Just _knew_ that AKIRA would be there on the list.
on
Essential Anime
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· Score: 1
Definitely one of the A+ list of Anime. When I was getting into Anime, I kept hearing about it and couldn't understand what all the fuss was about (there seemed to be a heavy trade of bootleg copies of it at all the SF/Fantasy/Anime conventions- every huckster had at least a couple pirate copies of it for sale...) until I purchased my copy from out of Suncoast.
As Anime goes, it's one of the must-sees.
(Sounds like I need to obtain a few others from the sounds of people- I don't have either Mononoke Hime or Neon Genesis Evangelion...)
It's also a pretty cool one. Also seems to have been made (or properly re-worked) to have been distributed in English (the animations are properly synced to the voice-overs and the dialog is syntactically proper).
Shadowgate was this cool RPG game from Icom Simulations- originally on the Mac. I wasted many an hour (and it cost me many an "A" in college) on that game in the computer lab...
They've (As in Energy Conversion Devices) had prototypes of this technology for years (in fact, since the early to mid 70's!). The problem (as it is also with holographic storage) has been getting it to be economically manufactured. Perhaps they've finally gotten it down from atmospheric pricing.
Just had an e-mail conversation with one of their developers (after sending a request to their VP of product development, asking them to consider the same...)- seems they're working on it, but are having "driver problems" at this point in time.
If they get it going quickly enough, they plan on making a patch available for download. However, having said this, they also implied that this was not a definite yet. I've sent a reply to the developer in question offering my and possibly the Utah-GLX team's assistance in resolving the problem. No response yet.
Supposedly free- loads of rumors to that effect. One box handles Windows, MacOS, and Linux- it'll be guaranteed to be on the store shelves everywhere if they get the right channels selling it. It was developed under all OSes simultaneously.
It's got a LOT of potential- and I've been eagerly awaiting it for several months now. Now I know what to hint at for Father's Day or my Birthday now...:-)
Oh, you might want to hit Linux Games on a periodic basis- they track this sort of thing.
If they're using Lernout and Hauspie's speech recog system, it is already good enough in the context of the game play. ViaVoice and Dragon I suspect are also just about if not already ready. L&H's demo back over 5 years ago that I had the pleasure of playing with was unbelievable. Speaker independant. Over 50K word vocabulary. Got it right even in fairly noisy environs.
The ISO implementation has been available to the public as a referant for implementors of systems using MPEG-1 Layer III (MP3) codecs for sound. It was still freely downloadable when Fraunhoffer cracked down on all the encoders. LAME consisted of a dramatic enhancement of the psycho-acoustic model used to encode MP3's in the form of a patch set for the ISO code. Since it's a differing model, being slapped on top of the currently available codec, I suspect Fraunhoffer has less room to harass them- it's not a program or even their model (which is what is patented- the other portions, like the MDCT, etc. are in the public domain.). It all depends on what the model LAME is using is based upon, etc.
The issue, as you stipulated, wasn't the sources per-se, but rather, like you said based off of the violations of their patents (which anyone using the ISO reference implementation will automatically be in violation for.).
However, having said this, if I'm not mistaken, they only really have patents that cover the psycho-acoustic model they use to arrive at their version of an MP3. When you get to brass-tacks, everything else is prior-art. If you can manage to find another model that produces as good or better results for an MP3 stream and doesn't step on other patents, you're home free.
And before you come up with the "impossible" counterpoint, think long and hard about things like Vorbis. It's nearly there and it's comparable to MP3- with no patent snags. It'd not surprise me if they succeeded in that same regard- however, only time will tell if this is the case.
Linuxcare is one of the so-called "creme-de-la-creme" for commercial support. You still have Red Hat (which does support services still...), SGI (which seems to be doing quite well- much better than in other, recent times), and IBM. This has less to do with available business and more to do with Linuxcare not being able to execute their business plan due to VC management not "getting" it about Open Source.
As for corporate acceptance, IBM and SGI have done far, far more for corporate acceptance than Linuxcare ever could have accomplished on their own.
Don't get me wrong, I want to see them succeed. But Linuxcare "falling" on their IPO doesn't do what you're attributing it.
