China blocks and censors the net? Look, in the USA we have the RIAA tracking people down, raiding colleges, shutting down file sharing networks, and censoring websites, software, music, movies, art, and everything else which they make a profit out of.
So its ok for the USA to censor in the name of Capitalism, but its bad for China to censor in the name of Communism?
I hate looking at such hypocritical stories, stop picking on China's government and fix ours. Lets talk about the fucked up DMCA, lets talk about the RIAA, lets talk about IP and the fact that none of us here have IP yet we all must sacrafice our freedom to protect something only 5% of our population owns.
Its pathetic, leave China alone for a moment and whoever is moderator of Slashdot, please post an article comparing China and the USA's censorship and see that we are just as bad.
I think Shareaza using the G2 network is the most promising P2P right now.
Kazaa is about to be shut down, and I think Shareaza is going to be the next big thing.
P2P is still alive, Audio Galaxy and Morpheus took over after Napster died, then Morpheus died and Kazaa took over, soon Audio Galaxy died and now we have E-Donkey and Kazaa, when these two die, I expect Shareaza to take over, if not sooner.
Its simple, let the distribution make the interface look like windows.
Anyone who wants it to look like this should be able to setup their KDE to look like this, If i buy a less newbie linux i should have this interface if i buy Lindows or Mandrake it should look like Windows.
Re:Kde3 better than OSX? What are you smoking?
on
Fresco M1 Released
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· Score: 2
Welcome to OSS time scales! A lot of the core infrastructure is already in place (thank's to XRender), and they have a good base (Postscript) to cue the design off of. If the speed of development of XRender, Xft, and FontConfig are any indication, those X guys will speed through implementing the vector API. If XRender and XRandR are any indication, KDE will support the vector API before it even becomes available in a stable X release! XRandR and XRender are not fully supported by KDE, but they are partially supported which, we are just not getting the support for anti aliased fonts and we still dont have alpha channel, (well we do but its not REAL alpha channel). I think you are right they could do it within a year but its not going to make Xfree86 4.3 and Xfree86 5.0 wont be here for about a year. There arent any plans that I know of to release an Xfree86 4.4, its 4.3 and then 5.0 so this means the release coming this Jan is the last Xfree86 release until Xfree86 5.0, this is why I say at least a year, not because I dont think they could get some of the parts done within this year, as a whole package it wont be done until 2004 or late 2003.
Display PDF works fine, but it really was not the right rendering model to use. It would've been smart of Apple not to tie itself to something that really couldn't be accelerated in hardware easily. As for working better than Longhorn, Longhorn isn't due out for several years. Or are you judging by those leaked screenshots of an alpha build?
I can agree with that, that Display PDF is not perfect, but it does have its advantages, yes the Vector API coming for X will be better than Apples, but its too far away right now, at least over a year.
Microsoft did DirectX, and DirectX, in its modern iterations is one hell of a great API. It seems to be that the DirectX guys have a hand in Longhorn (desktop accelerated via Direct3D, for example) and I don't doubt that Longhorn's hardware accelerated desktop will kick ass. Who cares what it looks like (OS X people, sigh...)? The technology underneath is amazing. It's not innovative (it is kind of a no brainer at this point that the desktop should be accelerated via 3D hardware) but the idea is solid.
Nice technology but lets not forget whos making this technology, Microsoft. They arent exactly open source, so you wont be able to use the best technology unless they let you, and I dont think the default interface Microsoft comes up with will be anything special unless they completely rip off OSX and Linux like they usually do, Luna vs Aqua? And nice job of them adding the little Linux style bar to Longhorn as if they came up with the idea.
Rasterman isn't exactly the only person who can do this. EVAS will live on, or something like it. It's just too good not to. Take a look at E17's evas_test program. It's unbelievable. Even at this early stage, it can draw complex alpha-blended vector graphics at 100 fps, *fully* OpenGL accelerated.
Yes Evas is great, and Evas 2 is even better, the problem with Evas is, its moving at a speed thats too fast for X to handle. Rasterman himself told me we wont have an Evas desktop for at least 2 years, this was around a year ago, so we have one more year left, I expect when Xfree86 5.0 comes out, then you can use Evas to render the desktop, until then however Evas is just a toy.
Common misconception. "Quartz Extreme" is actually an enhancement for Quartz Compositor not Quartz 2D. It allows the compositing of windows and stuff like the genie effect to be hardware accelerated, nothing else. The Quartz 2D software renderer draws windows to textured quads, and these quads are draw via OpenGL onto the screen. Thus, the only thing being accelerated are window-level special effects (drop shadows, etc) not actual drawing.
True Quartz Extreme doesnt fully render the interface, I never said it does, I was talking about the special effects. Currently no interface is completely hardware accelerated, If Linux ever gets to THAT point it will blow OSX out of the water. This will take a very long time though, theres alot of video cards to support, a standard must be made and alot of code written unless they use OpenGL or something already written like Evas does.Its going to take Xfree86 a long while to do this, I think we will start to see it when Xfree86 5.0 is released, maybe support from a few Matrox cards, maybe Nvidia and ATI, The best reason this would be good is because the interface could use ram directly from the VideoCard making everything much much faster, you could do better than the Genie effect, you could do the T2 effect and have the Widgets and Windows morph in realtime from liquid to solid and it wouldnt slow anything down. When we get to that point, thats when Linux would begin to dominate the desktop for the casual user, If Linux could do that yet Microsoft and OSX couldnt, that would give casual users a reason to switch to Linux.
People dont switch to something thats just as good as Windows, stability and security casual users dont give a damn about, but cool eye candy is what attracts them.
