ATI gets a lot of bad press for their drivers, but they do release the specifications for their hardware to multiple open source development groups. What you end up with is Free, open drivers that are as good as the groups that make them. This as opposed to NVidia, a company that although support Linux through binary drivers, does not release the source code or specifications.
Re:Existing system works - why change?
on
VoIP at $15 a Pop
·
· Score: 2
My company is rolling out voice over broadband. Basically we set up an SDSL line that carries I think up to 8 phone lines, and has a (deprioritized) internet circuit that uses the bandwidth of the lines not in use. So instead of a company installing, say, 5 local loops and baying the business rate on each, they get 5 AND ~T1 on one local loop.
And no, power is not supplied through the circuit, since it is digital, but our rollout includes a UPS that is capable of maintaining the phone system for hours. It's really not a bad system, and you can't distinguish the quality from a regular POTS line. That, and our local calling area for our broadband customers is *HUGE*:)
The Radeon 8500 is actually neck and neck with the GeForce3 TI 500 (which performs better than a low end GeForce4). I'm constantly reading here and in other places that high end GeForce3 and 4 cards are "overkill," and I can tell from personal experience that a GeForce2 MX runs Quake3 in 1200x1024/32-bit color (with all the goodies) at a passable framerate. I think that this, combined with ATIs OEM deals (the mobility Radeon 7500 seems hot), they stand a chance to take quite a bit of market share from NVidia and the (IMO) overpriced GeForce4 line.
Why aren't any distros including OpenOffice? In my opinion it's a vast improvement over StarOffice 5.2, and the differences between it and StarOffice 6.0 are trivial.
Amen to that. First impressions are all we get from the media, and those are difficult to overcome if you don't have an extremely open mind. When you watch Delta Force and Spy Games you have a a little suspension of disbelief, but when you see the same things live on CNN those images are cemented in your mind. It blew my mind the first time I talked to a programmer from over there. I thought they were all militia men, but it turns out he goes to night clubs, watches TV, and fantasizes about chicks too. Imagine that.
Then on the flipside you have people in the United States who are becoming absolutely indignant toward their own government. Depending on who you ask, the strife in the middle east is all the United States' fault, damn those dirty scumbag Republicans. It's a series of knee jerk reactions that only escalate.
For my own part, I canceled my cable subscription a long time ago. I rely on IRC and word of mouth for my news. Less drama and politics that way.
I activated it before, when I installed it. He put it on an entirely different machine. It was an OEM version I bought with some RAM though--maybe that has something to do with it.
You probably won't run into any problems. I recently bought a new PC with XP Pro pre-installed, so I gave my XP home CD to my roommate. He installed and activated it with no additional effort on his part. No calls to Microsoft, no questions, no hiccups whatsoever.
Makes me wonder what activating really does for you.
I would prefer to get rid of licensing agreements entirely. I don't have to agree to any binding terms when I purchase a CD player or a hair dryer; why should software be treated any differently?
Of course I realize that unlike my hypothetical hair dryer, a piece of software can be copied and distributed using little or no personal resources. It isn't exactly a commodity, so it can't be treated as such. Nevertheless, I'm still opposed to EULAs in their current forms, so perhaps a compromise is in order.
Generally speaking, the GPL and its close relatives don't get much flack from the SlashDot crowd. In essence they are EULAs, using the same legalistic and hard-to-understand languages as their distant proprietary cousins, but they are accepted, tolerated--even welcome in our community. They are maintained by standards organizations, publicly reviewed, and well understood.
Can this be done in the commercial world? Like, such-and-such has a EULA that is approved by the [insert standards body here]? But then again, even if it did help identify these issues sooner, my guess is that no one would even bother to look for that seal ("Kazaa isn't using an approved EULA? Oh no! Oh well.").
And then, no one could force a company (*cough*Kazaa*cough*) to get their EULAs approved. I'm not sure if I'd want that anyway.
Since when did the other students become the teachers?
Seriously, if you're going to pay upwards of $40,000 for a college education then shouldn't you expect that the faculty and staff would do their jobs? As a fellow student I have the option of helping my peers, but when it becomes necessary for them to pass their courses then you have a limited number of possibilities:
They aren't putting in the effort
The teacher isn't doing his or her job
They are in the wrong major
Sure, when you program you piece together smaller solutions to form one big one. Want to program? Great, get a CIS/MIS degree--no skill required. But if you want to be a Computer Science major, working in a field that is, by definition, research-oriented, then learn how to solve problems, not feed off of others.
- It uses a Sound Blaster for "enhanced MP3 encoding". Requiring an add-on product for best results is lame. Though I guess to some a Mac is an add-on product for an iPod...
The SoundBlaster Audigy has both dedicated hardware for MP3 encoding and a firewire port. It is one of the few, if not the only, sound card to provide these features.
