They may have come up with a real gem of an API (For Windows, maybe... I can't imagine an API that magically caters to the requirements of two radically dissimilar OS arch...), the problem with that is that without the specs, we can't fix the API- we're beholden to them for fixes, of which, NVidia has not been forthcoming, claiming they're waiting for the DRI release for the "real thing" from them (C'mon guys, DRI's out already- just make a DRI driver for 3.9.17!).
The MGA driver, while it's not yet to the Beta level yet, is quality enough for them to ship the thing with Q3. That's going into a production release of a commercial product for sale. Isn't that quality enough for you? I'd consider it so, myself. It could take us a week or two max to get something in place. Shortly I plan on attempting to demonstrate this with the SiS or Trident chipsets (Yes, I KNOW the things are lame- but there's a lot of poor souls out there that are stuck with them because they're embedded on the motherboard of their cheap PCs.).
"Hey, if anyone from nvidia is reading, I think it would take all of a single day or two to convert the existing nvidia glx driver to the same pseudo dma / real dma / direct rendering framework we have on the mga driver if some specs were released. It would be nice if we had unified functionality across all three chips, and it would be a major performance boost."http://list s.openprojects.net/pipermail/glx-dev/1999-December /002373.html is the link to the archive page for the message he posted. And he's right about that.
They've had these neato, expensive billboards plugging their dialup services throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth area. I've been curious about them- now I know to not reccomend or eval it for anyone...
NVidia's not given out anything (honestly now, an obfuscated source of a driver layer is nothing compared to the technical specs and register level information of the chip) compared to Matrox, 3DfX, or ATI. If you don't want to give money to ATI, spend it on Matrox or 3DfX at this point. The GeForce isn't supported under 3D- the others are right now.
Considering that between him and Gareth Hughes, there's pretty much an alpha driver for the Rage PRO available for the brave at heart to play Q3 and other OpenGL games on. He doesn't like the chip much (seems it's still missing some things- but you apparently can get by with it) but they've gotten the framerates close to what a G200 does right now. We're going to clean it up and use that driver as a reference Utah-GLX driver because it's the cleanest one to date. Shortly, you can expect a RAGE 128 driver to pop up (Beings that they've given a hell of a lot more info for it to us...).
It's not so much the chips themselves but the drivers that make the chipsets worse than they actually are. Yes, the ATI offerings are nowhere near as good as the Matrox, NVidia, etc. offerings- but they're everywhere, cheap, and are serviceable. As for this card, we'll have support for the basic configuration shortly- all we need for the full support is the info to interlace them from ATI.
PC-104 stuff's a bit pricey. If all you need is something like an integrated, does it all, mail gateway/web cache/firewall for something like an xDSL or Cable "Modem", they may have a better setup than a PC-104 board. It all boils down to what you're going for.
I will be one of the first to tell someone that those are GREAT OSes for deterministic applications- for most embedded apps, you don't need deterministic operation. That makes using something like OS-9 (which I used years ago as my primary OS (Tandy Color Computer 3...)), QNX, or Lynx major overkill. For these OSes, you'll spend lots of money on something you don't need and won't use- deterministic operation. Linux fills that gap very well (In fact, so well that the Lynx people are extending Linux for light-duty real-time applications and giving it all back to the community- using the support angle and the upgrade path to Lynx for the high-perormance systems angle to make money off of it.)
That post was FUD, pure and simple. You know they're not going back (they'd have to explain to everyone that has them why there won't be any more of them- without resorting to blaming "hackers" cracking the lame encryption that's ostensibly to prevent copying (well, it does- of DVD players!).
They're stuck with this and now it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle. All this BS is just flailing about in denial, trying desperately to avoid acknoleging the inevitable.
A TRO's the initial step placed in a lawsuit that you plan to carry through on- it's to stop someone that is damaging you in a civil manner from carrying on with the same damage while you prepare for the actual trial.
Thing is, they never grant one unless there's a substantial show that they've got a substantive case. Simply put, at this point, the DVD Forum couldn't prove damages via trade secret "theft" (Wrong tack if I've ever seen one- trade secrets are only such so long as they stay secret; if they didn't breach an NDA or stole it from them or their licensee's own facilities, they're exonerated of that charge.).
