What, again, was so revolutionary about this console?
In terms of technology, absolutely nothing.
However, what it promised was an open development
environment, which meant that Indrema certification
for a game was entirely optional. Anyone could
release software for it, from a
small backroom business to huge multi-national
corporates. The other consoles shut out the
smaller developers with the high barrier to
entry. Ultimately, that stifles innovation, and
you get a procession of near identical games,
because that's what the console maker dictates
(a perfect example of this is Sony's early
"all playstation games must be 3D" stance).
It's a shame to see Indrema fail, but I can't
say I'm surprised.
wish I could say 100% but I still need Netscape and StarOffice
You can dump Netscape today. Mozilla is now stable enough that it's replaced
Netscape as my everyday browser. Anything from
0.7 onwards is great. Hopefully Abiword will
stabilise soon, to replace StarOffice, but it's not there yet...
Their Primepower 2000, with 128 processors
running at 563mhz, would seem to be a killer of the Sun E10000
You might think that, but you'd probably be wrong.
In order to make use of 128 CPUs, they need an OS
suitable for the purpose. It's a fair bet that
Sun haven't put huge amounts of resources into
optimizing Solaris for more than 64 CPUs (sure,
they're bound to have played with it in the
labs, but it's unlikely to be production ready).
Unless you can get something that approximates
linear scalability, those extra 64 CPUs are going
to be sitting around doing nothing. All this
really lets you do is have more domains on a
single physical box than an E10K will give you.
If they price it right, that alone may make it a
success in the crowded machine rooms of the
corporate world, but it's not the wonder that it
first appears to be. If you want an OS that
supports a single OS image across more than 64
CPUs, you can try SGI or DG.
Disclaimer: the above assumes that they're running
Solaris, based on the claims of 100% Sun
compatibility and 12000 applications that they
make on their web site. I guess they could be
running a version of SINIX or Reliant Unix that
they've optimized for large numbers of processors.
C'mon.. GTK+ is cool and all for being a nice cross platform (well, at least cross-*nix), but Java is a nice tool thats already there for the major browsers.
I'm reasonably sure you're looking at this all
wrong. I don't think this is related to web
browsing at all. I think it's just a means of
letting you use GTK+ from *any* PHP script. That
would place it in the same class as dtksh, tcl/tk,
tkperl, or tkpython.
The superior architecture should blow away the x86 machines in raw computational power, even if the clock speed is substantially lower.
Sadly, that's not the case here. While it's true
that Sparc processors have traditionally blown
away x86 processors at equivalent clock speeds,
that's mostly been due to cache. With the Ultra 5
and now the Blade 100, they've completely crippled
the CPU by only giving it 256K cache (compare
that with the 2-8MB cache that Sun's "real"
machines come with). That makes performance suck, and
you're far better off getting a PC. Still, I guess
it's the only way they could bring it in at the
desired price point. I, for one, would be prepared
to pay a bit more to get a Sparc workstation with
a decent amount of cache.
Great - lets all sit back and watch as Ogg Vorbis is co-opted by M$ into their media players - they rot-13 the id info (or whatever - switch a bit somewhere) and Ogg Vorbitron(TM)(R) enters magical in-compatible la-la land.
Remember we're only talking about the sample implementation here. MS were always able to
write their own incompatible version anyway.
The file format is
still, and always will be owned by the Xiphophorous project. Presumably, they control
use of the name Ogg Vorbis, too.
No one wants to spend 8 hours to play one game of heroes of might and magic.
What curious timing you have. I spent 5 hours playing Heroes 3 yesterday. I would have been
more had I not needed to go out. I agree that
turn based games suffer for multiplayer use
though. That's why they turned mangband into a
real time game. IMHO, it suffered as a result,
though.
The argument that availability of programming tools to hackers is the critical factor in success may swing well to a Linux-focussed crowd, but it's wrong I'm afraid. Hackers simply aren't a large enough percentage of the userbase
You're looking at this from the wrong persective.