Well, expect something a little different from the XFree86 world for the RAGE 128 support- they're going to be as rock-solid/simple to use as the RagePRO drivers (Well, the same man's doing that work as well- what can one say?).
Drivers are unstable: Under Linux, they're more stable than the Matrox drivers. Just drop them in and go in most cases. I'm not kidding. Of course, that's because they didn't do anything other than hand us the register programming info and Gareth Huges and John Carmack took it from there. Because of this, we're (The Open Source community...) getting a lot more from them.
3d acceleration is only so-so: Well you have me there- but it remains to be seen what they're going to attempt with new silicon. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm also NOT writing them off just yet.
numerous compatibility issues with some AMD motherboards: Um, NVidia's as guilty of that as ATI and possibly for the same reasons- loading of the AGP bus past it's specified power capabilities. So, given that this is the case, which motherboards had the problems and what were the problems?
Sam's the original author and main maintainer of SDL. It's a natural that if SDL's a good fit that he'd be having Loki use it extensively. But, you are DEFINTELY right- SDL existed before Loki came about. And it was shaping up to be the DirectX type answer for Linux at that time.
Just because someone tries to follow the CMM (And there's a lot of companies that think they do) there's still backdoors and easter eggs that get in. Would you know if there was something dangerous like this lurking in your closed source code? No. Thank you, but I'd like to keep my open source as much as possible- I can at least have a trusted party audit the code if I can't audit it myself (which isn't very likely.).
Well, the Permedia2 is an OK adapter, and I think there might be some plans afoot to provide DRI support (don't quote me on that- I only know the rumors I've seen passed about on the Utah-GLX dev mailing list...).
Having said this, however, I'd reccomend that you look into some upgrades to your machine. Soyo and FIC both have excellent motherboards that plug into AT and ATX cases. Both companies offer motherboards that have been certified to run from a 166MMX to K6-3's They can support most socket 7 motherboards (note: a CPU upgrade's also cheap as all get-out. A K6-3 400 and motherboard can run as low as $130US.) From there, you've got options. Increased horsepower, AGP support, etc. If you do that and choose to do the display, get a Matrox G400.
Right now there's only a couple of DRI drivers out at this point in time. Three I think. One for a seldom used Permedia driver, one for the Voodoo3, and one for the Intel i810 video adapter.
Drivers for the ATI drivers are in progress right at the moment but aren't there yet.
NVidia promised one, and now they're apparently backing down from the same in favor of some other infrastructure layered in on top of XFree86 4.0.
SiS 6326 drivers will start, probably when Jim Duchek gets the Utah-GLX drivers as far as he feels he can take them. As soon as the Utah-GLX team gets ahold of SiS 300 details, I suspect work will start on that chip as well.
S3 hasn't released any driver or specs- yet. We're waiting for their next move. Word got back to us via an attendee at the CGDC that S3 was at least interested in the mobile chipset support under Linux. More wasn't intimated, but I think that they'd be interested in a lot more support.
It'd have worked well under both Windows and Linux. While the framerates are lower for the G400, the visual quality is much higher than with the NVidia TNT2 cards.
And the funny part about SDL is that allows you to write for one API, SDL+OpenGL, that allows you to write for Linux AND reasonably expect to merely recompile for Windows or vice versa. SDL encompasses 2D and 3D support along with sound, MJPEG, and MPEG playback. Sounds like a winner to me.
NVidia's being a pain- and their cards don't work well at all under Linux; therefore I suspect that's the reason why you don't see NVida in the benchmarks (How can you benchmark something with a a thoroughly broken driver?).
S3 up until recent times has been a pain (No driver or tech info)- they're slowly changing their tune and it's looking like the UtahGLX team might just get info on the mobile Savage chipset to start off with. Since we've no drivers for their chips, one can't benchmark.
It's COM (and therefore ActiveX) based. Calls within calls to interfaces. There's a very good reason why John Carmack uses OpenGL, etc. for his games- it's because DirectX isn't easy to use. Games are written to Windows only because it's the dominant computer platform.
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Definitely one of the A+ list of Anime. When I was getting into Anime, I kept hearing about it and couldn't understand what all the fuss was about (there seemed to be a heavy trade of bootleg copies of it at all the SF/Fantasy/Anime conventions- every huckster had at least a couple pirate copies of it for sale...) until I purchased my copy from out of Suncoast.