Wouldn't surprise me Hiawatha, a TRO is usually part of the prelims for a real lawsuit, legitimate or not. This is going to get ugly- that much is certain. However, I suspect that this thing falls under the Anti-SLAPP laws there in California (which is interesting, considering that this is the venue they're pursuing it in...) and as such, may not produce the results that the DVD Forum is seeking to achieve. It may make things worse for them.
I have this picture of a 6' tall man with brass knuckles, wearing an Elf suit...
It was to disguise the celebration in early times.
on
Children Turn On Santa
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· Score: 1
Since most early Christians were put to death, celebrating Christ's coming in an open way was suicide. So they celebrated his coming at the same time another celebration occured. The "church" as you know and refer to didn't exist per se during the time the first Christmases were celebrated.
...and in 3D, the GL performance may be important. Depends on the data they're collecting. Some of the stuff I did when I worked for one of the Army's contractors could have been better visualized in 3D in real-time or near so. Good 3D inexpensive 3D accel would have merited us evaluating that aspect- as it was, we had no real good options.
Video Card: The selected card is nice and ok, but you're better off with a Matrox G400 (About the same visual quality, and under Linux, it's currently way faster- with no real signs from NVidia that they're going to open up or that they're going to be expedient in resolving this situation...) Mouse: Intellimice are ok, Logitech mice (and, more specifically, their trackballs) are better with the exception of the newest mouse from MS. If trackballs are an option, the marble line from Logitech will perform better and survive longer for the same basic price. LS-120: Why LS-120- is the Army using that extensively? If it isn't, you might want to evaluate something more along the lines of a Jaz or an Orb that would provide much higher capacity storage and interoperability (if you chose some common filesystem format, you could concievably hook in one of these drives into your old Irix and Solaris/SunOS boxen and move data, etc. via that route...)
Then maybe you aren't running the "right" version of RedHat.
If the authors were sloppy about things, they'll have used the "latest" everything and it won't work right without the latest version of RH. (I'm running 6.1 right now and the thing seems ok.) It's got some of the problems that some of the other people have been claiming about it.
It's fast and relatively small, yes. This version of the software is clumsier to use than Opera for Windows (There's a clunkiness somewhere within their UI design that I can't quite describe with words- suffice it to say it's "not quite right".). It's got rendering problems and it doesn't support as many image formats as the big boys.
The age of cheap, high-performance embedded PC's is upon us. While they are going to be slightly more expensive than an ordinary PC of the same calibre, they will handle being fielded into hostile environs well and provide almost all you need for this design on a single board. Pick one of the "lesser" embedded PCs (like a 486-DX2/66, for example) with a PC-104/PC-104 Plus expansion option. It will fit into a medium sized plastic NEMA enclosure along with the power supply and the WaveLan card. Now, you want to probably use the PCMCIA version of the WaveLan because unless you can find a small, clean version of a PC-104 to ISA adapter, you're going to have to add a PCMCIA card interface PC-104 extender card on the whole configuration. Either obtain an embedded PC with onboard 10-base-T or obtain a 10/100 ethernet PC-104 extender card for the ethernet feed back from this router. Follow all of these up with a 4-8Mb M-Systems Chip-On-Disk for holding the mini-Linux distribution of choice.
Whole system cost: ~$700-1000 per machine, depending on how cleverly you shop.
This is cheaper than trying to NEMA a stock PC (which is what you're needing and looking for!)- that would run you ~$2-4k for an average machine enclosure and machine before you're said and done.
Think of how microwaves propagate down a waveguide- literally like water through a pipe!. What it appears that they're doing is turning one of the wires being used for an AC transmission line into something resembling a type of open waveguide, a G-line. I don't know if they can actually do this, but it's an interesting premise- one that I'd like to see actually attempted.
The whole thing reads like a system that operates off of near-field interactions. It sounds like they're trying to turn the surface of the transmission wires into a waveguide in the same manner one would turn an insulated wire into a G-line. Someone that's not entirely versed in what near-field EM acts like might come up with some of the stuff that shows in the patent copy.
IBM's patent search engine turns up patent number 5,982,276 that refers to "Magnetic field based power transmission line communication method and system".
One should read the patent copy that's there at IBM's site before commenting upon this subject- it's interesting (and required for comments) reading for this subject.
I'll thouroughly examine the patent copy and post an analysis of the same later today...
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They may have come up with a real gem of an API (For Windows, maybe... I can't imagine an API that magically caters to the requirements of two radically dissimilar OS arch...), the problem with that is that without the specs, we can't fix the API- we're beholden to them for fixes, of which, NVidia has not been forthcoming, claiming they're waiting for the DRI release for the "real thing" from them (C'mon guys, DRI's out already- just make a DRI driver for 3.9.17!).
