It seems OS projects that start from corporate roots, like Mozilla and OO (started as StarOffice), take a longer time to get competitive . Maybe their closed source roots require them to spend some time in software purgatory before they're admitted in open source heaven. Or something.
So, while OO may be fairly crappy for now, I have good hopes that in a few years time we'll see a firefox-like revival. Props to the developers and users who stick it out during this hard part of the development cycle. BTW, that's all the support you're likely to get from the likes of me. I'll maybe try updates once every year or so, then complain bitterly:-)
The fundamental reason for motion blur on LCD, which can not be solved using faster crystals, is the sample-and-hold property.
A video frame will remain on the screen for 1/50th (1/60th for NTSC, 1/24th for film material) of a second. Then, instantly, the frame is refreshed and all objects "jerk" towards their new positions. If you were tracking one of the objects with your eyes, your brain cannot cope with this instant movement, and instead tries to "see" the motion as smooth. For example, half-way during the showing time of the frame, the eye is already half-way shifted to the next expected object position. This results in a blurred perception of the object.
A CRT does not have this problem, since the frame is only flashed briefly, after which darkness returns. The brain can integrate these flashes to perceive fluid motion without blurred objects.
The backlight technology described in TFA mimics CRT pulse behaviour, to remove this fundamental blur. If you take care of reducing the visibility of flicker, which in practice means going to at least 75 Hz, this is an adequate solution.
You can't have your cake and eat it too: it is impossible to have both flicker-free display at limited frame rates and perfect motion portrayal.
Damn right. I'm not professionally active in this, but I've also learned not to "delight" family members with Linux.
The problem with installing Linux on other people's PC's is that they come back whining to you about it. With windows it's much easier for them to find support closer to home without bugging me.
That whole "community thing", as you rightly pointed out, is as much an idee-fixe in the Wikipedia-is-way-better-than-Brittanica vein than a practical support proposition.
That said, linux rules, especially in newly developed big and small hardware. Just not on the desktop.
About two weeks ago, IBM senior vice president and director of research Paul Horn gave an invited talk at my company as part of a research stategy planning thing.
He got to talking about the use of open source in general and Linux in particular. He says it costs IBM about 500 million dollars each year to keep something like AIX up-to-date and relevant. At a lower cost (but by no means negligble) they can invest in Linux to make it work for them like AIX. He hinted that that cost is about 100-200 million dollars annually.
The fact that society benefits from IBM's improvements of Linux may gave the people at IBM a nice warm feeling, but the financial people get a much better feeling from the fact that the combined world's efforts in creating an OS suite together saves them about 300-400 million a year.
watching a frigin busload of women redecorate their houses and elimidate each other
Man, I think you're on to something! Women redocorating shit, then going on dates with each other (hot! hot! think the US market is ready for this? Maybe try euroland first), and at the end of the evenening eliminating one of their own (did she go too far on the first date? not far enough? eliminate!). Behold the elimidate!
No, you fail to see that these schemes don't have to be anywhere near 100% secure to be successful.
For example, suppose there will be one standard, and it becomes widely known that it's hackable (say, akin to DVD's CSS).
Still, everytime someone says "I can't be bothered with this shit" and buys a second license for an album so he can play it in his car as well as in his house, that's money in the bank for the enemy. And it will happen a lot, when people are rich and lazy.
Damnit, with the help of slashdot fair'n'balanced editorial summaries I try to make my life simpler by discounting stuff, seeing a chance to put the N-Gage in once and for all in the no-longer-need-to-wonder-about-this-shit department, and along comes your message which tells me the damn thing might be interesting after all. Arses!
- RMS was useful at one time but he should now leave serious persons do the real work. - RMS is too extreme - RMS is a crackpot - RMS is a communist - RMS is a dirty hippy that smells bad
You can tell slashdot culture is going down the drain when even the trolls can't be bothered to send in a properly updated post.
Not just you, but the old people in Korea and Soviet Russia are absent as well. And who's imagining beowulf clusters of bittorrent sites these days, even if it's in Japan?
Photopia is great. One of the few text adventures that can truly be described as "interactive fiction" . It sounds lame, but to explain why would give away too much of Photopia's plot.
I can also heartily recommend spider and web by Andrew Plotkin. More of a traditional puzzler, but with nice plot and NPCs.
The decimal type offers a fix for a (very slight) inaccuracy that's inherent with floating point values on a machine level. It's not a programming language "issue" at all.
Having said that, I agree it takes some time to become efficient in Python. I wish/hope (ought to check again) that Python's potentially excellent built-in documentation string system becomes/is more accessible and useful. That'd help a lot with getting to know modules.