Ultimately, any hardware platform lives or dies
based on the size of the third party development
community. The availability of a mainstream OS
running on a PDA, with widely available
programming tools, instantly makes it easy to
develop for -- not just by hackers, but by small
independent software houses. And that is
what could make this a great success. Plus, of
course, Sharp have a long history of getting it
right when it comes to portable computing. Their
PC-1500 from the mid-80s was way ahead of its
time, comparable to Psion's early efforts several
years later.
100BT on the LAN and USB out via DSL or frame relay makes a _great_ compact SOHO router.
I wish that were true. Here in the UK, if you get
the USB ADSL option, you can only connect a single
computer to it (unless BT are lying to me, which
I wouldn't completely rule out...). Thus, I need
to get the Ethernet option. I guess I could try
and find a USB10baseT converter, and use that
to plug into the ADSL box, but it's a lot more
hassle than just finding something with 2 network
ports. A Qube or Netwinder would be great, but
both are waaaay overpriced for what I'm after.
Cisco makes small, set-top box routers. They own the market, for god sakes, they're worth more than Microsoft.
They've also priced themselves out of the market
for all but enterprise customers. Sure, that's a
great business strategy, and they're making more
money than ever, but it still leaves a gap at the
lower end of the market. A home user with an ADSL
line isn't going to be able to afford a Cisco box.
Nor will a small business.
I suppose the niche market is impromtue Halflife/Quake/Diablo Lan parties.
To me, the obvious use is as a router and/or firewall box. The manufacturers obviously disagree,
because they've only supplied it with a single
network port. With two network ports, I'm sure
these machines would have a real niche market
to sell to. As it is, I just can't see who's going
to buy them...
Futhermore, this documentation and the man pages for the Xlib/Xt API are NOT very good.
Just to play devil's advocate for a second:
leto:~% man gtk_window_new
No manual entry for gtk_window_new
At least Xt *has* man pages. Sure, there's plenty
of HTML documentation for gtk+, but when you're
in the middle of a coding session and you can't
remember the arguments to a function, suspending
and reading the man page is a lot less hassle
than firing up a web browser and navigating to
the right page. Qt used to have the same problem,
but I believe there are now man pages for Qt
classes and member functions.
The main problem with Xt, though, is not the documentation. It's the fact that it's not sufficiently abstracted. You can't sit down and write a standalone Xt
app that does anything meaningful. You need to
know raw Xlib as well in order to do the things
that Xt can't. When you add Motif into the equation, things get even worse. You need to know
all three. Looking at the X books on my shelf,
that's several thousand pages of documentation
that you need to know about before you can write anything useful.
Both gtk+ and qt let you write an application
without having to know about the underlying Xlib
layer. If you've ever had to do any Motif or Xt
programming, you'd know just how big a benefit
that is. I'm just glad I don't have to do it
any more...
to switch to your home or work network settings
respectively. However, at some time around Red
Hat 6.x, this stopped working. By then, though,
I wasn't using the laptop enough for me to bother
to find out why... Can anyone shed any light on this?
Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.
on
The Unblinking Eye
·
· Score: 2
Here in the UK, this sort of face scanning software has been used for some time.
Yep, the first trial in the UK was in
Stratford
in East London (where I used to live). Sure, it
was a crime-ridden area, but I still wasn't happy
about it.
Its just a question of trusting the authoriteies. If they abuse this power, unlikely, you can just vote them out.
There's the problem. I don't trust the
authorities, and neither should you. While I'm
not as extreme as the conspiracy theorists, I
certainly don't feel any authority I have yet
encountered has done anything to earn my trust.
Mostly that's due to incompetence rather than
malice, but the fact remains that they're untrustworthy.
The other point, that you don't seem to have
considered, is how you expect to find out that
they're abusing their power -- if you don't know,
you'll never know they need voting out.
I'm certain that systems like these are installed
with the best of intentions, but I'd be extremely
surprised if those running it didn't abuse it in
one way or another.
If they do it at all, it has to be soon
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 3
If Apple plan on releasing OS X on Intel, they'll
have to do it soon, or it won't be worth it. When
Sun released Solaris for Intel, it was seen as too
late -- they were already comitted to SPARC, and
the market saw the Intel move as halfhearted.
SPARC was always going to be the preferred platform,
and Intel was always very much a second rate
citizen in the Solaris world. The same situation
exists with OS X. Unless an Intel version is released
very soon, OS X on PPC will be too entrenched.