The MGA driver, while it's not yet to the Beta level yet, is quality enough for them to ship the thing with Q3. That's going into a production release of a commercial product for sale. Isn't that quality enough for you? I'd consider it so, myself. It could take us a week or two max to get something in place. Shortly I plan on attempting to demonstrate this with the SiS or Trident chipsets (Yes, I KNOW the things are lame- but there's a lot of poor souls out there that are stuck with them because they're embedded on the motherboard of their cheap PCs.).
"Hey, if anyone from nvidia is reading, I think it would take all of a single day or two to convert the existing nvidia glx driver to the same pseudo dma / real dma / direct rendering framework we have on the mga driver if some specs were released. It would be nice if we had unified functionality across all three chips, and it would be a major performance boost." http://list s.openprojects.net/pipermail/glx-dev/1999-December /002373.html is the link to the archive page for the message he posted. And he's right about that.
I've been following this stuff and I'm keenly interested...
They've had these neato, expensive billboards plugging their dialup services throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth area. I've been curious about them- now I know to not reccomend or eval it for anyone...
This falls under the clause of "unreasonable search and siezure". Doesn't matter if it's a civil action. Doesn't matter if it's a criminal action.
It is still Un-Constitutional.
NVidia's not given out anything (honestly now, an obfuscated source of a driver layer is nothing compared to the technical specs and register level information of the chip) compared to Matrox, 3DfX, or ATI. If you don't want to give money to ATI, spend it on Matrox or 3DfX at this point. The GeForce isn't supported under 3D- the others are right now.
Considering that between him and Gareth Hughes, there's pretty much an alpha driver for the Rage PRO available for the brave at heart to play Q3 and other OpenGL games on. He doesn't like the chip much (seems it's still missing some things- but you apparently can get by with it) but they've gotten the framerates close to what a G200 does right now. We're going to clean it up and use that driver as a reference Utah-GLX driver because it's the cleanest one to date. Shortly, you can expect a RAGE 128 driver to pop up (Beings that they've given a hell of a lot more info for it to us...).
It's not so much the chips themselves but the drivers that make the chipsets worse than they actually are. Yes, the ATI offerings are nowhere near as good as the Matrox, NVidia, etc. offerings- but they're everywhere, cheap, and are serviceable. As for this card, we'll have support for the basic configuration shortly- all we need for the full support is the info to interlace them from ATI.
That hit it on the head of the proverbial nail.
PC-104 stuff's a bit pricey. If all you need is something like an integrated, does it all, mail gateway/web cache/firewall for something like an xDSL or Cable "Modem", they may have a better setup than a PC-104 board. It all boils down to what you're going for.
I will be one of the first to tell someone that those are GREAT OSes for deterministic applications- for most embedded apps, you don't need deterministic operation. That makes using something like OS-9 (which I used years ago as my primary OS (Tandy Color Computer 3...)), QNX, or Lynx major overkill. For these OSes, you'll spend lots of money on something you don't need and won't use- deterministic operation. Linux fills that gap very well (In fact, so well that the Lynx people are extending Linux for light-duty real-time applications and giving it all back to the community- using the support angle and the upgrade path to Lynx for the high-perormance systems angle to make money off of it.)
That post was FUD, pure and simple. You know they're not going back (they'd have to explain to everyone that has them why there won't be any more of them- without resorting to blaming "hackers" cracking the lame encryption that's ostensibly to prevent copying (well, it does- of DVD players!).
They're stuck with this and now it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle. All this BS is just flailing about in denial, trying desperately to avoid acknoleging the inevitable.
A TRO's the initial step placed in a lawsuit that you plan to carry through on- it's to stop someone that is damaging you in a civil manner from carrying on with the same damage while you prepare for the actual trial.
Thing is, they never grant one unless there's a substantial show that they've got a substantive case. Simply put, at this point, the DVD Forum couldn't prove damages via trade secret "theft" (Wrong tack if I've ever seen one- trade secrets are only such so long as they stay secret; if they didn't breach an NDA or stole it from them or their licensee's own facilities, they're exonerated of that charge.).
