Lied about what? Are you saying he faked the interviews? If not, I would lay low on the whole "lied" thing.
Speaking of lies, George W. Bush's office released a statement admitting to bending the truth on Iraq's nuclear weapons.. But since it was just the state of the union address... then its OK to do it.
Why don't you take your bullshit and shove it. The "moore's myths" is one load of bullshit.
Ever heard of an illegal monopoly? Or even an immoral monopoly? At least the government programs are checked by media and new versions of senators every 4 years. At a corporation, if shit hits the fan, its an internal memo. Especially if its a monopolly.
And if its a monopoly, you ARE forced to use their good or service. Period. And you gotta pay for it if you aren't going to break the law.
Its this little thing they forgot to teach you in right wing business 101.
I work in a university environment where all the warranty work goes through the office I work in. Disk ejection is _THE_ number one service request on the mac. A great majority of this time it is user or program error, and not drive failure. #2 and #3 end up being HDD and PSU failure.
On the windows side however, our number one, number 2, and number 3 most common service requests end up being hard drive failures, PSU failures, and rarely motherboard failures respectively.
I got this from searching our service database in the past year.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but I think this says a lot about how the Mac handles disk ejections. Considering the mac uses the same hard drives and utilizes 3rd party Mfg'd PSU's and motherboards, their failure rate is going to be approximately the same. And having worked with these people with problems ejecting disks, I can tell you that F12 fails me _All The Time_.
This is not a flawed argument at all. Currently, a 21" CRT is about the same price at a retail store as a 15-17" LCD pannel. Now there are quality differences in cheap CRT's and expensive ones, and the same goes for LCD's, but comparing them on featureset alone is certaintly the wrong approach.
If you are looking for the best quality/features for an upfront budget, then certaintly CRT is the way to go. But if you are looking for the overall best no matter of upfront price, then yes, you could compare a 15" LCD to a 15" CRT. The more common comparison tho has the most significant portion being price/performance.
Thats not the point. After shipping, the margins are shot. It doesn't matter that a CRT is still cheaper after shipping. Larger outfits can afford this because they get free shipping from their distributers. But average sized computer shops just can't compete locally in price if they have to pay for CRT shipping charges. Selling CRT's at a price that is not locally competative is like committing suicide.
If you can ship a 19" LCD for practically nothing, and a 19" CRT for a significant price, you can sell the LCD for a significantly smaller margin and still make the same percentage profit. And since LCD's now have over 50% of the monitor retail market, there is almost no reason to carry CRT's in stock unless your a huge retail store. Small stores just don't have enough customers to carry both types. (where I work, we will special order them for people)
On top of all this, its relatively EASY to sell an LCD monitor, and relatively hard to sell a CRT. After the power savings and clearer fonts, people with bad eyesite and/or environmental concerns, and electric bill concerns, will almost always pay the extra money upfront just in those benefits alone. Not to mention they take up negligable amounts of desk space, can pivot their aspect ratio, and other neat features.
The only people who should need a CRT are people playing video games. Because the fastest LCD's around are around 15ms which means max refresh of ~65Hz. More commonly, most LCD's are more like 25ms which is equivilent to 40Hz which produces a huge problem with ghosting effects while moving in a 3D world.
Re:It's not surpsing Carmack wants to get it right
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No Doom 3 This Year?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I'll chime in... not to correct, but to provide some of my observations...
Quake3 lacks scalability to large numbers of people. The main problem is that the server sends the same info about each client to every other client. So if 64 people join a server, there are 64 different clients that you have to know about, even if you shouldn't (like, they aren't close to being on your screen). This effectively limits Quake3 based games to a MAX of 32 players per server (due to outgoing bandwidth limitations of the server, CPU time is also a concern, but not as great).
I do not know what DOOM III is going to do to solve these types of problem, but I have heard rumors that it will support the ability to tell clients about only the relevant players on his screen. This would increase security (prevent cheaters from using "radar" cheats via packetsniffing) and dramatically increase the number of players capable of being on a single server.
Also, larger terrains will be supported. In quake3, you make terrains with a 3D mesh, and the computer must render every polygon in the terrain no matter your distance from it. In many newer games, the level of detail of the polygons are reduced when viewing terrains from large distances, thus improving performance dramatically without costing any visual degredation. DOOMIII will likely support these enhancements.
Vehicle support is another big thing for DOOMIII. One of Quake3's biggest drawbacks is that it does not have cars or planes to drive. Battle Field 1942's popularity has proven this fact online, where the Q3 equivilent game (wolfenstein, and wolf ET) are in competition, but most everyone who plays BF1942 stick with its engine dispite it being buggy,slow, and crappy physics simply because of its vehicle support.
The list can go on and on, but those are the 3 biggest points that are preventing Quake3 from selling to developers. With DOOMIII's upgrades, id will have the upper hand on the game engine market and many game developers are itching for it is release.
Re:Pretty eye-candy, but not much else...
on
No Doom 3 This Year?
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· Score: 5, Informative
It seems that everything imitates one of a few different styles. I'm saddened to see that an intelligent and creative man like John Carmack is just repeating himself.