IT works with Movies, it works with Video Games, it works with Music Videos, It works with Ads, when you have something that looks pretty it gets more attention from the masses.
First is GLX powerful enough? Second if its so easy why havent they ported it? GTK is being ported to Directfb.
Re:Kde3 better than OSX? What are you smoking?
on
Fresco M1 Released
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· Score: 1
OSX is not bitmaps, its vectors.
OSX does realtime scaling this means you can scale a movie down in realtime while its playing and see it playing while its happening, it also allows you to scale icons in realtime, this is mainly due to the PDF based API and the design but it manages to do it.
Actually, certain X driver (Matrox, NVIDIA) *do* accelerate XRender in hardware. Quartz, right now, does everything in software, and can't even theoretically do stuff in hardware (blame Display PDF) without a lot of overhead in translating the format. Xrender is not powerful enough is my point.
OSX jaguar uses Quartz extreme which does everything in hardware, you are thinking of the Quartz which was released years ago not the current.
The future is stuff like EVAS and Longhorn Rasterman has totally given up on Linux on the desktop, read the interview Linux on the desktop dead by Rasterman
Longhorn looks just like XP, Microsoft is working on it, but if you honestly believe Microsoft is innovative enough to actually be the future of the desktop, you must have been blind for the past 5-6 years.
OSX has its flaws but Display PDF works very well, Its working better than Longhorn, and better than Linux, perhaps in 5 years when Microsoft catches up and in 2-3 years when Linux catches up Apple will be just about ready to release OS11.
By the way I've checked out the mailing lists, a Vector API takes longer than months to develop, its going to take them at least a year to fully develop it considering its only 2 guys writing it. Thats why I said 2-3 years Linux will catch up, because it will take about a year for the Vector API to be complete, then another year for KDE to actually use it, then another year before all the themes are actually made to take advantage of it, so 2-3 years is a good estimate.
Re:Usability isnt the issue, Quality is the issue.
on
Fresco M1 Released
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· Score: 1
m, how exactly is this useful? First, I doubt you can make out two tiny icon-sized images alpha-blended together. Second, if you're drop target is the size of an icon,
Let me give you an example, In OSX or in WinXP, take a file, drag it, see the nice shadow below it? You also should see that while its moving, the object you are draging is translucent, meaning you can see whats under it, this doesnt sound useful? when you are moving pictures this is damn useful, its also useful from a usability point of view, when you drag something you want to null what you are draging, so you make it translucent, the shadows gives it a better 3d look so it seems like you are acting draging it over something and not just teleporting it.
Linux has horrible drag and drop animation, when you drag something into the browser you see some weird paper looking animation or something, its not the same at all. Have you moved folders in OSX? You may think the scaling and shadows is just eye candy, but think of it this way, sit a newbie down, and let him look at both OSes, which one would he choose? The one with the nice eye candy, or the other OS which does the same thing but with no eye candy at all?
How is it fake? I've got transparent menus and cool eye candy in KDE, and I sure as a hell can't tell the difference between it and OS X, aside from the god-damned window drop-shadows. There are two rendering models at work here, and despite what Apple would have you believe, Aqua's isn't better than X's.
Drag a movie while its moving in KDE, does the movie go translucent and still play while you are dragging it? Noooo, you have to see the whole pause while you drag it or worse, the movie takes up space on your screen while you drag it around past your browser, chat window or whatever you are moving the movie from blocking.
X has a model that maps very well to current hardware, and is very fast. Do benchmarks if you don't believe me on the 'fast' part. I've done them, and X whips some ass. As a trade-off for this, it has to implement certain eye-candy tricks as hacks. This is just fine, because eye candy isn't drawn that often anyway. If the user doesn't notice, it's working just fine.
Sadly, OSX is much faster than X even if X is fast. X may be faster than Windows95 and OS9 but its definately not faster than OSX or XP, considering both fully use the hardware.
Aqua uses a model that does not map well at all to current hardware. It's coupling to DisplayPDF precludes a lot of hardware acceleration possibilities, and it uses inordinate amounts of RAM. However, it enables certain things like window shadows and the genie effect to be done "naturally."
And to the average user, thats all that matters, they dont give a damn about how fast you can compile a kernel, they dont care how much ram is used considering all they do with their 512 megs of ram is browse the web, these people want something that looks nice, not something that looks like shit but runs nice. Linux will always be a geek OS as long as people keep trying to tell the casual user stuff like "so what if its not as pretty, it gets the job done, its stable, its open source" Like the casual user gives a damn.
The casual user wants an OS which looks pretty, an OS which is easy to use, and they want to be able to run their software, thats it. They dont care if the OS is using alot or alittle ram, they dont care about CPU resources, they dont care about "real work" performance. People who care about "real work" performance are programmers, and business men, not a teenager who wants to surf the web with pretty fonts etc.
"Um, even Apple realized that it had to cut down on eye candy to look more professional. Hence, Aqua Graphite."
Aqua Graphite still has all of the special effects and eye candy, its alittle bit less colorful, so what? OSX can be serious for serious users and it can be pretty for casual users, casual users want something thats pretty, if they wanted serious they'd have been using unix in the first place and we wouldnt be trying to convert them to linux users.
"Usability is king. If something can look nice and still be usable, great. If looks interferes with usability, you've fucked up the design. "
Translucency does not interfere with usability when done right, OSX has done it right, learn from the experts and do it right. A translucent terminal might not be your style, but I'd love to have one. Done right, it wouldnt bee translucent by default, but the ability would still be there.
