I will really jump for joy when I see some drivers released for 3Com's PCMCIA NICs. Not that Card Services isn't great, but neither the 3c574 or the 3c589d drivers have worked for me.
Huh? Why not? The 3c589d worked fine straight out of the box for me, and has done so for some time now. I've tried it with both 2.0.x and 2.2.x kernels without problems. The card services stuff shipped with Red Hat 5.2 was slightly too old, so I had to get a new one from the net, but the ones shipped with 6.0 are OK.
The point is that if we want to influence Sun, we can do it by not supporting them as enthusiasticly as we might otherwise. Voting with our feet, in other words.
The thing is that Sun, like any corporation of that size, is not a single entity. The hardware side of Sun, after an initial shaky start, have been quite helpful to the Linux community, even going so far as lending developers high-end hardware and providing technical info so that Linux could be made to work well on it. See starfire.c, somewhere under arch/sparc64 (sorry, I dont' have a kernel tree to hand to check the exact location), to see the code for supporting Sun's Ultra Enterprise 10000 (high-end server, up to 64 CPUs -- we've got 4 of them here:-)
I remember using a Sparc 5 and it FELT like a Pentium 120
Yes, it probably did, but then it was almost certainly using either a 60 or 70MHz chip (they did a 110MHz version, and later a 170MHz version based on the TurboSparc, but they weren't veyr common). From personal experience, a Sparc will feel about that same as an Intel with 1.5 to 2 times the clock speed. This is probably mostly due to the on-chip cache (even the 60MHz MicroSparc II had 1MB of onboard cache).
bought a barebones kit last year and they swapped for an 'equivalent' board:(
So why didn't you send it back and get a refund? If it came with a different video chip to the one you ordered, then they are not equivalent for your purposes, and you're entitled to a refund. The fact that your average Windows user wouldn't notice the difference is irrelevant.
Oh BTW someone also has to pay for the QC on all those extra games, Sony submission can take several months at the moment, can you imagine how long it would take if there were ten times as many submissions, not to mention how much it would cost Sony to do all this testing.
You're completely missing the point I made. I'm saying there should be no Sony testing, no Sony submission at all. If someone wants to release a game, just let them go ahead and do it. The market will decide what's good and what isn't. The crap software houses will die off due to lack of sales, and the good ones will make money. Natural selection.
At the end of the day, all I want is for the consoles to be market driven, rather than prorietary, as they are now. It works for the PC games industry. The console makers are just being greedy, at the expense of the customer (i.e., me!)
Basically, the game companies sell the consoles at cost, or close to it, in order to make money off of the games.
Actually, that's mostly a myth. Console hardware still has a considerable markup on it, and they make a fair bit of money from it. Where they lose out is when they start bundling game packs with it, because then they have to pay the game publisher as well. Even then, I suspect it only reduces their margins slightly. I doubt they're actually making a loss.
As for loss of quality, that's a non-issue. Having an open development platform would simply mean more choice (and yes, some of that would be rubbish!). There's no reason it should lead to a reduction in the number of "approved" titles that are released via the existing QC process of the major players.
what could you program a console to do that you couldn't program a computer to do
*Nothing* That's the whole point. A console is just a computer that happens to have the right hardware for playing games very well. I program my computer, and I want to be able to program my console.
Mainly, I don't want to be limited to the choice of titles that a large corporation dictates I should buy. No-one makes certain classes of games any more. How many 2D scrolling shoot-em ups have you seen for a modern console (save the few "nostalgia" titles like Xevious, R-Types etc.)? But also, I'd like to be able to set myself up as a small independent software producer for consoles. At the moment, the price of entry is simply too high. It's not possible for an independent to write some software, get a distribution deal and sell it. You have to strike a deal with a publisher, who will pay you an advance that can cover the cost of a devkit, and rip you off when it comes to selling the finished product. Thanks, but no thanks.
today is a big day for numerologists, pagans, and Nostradamus.
Few of the pagans I know (including myself:-) would be seen dead having anything to do with numerology. Today has no real pagan significance. I was discussing it with a friend last night -- it's based solely on a date system that revolves around some bloke supposedly born 2000 years ago that pagans don't believe in...
No, but then it's not capable of playing space invaders, either. The consoles are capable of doing any number of things, but only if I can program them. There's no benefit to being able to program a VCR -- there is a benefit to being able to program a console.
The development itself will (GASP!) Linux based. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.