Carmack is mostly a 3D guy...Kindof like the kernel hacker in the back. He has say and cares in what type of games get put out, but in general he is focusing on the engine... id releases their engines every once in a while, with new upgrades of features taking advantage of the latest video cards, 3D innovations, and performance upgrades. The game they are working on just happens to be the label for that new engine.
So far, Carmack's only 3D sons are Quake, Quake2, and Quake3 engines. Technology from Quake1 and 2 spawned halflife, and thus the HL MOD Counterstrike. It became a huge success, with id's engine doing the grunt work underneath.
Then Quake2 begot Soldier of Fortune, another huge single player and multiplayer success. So successfull that SOF eventually begot SOF2 (based off an independant engine I believe)...
After a while, id decided to release their Quake3 engine. It came with a multiplayer DM and CTF style game only, with no single player except playing the MP game with bots inserted. This quake3 engine gave a whole new meaning to 3D graphics engines, with curved surfaces, fully 32 bit color rendering, huge advancements in lighting, and large terrain support, stable and known consol/script interface for the "pro" gamers, amongst numerous features. (note: there were other competing engines that had similar functions, UT for example)
Quake3 was an instant hit. It carried on the hardcore gamers tradition from the land of Quake2 deathmatch and CTF to a newer generation of Quake gamers. With the release of OSP competition mod, quake3 was the first game to introduce serious gamers to serioius tournaments. People started Modding the Quake3 engine and created navy seals games, and others. Companies started putting out their own mods and releasing them as standalone games. Namely, Quake3 begot Jedi Knight II, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and the new FREE multiplayer online game: Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. The latter 3 saving private ryan like semi massive multiplayer FPS and James bond like single player games were huge successess both in sales, but also in online gaming. Semi massive multiplayer reality online FPS games are one of the new big things, and id's Quake3 engine is behind it. (note: Battlefield 1942, using a competing engine, is of the same type, but with vehicles and larger terrains)
Quake3 will likely spawn more games, and improve its children into perfection. Quake3 is showing its age though. No vehicle support, and very large terrains are hard to build without killing framerate (wolfenstein has shown this). And new technology has built up since Quake3 has been released way back in 2000(?).
DOOM III will be id's next generation engine. With a new name, and an all new rendering paths for various card manufacturers. The latest technology in 3D rendering will be included, and you can bet it will be stable and fast and beautiful as ever. From the looks of it, DOOM III is scheduled to beget Quake IV as its online counterpart (developed by a seperate company, but using the DOOMIII engine). DOOM III should support vehicles in all shapes (aircfaft, cars, bikes) and will have unbelieveably large terrain support. Improved lighting engines and geometry and physics engines. All new sound engine. One thing I MUST mention is the all new network code. It will be improved to allow better scalability for massive multiplayer online gaming and with better prediction technology and lag fixes.
Virtually everything will be all new and improved. You can bet that the DOOMIII engine will live long and prosper.
"I've also heard few web experts claim that surfing localhost is also faster. And that the speed difference would become more prominant if the files were accessed directly without the sluggish web server layer."
Your point has nothing to do with the argument at hand and is just plain trolling. Web surfing is primarily remote and desktop rendering is primarily local. Optimising for the most used case is the better way to go. If you don't want to move ahead on local rendering, DON'T. Keep using XFree86. Nobody is forcing you to change to a direct rendered model. And nobody is even suggesting to take a step backwards and not support remote rendering. Every time someone suggests a direct rendered model on slashdot, none of them take away remote display, they only optimise for the local case. What is wrong with that if one uses his desktop locally mostly anyway?
If you want pure X. compile your QT and GTK applications on X. Maybe in the future, if you want it faster, compile them on QT/DirectFB.
(note: i'm not claiming DirectFB is faster NOW, as it is still in development stages, and drivers for many cards are not readilly available.)
Nobody is saying exchange network capability for these features. Everyone is talking about using a direct rendered model, and having an X interface on top of it. Rather than rendering everything through X, which by default is over a network, render everytying directly and use X protocol when needed for remote display.
Nobody wants to take away your X desktop, or your X protocol, or your X features. Nobody wants ANY of this. We simply want faster local rendering. Thats simply the point of DirectFB with XDirect. and why it has gained so much attention from KDE,GNOME, and QT developers.
And Microsoft Terminal Services has absolutely EVERYTHING to do with normal, every day desktop usage by everyone doesn't it?
Thought not.
Your argument has nothing to do with the local rendering. X is not optimised for it, MS Terminal Services isn't either. For local rendering, Microsoft has a completely different approach.
"Due to the abundance of lawyers and civil suits filed in this country on a daily basis, police departments tend to be very careful when it comes to following the law so that the perp can be prosecuted without problems such as illegal searches arising during trial."
To fight fire with fire... Got any stats to back this up? If not, your entire post was without point.
Have a nice day and quit being blinded by the drug war and especially the anti-marijuana propaganda.
