If you can write into the frame buffer, you can read from it. DRI's got raftloads of protections from people taking control of the DMA pathways and using them to mine data from other process' memory space.
I used to develop software for set-top boxes for the purposes of Internet browsing. The stated resolution for NTSC is something more akin to 640x480, the problem is that while the set can SEE the signals at those resolutions, the PICTURE TUBE may/may not resolve at the full resolution, clip the picture to 512x480 or similar.
It's not for a false sense of security. They KNOW we can reverse engineer the stuff- in fact, it's that very thing that prevents a LOT of toys coming our way, believe it or not. What I believe the issue to be, based off of observations, is that there's some nasty verbiage involved with the patent licensing for MPEG that precludes the release of the info or pressure from someone like the MPAA.
In actuality, they released everything BUT the driver info for the MPEG stuff. They handed the 2D and 3D over to the DRI and XFree86 people- Alan Cox was working on making the drivers all nice and clean up until recently.
From what I got from my contacts at SiS and VIA when I was working on set-top box designs using their chipsets was that the stuff was being held to an NDA because of contractual reasons. My ignorant guess would be that there's something with regards to the MPEG patent licensing that prevents the details being released for piracy prevention reasons because the use of these accelerators would enable real-time/near real-time transcoding of DVDs, etc.
This is not to say that I'm right, or if I am, that it's a good reason.
Unless you're exposing the tubing to chemicals that would leach out the plasticizer from the tubing (not very likely in a watercool rig, mind...) or exposing the tubing to direct sunlight for years on end, you're NOT going to get cracking or stiffening in timeframes that are applicable to PC's.
Don't plan on being able to surf the web or really be able to do IM with this toy unless you've got a top of the line TV.
NTSC television has an average effective resolution of something like 480x480. If you've got a decent TV, that is. A higher quality set may have as much as 512x480 and a lower quality set will have something along the lines of 320x240 resolution- many televisions are at THAT resolution. While you can get a 640x480 scanline converter to allow you to display pictures, etc. on any TV set, the effective resolution trims the edges of the image on the screen and makes it blurry as all get-out on over half of the TV's out there.
Most of the SCADA systems are ancient affairs, not even capable of running Windows- and most of them aren't even on the Internet.
You don't need to worry about a MS Worm bringing about a massive nation-wide blackout.
You DO need to worry about terrorists taking control of a couple of substations by remote through the unsecured SCADA system or by physical means. Control of a substation means you can induce things like brownouts and blackouts in a given area serviced by the substation. Get control of enough of them and the recent blackouts on the east coast would pale by comparison.
Beings that the GPL gave them a publishing and derivative works license that allowed them to sell Caldera and then SCO Linux for many years- if the GPL is invalid, then they had no license to do so. They're guilty of years worth of IP infringement with the majority of the Linux kernel- and selling it at that. There will be no sympathy from any court at that point for them. No injunctive or financial relief- they have dirty hands all the way around.
On the other hand, SCO would then be open for thousands of infringement suits that would involve every dime they made on Linux over the years up to the point of the statute of limitations- this includes any monies that they may have obtained in their IPO.
I'm not surprised, really, I'm SURE he's observed the Customer Disservice first-hand on a periodic basis- considering that they've been in the Dallas area for some time now (And just opened the store in Irving...).
No, Fry's sells OEM copies of 98 and XP Home to people that are assembling a PC, so long as they buy a motherboard and a HD. I would suspect that this would also apply to their barebones sales (which this PC is even moreso than that...).
I hate to knock fry's since I'm a regular at the new Irving TX store but Wal-Mart ships better Linux pc's.
I'd like to echo the sentiment- down to the reason. That Irving store's the best of the three in the DFW metroplex with regards to the quality of the store and the inventory that they seem to stock. It's really a nice store- but, sadly, it's still Fry's.
I was in there the other day, pricing parts, like I usually do in advance of a hardware project. I was on the far wall, pricing DDR memory for a machine upgrade when I overheard a conversation with a salesperson and a customer trying to purchase the parts for a whole computer. He was twittering on and on about clock speeds. He picked out an Athlon 2400+ and compared it to the clock speed of a P4 2.4 GHz and then compared the prices between the two. He said that the P4 had the same technology as the Athlon and you were getting nearly a full GHz of clock speed over the Athlon for only a slightly higher price. I was oh so tempted to chime in and shoot the salesperson down in flames- but I behaved myself and just walked away.