As Anime goes, it's one of the must-sees.
(Sounds like I need to obtain a few others from the sounds of people- I don't have either Mononoke Hime or Neon Genesis Evangelion...)
It's also a pretty cool one. Also seems to have been made (or properly re-worked) to have been distributed in English (the animations are properly synced to the voice-overs and the dialog is syntactically proper).
While the second series is cool, the first is better. And it's damn good (although it's not anywhere near as good as something like AKIRA or Lodoss).
Shadowgate was this cool RPG game from Icom Simulations- originally on the Mac. I wasted many an hour (and it cost me many an "A" in college) on that game in the computer lab...
They've (As in Energy Conversion Devices) had prototypes of this technology for years (in fact, since the early to mid 70's!). The problem (as it is also with holographic storage) has been getting it to be economically manufactured. Perhaps they've finally gotten it down from atmospheric pricing.
While it's the ugliest and "slowest" of the possible cards to compare- it is more of an apples to apples comparison.
Just had an e-mail conversation with one of their developers (after sending a request to their VP of product development, asking them to consider the same...)- seems they're working on it, but are having "driver problems" at this point in time.
If they get it going quickly enough, they plan on making a patch available for download. However, having said this, they also implied that this was not a definite yet. I've sent a reply to the developer in question offering my and possibly the Utah-GLX team's assistance in resolving the problem. No response yet.
Supposedly free- loads of rumors to that effect.
:-)
One box handles Windows, MacOS, and Linux- it'll be guaranteed to be on the store shelves everywhere if they get the right channels selling it.
It was developed under all OSes simultaneously.
It's got a LOT of potential- and I've been eagerly awaiting it for several months now. Now I know what to hint at for Father's Day or my Birthday now...
Oh, you might want to hit Linux Games on a periodic basis- they track this sort of thing.
If they're using Lernout and Hauspie's speech recog system, it is already good enough in the context of the game play. ViaVoice and Dragon I suspect are also just about if not already ready. L&H's demo back over 5 years ago that I had the pleasure of playing with was unbelievable. Speaker independant. Over 50K word vocabulary. Got it right even in fairly noisy environs.
The ISO implementation has been available to the public as a referant for implementors of systems using MPEG-1 Layer III (MP3) codecs for sound. It was still freely downloadable when Fraunhoffer cracked down on all the encoders. LAME consisted of a dramatic enhancement of the psycho-acoustic model used to encode MP3's in the form of a patch set for the ISO code. Since it's a differing model, being slapped on top of the currently available codec, I suspect Fraunhoffer has less room to harass them- it's not a program or even their model (which is what is patented- the other portions, like the MDCT, etc. are in the public domain.). It all depends on what the model LAME is using is based upon, etc.
Reality is, some things are so patently BS (Like CSS) that clear logic and sound arguments just plain flat don't wash.
The issue, as you stipulated, wasn't the sources per-se, but rather, like you said based off of the violations of their patents (which anyone using the ISO reference implementation will automatically be in violation for.).
However, having said this, if I'm not mistaken, they only really have patents that cover the psycho-acoustic model they use to arrive at their version of an MP3. When you get to brass-tacks, everything else is prior-art. If you can manage to find another model that produces as good or better results for an MP3 stream and doesn't step on other patents, you're home free.
And before you come up with the "impossible" counterpoint, think long and hard about things like Vorbis. It's nearly there and it's comparable to MP3- with no patent snags. It'd not surprise me if they succeeded in that same regard- however, only time will tell if this is the case.
Linuxcare is one of the so-called "creme-de-la-creme" for commercial support. You still have Red Hat (which does support services still...), SGI (which seems to be doing quite well- much better than in other, recent times), and IBM. This has less to do with available business and more to do with Linuxcare not being able to execute their business plan due to VC management not "getting" it about Open Source.
As for corporate acceptance, IBM and SGI have done far, far more for corporate acceptance than Linuxcare ever could have accomplished on their own.
Don't get me wrong, I want to see them succeed. But Linuxcare "falling" on their IPO doesn't do what you're attributing it.