I've used 3 scripting languages over the times; I use bash for anything less then 10 lines, never using functions. Perl no longer, as I can learn the language, but my brain can't seem to remember the details longer than about a week --- don't know where the fault lies. That leaves me with Python for everything more than 10 lines.
Slightly offtopic, but a few days ago Valve's Steam stuff (the bit installed on the victim's PC) ran a poll about gamer's hardware, in which I participated.
I was very surprised by the intermediate results: 47% was running an AMD CPU (lots of them 64 bit), Intel at 51% and the rest other wacky stuff. Considering that gaming is a major drive (maybe only windows upgrades are more important --- and those are few and far between lately) in processor upgrades, I'd be worried if I were intel.
Personally, I've been a happy AMD user since their 386-40MHz. A brief flirt with a Pentium Pro and even a fling with a CentaurHauls (or something, I remember that name from/proc/cpu) aside, it's been AMD all the time. I hope they keep doing well.
Both policies are bankrupt, if this BBC news article is to be believed.
Basically, it's arguing that both parties base their budget plans on 3% economic growth in the coming years, which is probably too optimistic because much of the current growth (barely more than 3%) is fueled by consumer spending which is building up unsustainable consumer debt.
Right, maybe I posted that a bit too black and white.
However, my point is that the slashdot story is like suggesting 5-10 years ago that Apple should come up with a real good winamp version for the mac, instead of thinking up shit like ipods.
So, if Apple's going into gaming, it'd definately not be on a mac. Something else... wilder...
I think you can forget about games for PCs or Macs, as that whole market will soon be irrelevant. Gaming is all about consoles and mobile platforms nowadays.
Reminds me of a great documentary, startup.com,
about a dot.com that wanted to do something or other that would make tons of money.
So many funny and tragic things happened there that to this day I'm not entirely convinced that it isn't a mockumentary a la Spinal Tap.
For us in old Europe it was a double treat, because we'd get to experience both the dot.com madness, as well as the "standard" American business practices, like the "Monday morning shout" and other weird (for us) motivational stuff.
Definitely check this documentary out if you haven't already.
On the net, there is only the illusion of freedom because of the enormous scale. If you make big enough waves, you will be noticed and, if they want you, you will be found.
This whole "routing around censorship damage" is late 20th century romanticism. No link with reality whatsoever.
Yes, but the capacity on current DVDs is simply not sufficient for HD signals. And HD is where we're headed...
This is also the reason I favour the Blu-Ray format; it has 25 GB where HD-DVD offers 15 (I think both numbers are per layer, could be wrong).
Going from 4.5 to 15 per layer does not seem worth the effort, from 4.5 to 25 just might be. Also, I think the HD-DVD camp is making the very common mistake of overestimating *practical* video compression technology. Theoretically 15 GB might just be enough for 3 hours HD movie at 1920x1080i. However, the current DVD market shows most studios can't tell their arse from a good mpeg encoder.
Video compression is a bit like compiler technology; when Intel launches a new pentium it's like "well it won't work faster than the old one right away, but with a smart compiler it'll really fly"... however, that new compiler never materializes, or simply isn't used by your software vendor. So your shiny new processer won't fly after all.
Therefore, in CPUs and DVD storage capacity alike, over-engineer where you can! Vote blu-ray.
Yes, Mozilla will be able to handle the load and responsibility of being the dominant browser.
How can I be so sure? Because Microsoft could too, if they were as focussed on the browsing experience as the Mozilla project is. I don't doubt there are bright Microsoft engineers who could crank out an IE version with 95% of the current flaws removed on very short notice.
However, this would involve killing a lot of "features", most notably ActiveX, which will make customers (the poor bastards...) who went for the "full MS web experience" (IIS + IE + ASP, you get the idea) very unhappy. Microsoft is more-or-less obliged to keep supporting all those instant-security-hole features, or risk pissing off their remaining IIS customers.
The trouble with open sourcing the engines is that you can no longer charge those licensing fees, yet you still have to expend the time and money to develop the engine in the first place.
I disagree with that. It is quite possible (and dealt with in a gazillion different OS licenses) to distribute source for free, yet require license payments if said source, or a derivative thereof, is used in a commercial offering.
In fact, I would argue that due to the extremly high visibility of game engine software (as opposed to, say, the exact roots of source of firmware in a network hub or something like that) it is quite unlikely that any half-major developer
can successfully "sneak" the code in his own product without you noticing.
Of course there's the possibility that the competition will use the source only to steal the good ideas from your work, in which case you don't get paid. But for that we'll soon have software patents so you can protect the ideas too. See how software patents help open source? (quickly ducks)
Slashdot Mirror
It seems OS projects that start from corporate roots, like Mozilla and OO (started as StarOffice), take a longer time to get competitive . Maybe their closed source roots require them to spend some time in software purgatory before they're admitted in open source heaven. Or something.