Honor codes like this are designed to prevent diluting the reputation of a university by ensuring that each student really and truly learns the material in order to graduate. Most universities hire absured numbers of tutors from the upper class and graduate division to assist you. At my university half of them were let go because no one, not one student, went to see them.
There is no accounting for laziness. To be honest, no university can teach computer science; anyone who will be successful in this field has to have enough interest to persue it as a hobby, if not a lifestyle, in order to succeed. It can be learned solo--I learned more in high school on my own than I ever did in college.
There seems to be this opinion that everyone who takes the course should pass, and this quite frankly disgusts me. Iam currently still persuing my degree and I am saddled by group projects and burdened with seniors who cannot write a compilable line of C. These are not people who should be seniors; they got where they are now by "learning" from their partners.
'd' as in "denounce" as in we are legitimate open source developers denouncing both the incumbent intellectual property legislation and the violation of those laws rather than protesting them through proper channels.
IBM is still a large contender in the server market
IBM has put billions into open source development, including their own implementation of the JDK, compiler, and clustered virtual machines
IBM favors Linux and has partnerships with SuSE and Redhat (perhaps others)
Oracle produces versions of their products to run on almost every platform, and uses Java in most of their client applications
There you have it. Sun is in direct competition with IBM on three fronts (hardware, operating system, and software), and I'm sure Ellison could care less who buys his product, as long as it's selling. Obviously IBM wants some control over Java, and Sun isn't playing nicely. I'm kind of on the edge of my seat myself.
According to Sun, 1.4 is almost twice as fast as 1.3. Forte for Java CE (which is probably the largest and most complex Java application I have ever seen) runs as fast as a native application on the Windows VM.
However, the Linux VM sucks ass. It's slow and buggy and hasn't changed much since 1.2. That may be why a lot of the geekier types are against Java.
That's a good observation. Okay, so the [L]GPL is ruled out, but that doesn't mean we can't have an open version floating around under the BSD license. We'll have the source code and the ability to improve it, just not the ability to prevent some foolish corporation from trying to close it up and sell it.
If you're dogmatic about open source, nobody's forcing you to use proprietary versions of the same. Other than the unfairness of having your work whored out in the corporate marketplace, I don't see this as being a huge problem.
Yeah what's up with that. I mean, you click "Find Driver". You select "Radeon 8500". Then you select "Linux". It takes you to that URL.
This compared to NVidia's site where you click Support, then Linux, then read and agree to a disclaimer, then choose a version, then download the kernel patches...
I don't know if this will hold any water from a legal standpoint, and it may be a little off topic, but it is worth noting that competition in the entertainment industry is non-existent. If it were Sony vs. Universal vs. Paramount vs. Whoever then that might be another story, but what we have here is a unified effort by the organizations to which they subscribe: the RIAA and the MPAA. Acting as single entities, these organizations are responsible for artificial price floors on CDs, movie tickets, and home video releases. The only real competition is piracy. Jack Valenti and Hillary Rosen will tell you that people pirate because it's easy and they don't really see anything wrong with it, and that demand has kept the prices where they currently are. What I see is millions of Americans ranging from the very young and reckless to the very old and conservative willing to break the law to acquire these commodities rather than purchase them. This law just gives the MPAA and RIAA yet another tool to (in my opinion unethically) extend their choke hold on the industry.
This may bring broadband services sooner, but then who would be able to afford them? This will ultimately and irreparably harm the consumer if passed.
One last thought--fair use may not be a right, but it should be understood that consumers expect to have ownership of the products they purchase, not just the right to listen or watch on somebody else's terms. This expectation should be headed and legislation should be put in place to address it, as it seems to be the popular will of the people.
ATIs policy is that they don't produce drivers for Linux. However, they have established a relationship with open source developers and provided all of the specifications for their hardware. It is my understanding that currently the Radeon series has good 2D acceleration in X, but the 3D acceleration portions (MESA et al) is still in the works. It will likely be month before we start seeing advanced features like the T&L they have been touting available for Linux.
How does this work? I'm fairly sure that even IE won't let you write to the hard drive (which, IIRC, is required to change the look/feel of IE. There's special file naming convention in the IE folder under Program Files). Aside from that, wouldn't it take at least an ActiveX plugin? I seriously doubt this is possible for informed users who don't install every little unsigned octect stream that comes across their internet connection.
That's the exact impression I get from RMS, though. He's an idealist who is, as he said, only interested in protecting freedoms. ESR, with the Cathedral and the Bazaar, tried to temper that with a more practical appeal, with marginal success. Ironically ESR gets the most press for being kind of "out there," while RMS is (perhaps rightly so) paraded as the hero of open source.