Re:Sounds like a plan.
on
Qt On DirectFB
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Restrictions on smoothness and responsiveness to user input are due more to driver and kernel performance characteristics than issues with X itself
Nobody except people who use X over the network extensively are making claims such as yours. There are many people who do extensive GUI research and programing contradicting what you are saying. the KDE and GNOME projects have both showed interest in direct rendering models. There is a HUGE project of people doing exactly what the above link says. Implementing a direct rendered GUI with an X layer atop for remote display. There is no reason that X should treat everything (including local rendering) as a network socket connection when it can talk to the hardware directly. It is just too much overhead.
People making claims that the UNIX SOCKETS for local display don't involve overhead haven't made their evidence available. if this is true, explain yourself. There is real world proof that the DirectFB model is faster for local rendering, and until XFree86 either gets its own direct rendering model built into it for 2d rendering, and all the bells and whistles that DirectFB has (alpha blending with hardware acceleration, desktop/screen resloution switching on the fly, etc), you people claiming X's faults aren't with the protocol and implementation but with drivers are all blowing hot air.
the unix desktop CAN be faster. But X/XFree86 either needs to grow with the modern desktops, or it needs to be replaced on the desktop with something that works better. Either way, competition is a good thing, and I'm glad that DirectFB is making some headway. Porting QT/Free edition to DirectFB is going to make this competition even better, and the users will win out in the end.
I'm not bashing X here. I'm simply saying that there are better methods to locally render 2D applications. They do exist. They are being developed. The X protocol and XFree86 was designed for UNIX in a client/server networked environment. This is not how most modern computers use on their 2D desktop. I'm not saying XFree86 or the X Protocol needs to go. But if it wants to be _THE_ unix desktop for everyone, it needs to take into account the growing popularity of pure-local rendering environments. (There is no argument from me against it being _THE_ unix desktop in a client/server networked environment)
Re:Before all the flamers get in.
on
Qt On DirectFB
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· Score: 4, Interesting
"The good news is that they're not going to do that. If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Well, considering one of the founders of the XFree86 Project (and board members) has said that the *nix desktop needs to be replaced by a direct rendered model with an X interface on top of it (exactly the same thing but with faster local rendering at the cost of nothing) I would like to call bluff on your "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Because according to (at least one) XFree86 founder, it is broke, and it does need to be fixed.
"Illegally executed searches is a big cause of death of innocent people by police men. Can you provide any official statistics for this"
I don't need to provide official statistics for this point to be true. I only need to show examples. Many can be any significant number, and below are a list of some examples. I cannot think of any other cause of death by police of innocent people that outweighs this cause. Even if I could, it would not disprove my above point.
Here are some examples of police murdering innocent people. This in my opinion counts as "many" (and this is not ment to be a comprehensive list, there is a significant number of cases. These are just a few examples):
"If a police man charges into your house without a warrant, or illegaly breaks down your door, you as a home owner have EVERY (legal) RIGHT to kill that man, whether he is a cop or not. Period. No shit. The parent post said nothing about illegal searches."
If you notice, I actually said:
I think his point is about how there are countless instances where pot smokers were murdered by cops who were on a mission from god to destroy all pot smokers. Knocking down doors without warrants and shooting a family of innocent bystanders because you think they have pot is not legal, and cops get away with it every year.
So the parent's lack of this "illegal searches" keyword has nothing to do with my argument. I was simply elaborating on my point of what I think the parent ment when cops should think twice before busting down a door of a house full of people with (what the cop thinks) tons of drugs. I never said that is the parent's intention, just that I think that is what he was trying to get at. Since he didn't reply, I believe my reason is the first thought that should come to one's mind when we are trying to scare cops with our arsenal of weapons in our houses. Cops SHOULD be worried about them, because if they aren't, they will wind up dead after knocking down an innocent bystander's door. That is my point.
BTW, it is illegal to posess drugs and guns simultaneously. That does not make it illegal to defend oneself with said weapons from illegal searches. if a search is illegal, you have every right to defend your home, and your family from ANY intruders, whether they be the CIA, FBI, DEA, Sherif, or the terminator. This is why cops should think twice before entering a household illegally (and yes, this DOES happen every day, I'm not making any claims that people die b/c of it every day tho, which you implied with your final sentence. No, I don't have any statistics but I read about it in the papers every single day about how a drug dealer got off b/c of illegal searches. And I'm sure you do too, if you happen to read it.)
"VGA cards and SCSI cards need an onboard BIOS to be able to boot from. The x86 cards will not work on a PPC platform. Period.
Really? That will come as a shock to Adaptec, who have been selling SCSI cards that support PCs and Macs [adaptec.com] for years now. "
See, your contradictory example did not contain a BIOS SCSI card. That card you mention is not capable of BOOTING your machine. So my argument stands
As for the AGP cards, you still need firmware updates for the card, which most cards don't support. I believe nVidia may post BIOS ROM's on their website for Mac support, but no MFG officially supports it, and you admitted that you did not get one working without hax. So my argument still stands here.
You have not refuted a single point I have made about your argument all night.
"Really? That will come as a shock to Adaptec, who have been selling SCSI cards that support PCs and Macs for years now."