OK, then -- you're wrong:-) Yes, PSX2 development will be Linux based. However, don't be fooled into thinking you can write PSX2 software with your Linux box at home. You need a specific devkit machine from Sony, which will effectively be a PC running Linux with some additional custom hardware, and a proprietary software development environment. The hardware will essentially consist of a PSX2 on a card. The software environment will give you appropriate access to the card. This lets you write and compile the software, and then run it, without the need to continually burn discs to put in a real PSX2. The software environment may include a full IDE/compiler, but will more likely let you use native Linux tools (e.g., gcc/gdb etc.) Of course, this is all conjecture, 'coz I haven't actually seen a PSX2 devkit yet, but I doubt it'll be far off, based what others in the industry have said.
I find it hard to get tremendously excited about all these new consoles. Sure, the specs are awesome. But at the end of the day, Sony, Sega and Nintendo are every bit as bad as Micros~1. They may be great for the average end user, but what about me? If I want to write some software for any of them, I need to splash out $25,000 to get an official development kit, and I won't be able to release anything I write without official blessing from the company that designed the console. There is no third party software industry for consoles. Everything you see is officially sanctioned. Sony made a step in the right direction with the Net Yaroze, but then deliberately crippled it to prevent Net Yaroze discs be used in a regular Playstation.
Prediction: the first company that allows open development for its console with make an absolute fortune. Unfortunately, I think they're all too paranoid about losing intellectual property to risk it. Sigh.
if someone turns up for regular hours, does a specific job, answering to a specific person then that person should be employed not contracted.
Word on the grapevine in that the legislation (IR35) is due to be either dropped completely, or significantly toned down. However, I haven't heard anything officially about this, and last time I looked, there was nothing on http://www.ir35update.co.uk about it. I guess time will tell.
I'll be less affected than most, as I pay myself a relatively high salary (to keep my pension contributions high), but it's still a worry. In particular, some of the proposed regulations will significantly drive down contract rates.
Anyway, in answer to the original question, I'd aim for about 75% permies and 25% contractors.
Experimentation with capability-based systems is needed to figure out how to build more secure systems.
Agreed, but much of this work has already been done. See the DG/UX B2 security option, for example. Other proprietary Unix vendors have done similar things (e.g. Trusted Solaris), but AFAIK none of them took it as far as DG. Interesting to note that DG/UX is one of the few innovative Unices out there. Although originally an SVR[34] licensee, later versions rewrote the kernel from scratch, in a similar manner to Linux, to support the additions they needed. Sadly, I think EMC's recent purchase of DG will result in the demise of DG/UX.
I definitely agree that the world needs new OS designs. The more, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Nothing promotes innovate as much as competition.
They made the MH & xmh book available when it went out of print.
It's slightly different when books are superceded by newer versions, though. The old version is still useful, and the differences aren't necessarily sufficient to make releasing the old version of the book commercially viable. For example, my DNS and BIND book is good enough for what I need to know. Although it's been replaced by a newer version, I wouldn't have gone out and bought the new one (although some kind soul was good enough to buy it for my birthday anyway:-)
I seem to recall reading that O'Reilly do offer a trade in service, where you can send them the front cover of a previous version to get a discount on the newer version of a book.
He already answered that question satisfactorily: it didn't sell enough copies to motivate the authors to write a new edition.
While he did indeed say that, it doesn't answer the question I originally asked. I want to know the figures. If I release a book, I want to know all the options before deciding whether or not to make the book freely available.
Sure, the major RISC chips tend to be much more expensive than consumer chips. There's a reason for that -- cache. The only chips Intel make with a comparable amount of cache to, say, an UltraSPARC, is the high-end Xeons. Surprise, surprise -- the Xeon is just as overpriced as the others.
Of course, even accounting for cache, the prices are artificially high, just because that's the price people are willing to pay. Profit margins on those chips are significantly higher than on commodity CPUs.
Are there any books that you look back on and wish you hadn't bothered with? In particular, I'm thinking about John Bloomer's Power Programming with RPC, which is the only book I feel tarnishes O'Reilly's good name. It the only one I've read (and I've got most of them, to be honest:-) that I feel is poorly written and difficult to read. For a programming book not to include a simple "Hello, world!" type program until chapter 6 or so is, IMHO, pretty unforgivable.
why hasn't O'Reilly published any BSD books in recent memory?
Maybe I just have a better memory than you:-) They published the complete 4.4BSD docs, although many of them are now out of print, and I can't find mention of them on the O'Reilly web site.
My girlfriend's boss has the complete set (in part because the company uses BSD/OS extensively). That said, O'Reilly could do with some more recent BSD docs, covering {Free,Net,Open}BSD.