" Um, shadows on cursors looks cheesy, not professional. Are you telling me that before Windows 2000 and it's drop shadow effect, there was no professional looking GUI? Beyond that, you're just wrong on so many levels. All cursors (since like Windows 2.0) have transparency (they're two bitmaps, a color one and a mask). That's why it looks like an arrow rather than a big square. Besides, the XCursor extension (already in XFree CVS) does drop shadows and animation and all that."
Before dropshadows, Windows was ugly as shit, unfortunately that was all there was at the time so people had to deal with it, it was the best there was. Find me one person on the planet who doesnt know a thing about computers who prefers the look of plain Windows95 over the look of OSX or Windows 2000 and you can prove your point.
Like I said, when done right, translucency, genie effect, animated icons and so on, they improve the user experience, when done wrong they annoy the user, it all depends on how its done.
Sure you can over do it on the special effects, but you can also under do it, currently linux doesnt even do fonts properly, the genie effect or I should call it realtime scaling would also be useful for linux users, especially users with multiple desktops, the alpha channel would be useful for people who keep the terminal open at all times, and want to be able to see the terminal update while they surf the web.
Oh and when people want to watch movies and surf the web, multitasking, they shouldnt have to choose which one they get to see, they should be able to see both if they choose to, this means the movie should be able to go alittle bit translucent so they can read whatever website they are reading, you can have a button to turn this future on and off.
I suggest you try using OSX for a while, you'll see how they use this eye candy in useful ways, if you can show a newbie OSX and they tell you its harder to use than Windows95 or Linux, then you can come here and talk about usability vs eyecandy
Usability isnt the issue, Quality is the issue.
on
Fresco M1 Released
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· Score: 2
Linux looks like shit because it has no Alpha channel effects, Note I didnt say transparency, thats not what I mean, what I mean is, the ability for windows to have diffrent levels of alpha channelling.
This is VERY useful, look at OSX and see how its used, even WindowsXP uses it when you move your icons, the icons become transparent so you can see where you are moving them.
The cursor also needs to become transparent so that it can have proper shadows and look professional, the fonts would also look better, along with the windows.
This isnt about usability, geeks care about usability, WindowsXP isnt the most usable, neither is OSX, you have to balance usability and presentation.
Linux is already easier to use meaning better usability than Windows in most areas, the only real problems left are the lack of polish, Linux still looks amateur, KDE3 can add all these nice effects but if they all are fake, the whole thing looks like a hacker OS that it still is.
Things need to look professional, and this is the purpose of eye candy.
Please tell me why KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment(in fact rasterman himself told me it wasnt possible) cannot do alpha channel, and genie like effects, please explain why theres no realtime shadows on my windows, why is there no realtime scaling?
Please tell me if Xrender is completely finished, why is it not being used by anyone?
If its so finished perhaps its too hard to use so no ones using it, the only people who seem to be able to use it are keith packard and Xfree developer types.
Kde3 better than OSX? What are you smoking?
on
Fresco M1 Released
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· Score: 2
KDE doesnt do alpha channel properly, it cannot do realtime shadows yet, it cannot do image transformations such as genie effect, it cannot do realtime scaling, it doesnt fully anti alias everything on screen, it doesnt use your video card to do this in hardware if you do find some software hacks to do this, so X is extremely slow.
KDE better than OSX? hell no, check back in 2-3 years and maybe you'll be right.
Can X do image transformation? What about resolution issues? Font problems anyone? No realtime shadows, no hardware alpha channel, software alpha channel is too slow and buggy to be useful.
When will Xrender be completed?
on
Fresco M1 Released
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I bet Fresco will be finished before Xrender has image transformations, true hardware alpha channel, etc.
X is just now getting anti alaised fonts and everyone is saying X is so great, we are about a year away from the release of Xfree5.0 which is supposed to have the finished Xrender, only one guy is working on Xrender (Keith Packard) The founder of the X project Mr. Dawes claims they are just now beginning to focus on
Quotes from David Dawes David Dawes: There has been some work on a new rendering model for XFree86 that provides some more advance composition techniques (including transparency), this currently being implemented in software. For XFree86 5.0 we'll be investigating this as part of our review of rendering models, and seeing if a hardware implementation would not be more appropriate.
Currently Xrender is still in the planning stages, its at about the same level as Fresco, not really useable to anyone but perhaps Keith Packard and a select few developers, its unfinished, its beta but to users and not so skilled programmers its vaporware.
I'm looking towards XFree86 5.0, which will be the next significant step in XFree86. We're only just starting to think seriously about it. We'll start by re-evaluating what we would like from a graphics/windowing system, and not limit ourselves to the ones that currently exist. With XFree86 4.0 our main focus was on the device-dependent component of the X server (DDX), and to do that we needed to provide a more modular infrastructure. The features that came out of that process showed how much it was needed, and it has given us a solid DDX base from which to expand into other areas. For 5.0 I expect that we'll move more into the device-independent (DIX) and protocol areas as well as making some adjustments to the DDX area based on our experiences with 4.x.
Ok so for Xfree86 5.0 they will focus on improving the rendering, and bringing X to the levels of Aqua, but by the time 5.0 gets here expect Longhorn to be released, and expect OS 11 to be released by Apple which takes things to the next level.
Linux needs to do more than just keep afloat and compete, Linux has to dominate to beat Microsoft.
Currently the only thing preventing Linux from taking the desktop market, is the fact that the currently Linux interface doesnt look polished enough, theres enough programs for grandma, theres games, theres plenty of office apps, the casual user can use Linux, the only reason they wont use Linux is because OSX is better than Linux.
Why buy a Linux dell laptop for college when you can get an Ibook thats just as powerful but better?
Why get Linux if its just like Windows? This is why Windows users would sooner switch to Mac.
X is now one of Linux's biggest bottlenecks, along with the fact that they have no music apps and not enough file sharing apps.