If it reaches that point, Apple won't be able to convice
developers to code for both platforms, and they'll
stick to just PPC. Ultimately, the support of third
party developers is what makes or breaks an OS.
I'm actually in two minds about whether or not
Apple should release an Intel OS X. On one hand,
more competition is always a good thing. On the
other hand, if it's successful, it could hasten
the demise of viable non-x86 alternatives.
Forgot, The Incredible Machine might be a decent test of intellectual abilities.
Yes, but it, along with my nomination, Sokoban,
rely on very different skills to Starcraft.
They require the ability to plan ahead and a certain degree of spacial awareness, as opposed
to the ability to manage limited resources successfully. Both skills are important, and it's
probably worth testing your subjects against games
of both types. I'd recommend Sokoban and Heroes Of Might And Magic III as outstanding games in each
category.
Have them play it every day for two straight days, with only a four-hour break for sleep. Then, on the day of their final, have them play Starcraft instead of showing up.
Sadly, that sounds all too familiar. With me it
was my Computer Networking exam, and the game was
Rainbow Islands on the Amiga. Ahhh, memories of a
misspent youth...:-)
Who's making the specs? Well, IBM for one and they have quite a vested interest in HD sales, do you think they'd leave the door open like this?
More to the point, why wouldn't they? What do IBM
(or any other drive maker) have to gain from CPRM?
Sure, CPRM is great for the big content providers,
but how does it help sell hard drives? That's the
bit that I'm failing to understand. Of the three
interested parties (consumers, drive makers and content providers), the only one that will benefit
from CPRM is the only one that has no impact on
drive sales. I just don't get why this scenario
ever got off the drawing board. Can anyone shed
any light on this?
The P3-Xeon is sort of the best thing out there in the x86 word (but sadly it only scales up to 8way AFAIK.
Data General have been shipping 32-way Xeon boxes for some time now, in the form of their
AV25000
server.
They're also about to release the 64-way
AV35000
shortly. Obviously, that all comes with
redundant power, cooling, storage etc. They run DG/UX, or NT, but if you run NT, you can only use
4 of the CPUs at once:-) You can always run multiple system images on one box, but each NT
image can only access 4 CPUs. Naturally, DG/UX
can use the whole machine...
Leaf switches also used to be used in seriously cheap joysticks (on the grounds that bent copper was cheaper than 4 microswitches) back in the digital stick days and could get pretty unreliable and vague pretty quickly.
Yes, that was the argument used back in the '80s
when everyone changed to use microswitches in
their joysticks. It was bogus at the time,
just as it is now. Fortunately, I still have my
original leaf switch based Kempston Competition Pro. I was then, and remains to this day, the
best joystick ever made. The microswitched
versions were just hopelessly lacking in response.
You needed to move the stick 2 to 3 times further
to get it to register a movement, which completely
ruined many games. Give me leaf switches any day.
After 15 years, mine still haven't failed. That's
hardly unreliable or vague.
The link goes to a completely different Linux Today story, and there's nothing about it on the freetype home page. Is this just a rumour, or is there anything substantiating it?
What on earth is Diablo doing in the list?
It's a half-hearted rip-off of Angband (or any of the other
rogue-like games), but with all the gameplay removed and
replaced with flashy graphics. The game has *no* depth to it at all,
and I can't see me still playing it in a few years.
In fact, I don't play it any more now. In contrast, I'm still playing
Moria (in it's Angband form) over a decade after I
first played it. That's the mark of a true classic...
Slashdot Mirror
In terms of technology, absolutely nothing. However, what it promised was an open development environment, which meant that Indrema certification for a game was entirely optional. Anyone could release software for it, from a small backroom business to huge multi-national corporates. The other consoles shut out the smaller developers with the high barrier to entry. Ultimately, that stifles innovation, and you get a procession of near identical games, because that's what the console maker dictates (a perfect example of this is Sony's early "all playstation games must be 3D" stance). It's a shame to see Indrema fail, but I can't say I'm surprised.