You've said that the Linux Network Administrator's Guide sold significantly less than would normally be expected as a result of the text of the book being freely available on the net. By what sort of margin? How many copies did it sell, and how many would you have expected to sell under normal circumstances? Would you release another book in a similar manner if the author accepts that they'll make less money from it? Did the book actually make a loss, or just not make as much profit as expected?
As others have said, that price includes a G4 machine as well. However, even if it didn't, I've worked at a company where it wasn't uncommon to see 3 17" flat panel displays per machine. Don't judge prices by what home users will be prepared to pay. Corporates will pay whatever it takes to get the display they want, particularly for something like this which is aimed squarely at the publishing/graphic arts market.
They claim that like a movie theatre, it has a letterbox format (1600x1024). However, I always thought movie format had an aspect ration of something like 1.8:1, not the 1.56:1 of this display. Still, it's a definite step in the right direction. Anyone who has used a dual headed display will agree that having a wide, low display provides significant benefits over a tradtional CRT aspect ratio.
As far as I can see it only has two problems: Apple's pig-ugly translucent styling, and the likely price by the time it reaches the UK...
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Huh? Why not? The 3c589d worked fine straight out of the box for me, and has done so for some time now. I've tried it with both 2.0.x and 2.2.x kernels without problems. The card services stuff shipped with Red Hat 5.2 was slightly too old, so I had to get a new one from the net, but the ones shipped with 6.0 are OK.
The thing is that Sun, like any corporation of that size, is not a single entity. The hardware side of Sun, after an initial shaky start, have been quite helpful to the Linux community, even going so far as lending developers high-end hardware and providing technical info so that Linux could be made to work well on it. See starfire.c, somewhere under arch/sparc64 (sorry, I dont' have a kernel tree to hand to check the exact location), to see the code for supporting Sun's Ultra Enterprise 10000 (high-end server, up to 64 CPUs -- we've got 4 of them here :-)
Yes, it probably did, but then it was almost certainly using either a 60 or 70MHz chip (they did a 110MHz version, and later a 170MHz version based on the TurboSparc, but they weren't veyr common). From personal experience, a Sparc will feel about that same as an Intel with 1.5 to 2 times the clock speed. This is probably mostly due to the on-chip cache (even the 60MHz MicroSparc II had 1MB of onboard cache).
So why didn't you send it back and get a refund? If it came with a different video chip to the one you ordered, then they are not equivalent for your purposes, and you're entitled to a refund. The fact that your average Windows user wouldn't notice the difference is irrelevant.
You're completely missing the point I made. I'm saying there should be no Sony testing, no Sony submission at all. If someone wants to release a game, just let them go ahead and do it. The market will decide what's good and what isn't. The crap software houses will die off due to lack of sales, and the good ones will make money. Natural selection.
At the end of the day, all I want is for the consoles to be market driven, rather than prorietary, as they are now. It works for the PC games industry. The console makers are just being greedy, at the expense of the customer (i.e., me!)
Actually, that's mostly a myth. Console hardware still has a considerable markup on it, and they make a fair bit of money from it. Where they lose out is when they start bundling game packs with it, because then they have to pay the game publisher as well. Even then, I suspect it only reduces their margins slightly. I doubt they're actually making a loss.
As for loss of quality, that's a non-issue. Having an open development platform would simply mean more choice (and yes, some of that would be rubbish!). There's no reason it should lead to a reduction in the number of "approved" titles that are released via the existing QC process of the major players.
*Nothing* That's the whole point. A console is just a computer that happens to have the right hardware for playing games very well. I program my computer, and I want to be able to program my console.
Mainly, I don't want to be limited to the choice of titles that a large corporation dictates I should buy. No-one makes certain classes of games any more. How many 2D scrolling shoot-em ups have you seen for a modern console (save the few "nostalgia" titles like Xevious, R-Types etc.)? But also, I'd like to be able to set myself up as a small independent software producer for consoles. At the moment, the price of entry is simply too high. It's not possible for an independent to write some software, get a distribution deal and sell it. You have to strike a deal with a publisher, who will pay you an advance that can cover the cost of a devkit, and rip you off when it comes to selling the finished product. Thanks, but no thanks.
Few of the pagans I know (including myself :-) would be seen dead having anything to do with numerology. Today has no real pagan significance. I was discussing it with a friend last night -- it's based solely on a date system that revolves around some bloke supposedly born 2000 years ago that pagans don't believe in...
No, but then it's not capable of playing space invaders, either. The consoles are capable of doing any number of things, but only if I can program them. There's no benefit to being able to program a VCR -- there is a benefit to being able to program a console.