:-)
So, while OO may be fairly crappy for now, I have good hopes that in a few years time we'll see a firefox-like revival. Props to the developers and users who stick it out during this hard part of the development cycle. BTW, that's all the support you're likely to get from the likes of me. I'll maybe try updates once every year or so, then complain bitterly
All along, they's tricked us.
Partly. There's also the fundamental sample-and-hold limitation, which cannot be overcome with faster crystals. See my post elsewhere in this list.
The fundamental reason for motion blur on LCD, which can not be solved using faster crystals, is the sample-and-hold property.
A video frame will remain on the screen for 1/50th (1/60th for NTSC, 1/24th for film material) of a second. Then, instantly, the frame is refreshed and all objects "jerk" towards their new positions. If you were tracking one of the objects with your eyes, your brain cannot cope with this instant movement, and instead tries to "see" the motion as smooth. For example, half-way during the showing time of the frame, the eye is already half-way shifted to the next expected object position. This results in a blurred perception of the object.
A CRT does not have this problem, since the frame is only flashed briefly, after which darkness returns. The brain can integrate these flashes to perceive fluid motion without blurred objects.
The backlight technology described in TFA mimics CRT pulse behaviour, to remove this fundamental blur. If you take care of reducing the visibility of flicker, which in practice means going to at least 75 Hz, this is an adequate solution.
You can't have your cake and eat it too: it is impossible to have both flicker-free display at limited frame rates and perfect motion portrayal.
Damn right. I'm not professionally active in this, but I've also learned not to "delight" family members with Linux.
The problem with installing Linux on other people's PC's is that they come back whining to you about it. With windows it's much easier for them to find support closer to home without bugging me.
That whole "community thing", as you rightly pointed out, is as much an idee-fixe in the Wikipedia-is-way-better-than-Brittanica vein than a practical support proposition.
That said, linux rules, especially in newly developed big and small hardware. Just not on the desktop.
About two weeks ago, IBM senior vice president and director of research Paul Horn gave an invited talk at my company as part of a research stategy planning thing.
He got to talking about the use of open source in general and Linux in particular. He says it costs IBM about 500 million dollars each year to keep something like AIX up-to-date and relevant. At a lower cost (but by no means negligble) they can invest in Linux to make it work for them like AIX. He hinted that that cost is about 100-200 million dollars annually.
The fact that society benefits from IBM's improvements of Linux may gave the people at IBM a nice warm feeling, but the financial people get a much better feeling from the fact that the combined world's efforts in creating an OS suite together saves them about 300-400 million a year.
watching a frigin busload of women redecorate their houses and elimidate each other
Man, I think you're on to something! Women redocorating shit, then going on dates with each other (hot! hot! think the US market is ready for this? Maybe try euroland first), and at the end of the evenening eliminating one of their own (did she go too far on the first date? not far enough? eliminate!). Behold the elimidate!
No, you fail to see that these schemes don't have to be anywhere near 100% secure to be successful.
For example, suppose there will be one standard, and it becomes widely known that it's hackable (say, akin to DVD's CSS).
Still, everytime someone says "I can't be bothered with this shit" and buys a second license for an album so he can play it in his car as well as in his house, that's money in the bank for the enemy. And it will happen a lot, when people are rich and lazy.
Damnit, with the help of slashdot fair'n'balanced editorial summaries I try to make my life simpler by discounting stuff, seeing a chance to put the N-Gage in once and for all in the no-longer-need-to-wonder-about-this-shit department, and along comes your message which tells me the damn thing might be interesting after all. Arses!
- RMS was useful at one time but he should now leave serious persons do the real work.
- RMS is too extreme
- RMS is a crackpot
- RMS is a communist
- RMS is a dirty hippy that smells bad
Let's add:
- RMS Rocks
- RMS is CowboyNeal in disguise
and have ourselves a poll!
You can tell slashdot culture is going down the drain when even the trolls can't be bothered to send in a properly updated post.
./ posts confirm it: trolling is dying!
Not just you, but the old people in Korea and Soviet Russia are absent as well. And who's imagining beowulf clusters of bittorrent sites these days, even if it's in Japan?
The
Photopia is great. One of the few text adventures that can truly be described as "interactive fiction" . It sounds lame, but to explain why would give away too much of Photopia's plot.
I can also heartily recommend spider and web by Andrew Plotkin. More of a traditional puzzler, but with nice plot and NPCs.
The decimal type offers a fix for a (very slight) inaccuracy that's inherent with floating point values on a machine level. It's not a programming language "issue" at all.
