.e., aa, subpixel, alpha etc) Keith's speciality. I don't know how it might work out, but it would be nice to see more competition/openness on the display driver front as well, especially 3D, and especially, 3D used for 2D rendering, which I'm sure Keith has some ideas about.
You could also just download the free MS Word viewer that Microsoft provides here
.doc is beginning to lose relevance. The number of .docs I have to deal with has fallen off rapidly over the last year, after steadily rising up to that point. Most of what I see coming my way now are pdfs. I do not doubt that once a decent zipped xml standard is finalized, it will catch on exponentially.
.docs if you don't need them to edit them. Chances are, you'll be sending a bunch of stuff you never wanted them to see, embedded in the .doc history.
You don't need it, openoffice works perfectly well. Abiword does a decent job most of the time, and starts faster.
That said, it's evident that
It's just stupid to send people
Heh...personally, I say if the EU pushes it, MS should pull back every fricking license there is in europe and let them all suffer.
They don't own the software they paid for, they paid to license it...take eaway the lcienses, and if they don't remove all the MS software, MS can sue the EU and it's members, and individuals, and businesses who used the software, now, illegally...
That would be suicide.
Another important fact that is being overlooked is that although Microsoft has had antitrust troubles since 1997, they've also remained profitable every year since 1997 - very profitable. This EU thing isn't going to change that,
...MS will not be gone in your lifetime, no matter how much you wish it.
Unlike the Bush-defanged DOJ, the EU commission has real teeth. I suppose that if MS plays its usual games of evading things they agree to, it may be in for some of that "10% of worldwide income" treatment. That's real money, it's going to hurt.
Just like DEC isn't gone and Compaq isn't gone.
I'm considering quitting my current job, without another one lined up, because I have a moral dilemma (seriously) developing with Microsoft's products. I feel support of their products is support of their actions, some of which I consider immoral. I was just given my first .NET project to work on, but I'm quickly looking for something elsewhere with Linux or Unix. As a last resort I might just quit within a few weeks and look for something while living off savings for 6 months.
Line up your new job before you quit. Continue to perform your current work competently, but spend no more of your valuable time on it than you are legally obliged to. Take inventory of all your holiday time, schedule it as soon as possible, and spend your holidays contacting potential employers, and if possible, interviewing. Use your remaining time on your job to learn as much as possible that may be of use to you in your new career, with an ethical employer bright enough to act in their own interest by leveraging free software, and moral enough not to support the business methods of a convicted and unrepentant monopolist.
They don't have to convince judges that Linux is 'a derivative of' UNIX. At least not for patent infringement lawsuits. With patents, you are still infringing even if you independently come up with the same idea.
This has got nothing whatsoever to do with patents. Did you read the claim?
If SuSE drops out, do the "UnitedLinux" gang have anything left? Isn't UnitedLinux based upon SuSE 8.1?
As far as I know, United Linux was Ransom "All your codes are belong to us" Love's idea. Personally, I think everybody should stay as far away from Caldera/SCO as possible, now that they've revealed themselves.
Suse and Conectiva are both excellent companies that contribute a lot to the community, deliver fine products, and deserve to succeed. If anybody should pool resources, it's these two. It helps a lot that their target markets are completely separate.