OK, then -- you're wrong :-) Yes, PSX2 development will be Linux based. However, don't be fooled into thinking you can write PSX2 software with your Linux box at home. You need a specific devkit machine from Sony, which will effectively be a PC running Linux with some additional custom hardware, and a proprietary software development environment. The hardware will essentially consist of a PSX2 on a card. The software environment will give you appropriate access to the card. This lets you write and compile the software, and then run it, without the need to continually burn discs to put in a real PSX2. The software environment may include a full IDE/compiler, but will more likely let you use native Linux tools (e.g., gcc/gdb etc.) Of course, this is all conjecture, 'coz I haven't actually seen a PSX2 devkit yet, but I doubt it'll be far off, based what others in the industry have said.
Prediction: the first company that allows open development for its console with make an absolute fortune. Unfortunately, I think they're all too paranoid about losing intellectual property to risk it. Sigh.
Word on the grapevine in that the legislation (IR35) is due to be either dropped completely, or significantly toned down. However, I haven't heard anything officially about this, and last time I looked, there was nothing on http://www.ir35update.co.uk about it. I guess time will tell.
I'll be less affected than most, as I pay myself a relatively high salary (to keep my pension contributions high), but it's still a worry. In particular, some of the proposed regulations will significantly drive down contract rates.
Anyway, in answer to the original question, I'd aim for about 75% permies and 25% contractors.
Agreed, but much of this work has already been done. See the DG/UX B2 security option, for example. Other proprietary Unix vendors have done similar things (e.g. Trusted Solaris), but AFAIK none of them took it as far as DG. Interesting to note that DG/UX is one of the few innovative Unices out there. Although originally an SVR[34] licensee, later versions rewrote the kernel from scratch, in a similar manner to Linux, to support the additions they needed. Sadly, I think EMC's recent purchase of DG will result in the demise of DG/UX.
I definitely agree that the world needs new OS designs. The more, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Nothing promotes innovate as much as competition.
They didn't. At least, not, that I noticed. I booted 6.0 from CD on both Intel and Sparc without problems.
It's slightly different when books are superceded by newer versions, though. The old version is still useful, and the differences aren't necessarily sufficient to make releasing the old version of the book commercially viable. For example, my DNS and BIND book is good enough for what I need to know. Although it's been replaced by a newer version, I wouldn't have gone out and bought the new one (although some kind soul was good enough to buy it for my birthday anyway :-)
I seem to recall reading that O'Reilly do offer a trade in service, where you can send them the front cover of a previous version to get a discount on the newer version of a book.
While he did indeed say that, it doesn't answer the question I originally asked. I want to know the figures. If I release a book, I want to know all the options before deciding whether or not to make the book freely available.
Of course, even accounting for cache, the prices are artificially high, just because that's the price people are willing to pay. Profit margins on those chips are significantly higher than on commodity CPUs.
Are there any books that you look back on and wish you hadn't bothered with? In particular, I'm thinking about John Bloomer's Power Programming with RPC, which is the only book I feel tarnishes O'Reilly's good name. It the only one I've read (and I've got most of them, to be honest :-) that I feel is poorly written and difficult to read. For a programming book not to include a simple "Hello, world!" type program until chapter 6 or so is, IMHO, pretty unforgivable.
Maybe I just have a better memory than you :-) They published the complete 4.4BSD docs, although many of them are now out of print, and I can't find mention of them on the O'Reilly web site.
My girlfriend's boss has the complete set (in part because the company uses BSD/OS extensively). That said, O'Reilly could do with some more recent BSD docs, covering {Free,Net,Open}BSD.
You've said that the Linux Network Administrator's Guide sold significantly less than would normally be expected as a result of the text of the book being freely available on the net. By what sort of margin? How many copies did it sell, and how many would you have expected to sell under normal circumstances? Would you release another book in a similar manner if the author accepts that they'll make less money from it? Did the book actually make a loss, or just not make as much profit as expected?
No, it's not, but unfortunately for your argument, I, like Alan, am in the UK, where it's "perk" (and "cheque" and "colour").
Actually, yes, I have. Not a bad site, all things considered. However, please don't SHOUT about it.
As the subject says. Just an observation :-)
As others have said, that price includes a G4 machine as well. However, even if it didn't, I've worked at a company where it wasn't uncommon to see 3 17" flat panel displays per machine. Don't judge prices by what home users will be prepared to pay. Corporates will pay whatever it takes to get the display they want, particularly for something like this which is aimed squarely at the publishing/graphic arts market.
As far as I can see it only has two problems: Apple's pig-ugly translucent styling, and the likely price by the time it reaches the UK...