Censorship doesnt change the fact that the majority are evil, they'd still be evil if censored, we'd just have no way of knowiung who these evil people are.
I'd rather them be on the net so we can monitor these people than have them be totally censored and invisible in our society.
Also I think even if we didnt make the first atomic bomb, we'd still have wars, ignorance cannot be erased with censorship only hidden and hiding the problem does not solve it.
The solution is not censorship, the solution is containment, if theres enough intelligent people in this world we can stop putting power in the hands of the ignorant few, and eventually over perhaps generations intelligent people can change the fate of humanity.
Currently however our president is not the most intelligent man, hes a rich snob who used his fathers popularity and money to get into office.
Until we have real leaders who are intelligent we cannot easily prevent war, its funny these kids who go to harvard, people with PHDs, scientists, and so on are all anti war, the most intelligent people in society are also the least aggressive, but intelligent people because of their lack of aggression usually dont end up as president or any high up positions because it takes a killer instinct and aggressive attitude to get to the top, ask bill gates, george bush, or any war general how they got to their rank, it wasnt because they were the smartest, or most intelligent, they just happened to be the most motivated.
Evil people in the world are the most motivated while intelligent people in the world are the least motivated, very rarely are intelligent people in the world motivated, perhaps open source is an example of intelligent people motivated, but bill gates is still on top because greed motivates more people than peace on earth, or helping your neighbor etc.
Capitalism only works because the world is filled with ignorant greedy peopel who are selfish and who cant see the whole picture, they arent thinking long term about what capitalism will do to society, how millions of people in the third world die over capitalism, how millions of people in their own country suffer because of capitalism, how in general the world has less knowledge and education because of capitalism, etc.
Until we find a way to motivate intelligent people, we are stuck with capitalism.
I dont know your sex height or color, I dont really care about it either. If i met you in person, none of this would make a diffrence when it comes to me judging you as a person.
[QUOTE]The only person that can ignore someone's race/colour/sex/creed is a blind man, or someone so enlightened that even if he's in the middle of an orgasm he will actually be in a serene meditative state [/QUOTE]
Or someone who simply doesnt care about visual appearance. I cant see you through the internet, I've learned not to give a damn what people look like because of the internet.
[QUOTE]The best you can do is have your conscious mind actively try to override your preconceptions about their race/colour/sex/creed of the person. For example if you saw a man in a wheelchair trying to stand up, you would think about helping him, whereas somebody normally sitting in a chair and getting up you wouldn't help. YOU WOULD HELP THE DISABLED PERSON STAND UP, BUT NOT THE NORMAL PERSON - how did you notice the disabled person was disabled? You couldn't help discriminating for him, your high badwidth link from your eyes to your brain totally overrides everything. That's why Buddha closes his eyes when he meditates.[/QUOTE]
Stop being silly, how would I know the diffrence between a normal person in a chair and a disabled person? I wouldnt really help either of them unless they specifically asked for help, and no i wouldnt think of helping them unless they somehow suggest they need it.
[QUOTE]So you see Socialism is idealism, it won't work in reality because human beings are not perfect, we are selfish. Money allows us to turn these selfish and greedy desires into something that by accident does some good like creating jobs so that we can make more money as a Director of a big company. I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm saying it's a terrible thing.[/QUOTE]
Yes the majority of humanity is selfish, the majority of humanity is also evil, hateful, and cruel, I'm not part of that majority so why should I care if humanity as a whole cannot handle idealism?
I can, if you cant, go back to the stone ages or bomb yourself back there in the petty wars that capitalism will continue to cause.
Some people however arent selfish and are ready for socialism, yes these people arent the majority, but theres good people in the world who arent selfish, socialism cannot work until people are all on this level and I never said we were ready for socialism, but pure capitalism cannot work either for the same exact reason.
Someone has to write the code and you have the most programmers in india, this = $$
Someone has to write serious government apps and people would pay money for this.
Open Source does not mean Free as in beer.
Open Source is Open Source.
You can sell programs, but the source code is free, you sell the compiled code, most people when they buy a game dont know how to or dont want to spend days compiling it, they want a CD, they want to pop it in, and have it work.
People who hate are terrorists, yes we have domestic terrorism in the USA, they should be locked up with Al Qaeda, The unibomber and many others,
The solution is containment, not censorship.
Dont compare the 1940s to now, If bin laden was around flying planes into cities in the 1940s the whole USA would have been destroyed, this is 2002.
You cannot censor hate, the best you can do is contain it by setting laws that make it very difficult for these people to get guns, and which alienates them.
Sorta like an ex con, a sex offender, or just a person from iraq who decides to fly on a one way planeride, people should keep a close eye on these people.
Its easier to monitor them from websites than to implant spies throughout their ranks.
If they ever do become a threat, their websites will most likely offer clues.
It sounds good, but when you realize you cannot outlaw ignorance without being ignorant yourself it fails.
The way to control hate is to contain it, and simply make it known that its wrong, fight information with information, fight ignorance with intelligence.
Make a law to track every hate site, make a law to monitor the hosts, make laws to allow hosts of hate sites to be monitored by anti terrorist units, but thats all you can do, monitor hate.
They deserve freedom of speech, i also believe we shouldnt stop file sharing, but monitoring is fine.
Hate is wrong, but you cant stop it by censoring it and you can get more intelligence info from monitor and containment to stop any attacks they try to make before they happen.
Slashdot Mirror
China blocks and censors the net? Look, in the USA we have the RIAA tracking people down, raiding colleges, shutting down file sharing networks, and censoring websites, software, music, movies, art, and everything else which they make a profit out of.