Moral of the story: Fry's sales people are told to up-sell whereever possible- even if it's wrong, customer spends too much, etc. Fry's is only usually a good/great deal if you know their antics and know what in the hell you're doing yourself. Of course, their media section's decent- and relatively safe- so it's probably okay to buy CD's and DVD's you can't find anywhere else there.
...this ups the ante a little bit. This means that they were KNOWINGLY distributing and selling a GPLed system with IP that they were unwilling to license under the GPL. The moment that this occurs, they're without a license, per the terms of the GPL, to distribute or make derivative works. This means they're guilty of some 18+ months of IP infringement on everyone else that has contributed substantive portions of the Kernel, Red Hat and SuSE included. There is no way in HELL that a court is going to give SCO any damages or even hear an IP infringement case from SCO if this is actually the case. Worse, if they realy ARE stupid enough to file suit against Red Hat over infringement and conspiracy to infringe, it opens up the floodgates- because it will be an open statement of that willful 18+ months of infringement and their unwillingness to work out the infringement they did- and since they SOLD the stuff, there WILL be actual infringement damages involved.
I believe, per some of the antitrust settlements in the past, they agreed to not go back into the Unix arena- buying SCO would do that and would likely be barred by the FTC or the DOJ.
And McBride just set himself up for infringement suits himself- and from RedHat even.
If there's IP that they deem to not have been licensed under the GPL, they're guilty of over seven months worth of IP infringement. Each and every contributor, Red Hat included, can now sue the crap out of them for infringement of the code they distributed from off of their FTP site- and in each country that they reside in since the FTP server provides it worldwide.
You know, I don't think that the code got in there without permission. I don't think someone did anything to cause this mess. I now think that SCO thinks it can retroactively pull the GPL licensing on the code that Caldera previously contributed. It's the only thing that could explain "thousands" of lines of code that is "theirs" and in the kernel.
Copyright does not create a thing, per se, like a television. When you copy and distribute something without the Copyright holder's permission, you're not commiting an act of theft, but one of infringement- you're taking away the right of the holder to control production and distribution of the IP in question. It's the way the law is worded and there's a good reason for it as IP isn't really property- when you infringe, you don't take away the idea; when you steal, you take away the object and it's use from the owner.
Now, having made this distinction, I'll make a further observation that makes your analogy invalid. The Linux kernel people as a whole didn't take the IP in the first place. The closest analogy to this if you WERE to try to apply a "theft" model on the whole thing would be this:
Party A steals a TV set from Party B's house. He doesn't get immediately caught and sells the TV at a garage sale or at a flea market for what would be a fair price (so as to not tip people off that it's hot) to Party C. Party A is actually caught up with and is punished. Party C is not guilty of anything because he bought in good faith- but he may be required to relinquish the stolen property if Party A wants it back.
In this case, the party (or parties) that is actually guilty of the act of infringement is the only one that will face fines and damages- the rest of the people distributing Linux will be ordered to remove the offending IP (which is the very thing we've been TRYING to do anyway...) or license it accordingly and will be given a reasonable amount of time to decide and act on the order.
...to actually USE the wax thermal compound with the heat sink. If you're going to be using a "super" thermal grease (such as Arctic Silver and it's ilk), you DON'T want to use that pad at all- it interferes with the proper operation of the thermal grease because the wax-like compound of the thermal pad embeds itself into the cracks, etc. on the heatsink and contact pad of the CPU and acts more like a thermal insulator compared to the grease. Basically speaking, if there's a pad on your heat sink, you're going to want to scrape off that pad and lap the sink before using it with the thermal grease. That's why most of the high-end sink manufacturers quit putting the wax pads on the sinks- people weren't using it and it wasn't nearly as good as the top of the line white grease, let alone something like Arctic Silver.