And that's where most of our arguments lie: ideaology. If not for our core philosophical beliefs, a lot of us would simply throw our lot in with proprietary software vendors and try to make a buck like everyone else. Sure open source (sorry, Free) software has a lot of benefits to businesses and home users, but those are really afterthoughts.
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ATI gets a lot of bad press for their drivers, but they do release the specifications for their hardware to multiple open source development groups. What you end up with is Free, open drivers that are as good as the groups that make them. This as opposed to NVidia, a company that although support Linux through binary drivers, does not release the source code or specifications.
My company is rolling out voice over broadband. Basically we set up an SDSL line that carries I think up to 8 phone lines, and has a (deprioritized) internet circuit that uses the bandwidth of the lines not in use. So instead of a company installing, say, 5 local loops and baying the business rate on each, they get 5 AND ~T1 on one local loop.
:)
And no, power is not supplied through the circuit, since it is digital, but our rollout includes a UPS that is capable of maintaining the phone system for hours. It's really not a bad system, and you can't distinguish the quality from a regular POTS line. That, and our local calling area for our broadband customers is *HUGE*
Simple solution: use ODBC. Or Java.
The Radeon 8500 is actually neck and neck with the GeForce3 TI 500 (which performs better than a low end GeForce4). I'm constantly reading here and in other places that high end GeForce3 and 4 cards are "overkill," and I can tell from personal experience that a GeForce2 MX runs Quake3 in 1200x1024/32-bit color (with all the goodies) at a passable framerate. I think that this, combined with ATIs OEM deals (the mobility Radeon 7500 seems hot), they stand a chance to take quite a bit of market share from NVidia and the (IMO) overpriced GeForce4 line.
Why aren't any distros including OpenOffice? In my opinion it's a vast improvement over StarOffice 5.2, and the differences between it and StarOffice 6.0 are trivial.
I *just* bought 7.3...does SuSE offer upgrade discounts?
Amen to that. First impressions are all we get from the media, and those are difficult to overcome if you don't have an extremely open mind. When you watch Delta Force and Spy Games you have a a little suspension of disbelief, but when you see the same things live on CNN those images are cemented in your mind. It blew my mind the first time I talked to a programmer from over there. I thought they were all militia men, but it turns out he goes to night clubs, watches TV, and fantasizes about chicks too. Imagine that.
Then on the flipside you have people in the United States who are becoming absolutely indignant toward their own government. Depending on who you ask, the strife in the middle east is all the United States' fault, damn those dirty scumbag Republicans. It's a series of knee jerk reactions that only escalate.
For my own part, I canceled my cable subscription a long time ago. I rely on IRC and word of mouth for my news. Less drama and politics that way.
I activated it before, when I installed it. He put it on an entirely different machine. It was an OEM version I bought with some RAM though--maybe that has something to do with it.
You probably won't run into any problems. I recently bought a new PC with XP Pro pre-installed, so I gave my XP home CD to my roommate. He installed and activated it with no additional effort on his part. No calls to Microsoft, no questions, no hiccups whatsoever.
Makes me wonder what activating really does for you.
I would prefer to get rid of licensing agreements entirely. I don't have to agree to any binding terms when I purchase a CD player or a hair dryer; why should software be treated any differently?
Of course I realize that unlike my hypothetical hair dryer, a piece of software can be copied and distributed using little or no personal resources. It isn't exactly a commodity, so it can't be treated as such. Nevertheless, I'm still opposed to EULAs in their current forms, so perhaps a compromise is in order.
Generally speaking, the GPL and its close relatives don't get much flack from the SlashDot crowd. In essence they are EULAs, using the same legalistic and hard-to-understand languages as their distant proprietary cousins, but they are accepted, tolerated--even welcome in our community. They are maintained by standards organizations, publicly reviewed, and well understood.
Can this be done in the commercial world? Like, such-and-such has a EULA that is approved by the [insert standards body here]? But then again, even if it did help identify these issues sooner, my guess is that no one would even bother to look for that seal ("Kazaa isn't using an approved EULA? Oh no! Oh well.").
And then, no one could force a company (*cough*Kazaa*cough*) to get their EULAs approved. I'm not sure if I'd want that anyway.
Perhaps they are leaving the "hard disk" market to persue some other means of mass storage.
Seriously, if you're going to pay upwards of $40,000 for a college education then shouldn't you expect that the faculty and staff would do their jobs? As a fellow student I have the option of helping my peers, but when it becomes necessary for them to pass their courses then you have a limited number of possibilities:
They aren't putting in the effort
The teacher isn't doing his or her job
They are in the wrong major
Sure, when you program you piece together smaller solutions to form one big one. Want to program? Great, get a CIS/MIS degree--no skill required. But if you want to be a Computer Science major, working in a field that is, by definition, research-oriented, then learn how to solve problems, not feed off of others.