So its ok for the USA to censor in the name of Capitalism, but its bad for China to censor in the name of Communism?
I hate looking at such hypocritical stories, stop picking on China's government and fix ours. Lets talk about the fucked up DMCA, lets talk about the RIAA, lets talk about IP and the fact that none of us here have IP yet we all must sacrafice our freedom to protect something only 5% of our population owns.
Its pathetic, leave China alone for a moment and whoever is moderator of Slashdot, please post an article comparing China and the USA's censorship and see that we are just as bad.
I think Shareaza using the G2 network is the most promising P2P right now.
Kazaa is about to be shut down, and I think Shareaza is going to be the next big thing.
P2P is still alive, Audio Galaxy and Morpheus took over after Napster died, then Morpheus died and Kazaa took over, soon Audio Galaxy died and now we have E-Donkey and Kazaa, when these two die, I expect Shareaza to take over, if not sooner.
Its simple, let the distribution make the interface look like windows.
Anyone who wants it to look like this should be able to setup their KDE to look like this, If i buy a less newbie linux i should have this interface if i buy Lindows or Mandrake it should look like Windows.
But KDE shouldnt worry about this.
You cannot get more mainstream than that.
Then theres mozilla.
Welcome to OSS time scales! A lot of the core infrastructure is already in place (thank's to XRender), and they have a good base (Postscript) to cue the design off of. If the speed of development of XRender, Xft, and FontConfig are any indication, those X guys will speed through implementing the vector API. If XRender and XRandR are any indication, KDE will support the vector API before it even becomes available in a stable X release!
XRandR and XRender are not fully supported by KDE, but they are partially supported which, we are just not getting the support for anti aliased fonts and we still dont have alpha channel, (well we do but its not REAL alpha channel). I think you are right they could do it within a year but its not going to make Xfree86 4.3 and Xfree86 5.0 wont be here for about a year. There arent any plans that I know of to release an Xfree86 4.4, its 4.3 and then 5.0 so this means the release coming this Jan is the last Xfree86 release until Xfree86 5.0, this is why I say at least a year, not because I dont think they could get some of the parts done within this year, as a whole package it wont be done until 2004 or late 2003.
Display PDF works fine, but it really was not the right rendering model to use. It would've been smart of Apple not to tie itself to something that really couldn't be accelerated in hardware easily. As for working better than Longhorn, Longhorn isn't due out for several years. Or are you judging by those leaked screenshots of an alpha build?
I can agree with that, that Display PDF is not perfect, but it does have its advantages, yes the Vector API coming for X will be better than Apples, but its too far away right now, at least over a year.
Microsoft did DirectX, and DirectX, in its modern iterations is one hell of a great API. It seems to be that the DirectX guys have a hand in Longhorn (desktop accelerated via Direct3D, for example) and I don't doubt that Longhorn's hardware accelerated desktop will kick ass. Who cares what it looks like (OS X people, sigh...)? The technology underneath is amazing. It's not innovative (it is kind of a no brainer at this point that the desktop should be accelerated via 3D hardware) but the idea is solid.
Nice technology but lets not forget whos making this technology, Microsoft. They arent exactly open source, so you wont be able to use the best technology unless they let you, and I dont think the default interface Microsoft comes up with will be anything special unless they completely rip off OSX and Linux like they usually do, Luna vs Aqua? And nice job of them adding the little Linux style bar to Longhorn as if they came up with the idea.
Rasterman isn't exactly the only person who can do this. EVAS will live on, or something like it. It's just too good not to. Take a look at E17's evas_test program. It's unbelievable. Even at this early stage, it can draw complex alpha-blended vector graphics at 100 fps, *fully* OpenGL accelerated.
Yes Evas is great, and Evas 2 is even better, the problem with Evas is, its moving at a speed thats too fast for X to handle. Rasterman himself told me we wont have an Evas desktop for at least 2 years, this was around a year ago, so we have one more year left, I expect when Xfree86 5.0 comes out, then you can use Evas to render the desktop, until then however Evas is just a toy.
Common misconception. "Quartz Extreme" is actually an enhancement for Quartz Compositor not Quartz 2D. It allows the compositing of windows and stuff like the genie effect to be hardware accelerated, nothing else. The Quartz 2D software renderer draws windows to textured quads, and these quads are draw via OpenGL onto the screen. Thus, the only thing being accelerated are window-level special effects (drop shadows, etc) not actual drawing.
True Quartz Extreme doesnt fully render the interface, I never said it does, I was talking about the special effects. Currently no interface is completely hardware accelerated, If Linux ever gets to THAT point it will blow OSX out of the water. This will take a very long time though, theres alot of video cards to support, a standard must be made and alot of code written unless they use OpenGL or something already written like Evas does.Its going to take Xfree86 a long while to do this, I think we will start to see it when Xfree86 5.0 is released, maybe support from a few Matrox cards, maybe Nvidia and ATI, The best reason this would be good is because the interface could use ram directly from the VideoCard making everything much much faster, you could do better than the Genie effect, you could do the T2 effect and have the Widgets and Windows morph in realtime from liquid to solid and it wouldnt slow anything down.
When we get to that point, thats when Linux would begin to dominate the desktop for the casual user, If Linux could do that yet Microsoft and OSX couldnt, that would give casual users a reason to switch to Linux.
People dont switch to something thats just as good as Windows, stability and security casual users dont give a damn about, but cool eye candy is what attracts them.
IT works with Movies, it works with Video Games, it works with Music Videos, It works with Ads, when you have something that looks pretty it gets more attention from the masses.
Buy the $200 Linux PC.
The only reaosn Linux isnt selling off the shelves at Walmart is the fact that Windows is more perfesionally looking even if Linux is bette.