Wow, one whole Adaptec card that works on both PC and Mac. I guess you didn't look at Adaptec's entire product line. Here is a clue. The 2906 does not have a BIOS. it is specifically ment for SCSI scanners, Zip drives, and hard drives that aren't the boot drive. You cannot boot off a SCSI card unles it contains a BIOS. This card does not. Not a SINGLE Adaptec SCSI card with BIOS contains a PC and Mac BIOS in the same card. Not only this, but they do not offer a download for the Mac BIOS if you already have the PC card. You must purchase seperate cards for seperate platforms. period.
As for the AGP cards, there is not a SINGLE manufacturer I can find that produces a card that will work in both Mac and PC. It just isn't there. You must have a different BIOS ROM on the card to use it in different platforms. In fact, two of the most popular and available nVidia card mfg's don't even support Mac on any of their cards: www.evga.com www.bfgtech.com In fact, I can't even find a manufacturer that has a card with PPC BIOS in it. This completely changes how "commodity" video cards are for the mac. They simply are harder to find, and thus, more expensive. I do know that ATI branded cards have a Mac product line (but they are different cards than the PC cards), but there are no ATI 3rd party cards with Mac support. Even then, walking into Best Buy and looking for a new video card for your mac is probably the wrong angle to approach getting a new 3d card for your mac.
The same goes for SerialATA cards, and for IDE Raid cards, and that is why you don't find many inside G4 machines.
In short (and this has always been true, and will be true for the near future), any PCI or AGP card containing a BIOS must contain a ROM specifically for the platform you are using it in. There is no such thing as a dual platform BIOS because x86 ROMs cannot run on PPC machines. and PPC ROMs cannot run on x86 machines. Until card manufacturers stop being cheap and include a ROM chip big enough to contain both BIOS's and a fancy way for the card to select which one to present to the host machine (probably in the form of a jumper or dip switch), everything you have said above is incorrect, untrue, and just plain wrong.
"The exact same trick works with most SCSI cards, several flavors of NVidia and ATI graphics cards, and Creative's Soundblaster line."
You are quite wrong on this point. VGA cards and SCSI cards need an onboard BIOS to be able to boot from. The x86 cards will not work on a PPC platform. Period.
You can get BIOS-less SCSI cards, but you cannot use them as your boot device. As for the VGA cards, there is no such thing as a dual platform one (you might be able to find a hacked BIOS for it that allows you to bood it on a PPC machine, but it probably isn't worth your time). on VGA cards, the mac card is usually slightly more costly (because they are less common)
If you haven't noticed, Athlon 64 is coming out next month (for consumers) and AMD Operton 64 has been out for months and shipping in servers for cheap.
The current Athlon on the market is 32 bit, and AMD has said that it is the last 32 bit athlon they will be shipping (the Athlon XP 3200+).
So yes, you can compare Athlon (64) to G5... Especially considering the G5 doesn't ship till next month either.
"...-R/RW seems to be the cheaper media wherever I check. Sadly to say, but it seems the -R/RW may be on its way out the door."
You don't know how far from the truth you are...
DVD-R media is cheaper because there are no royalties attached. DVD+R is owned by Sony corporation and they charge outstanding patent royalties on the drive technology and media manufacturing process of DVD+R/RW.
DVD-R v2.0 is the official DVD Forum Specification. The same people who created the DVD-ROM and DVD Video specification which are undisputed standards. DVD+R is a cheap knockoff so sony can make profits on patent royalties. I would imagine DVD+R will last relatively (time and popularity wise)to minidisk..
"There's no excuse for a player to come out today that doesn't fully support both formats, and THAT is where our focus should be."
Why is there no excuse? Here is one:
DVD+R/RW is a proprietary patented format invented by Sony corporation to push DVD FORUM's DVD-R specification out of the market. They did this by making a drive (and patenting it and licensing it) that is capable of burning both formats, but crippling the DVD-R capability to half speed of the DVD+R on the same drive (4x +, 2x -, or 8x+/4x-).
There is no inherant or technical reason to cripple the DVD-R capability except only to sell DVD+R media (mind you, patented media that costs slightly more)
If you want to make a player, why would you want to spend extra money to be compatible with some market player who jumped in late and made an incompatible proprietary format to try to kill the competition which is already a STANDARD and perfectly capable of doing exactly the same thing that DVD+R does?
The simple answer: Don't support, buy, or use DVD+R and it will die a slow death and we can get on with our lives.
You are just not getting your facts straight. To continue with the harry potter idea, most (if not all) businesses that say they have the lowest price in town honor pricematching of local competitors.
You can't just make a blanket statement that they must be lying if they say they have the best deal in town. Because they probably do.
You don't see every bookseller in town making the same claim do you? If not, then your wrong. And I haven't seen many book sellers telling me they have the lowest prices in town.
You have taken an assumption that their advertisement is false, and turned it into "all advertisements are fraudulent" when you didn't even bother to verify if the advertisement at hand is false or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice fake trying to pose as another person. idiot.
Your bullshit has given us enough to laff at for a fucking year.
Lied about what? Are you saying he faked the interviews? If not, I would lay low on the whole "lied" thing.
Speaking of lies, George W. Bush's office released a statement admitting to bending the truth on Iraq's nuclear weapons.. But since it was just the state of the union address... then its OK to do it.