The SoundBlaster Audigy has both dedicated hardware for MP3 encoding and a firewire port. It is one of the few, if not the only, sound card to provide these features.
Honor codes like this are designed to prevent diluting the reputation of a university by ensuring that each student really and truly learns the material in order to graduate. Most universities hire absured numbers of tutors from the upper class and graduate division to assist you. At my university half of them were let go because no one, not one student, went to see them.
There is no accounting for laziness. To be honest, no university can teach computer science; anyone who will be successful in this field has to have enough interest to persue it as a hobby, if not a lifestyle, in order to succeed. It can be learned solo--I learned more in high school on my own than I ever did in college.
There seems to be this opinion that everyone who takes the course should pass, and this quite frankly disgusts me. Iam currently still persuing my degree and I am saddled by group projects and burdened with seniors who cannot write a compilable line of C. These are not people who should be seniors; they got where they are now by "learning" from their partners.
WE P ON X?
'd' as in "denounce" as in we are legitimate open source developers denouncing both the incumbent intellectual property legislation and the violation of those laws rather than protesting them through proper channels.
There you have it. Sun is in direct competition with IBM on three fronts (hardware, operating system, and software), and I'm sure Ellison could care less who buys his product, as long as it's selling. Obviously IBM wants some control over Java, and Sun isn't playing nicely. I'm kind of on the edge of my seat myself.
According to Sun, 1.4 is almost twice as fast as 1.3. Forte for Java CE (which is probably the largest and most complex Java application I have ever seen) runs as fast as a native application on the Windows VM.
However, the Linux VM sucks ass. It's slow and buggy and hasn't changed much since 1.2. That may be why a lot of the geekier types are against Java.
That's a good observation. Okay, so the [L]GPL is ruled out, but that doesn't mean we can't have an open version floating around under the BSD license. We'll have the source code and the ability to improve it, just not the ability to prevent some foolish corporation from trying to close it up and sell it.
If you're dogmatic about open source, nobody's forcing you to use proprietary versions of the same. Other than the unfairness of having your work whored out in the corporate marketplace, I don't see this as being a huge problem.
Yeah what's up with that. I mean, you click "Find Driver". You select "Radeon 8500". Then you select "Linux". It takes you to that URL.
This compared to NVidia's site where you click Support, then Linux, then read and agree to a disclaimer, then choose a version, then download the kernel patches...
I don't know if this will hold any water from a legal standpoint, and it may be a little off topic, but it is worth noting that competition in the entertainment industry is non-existent. If it were Sony vs. Universal vs. Paramount vs. Whoever then that might be another story, but what we have here is a unified effort by the organizations to which they subscribe: the RIAA and the MPAA. Acting as single entities, these organizations are responsible for artificial price floors on CDs, movie tickets, and home video releases. The only real competition is piracy. Jack Valenti and Hillary Rosen will tell you that people pirate because it's easy and they don't really see anything wrong with it, and that demand has kept the prices where they currently are. What I see is millions of Americans ranging from the very young and reckless to the very old and conservative willing to break the law to acquire these commodities rather than purchase them. This law just gives the MPAA and RIAA yet another tool to (in my opinion unethically) extend their choke hold on the industry.
This may bring broadband services sooner, but then who would be able to afford them? This will ultimately and irreparably harm the consumer if passed.
One last thought--fair use may not be a right, but it should be understood that consumers expect to have ownership of the products they purchase, not just the right to listen or watch on somebody else's terms. This expectation should be headed and legislation should be put in place to address it, as it seems to be the popular will of the people.
Linux and XFree86
ATIs policy is that they don't produce drivers for Linux. However, they have established a relationship with open source developers and provided all of the specifications for their hardware. It is my understanding that currently the Radeon series has good 2D acceleration in X, but the 3D acceleration portions (MESA et al) is still in the works. It will likely be month before we start seeing advanced features like the T&L they have been touting available for Linux.
How does this work? I'm fairly sure that even IE won't let you write to the hard drive (which, IIRC, is required to change the look/feel of IE. There's special file naming convention in the IE folder under Program Files). Aside from that, wouldn't it take at least an ActiveX plugin? I seriously doubt this is possible for informed users who don't install every little unsigned octect stream that comes across their internet connection.
That's the exact impression I get from RMS, though. He's an idealist who is, as he said, only interested in protecting freedoms. ESR, with the Cathedral and the Bazaar, tried to temper that with a more practical appeal, with marginal success. Ironically ESR gets the most press for being kind of "out there," while RMS is (perhaps rightly so) paraded as the hero of open source.
And that's where most of our arguments lie: ideaology. If not for our core philosophical beliefs, a lot of us would simply throw our lot in with proprietary software vendors and try to make a buck like everyone else. Sure open source (sorry, Free) software has a lot of benefits to businesses and home users, but those are really afterthoughts.