First is GLX powerful enough? Second if its so easy why havent they ported it? GTK is being ported to Directfb.
OSX is not bitmaps, its vectors.
OSX does realtime scaling this means you can scale a movie down in realtime while its playing and see it playing while its happening, it also allows you to scale icons in realtime, this is mainly due to the PDF based API and the design but it manages to do it.
Actually, certain X driver (Matrox, NVIDIA) *do* accelerate XRender in hardware. Quartz, right now, does everything in software, and can't even theoretically do stuff in hardware (blame Display PDF) without a lot of overhead in translating the format.
Xrender is not powerful enough is my point.
OSX jaguar uses Quartz extreme which does everything in hardware, you are thinking of the Quartz which was released years ago not the current.
The future is stuff like EVAS and Longhorn
Rasterman has totally given up on Linux on the desktop, read the interview
Linux on the desktop dead by Rasterman
Longhorn looks just like XP, Microsoft is working on it, but if you honestly believe Microsoft is innovative enough to actually be the future of the desktop, you must have been blind for the past 5-6 years.
OSX has its flaws but Display PDF works very well, Its working better than Longhorn, and better than Linux, perhaps in 5 years when Microsoft catches up and in 2-3 years when Linux catches up Apple will be just about ready to release OS11.
By the way I've checked out the mailing lists, a Vector API takes longer than months to develop, its going to take them at least a year to fully develop it considering its only 2 guys writing it. Thats why I said 2-3 years Linux will catch up, because it will take about a year for the Vector API to be complete, then another year for KDE to actually use it, then another year before all the themes are actually made to take advantage of it, so 2-3 years is a good estimate.
m, how exactly is this useful? First, I doubt you can make out two tiny icon-sized images alpha-blended together. Second, if you're drop target is the size of an icon,
Let me give you an example, In OSX or in WinXP, take a file, drag it, see the nice shadow below it? You also should see that while its moving, the object you are draging is translucent, meaning you can see whats under it, this doesnt sound useful? when you are moving pictures this is damn useful, its also useful from a usability point of view, when you drag something you want to null what you are draging, so you make it translucent, the shadows gives it a better 3d look so it seems like you are acting draging it over something and not just teleporting it.
Linux has horrible drag and drop animation, when you drag something into the browser you see some weird paper looking animation or something, its not the same at all. Have you moved folders in OSX? You may think the scaling and shadows is just eye candy, but think of it this way, sit a newbie down, and let him look at both OSes, which one would he choose? The one with the nice eye candy, or the other OS which does the same thing but with no eye candy at all?
How is it fake? I've got transparent menus and cool eye candy in KDE, and I sure as a hell can't tell the difference between it and OS X, aside from the god-damned window drop-shadows. There are two rendering models at work here, and despite what Apple would have you believe, Aqua's isn't better than X's.
Drag a movie while its moving in KDE, does the movie go translucent and still play while you are dragging it? Noooo, you have to see the whole pause while you drag it or worse, the movie takes up space on your screen while you drag it around past your browser, chat window or whatever you are moving the movie from blocking.
X has a model that maps very well to current hardware, and is very fast. Do benchmarks if you don't believe me on the 'fast' part. I've done them, and X whips some ass. As a trade-off for this, it has to implement certain eye-candy tricks as hacks. This is just fine, because eye candy isn't drawn that often anyway. If the user doesn't notice, it's working just fine.
Sadly, OSX is much faster than X even if X is fast. X may be faster than Windows95 and OS9 but its definately not faster than OSX or XP, considering both fully use the hardware.
Aqua uses a model that does not map well at all to current hardware. It's coupling to DisplayPDF precludes a lot of hardware acceleration possibilities, and it uses inordinate amounts of RAM. However, it enables certain things like window shadows and the genie effect to be done "naturally."
And to the average user, thats all that matters, they dont give a damn about how fast you can compile a kernel, they dont care how much ram is used considering all they do with their 512 megs of ram is browse the web, these people want something that looks nice, not something that looks like shit but runs nice. Linux will always be a geek OS as long as people keep trying to tell the casual user stuff like "so what if its not as pretty, it gets the job done, its stable, its open source" Like the casual user gives a damn.
The casual user wants an OS which looks pretty, an OS which is easy to use, and they want to be able to run their software, thats it. They dont care if the OS is using alot or alittle ram, they dont care about CPU resources, they dont care about "real work" performance. People who care about "real work" performance are programmers, and business men, not a teenager who wants to surf the web with pretty fonts etc.
"Um, even Apple realized that it had to cut down on eye candy to look more professional. Hence, Aqua Graphite."
Aqua Graphite still has all of the special effects and eye candy, its alittle bit less colorful, so what? OSX can be serious for serious users and it can be pretty for casual users, casual users want something thats pretty, if they wanted serious they'd have been using unix in the first place and we wouldnt be trying to convert them to linux users.
"Usability is king. If something can look nice and still be usable, great. If looks interferes with usability, you've fucked up the design.
"
Translucency does not interfere with usability when done right, OSX has done it right, learn from the experts and do it right. A translucent terminal might not be your style, but I'd love to have one. Done right, it wouldnt bee translucent by default, but the ability would still be there.
"
Um, shadows on cursors looks cheesy, not professional. Are you telling me that before Windows 2000 and it's drop shadow effect, there was no professional looking GUI? Beyond that, you're just wrong on so many levels. All cursors (since like Windows 2.0) have transparency (they're two bitmaps, a color one and a mask). That's why it looks like an arrow rather than a big square. Besides, the XCursor extension (already in XFree CVS) does drop shadows and animation and all that."