Why don't you take your bullshit and shove it. The "moore's myths" is one load of bullshit.
Ever heard of an illegal monopoly? Or even an immoral monopoly? At least the government programs are checked by media and new versions of senators every 4 years. At a corporation, if shit hits the fan, its an internal memo. Especially if its a monopolly.
And if its a monopoly, you ARE forced to use their good or service. Period. And you gotta pay for it if you aren't going to break the law.
Its this little thing they forgot to teach you in right wing business 101.
Yea... they are just government official's programs... {cough... cheney... cough)
Gag me with a fucking spoon. The penalty for treason should be a hanging.
Not to mention all the people in their twenties with poor eyesite already...
"I've never found F12 to fail me."
I work in a university environment where all the warranty work goes through the office I work in. Disk ejection is _THE_ number one service request on the mac. A great majority of this time it is user or program error, and not drive failure. #2 and #3 end up being HDD and PSU failure.
On the windows side however, our number one, number 2, and number 3 most common service requests end up being hard drive failures, PSU failures, and rarely motherboard failures respectively.
I got this from searching our service database in the past year.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but I think this says a lot about how the Mac handles disk ejections. Considering the mac uses the same hard drives and utilizes 3rd party Mfg'd PSU's and motherboards, their failure rate is going to be approximately the same. And having worked with these people with problems ejecting disks, I can tell you that F12 fails me _All The Time_.
This is not a flawed argument at all. Currently, a 21" CRT is about the same price at a retail store as a 15-17" LCD pannel. Now there are quality differences in cheap CRT's and expensive ones, and the same goes for LCD's, but comparing them on featureset alone is certaintly the wrong approach.
If you are looking for the best quality/features for an upfront budget, then certaintly CRT is the way to go. But if you are looking for the overall best no matter of upfront price, then yes, you could compare a 15" LCD to a 15" CRT. The more common comparison tho has the most significant portion being price/performance.
Thats not the point. After shipping, the margins are shot. It doesn't matter that a CRT is still cheaper after shipping. Larger outfits can afford this because they get free shipping from their distributers. But average sized computer shops just can't compete locally in price if they have to pay for CRT shipping charges. Selling CRT's at a price that is not locally competative is like committing suicide.
If you can ship a 19" LCD for practically nothing, and a 19" CRT for a significant price, you can sell the LCD for a significantly smaller margin and still make the same percentage profit. And since LCD's now have over 50% of the monitor retail market, there is almost no reason to carry CRT's in stock unless your a huge retail store. Small stores just don't have enough customers to carry both types. (where I work, we will special order them for people)
On top of all this, its relatively EASY to sell an LCD monitor, and relatively hard to sell a CRT. After the power savings and clearer fonts, people with bad eyesite and/or environmental concerns, and electric bill concerns, will almost always pay the extra money upfront just in those benefits alone. Not to mention they take up negligable amounts of desk space, can pivot their aspect ratio, and other neat features.
The only people who should need a CRT are people playing video games. Because the fastest LCD's around are around 15ms which means max refresh of ~65Hz. More commonly, most LCD's are more like 25ms which is equivilent to 40Hz which produces a huge problem with ghosting effects while moving in a 3D world.
I'll chime in... not to correct, but to provide some of my observations...
Quake3 lacks scalability to large numbers of people. The main problem is that the server sends the same info about each client to every other client. So if 64 people join a server, there are 64 different clients that you have to know about, even if you shouldn't (like, they aren't close to being on your screen). This effectively limits Quake3 based games to a MAX of 32 players per server (due to outgoing bandwidth limitations of the server, CPU time is also a concern, but not as great).
I do not know what DOOM III is going to do to solve these types of problem, but I have heard rumors that it will support the ability to tell clients about only the relevant players on his screen. This would increase security (prevent cheaters from using "radar" cheats via packetsniffing) and dramatically increase the number of players capable of being on a single server.
Also, larger terrains will be supported. In quake3, you make terrains with a 3D mesh, and the computer must render every polygon in the terrain no matter your distance from it. In many newer games, the level of detail of the polygons are reduced when viewing terrains from large distances, thus improving performance dramatically without costing any visual degredation. DOOMIII will likely support these enhancements.
Vehicle support is another big thing for DOOMIII. One of Quake3's biggest drawbacks is that it does not have cars or planes to drive. Battle Field 1942's popularity has proven this fact online, where the Q3 equivilent game (wolfenstein, and wolf ET) are in competition, but most everyone who plays BF1942 stick with its engine dispite it being buggy,slow, and crappy physics simply because of its vehicle support.
The list can go on and on, but those are the 3 biggest points that are preventing Quake3 from selling to developers. With DOOMIII's upgrades, id will have the upper hand on the game engine market and many game developers are itching for it is release.
It seems that everything imitates one of a few different styles. I'm saddened to see that an intelligent and creative man like John Carmack is just repeating himself.
Carmack is mostly a 3D guy...Kindof like the kernel hacker in the back. He has say and cares in what type of games get put out, but in general he is focusing on the engine... id releases their engines every once in a while, with new upgrades of features taking advantage of the latest video cards, 3D innovations, and performance upgrades. The game they are working on just happens to be the label for that new engine.