Well, expect something a little different from the XFree86 world for the RAGE 128 support- they're going to be as rock-solid/simple to use as the RagePRO drivers (Well, the same man's doing that work as well- what can one say?).
Drivers are unstable: Under Linux, they're more stable than the Matrox drivers. Just drop them in and go in most cases. I'm not kidding. Of course, that's because they didn't do anything other than hand us the register programming info and Gareth Huges and John Carmack took it from there. Because of this, we're (The Open Source community...) getting a lot more from them.
3d acceleration is only so-so: Well you have me there- but it remains to be seen what they're going to attempt with new silicon. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm also NOT writing them off just yet.
numerous compatibility issues with some AMD motherboards: Um, NVidia's as guilty of that as ATI and possibly for the same reasons- loading of the AGP bus past it's specified power capabilities. So, given that this is the case, which motherboards had the problems and what were the problems?
It fits so well with this article.
:-)
(BTW- Shame on you. You got me laughing up here at work!
Sam's the original author and main maintainer of SDL. It's a natural that if SDL's a good fit that he'd be having Loki use it extensively. But, you are DEFINTELY right- SDL existed before Loki came about. And it was shaping up to be the DirectX type answer for Linux at that time.
Just because someone tries to follow the CMM (And there's a lot of companies that think they do) there's still backdoors and easter eggs that get in. Would you know if there was something dangerous like this lurking in your closed source code? No. Thank you, but I'd like to keep my open source as much as possible- I can at least have a trusted party audit the code if I can't audit it myself (which isn't very likely.).
You bet right on the TNT2- so did I. ;->
Well, the Permedia2 is an OK adapter, and I think there might be some plans afoot to provide DRI support (don't quote me on that- I only know the rumors I've seen passed about on the Utah-GLX dev mailing list...).
Having said this, however, I'd reccomend that you look into some upgrades to your machine. Soyo and FIC both have excellent motherboards that plug into AT and ATX cases. Both companies offer motherboards that have been certified to run from a 166MMX to K6-3's They can support most socket 7 motherboards (note: a CPU upgrade's also cheap as all get-out. A K6-3 400 and motherboard can run as low as $130US.) From there, you've got options. Increased horsepower, AGP support, etc.
If you do that and choose to do the display, get a Matrox G400.
Right now there's only a couple of DRI drivers out at this point in time. Three I think. One for a seldom used Permedia driver, one for the Voodoo3, and one for the Intel i810 video adapter.
Drivers for the ATI drivers are in progress right at the moment but aren't there yet.
NVidia promised one, and now they're apparently backing down from the same in favor of some other infrastructure layered in on top of XFree86 4.0.
SiS 6326 drivers will start, probably when Jim Duchek gets the Utah-GLX drivers as far as he feels he can take them. As soon as the Utah-GLX team gets ahold of SiS 300 details, I suspect work will start on that chip as well.
S3 hasn't released any driver or specs- yet. We're waiting for their next move. Word got back to us via an attendee at the CGDC that S3 was at least interested in the mobile chipset support under Linux. More wasn't intimated, but I think that they'd be interested in a lot more support.
It'd have worked well under both Windows and Linux. While the framerates are lower for the G400, the visual quality is much higher than with the NVidia TNT2 cards.
And the funny part about SDL is that allows you to write for one API, SDL+OpenGL, that allows you to write for Linux AND reasonably expect to merely recompile for Windows or vice versa. SDL encompasses 2D and 3D support along with sound, MJPEG, and MPEG playback. Sounds like a winner to me.
NVidia's being a pain- and their cards don't work well at all under Linux; therefore I suspect that's the reason why you don't see NVida in the benchmarks (How can you benchmark something with a a thoroughly broken driver?).
S3 up until recent times has been a pain (No driver or tech info)- they're slowly changing their tune and it's looking like the UtahGLX team might just get info on the mobile Savage chipset to start off with. Since we've no drivers for their chips, one can't benchmark.
It's COM (and therefore ActiveX) based. Calls within calls to interfaces. There's a very good reason why John Carmack uses OpenGL, etc. for his games- it's because DirectX isn't easy to use. Games are written to Windows only because it's the dominant computer platform.
Why should internet sales be taxed any differently?