Before dropshadows, Windows was ugly as shit, unfortunately that was all there was at the time so people had to deal with it, it was the best there was. Find me one person on the planet who doesnt know a thing about computers who prefers the look of plain Windows95 over the look of OSX or Windows 2000 and you can prove your point.
Like I said, when done right, translucency, genie effect, animated icons and so on, they improve the user experience, when done wrong they annoy the user, it all depends on how its done.
Sure you can over do it on the special effects, but you can also under do it, currently linux doesnt even do fonts properly, the genie effect or I should call it realtime scaling would also be useful for linux users, especially users with multiple desktops, the alpha channel would be useful for people who keep the terminal open at all times, and want to be able to see the terminal update while they surf the web.
Oh and when people want to watch movies and surf the web, multitasking, they shouldnt have to choose which one they get to see, they should be able to see both if they choose to, this means the movie should be able to go alittle bit translucent so they can read whatever website they are reading, you can have a button to turn this future on and off.
I suggest you try using OSX for a while, you'll see how they use this eye candy in useful ways, if you can show a newbie OSX and they tell you its harder to use than Windows95 or Linux, then you can come here and talk about usability vs eyecandy
Linux looks like shit because it has no Alpha channel effects, Note I didnt say transparency, thats not what I mean, what I mean is, the ability for windows to have diffrent levels of alpha channelling.
This is VERY useful, look at OSX and see how its used, even WindowsXP uses it when you move your icons, the icons become transparent so you can see where you are moving them.
The cursor also needs to become transparent so that it can have proper shadows and look professional, the fonts would also look better, along with the windows.
This isnt about usability, geeks care about usability, WindowsXP isnt the most usable, neither is OSX, you have to balance usability and presentation.
Linux is already easier to use meaning better usability than Windows in most areas, the only real problems left are the lack of polish, Linux still looks amateur, KDE3 can add all these nice effects but if they all are fake, the whole thing looks like a hacker OS that it still is.
Things need to look professional, and this is the purpose of eye candy.
Please tell me why KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment(in fact rasterman himself told me it wasnt possible) cannot do alpha channel, and genie like effects, please explain why theres no realtime shadows on my windows, why is there no realtime scaling?
Please tell me if Xrender is completely finished, why is it not being used by anyone?
If its so finished perhaps its too hard to use so no ones using it, the only people who seem to be able to use it are keith packard and Xfree developer types.
KDE doesnt do alpha channel properly, it cannot do realtime shadows yet, it cannot do image transformations such as genie effect, it cannot do realtime scaling, it doesnt fully anti alias everything on screen, it doesnt use your video card to do this in hardware if you do find some software hacks to do this, so X is extremely slow.
KDE better than OSX? hell no, check back in 2-3 years and maybe you'll be right.
Only Geeks and Business men care about network transparancy, come on, all the average joe wants is eye candy. Thats all Linux is lacking to them.
Can X do image transformation?
What about resolution issues? Font problems anyone?
No realtime shadows, no hardware alpha channel, software alpha channel is too slow and buggy to be useful.
I bet Fresco will be finished before Xrender has image transformations, true hardware alpha channel, etc.
X is just now getting anti alaised fonts and everyone is saying X is so great, we are about a year away from the release of Xfree5.0 which is supposed to have the finished Xrender, only one guy is working on Xrender (Keith Packard)
The founder of the X project Mr. Dawes claims they are just now beginning to focus on
Quotes from David Dawes David Dawes: There has been some work on a new rendering model for XFree86 that provides some more advance composition techniques (including transparency), this currently being implemented in software. For XFree86 5.0 we'll be investigating this as part of our review of rendering models, and seeing if a hardware implementation would not be more appropriate.
Currently Xrender is still in the planning stages, its at about the same level as Fresco, not really useable to anyone but perhaps Keith Packard and a select few developers, its unfinished, its beta but to users and not so skilled programmers its vaporware.
I'm looking towards XFree86 5.0, which will be the next significant step in XFree86. We're only just starting to think seriously about it. We'll start by re-evaluating what we would like from a graphics/windowing system, and not limit ourselves to the ones that currently exist. With XFree86 4.0 our main focus was on the device-dependent component of the X server (DDX), and to do that we needed to provide a more modular infrastructure. The features that came out of that process showed how much it was needed, and it has given us a solid DDX base from which to expand into other areas. For 5.0 I expect that we'll move more into the device-independent (DIX) and protocol areas as well as making some adjustments to the DDX area based on our experiences with 4.x.
Ok so for Xfree86 5.0 they will focus on improving the rendering, and bringing X to the levels of Aqua, but by the time 5.0 gets here expect Longhorn to be released, and expect OS 11 to be released by Apple which takes things to the next level.
Linux needs to do more than just keep afloat and compete, Linux has to dominate to beat Microsoft.
Currently the only thing preventing Linux from taking the desktop market, is the fact that the currently Linux interface doesnt look polished enough, theres enough programs for grandma, theres games, theres plenty of office apps, the casual user can use Linux, the only reason they wont use Linux is because OSX is better than Linux.
Why buy a Linux dell laptop for college when you can get an Ibook thats just as powerful but better?
Why get Linux if its just like Windows? This is why Windows users would sooner switch to Mac.
X is now one of Linux's biggest bottlenecks, along with the fact that they have no music apps and not enough file sharing apps.
IF X were as good as Quartz Extreme then Linux would succeed on the desktop.
X is what is holding linux back, not lack of apps, you see people complain linux is too hard to use, and it cant be made easier until X is fixed.
Censorship doesnt change the fact that the majority are evil, they'd still be evil if censored, we'd just have no way of knowiung who these evil people are.