So far, Carmack's only 3D sons are Quake, Quake2, and Quake3 engines. Technology from Quake1 and 2 spawned halflife, and thus the HL MOD Counterstrike. It became a huge success, with id's engine doing the grunt work underneath.
Then Quake2 begot Soldier of Fortune, another huge single player and multiplayer success. So successfull that SOF eventually begot SOF2 (based off an independant engine I believe)...
After a while, id decided to release their Quake3 engine. It came with a multiplayer DM and CTF style game only, with no single player except playing the MP game with bots inserted. This quake3 engine gave a whole new meaning to 3D graphics engines, with curved surfaces, fully 32 bit color rendering, huge advancements in lighting, and large terrain support, stable and known consol/script interface for the "pro" gamers, amongst numerous features. (note: there were other competing engines that had similar functions, UT for example)
Quake3 was an instant hit. It carried on the hardcore gamers tradition from the land of Quake2 deathmatch and CTF to a newer generation of Quake gamers. With the release of OSP competition mod, quake3 was the first game to introduce serious gamers to serioius tournaments. People started Modding the Quake3 engine and created navy seals games, and others. Companies started putting out their own mods and releasing them as standalone games. Namely, Quake3 begot Jedi Knight II, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and the new FREE multiplayer online game: Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. The latter 3 saving private ryan like semi massive multiplayer FPS and James bond like single player games were huge successess both in sales, but also in online gaming. Semi massive multiplayer reality online FPS games are one of the new big things, and id's Quake3 engine is behind it. (note: Battlefield 1942, using a competing engine, is of the same type, but with vehicles and larger terrains)
Quake3 will likely spawn more games, and improve its children into perfection. Quake3 is showing its age though. No vehicle support, and very large terrains are hard to build without killing framerate (wolfenstein has shown this). And new technology has built up since Quake3 has been released way back in 2000(?).
DOOM III will be id's next generation engine. With a new name, and an all new rendering paths for various card manufacturers. The latest technology in 3D rendering will be included, and you can bet it will be stable and fast and beautiful as ever. From the looks of it, DOOM III is scheduled to beget Quake IV as its online counterpart (developed by a seperate company, but using the DOOMIII engine). DOOM III should support vehicles in all shapes (aircfaft, cars, bikes) and will have unbelieveably large terrain support. Improved lighting engines and geometry and physics engines. All new sound engine. One thing I MUST mention is the all new network code. It will be improved to allow better scalability for massive multiplayer online gaming and with better prediction technology and lag fixes.
Virtually everything will be all new and improved. You can bet that the DOOMIII engine will live long and prosper.
thank you.
"I've also heard few web experts claim that surfing localhost is also faster. And that the speed difference would become more prominant if the files were accessed directly without the sluggish web server layer."
Your point has nothing to do with the argument at hand and is just plain trolling. Web surfing is primarily remote and desktop rendering is primarily local. Optimising for the most used case is the better way to go. If you don't want to move ahead on local rendering, DON'T. Keep using XFree86. Nobody is forcing you to change to a direct rendered model. And nobody is even suggesting to take a step backwards and not support remote rendering. Every time someone suggests a direct rendered model on slashdot, none of them take away remote display, they only optimise for the local case. What is wrong with that if one uses his desktop locally mostly anyway?
If you want pure X. compile your QT and GTK applications on X. Maybe in the future, if you want it faster, compile them on QT/DirectFB.
(note: i'm not claiming DirectFB is faster NOW, as it is still in development stages, and drivers for many cards are not readilly available.)
Nobody is saying exchange network capability for these features. Everyone is talking about using a direct rendered model, and having an X interface on top of it. Rather than rendering everything through X, which by default is over a network, render everytying directly and use X protocol when needed for remote display.
Nobody wants to take away your X desktop, or your X protocol, or your X features. Nobody wants ANY of this. We simply want faster local rendering. Thats simply the point of DirectFB with XDirect. and why it has gained so much attention from KDE,GNOME, and QT developers.
And Microsoft Terminal Services has absolutely EVERYTHING to do with normal, every day desktop usage by everyone doesn't it?
Thought not.
Your argument has nothing to do with the local rendering. X is not optimised for it, MS Terminal Services isn't either. For local rendering, Microsoft has a completely different approach.
"Due to the abundance of lawyers and civil suits filed in this country on a daily basis, police departments tend to be very careful when it comes to following the law so that the perp can be prosecuted without problems such as illegal searches arising during trial."
To fight fire with fire... Got any stats to back this up? If not, your entire post was without point.
Have a nice day and quit being blinded by the drug war and especially the anti-marijuana propaganda.
Restrictions on smoothness and responsiveness to user input are due more to driver and kernel performance characteristics than issues with X itself
This is a myth, and an XFree86 developer, board member, and one of the founders seems to agree:
I've even pissed off Keith and many others on the Core Team by pointing out that X is obsolescent. I've been working in the Windows world for years now, and client-server display systems are utterly irrelvent to the majority of real-world computer users. X needs to be replaced by a direct-rendered model, on which a backwards-compatible X server can be reasonably trivially implemented.