Wouldn't surprise me Hiawatha, a TRO is usually part of the prelims for a real lawsuit, legitimate or not. This is going to get ugly- that much is certain. However, I suspect that this thing falls under the Anti-SLAPP laws there in California (which is interesting, considering that this is the venue they're pursuing it in...) and as such, may not produce the results that the DVD Forum is seeking to achieve. It may make things worse for them.
I have this picture of a 6' tall man with brass knuckles, wearing an Elf suit...
Since most early Christians were put to death, celebrating Christ's coming in an open way was suicide. So they celebrated his coming at the same time another celebration occured. The "church" as you know and refer to didn't exist per se during the time the first Christmases were celebrated.
...and in 3D, the GL performance may be important. Depends on the data they're collecting. Some of the stuff I did when I worked for one of the Army's contractors could have been better visualized in 3D in real-time or near so. Good 3D inexpensive 3D accel would have merited us evaluating that aspect- as it was, we had no real good options.
Video Card: The selected card is nice and ok, but you're better off with a Matrox G400 (About the same visual quality, and under Linux, it's currently way faster- with no real signs from NVidia that they're going to open up or that they're going to be expedient in resolving this situation...) Mouse: Intellimice are ok, Logitech mice (and, more specifically, their trackballs) are better with the exception of the newest mouse from MS. If trackballs are an option, the marble line from Logitech will perform better and survive longer for the same basic price. LS-120: Why LS-120- is the Army using that extensively? If it isn't, you might want to evaluate something more along the lines of a Jaz or an Orb that would provide much higher capacity storage and interoperability (if you chose some common filesystem format, you could concievably hook in one of these drives into your old Irix and Solaris/SunOS boxen and move data, etc. via that route...)
Then maybe you aren't running the "right" version of RedHat.
If the authors were sloppy about things, they'll have used the "latest" everything and it won't work right without the latest version of RH.
(I'm running 6.1 right now and the thing seems ok.) It's got some of the problems that some of the other people have been claiming about it.
It's fast and relatively small, yes.
This version of the software is clumsier to use than Opera for Windows (There's a clunkiness somewhere within their UI design that I can't quite describe with words- suffice it to say it's "not quite right".).
It's got rendering problems and it doesn't support as many image formats as the big boys.
Beta software? Nope.
Alpha software? Yep.
Welcome? That remains to be seen...
The age of cheap, high-performance embedded PC's is upon us. While they are going to be slightly more expensive than an ordinary PC of the same calibre, they will handle being fielded into hostile environs well and provide almost all you need for this design on a single board. Pick one of the "lesser" embedded PCs (like a 486-DX2/66, for example) with a PC-104/PC-104 Plus expansion option. It will fit into a medium sized plastic NEMA enclosure along with the power supply and the WaveLan card. Now, you want to probably use the PCMCIA version of the WaveLan because unless you can find a small, clean version of a PC-104 to ISA adapter, you're going to have to add a PCMCIA card interface PC-104 extender card on the whole configuration. Either obtain an embedded PC with onboard 10-base-T or obtain a 10/100 ethernet PC-104 extender card for the ethernet feed back from this router. Follow all of these up with a 4-8Mb M-Systems Chip-On-Disk for holding the mini-Linux distribution of choice.
Whole system cost: ~$700-1000 per machine, depending on how cleverly you shop.
This is cheaper than trying to NEMA a stock PC (which is what you're needing and looking for!)- that would run you ~$2-4k for an average machine enclosure and machine before you're said and done.
Yep, I live on that stuff. One of the higher caffene drinks out there- and it's cheaper than everyone else's stuff.
Think of how microwaves propagate down a waveguide- literally like water through a pipe!. What it appears that they're doing is turning one of the wires being used for an AC transmission line into something resembling a type of open waveguide, a G-line. I don't know if they can actually do this, but it's an interesting premise- one that I'd like to see actually attempted.
The whole thing reads like a system that operates off of near-field interactions. It sounds like they're trying to turn the surface of the transmission wires into a waveguide in the same manner one would turn an insulated wire into a G-line. Someone that's not entirely versed in what near-field EM acts like might come up with some of the stuff that shows in the patent copy.
And such are coherent, single frequency oscillators that exhibit a lot of unique characteristics.
IBM's patent search engine turns up patent number 5,982,276 that refers to "Magnetic field based power transmission line communication method and system".
One should read the patent copy that's there at IBM's site before commenting upon this subject- it's interesting (and required for comments) reading for this subject.
I'll thouroughly examine the patent copy and post an analysis of the same later today...