I'd rather them be on the net so we can monitor these people than have them be totally censored and invisible in our society.
Also I think even if we didnt make the first atomic bomb, we'd still have wars, ignorance cannot be erased with censorship only hidden and hiding the problem does not solve it.
The solution is not censorship, the solution is containment, if theres enough intelligent people in this world we can stop putting power in the hands of the ignorant few, and eventually over perhaps generations intelligent people can change the fate of humanity.
Currently however our president is not the most intelligent man, hes a rich snob who used his fathers popularity and money to get into office.
Until we have real leaders who are intelligent we cannot easily prevent war, its funny these kids who go to harvard, people with PHDs, scientists, and so on are all anti war, the most intelligent people in society are also the least aggressive, but intelligent people because of their lack of aggression usually dont end up as president or any high up positions because it takes a killer instinct and aggressive attitude to get to the top, ask bill gates, george bush, or any war general how they got to their rank, it wasnt because they were the smartest, or most intelligent, they just happened to be the most motivated.
Evil people in the world are the most motivated while intelligent people in the world are the least motivated, very rarely are intelligent people in the world motivated, perhaps open source is an example of intelligent people motivated, but bill gates is still on top because greed motivates more people than peace on earth, or helping your neighbor etc.
Capitalism only works because the world is filled with ignorant greedy peopel who are selfish and who cant see the whole picture, they arent thinking long term about what capitalism will do to society, how millions of people in the third world die over capitalism, how millions of people in their own country suffer because of capitalism, how in general the world has less knowledge and education because of capitalism, etc.
Until we find a way to motivate intelligent people, we are stuck with capitalism.
I dont know your sex height or color, I dont really care about it either. If i met you in person, none of this would make a diffrence when it comes to me judging you as a person.
[QUOTE]The only person that can ignore someone's race/colour/sex/creed is a blind man, or someone so enlightened that even if he's in the middle of an orgasm he will actually be in a serene meditative state [/QUOTE]
Or someone who simply doesnt care about visual appearance. I cant see you through the internet, I've learned not to give a damn what people look like because of the internet.
[QUOTE]The best you can do is have your conscious mind actively try to override your preconceptions about their race/colour/sex/creed of the person. For example if you saw a man in a wheelchair trying to stand up, you would think about helping him, whereas somebody normally sitting in a chair and getting up you wouldn't help. YOU WOULD HELP THE DISABLED PERSON STAND UP, BUT NOT THE NORMAL PERSON - how did you notice the disabled person was disabled? You couldn't help discriminating for him, your high badwidth link from your eyes to your brain totally overrides everything. That's why Buddha closes his eyes when he meditates.[/QUOTE]
Stop being silly, how would I know the diffrence between a normal person in a chair and a disabled person? I wouldnt really help either of them unless they specifically asked for help, and no i wouldnt think of helping them unless they somehow suggest they need it.
[QUOTE]So you see Socialism is idealism, it won't work in reality because human beings are not perfect, we are selfish. Money allows us to turn these selfish and greedy desires into something that by accident does some good like creating jobs so that we can make more money as a Director of a big company. I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm saying it's a terrible thing.[/QUOTE]
Yes the majority of humanity is selfish, the majority of humanity is also evil, hateful, and cruel, I'm not part of that majority so why should I care if humanity as a whole cannot handle idealism?
I can, if you cant, go back to the stone ages or bomb yourself back there in the petty wars that capitalism will continue to cause.
Some people however arent selfish and are ready for socialism, yes these people arent the majority, but theres good people in the world who arent selfish, socialism cannot work until people are all on this level and I never said we were ready for socialism, but pure capitalism cannot work either for the same exact reason.
I judge people based on how they treat me. Based on character not outside appearance.
Racists dont just judge people they hate the people they judge so theres a diffrence.
Microsoft and the USA has a monopoly on knowledge so what good is having the tools?
Instead of teaching them to fish, we give them fish.
Someone has to write the code and you have the most programmers in india, this = $$
Someone has to write serious government apps and people would pay money for this.
Open Source does not mean Free as in beer.
Open Source is Open Source.
You can sell programs, but the source code is free, you sell the compiled code, most people when they buy a game dont know how to or dont want to spend days compiling it, they want a CD, they want to pop it in, and have it work.
People who hate are terrorists, yes we have domestic terrorism in the USA, they should be locked up with Al Qaeda, The unibomber and many others,
The solution is containment, not censorship.
Dont compare the 1940s to now, If bin laden was around flying planes into cities in the 1940s the whole USA would have been destroyed, this is 2002.
You cannot censor hate, the best you can do is contain it by setting laws that make it very difficult for these people to get guns, and which alienates them.
Sorta like an ex con, a sex offender, or just a person from iraq who decides to fly on a one way planeride, people should keep a close eye on these people.
Its easier to monitor them from websites than to implant spies throughout their ranks.
If they ever do become a threat, their websites will most likely offer clues.
this also applies to file sharing. why cant we share source code or files on napster that are copyrighted?
Theres no freedom of speech its just an illusion
To stop hate its better that we monitor them than make them go underground.
It sounds good, but when you realize you cannot outlaw ignorance without being ignorant yourself it fails.
The way to control hate is to contain it, and simply make it known that its wrong, fight information with information, fight ignorance with intelligence.
Make a law to track every hate site, make a law to monitor the hosts, make laws to allow hosts of hate sites to be monitored by anti terrorist units, but thats all you can do, monitor hate.
They deserve freedom of speech, i also believe we shouldnt stop file sharing, but monitoring is fine.
Hate is wrong, but you cant stop it by censoring it and you can get more intelligence info from monitor and containment to stop any attacks they try to make before they happen.