Having said that, I agree it takes some time to become efficient in Python. I wish/hope (ought to check again) that Python's potentially excellent built-in documentation string system becomes/is more accessible and useful. That'd help a lot with getting to know modules.
I've used 3 scripting languages over the times; I use bash for anything less then 10 lines, never using functions. Perl no longer, as I can learn the language, but my brain can't seem to remember the details longer than about a week --- don't know where the fault lies. That leaves me with Python for everything more than 10 lines.
In Soviet North Korea, dying old people confirm that netcraft imagines beowulf clusters... but will they run linux in Japan?
In Korea, single sign-on is only for old people.
Slightly offtopic, but a few days ago Valve's Steam stuff (the bit installed on the victim's PC) ran a poll about gamer's hardware, in which I participated.
/proc/cpu) aside, it's been AMD all the time. I hope they keep doing well.
I was very surprised by the intermediate results: 47% was running an AMD CPU (lots of them 64 bit), Intel at 51% and the rest other wacky stuff. Considering that gaming is a major drive (maybe only windows upgrades are more important --- and those are few and far between lately) in processor upgrades, I'd be worried if I were intel.
Personally, I've been a happy AMD user since their 386-40MHz. A brief flirt with a Pentium Pro and even a fling with a CentaurHauls (or something, I remember that name from
Basically, it's arguing that both parties base their budget plans on 3% economic growth in the coming years, which is probably too optimistic because much of the current growth (barely more than 3%) is fueled by consumer spending which is building up unsustainable consumer debt.
Right, maybe I posted that a bit too black and white.
However, my point is that the slashdot story is like suggesting 5-10 years ago that Apple should come up with a real good winamp version for the mac, instead of thinking up shit like ipods.
So, if Apple's going into gaming, it'd definately not be on a mac. Something else... wilder...
I think you can forget about games for PCs or Macs, as that whole market will soon be irrelevant. Gaming is all about consoles and mobile platforms nowadays.
So many funny and tragic things happened there that to this day I'm not entirely convinced that it isn't a mockumentary a la Spinal Tap.
For us in old Europe it was a double treat, because we'd get to experience both the dot.com madness, as well as the "standard" American business practices, like the "Monday morning shout" and other weird (for us) motivational stuff.
Definitely check this documentary out if you haven't already.
Ha! Detailed language analysis shows that slashdot editorials are written by the Bush election campaign!
On the net, there is only the illusion of freedom because of the enormous scale. If you make big enough waves, you will be noticed and, if they want you, you will be found.
This whole "routing around censorship damage" is late 20th century romanticism. No link with reality whatsoever.
Yes, but the capacity on current DVDs is simply not sufficient for HD signals. And HD is where we're headed...
This is also the reason I favour the Blu-Ray format; it has 25 GB where HD-DVD offers 15 (I think both numbers are per layer, could be wrong).
Going from 4.5 to 15 per layer does not seem worth the effort, from 4.5 to 25 just might be. Also, I think the HD-DVD camp is making the very common mistake of overestimating *practical* video compression technology. Theoretically 15 GB might just be enough for 3 hours HD movie at 1920x1080i. However, the current DVD market shows most studios can't tell their arse from a good mpeg encoder.
Video compression is a bit like compiler technology; when Intel launches a new pentium it's like "well it won't work faster than the old one right away, but with a smart compiler it'll really fly"... however, that new compiler never materializes, or simply isn't used by your software vendor. So your shiny new processer won't fly after all.
Therefore, in CPUs and DVD storage capacity alike, over-engineer where you can! Vote blu-ray.
Yes, Mozilla will be able to handle the load and responsibility of being the dominant browser.
How can I be so sure? Because Microsoft could too, if they were as focussed on the browsing experience as the Mozilla project is. I don't doubt there are bright Microsoft engineers who could crank out an IE version with 95% of the current flaws removed on very short notice.
However, this would involve killing a lot of "features", most notably ActiveX, which will make customers (the poor bastards...) who went for the "full MS web experience" (IIS + IE + ASP, you get the idea) very unhappy. Microsoft is more-or-less obliged to keep supporting all those instant-security-hole features, or risk pissing off their remaining IIS customers.
I disagree with that. It is quite possible (and dealt with in a gazillion different OS licenses) to distribute source for free, yet require license payments if said source, or a derivative thereof, is used in a commercial offering.
In fact, I would argue that due to the extremly high visibility of game engine software (as opposed to, say, the exact roots of source of firmware in a network hub or something like that) it is quite unlikely that any half-major developer can successfully "sneak" the code in his own product without you noticing.
Of course there's the possibility that the competition will use the source only to steal the good ideas from your work, in which case you don't get paid. But for that we'll soon have software patents so you can protect the ideas too. See how software patents help open source? (quickly ducks)