Nobody except people who use X over the network extensively are making claims such as yours. There are many people who do extensive GUI research and programing contradicting what you are saying. the KDE and GNOME projects have both showed interest in direct rendering models. There is a HUGE project of people doing exactly what the above link says. Implementing a direct rendered GUI with an X layer atop for remote display. There is no reason that X should treat everything (including local rendering) as a network socket connection when it can talk to the hardware directly. It is just too much overhead.
People making claims that the UNIX SOCKETS for local display don't involve overhead haven't made their evidence available. if this is true, explain yourself. There is real world proof that the DirectFB model is faster for local rendering, and until XFree86 either gets its own direct rendering model built into it for 2d rendering, and all the bells and whistles that DirectFB has (alpha blending with hardware acceleration, desktop/screen resloution switching on the fly, etc), you people claiming X's faults aren't with the protocol and implementation but with drivers are all blowing hot air.
the unix desktop CAN be faster. But X/XFree86 either needs to grow with the modern desktops, or it needs to be replaced on the desktop with something that works better. Either way, competition is a good thing, and I'm glad that DirectFB is making some headway. Porting QT/Free edition to DirectFB is going to make this competition even better, and the users will win out in the end.
I'm not bashing X here. I'm simply saying that there are better methods to locally render 2D applications. They do exist. They are being developed. The X protocol and XFree86 was designed for UNIX in a client/server networked environment. This is not how most modern computers use on their 2D desktop. I'm not saying XFree86 or the X Protocol needs to go. But if it wants to be _THE_ unix desktop for everyone, it needs to take into account the growing popularity of pure-local rendering environments. (There is no argument from me against it being _THE_ unix desktop in a client/server networked environment)
"The good news is that they're not going to do that. If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Well, considering one of the founders of the XFree86 Project (and board members) has said that the *nix desktop needs to be replaced by a direct rendered model with an X interface on top of it (exactly the same thing but with faster local rendering at the cost of nothing) I would like to call bluff on your "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Because according to (at least one) XFree86 founder, it is broke, and it does need to be fixed.
"Illegally executed searches is a big cause of death of innocent people by police men.
Can you provide any official statistics for this"
I don't need to provide official statistics for this point to be true. I only need to show examples. Many can be any significant number, and below are a list of some examples. I cannot think of any other cause of death by police of innocent people that outweighs this cause. Even if I could, it would not disprove my above point.
Here are some examples of police murdering innocent people. This in my opinion counts as "many" (and this is not ment to be a comprehensive list, there is a significant number of cases. These are just a few examples):
Link
Link
"If a police man charges into your house without a warrant, or illegaly breaks down your door, you as a home owner have EVERY (legal) RIGHT to kill that man, whether he is a cop or not. Period.
No shit. The parent post said nothing about illegal searches."
If you notice, I actually said:
I think his point is about how there are countless instances where pot smokers were murdered by cops who were on a mission from god to destroy all pot smokers. Knocking down doors without warrants and shooting a family of innocent bystanders because you think they have pot is not legal, and cops get away with it every year.
So the parent's lack of this "illegal searches" keyword has nothing to do with my argument. I was simply elaborating on my point of what I think the parent ment when cops should think twice before busting down a door of a house full of people with (what the cop thinks) tons of drugs. I never said that is the parent's intention, just that I think that is what he was trying to get at. Since he didn't reply, I believe my reason is the first thought that should come to one's mind when we are trying to scare cops with our arsenal of weapons in our houses. Cops SHOULD be worried about them, because if they aren't, they will wind up dead after knocking down an innocent bystander's door. That is my point.
BTW, it is illegal to posess drugs and guns simultaneously. That does not make it illegal to defend oneself with said weapons from illegal searches. if a search is illegal, you have every right to defend your home, and your family from ANY intruders, whether they be the CIA, FBI, DEA, Sherif, or the terminator. This is why cops should think twice before entering a household illegally (and yes, this DOES happen every day, I'm not making any claims that people die b/c of it every day tho, which you implied with your final sentence. No, I don't have any statistics but I read about it in the papers every single day about how a drug dealer got off b/c of illegal searches. And I'm sure you do too, if you happen to read it.)
"VGA cards and SCSI cards need an onboard BIOS to be able to boot from. The x86 cards will not work on a PPC platform. Period.
Really? That will come as a shock to Adaptec, who have been selling SCSI cards that support PCs and Macs [adaptec.com] for years now. "
See, your contradictory example did not contain a BIOS SCSI card. That card you mention is not capable of BOOTING your machine. So my argument stands
As for the AGP cards, you still need firmware updates for the card, which most cards don't support. I believe nVidia may post BIOS ROM's on their website for Mac support, but no MFG officially supports it, and you admitted that you did not get one working without hax. So my argument still stands here.
You have not refuted a single point I have made about your argument all night.
"Really? That will come as a shock to Adaptec, who have been selling SCSI cards that support PCs and Macs for years now."