Thermal pastes are thermally conductive, not electrically so. In fact, you want them to be a damned good electrical insulator. If you'd read the article (I did several days ago- [H]ardOCP had coverage of this one earlier this week...) you'd have found out that carbon black, the substance in question, outpaces pretty much everything else (including diamond and nanotube based compounds in development) because it fills the gaps between the heatsink and the chip's heat spreader, etc. with thermally conductive materials better than anything else.
Right, it is indeed x86-only according to a post on LinuxGames by one of the developers IIRC. Don't know if you could've played it with DRI drivers anyway. PPC Linux users really get to notice why non-free software is bad. They don't get the 3D, Realplayer, Flash plugin etc.
It may be x86 only, but it's probably more because the developer doesn't know about what all Linux and GCC can do for them. I'll bet they're compiling on a specific distribution and linking against specific libs from the same.
While that will actually work for most applications, it makes it difficult to make versions for an alternate architechture, say like the PowerPC, for example.
However, cross-compilation techniques allow for a consistent build environment across different distributions and allows for the ability to build binaries for platforms other than x86. I know, we have set up for the ability to build for PowerPC in the case of Majesty and Soulride over at Linux Game Publishing. Other games are planned on a, "Will it run properly on the platform?" basis- some of the 3D games currently in the process of being ported may not run right without the more advanced (T&L supporting) Radeons (and I don't HAVE one of those right now in my G4- and no budget to rectify that issue... (Hint, hint...:-) ).
Gotta love these guys even without the PPC port, the programmer responsible for the GNU/Linux port posting on the LG comment threads for Savage and very much feeling like he's "with us". And this one really seems like an original game.
No doubt. My productivity went down a little bit (er, a lot...) when I started testing. They've got a little game balance tuing left to do, but it's shaping up to be a great game. And, it IS nice to have one of the developers interacting with us on LG.
It's the act of filesharing unauthorized works that is illegal. Now, having said this, the people on the list almost certainly guilty of infringement by way of unauthorized filesharing.
DirectFB's not planning on replacing X...
on
Qt On DirectFB
·
· Score: 2, Informative
X is available as a feature on DirectFB- it's called XDirectFB.
Don't be betting on it either way...
on
Qt On DirectFB
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
1) DirectFB supports GTK+ as well- I suspect Fltk's on the way as well.
2) You CAN have X apps under DirectFB with XDirectFB.
3) They're posting rather impressive framerates under Quake III:Arena with the DirectFBGL layer code.
4) Qt's ALREADY in the embedded space- QtEmbedded is what they're using on the Zaurus.
Slashdot Mirror
If you can write into the frame buffer, you can read from it. DRI's got raftloads of protections from people taking control of the DMA pathways and using them to mine data from other process' memory space.
I used to develop software for set-top boxes for the purposes of Internet browsing. The stated resolution for NTSC is something more akin to 640x480, the problem is that while the set can SEE the signals at those resolutions, the PICTURE TUBE may/may not resolve at the full resolution, clip the picture to 512x480 or similar.
It's not for a false sense of security. They KNOW we can reverse engineer the stuff- in fact, it's that very thing that prevents a LOT of toys coming our way, believe it or not. What I believe the issue to be, based off of observations, is that there's some nasty verbiage involved with the patent licensing for MPEG that precludes the release of the info or pressure from someone like the MPAA.
In actuality, they released everything BUT the driver info for the MPEG stuff. They handed the 2D and 3D over to the DRI and XFree86 people- Alan Cox was working on making the drivers all nice and clean up until recently.
From what I got from my contacts at SiS and VIA when I was working on set-top box designs using their chipsets was that the stuff was being held to an NDA because of contractual reasons. My ignorant guess would be that there's something with regards to the MPEG patent licensing that prevents the details being released for piracy prevention reasons because the use of these accelerators would enable real-time/near real-time transcoding of DVDs, etc.
This is not to say that I'm right, or if I am, that it's a good reason.
Unless you're exposing the tubing to chemicals that would leach out the plasticizer from the tubing (not very likely in a watercool rig, mind...) or exposing the tubing to direct sunlight for years on end, you're NOT going to get cracking or stiffening in timeframes that are applicable to PC's.