You can dump Netscape today. Mozilla is now stable enough that it's replaced Netscape as my everyday browser. Anything from 0.7 onwards is great. Hopefully Abiword will stabilise soon, to replace StarOffice, but it's not there yet...
It expands to all the argument passed to the current program or function, just with different quoting semantics to $*. Your point being?
You might think that, but you'd probably be wrong. In order to make use of 128 CPUs, they need an OS suitable for the purpose. It's a fair bet that Sun haven't put huge amounts of resources into optimizing Solaris for more than 64 CPUs (sure, they're bound to have played with it in the labs, but it's unlikely to be production ready). Unless you can get something that approximates linear scalability, those extra 64 CPUs are going to be sitting around doing nothing. All this really lets you do is have more domains on a single physical box than an E10K will give you. If they price it right, that alone may make it a success in the crowded machine rooms of the corporate world, but it's not the wonder that it first appears to be. If you want an OS that supports a single OS image across more than 64 CPUs, you can try SGI or DG.
Disclaimer: the above assumes that they're running Solaris, based on the claims of 100% Sun compatibility and 12000 applications that they make on their web site. I guess they could be running a version of SINIX or Reliant Unix that they've optimized for large numbers of processors.
I'm reasonably sure you're looking at this all wrong. I don't think this is related to web browsing at all. I think it's just a means of letting you use GTK+ from *any* PHP script. That would place it in the same class as dtksh, tcl/tk, tkperl, or tkpython.
Sadly, that's not the case here. While it's true that Sparc processors have traditionally blown away x86 processors at equivalent clock speeds, that's mostly been due to cache. With the Ultra 5 and now the Blade 100, they've completely crippled the CPU by only giving it 256K cache (compare that with the 2-8MB cache that Sun's "real" machines come with). That makes performance suck, and you're far better off getting a PC. Still, I guess it's the only way they could bring it in at the desired price point. I, for one, would be prepared to pay a bit more to get a Sparc workstation with a decent amount of cache.
Remember we're only talking about the sample implementation here. MS were always able to write their own incompatible version anyway. The file format is still, and always will be owned by the Xiphophorous project. Presumably, they control use of the name Ogg Vorbis, too.
What curious timing you have. I spent 5 hours playing Heroes 3 yesterday. I would have been more had I not needed to go out. I agree that turn based games suffer for multiplayer use though. That's why they turned mangband into a real time game. IMHO, it suffered as a result, though.
You're looking at this from the wrong persective. Ultimately, any hardware platform lives or dies based on the size of the third party development community. The availability of a mainstream OS running on a PDA, with widely available programming tools, instantly makes it easy to develop for -- not just by hackers, but by small independent software houses. And that is what could make this a great success. Plus, of course, Sharp have a long history of getting it right when it comes to portable computing. Their PC-1500 from the mid-80s was way ahead of its time, comparable to Psion's early efforts several years later.
I wish that were true. Here in the UK, if you get the USB ADSL option, you can only connect a single computer to it (unless BT are lying to me, which I wouldn't completely rule out...). Thus, I need to get the Ethernet option. I guess I could try and find a USB10baseT converter, and use that to plug into the ADSL box, but it's a lot more hassle than just finding something with 2 network ports. A Qube or Netwinder would be great, but both are waaaay overpriced for what I'm after.
They've also priced themselves out of the market for all but enterprise customers. Sure, that's a great business strategy, and they're making more money than ever, but it still leaves a gap at the lower end of the market. A home user with an ADSL line isn't going to be able to afford a Cisco box. Nor will a small business.
To me, the obvious use is as a router and/or firewall box. The manufacturers obviously disagree, because they've only supplied it with a single network port. With two network ports, I'm sure these machines would have a real niche market to sell to. As it is, I just can't see who's going to buy them...