Wow, one whole Adaptec card that works on both PC and Mac. I guess you didn't look at Adaptec's entire product line. Here is a clue. The 2906 does not have a BIOS. it is specifically ment for SCSI scanners, Zip drives, and hard drives that aren't the boot drive. You cannot boot off a SCSI card unles it contains a BIOS. This card does not. Not a SINGLE Adaptec SCSI card with BIOS contains a PC and Mac BIOS in the same card. Not only this, but they do not offer a download for the Mac BIOS if you already have the PC card. You must purchase seperate cards for seperate platforms. period.
As for the AGP cards, there is not a SINGLE manufacturer I can find that produces a card that will work in both Mac and PC. It just isn't there. You must have a different BIOS ROM on the card to use it in different platforms. In fact, two of the most popular and available nVidia card mfg's don't even support Mac on any of their cards: www.evga.com www.bfgtech.com In fact, I can't even find a manufacturer that has a card with PPC BIOS in it. This completely changes how "commodity" video cards are for the mac. They simply are harder to find, and thus, more expensive. I do know that ATI branded cards have a Mac product line (but they are different cards than the PC cards), but there are no ATI 3rd party cards with Mac support. Even then, walking into Best Buy and looking for a new video card for your mac is probably the wrong angle to approach getting a new 3d card for your mac.
The same goes for SerialATA cards, and for IDE Raid cards, and that is why you don't find many inside G4 machines.
In short (and this has always been true, and will be true for the near future), any PCI or AGP card containing a BIOS must contain a ROM specifically for the platform you are using it in. There is no such thing as a dual platform BIOS because x86 ROMs cannot run on PPC machines. and PPC ROMs cannot run on x86 machines. Until card manufacturers stop being cheap and include a ROM chip big enough to contain both BIOS's and a fancy way for the card to select which one to present to the host machine (probably in the form of a jumper or dip switch), everything you have said above is incorrect, untrue, and just plain wrong.
"The exact same trick works with most SCSI cards, several flavors of NVidia and ATI graphics cards, and Creative's Soundblaster line."
You are quite wrong on this point. VGA cards and SCSI cards need an onboard BIOS to be able to boot from. The x86 cards will not work on a PPC platform. Period.
You can get BIOS-less SCSI cards, but you cannot use them as your boot device. As for the VGA cards, there is no such thing as a dual platform one (you might be able to find a hacked BIOS for it that allows you to bood it on a PPC machine, but it probably isn't worth your time). on VGA cards, the mac card is usually slightly more costly (because they are less common)
For sound cards and NIC's, you have a point.
If you haven't noticed, Athlon 64 is coming out next month (for consumers) and AMD Operton 64 has been out for months and shipping in servers for cheap.
The current Athlon on the market is 32 bit, and AMD has said that it is the last 32 bit athlon they will be shipping (the Athlon XP 3200+).
So yes, you can compare Athlon (64) to G5... Especially considering the G5 doesn't ship till next month either.
"My only beef with DVD-R is that there's no official standard for 4x media"
Actually there is. the DVD-R v2.0 specification specifies 4x write speed in both the drive, and the media.
"...-R/RW seems to be the cheaper media wherever I check. Sadly to say, but it seems the -R/RW may be on its way out the door."
You don't know how far from the truth you are...
DVD-R media is cheaper because there are no royalties attached. DVD+R is owned by Sony corporation and they charge outstanding patent royalties on the drive technology and media manufacturing process of DVD+R/RW.
DVD-R v2.0 is the official DVD Forum Specification. The same people who created the DVD-ROM and DVD Video specification which are undisputed standards. DVD+R is a cheap knockoff so sony can make profits on patent royalties. I would imagine DVD+R will last relatively (time and popularity wise)to minidisk..
"There's no excuse for a player to come out today that doesn't fully support both formats, and THAT is where our focus should be."
Why is there no excuse? Here is one:
DVD+R/RW is a proprietary patented format invented by Sony corporation to push DVD FORUM's DVD-R specification out of the market. They did this by making a drive (and patenting it and licensing it) that is capable of burning both formats, but crippling the DVD-R capability to half speed of the DVD+R on the same drive (4x +, 2x -, or 8x+/4x-).
There is no inherant or technical reason to cripple the DVD-R capability except only to sell DVD+R media (mind you, patented media that costs slightly more)
If you want to make a player, why would you want to spend extra money to be compatible with some market player who jumped in late and made an incompatible proprietary format to try to kill the competition which is already a STANDARD and perfectly capable of doing exactly the same thing that DVD+R does?
The simple answer: Don't support, buy, or use DVD+R and it will die a slow death and we can get on with our lives.
You are just not getting your facts straight. To continue with the harry potter idea, most (if not all) businesses that say they have the lowest price in town honor pricematching of local competitors.
You can't just make a blanket statement that they must be lying if they say they have the best deal in town. Because they probably do.
You don't see every bookseller in town making the same claim do you? If not, then your wrong. And I haven't seen many book sellers telling me they have the lowest prices in town.
You have taken an assumption that their advertisement is false, and turned it into "all advertisements are fraudulent" when you didn't even bother to verify if the advertisement at hand is false or not.