Workable price. Usable feature set.
Don't plan on being able to surf the web or really be able to do IM with this toy unless you've got a top of the line TV.
NTSC television has an average effective resolution of something like 480x480. If you've got a decent TV, that is. A higher quality set may have as much as 512x480 and a lower quality set will have something along the lines of 320x240 resolution- many televisions are at THAT resolution. While you can get a 640x480 scanline converter to allow you to display pictures, etc. on any TV set, the effective resolution trims the edges of the image on the screen and makes it blurry as all get-out on over half of the TV's out there.
Most of the SCADA systems are ancient affairs, not even capable of running Windows- and most of them aren't even on the Internet.
You don't need to worry about a MS Worm bringing about a massive nation-wide blackout.
You DO need to worry about terrorists taking control of a couple of substations by remote through the unsecured SCADA system or by physical means. Control of a substation means you can induce things like brownouts and blackouts in a given area serviced by the substation. Get control of enough of them and the recent blackouts on the east coast would pale by comparison.
But, I'd not want the thankless job Alan's been doing unless someone like Red Hat hired me to do it and paid me well. (Hint...Hint... :-)
It's Red Hat's getting fed up with the overall abuse and suing SCO in court to make them put up or shut up.
Beings that the GPL gave them a publishing and derivative works license that allowed them to sell Caldera and then SCO Linux for many years- if the GPL is invalid, then they had no license to do so . They're guilty of years worth of IP infringement with the majority of the Linux kernel- and selling it at that. There will be no sympathy from any court at that point for them. No injunctive or financial relief- they have dirty hands all the way around.
On the other hand, SCO would then be open for thousands of infringement suits that would involve every dime they made on Linux over the years up to the point of the statute of limitations- this includes any monies that they may have obtained in their IPO.
So they COULD have bought a license all the same.
I'm not surprised, really, I'm SURE he's observed the Customer Disservice first-hand on a periodic basis- considering that they've been in the Dallas area for some time now (And just opened the store in Irving...).
No, Fry's sells OEM copies of 98 and XP Home to people that are assembling a PC, so long as they buy a motherboard and a HD. I would suspect that this would also apply to their barebones sales (which this PC is even moreso than that...).
I'd like to echo the sentiment- down to the reason. That Irving store's the best of the three in the DFW metroplex with regards to the quality of the store and the inventory that they seem to stock. It's really a nice store- but, sadly, it's still Fry's.
I was in there the other day, pricing parts, like I usually do in advance of a hardware project. I was on the far wall, pricing DDR memory for a machine upgrade when I overheard a conversation with a salesperson and a customer trying to purchase the parts for a whole computer. He was twittering on and on about clock speeds. He picked out an Athlon 2400+ and compared it to the clock speed of a P4 2.4 GHz and then compared the prices between the two. He said that the P4 had the same technology as the Athlon and you were getting nearly a full GHz of clock speed over the Athlon for only a slightly higher price. I was oh so tempted to chime in and shoot the salesperson down in flames- but I behaved myself and just walked away.
Moral of the story: Fry's sales people are told to up-sell whereever possible- even if it's wrong, customer spends too much, etc. Fry's is only usually a good/great deal if you know their antics and know what in the hell you're doing yourself. Of course, their media section's decent- and relatively safe- so it's probably okay to buy CD's and DVD's you can't find anywhere else there.
...this ups the ante a little bit. This means that they were KNOWINGLY distributing and selling a GPLed system with IP that they were unwilling to license under the GPL. The moment that this occurs, they're without a license, per the terms of the GPL, to distribute or make derivative works. This means they're guilty of some 18+ months of IP infringement on everyone else that has contributed substantive portions of the Kernel, Red Hat and SuSE included. There is no way in HELL that a court is going to give SCO any damages or even hear an IP infringement case from SCO if this is actually the case. Worse, if they realy ARE stupid enough to file suit against Red Hat over infringement and conspiracy to infringe, it opens up the floodgates- because it will be an open statement of that willful 18+ months of infringement and their unwillingness to work out the infringement they did- and since they SOLD the stuff, there WILL be actual infringement damages involved.