Just to play devil's advocate for a second:
At least Xt *has* man pages. Sure, there's plenty of HTML documentation for gtk+, but when you're in the middle of a coding session and you can't remember the arguments to a function, suspending and reading the man page is a lot less hassle than firing up a web browser and navigating to the right page. Qt used to have the same problem, but I believe there are now man pages for Qt classes and member functions.The main problem with Xt, though, is not the documentation. It's the fact that it's not sufficiently abstracted. You can't sit down and write a standalone Xt app that does anything meaningful. You need to know raw Xlib as well in order to do the things that Xt can't. When you add Motif into the equation, things get even worse. You need to know all three. Looking at the X books on my shelf, that's several thousand pages of documentation that you need to know about before you can write anything useful. Both gtk+ and qt let you write an application without having to know about the underlying Xlib layer. If you've ever had to do any Motif or Xt programming, you'd know just how big a benefit that is. I'm just glad I don't have to do it any more...
to switch to your home or work network settings respectively. However, at some time around Red Hat 6.x, this stopped working. By then, though, I wasn't using the laptop enough for me to bother to find out why... Can anyone shed any light on this?
Yep, the first trial in the UK was in Stratford in East London (where I used to live). Sure, it was a crime-ridden area, but I still wasn't happy about it.
Its just a question of trusting the authoriteies. If they abuse this power, unlikely, you can just vote them out.
There's the problem. I don't trust the authorities, and neither should you. While I'm not as extreme as the conspiracy theorists, I certainly don't feel any authority I have yet encountered has done anything to earn my trust. Mostly that's due to incompetence rather than malice, but the fact remains that they're untrustworthy. The other point, that you don't seem to have considered, is how you expect to find out that they're abusing their power -- if you don't know, you'll never know they need voting out. I'm certain that systems like these are installed with the best of intentions, but I'd be extremely surprised if those running it didn't abuse it in one way or another.
Sounds a bit slow to me. What you really want is 20 second kernel compile times :-)
I'm actually in two minds about whether or not Apple should release an Intel OS X. On one hand, more competition is always a good thing. On the other hand, if it's successful, it could hasten the demise of viable non-x86 alternatives.
Yes, but it, along with my nomination, Sokoban, rely on very different skills to Starcraft. They require the ability to plan ahead and a certain degree of spacial awareness, as opposed to the ability to manage limited resources successfully. Both skills are important, and it's probably worth testing your subjects against games of both types. I'd recommend Sokoban and Heroes Of Might And Magic III as outstanding games in each category.
Sadly, that sounds all too familiar. With me it was my Computer Networking exam, and the game was Rainbow Islands on the Amiga. Ahhh, memories of a misspent youth... :-)
I seem to recall it was longer than that. Probably nearer 20 years ago. I'm fairly sure it was pre-1983.
More to the point, why wouldn't they? What do IBM (or any other drive maker) have to gain from CPRM? Sure, CPRM is great for the big content providers, but how does it help sell hard drives? That's the bit that I'm failing to understand. Of the three interested parties (consumers, drive makers and content providers), the only one that will benefit from CPRM is the only one that has no impact on drive sales. I just don't get why this scenario ever got off the drawing board. Can anyone shed any light on this?
Data General have been shipping 32-way Xeon boxes for some time now, in the form of their AV25000 server. They're also about to release the 64-way AV35000 shortly. Obviously, that all comes with redundant power, cooling, storage etc. They run DG/UX, or NT, but if you run NT, you can only use 4 of the CPUs at once :-) You can always run multiple system images on one box, but each NT
image can only access 4 CPUs. Naturally, DG/UX
can use the whole machine...
Yes, that was the argument used back in the '80s when everyone changed to use microswitches in their joysticks. It was bogus at the time, just as it is now. Fortunately, I still have my original leaf switch based Kempston Competition Pro. I was then, and remains to this day, the best joystick ever made. The microswitched versions were just hopelessly lacking in response. You needed to move the stick 2 to 3 times further to get it to register a movement, which completely ruined many games. Give me leaf switches any day. After 15 years, mine still haven't failed. That's hardly unreliable or vague.
The link goes to a completely different Linux Today story, and there's nothing about it on the freetype home page. Is this just a rumour, or is there anything substantiating it?
What on earth is Diablo doing in the list? It's a half-hearted rip-off of Angband (or any of the other rogue-like games), but with all the gameplay removed and replaced with flashy graphics. The game has *no* depth to it at all, and I can't see me still playing it in a few years. In fact, I don't play it any more now. In contrast, I'm still playing Moria (in it's Angband form) over a decade after I first played it. That's the mark of a true classic...