I believe, per some of the antitrust settlements in the past, they agreed to not go back into the Unix arena- buying SCO would do that and would likely be barred by the FTC or the DOJ.
And McBride just set himself up for infringement suits himself- and from RedHat even.
If there's IP that they deem to not have been licensed under the GPL, they're guilty of over seven months worth of IP infringement. Each and every contributor, Red Hat included, can now sue the crap out of them for infringement of the code they distributed from off of their FTP site- and in each country that they reside in since the FTP server provides it worldwide.
You know, I don't think that the code got in there without permission. I don't think someone did anything to cause this mess. I now think that SCO thinks it can retroactively pull the GPL licensing on the code that Caldera previously contributed. It's the only thing that could explain "thousands" of lines of code that is "theirs" and in the kernel.
Now, having made this distinction, I'll make a further observation that makes your analogy invalid. The Linux kernel people as a whole didn't take the IP in the first place. The closest analogy to this if you WERE to try to apply a "theft" model on the whole thing would be this:
In this case, the party (or parties) that is actually guilty of the act of infringement is the only one that will face fines and damages- the rest of the people distributing Linux will be ordered to remove the offending IP (which is the very thing we've been TRYING to do anyway...) or license it accordingly and will be given a reasonable amount of time to decide and act on the order.
...to actually USE the wax thermal compound with the heat sink. If you're going to be using a "super" thermal grease (such as Arctic Silver and it's ilk), you DON'T want to use that pad at all- it interferes with the proper operation of the thermal grease because the wax-like compound of the thermal pad embeds itself into the cracks, etc. on the heatsink and contact pad of the CPU and acts more like a thermal insulator compared to the grease. Basically speaking, if there's a pad on your heat sink, you're going to want to scrape off that pad and lap the sink before using it with the thermal grease. That's why most of the high-end sink manufacturers quit putting the wax pads on the sinks- people weren't using it and it wasn't nearly as good as the top of the line white grease, let alone something like Arctic Silver.
Thermal pastes are thermally conductive, not electrically so. In fact, you want them to be a damned good electrical insulator. If you'd read the article (I did several days ago- [H]ardOCP had coverage of this one earlier this week...) you'd have found out that carbon black, the substance in question, outpaces pretty much everything else (including diamond and nanotube based compounds in development) because it fills the gaps between the heatsink and the chip's heat spreader, etc. with thermally conductive materials better than anything else.
You DO realize that you're very probably using that codec in violation of it's licensing terms by using it with MPlayer?
MPlayer's nice, no doubt about it- but it's NOT an answer to the issues of Windows codecs, etc.
It may be x86 only, but it's probably more because the developer doesn't know about what all Linux and GCC can do for them. I'll bet they're compiling on a specific distribution and linking against specific libs from the same.
While that will actually work for most applications, it makes it difficult to make versions for an alternate architechture, say like the PowerPC, for example.
However, cross-compilation techniques allow for a consistent build environment across different distributions and allows for the ability to build binaries for platforms other than x86. I know, we have set up for the ability to build for PowerPC in the case of Majesty and Soulride over at Linux Game Publishing. Other games are planned on a, "Will it run properly on the platform?" basis- some of the 3D games currently in the process of being ported may not run right without the more advanced (T&L supporting) Radeons (and I don't HAVE one of those right now in my G4- and no budget to rectify that issue... (Hint, hint...
No doubt. My productivity went down a little bit (er, a lot...) when I started testing. They've got a little game balance tuing left to do, but it's shaping up to be a great game. And, it IS nice to have one of the developers interacting with us on LG.
It's the act of filesharing unauthorized works that is illegal. Now, having said this, the people on the list almost certainly guilty of infringement by way of unauthorized filesharing.
X is available as a feature on DirectFB- it's called XDirectFB.
1) DirectFB supports GTK+ as well- I suspect Fltk's on the way as well.
2) You CAN have X apps under DirectFB with XDirectFB.
3) They're posting rather impressive framerates under Quake III:Arena with the DirectFBGL layer code.
4) Qt's ALREADY in the embedded space- QtEmbedded is what they're using on the Zaurus.