It's my understanding that VIA has recently provided a dump of new "cleaner" code to x.org that supports the Unichrome lineup more properly. (By the way, thanks...)
However, this doesn't help fully in the big-picture sense of things.
Right now, an Atom based netbook will have 3D capable of doing Compiz (I know, I've played with it on at least two differing eeePC models right now...) and some lower-end FOSS 3D games out of the box. With what has been given out so far, you still can't do this with VIA's offerings, which include the netbook designs and the EPIA boards. That, alone, isn't a good thing or selling point, really, for those designs right now. What is VIA planning to do in regards to fixing the 3D situation on the stuff that you have already released stuff for?
The aforementioned only talks to Unichrome/Unichrome Pro/Unichrome II. What's the story with the other Chrome lineup? Are we going to see FOSS support for those chips or are they even relevant going forward?
I suggest a Wiz, then. You'll have to wait a while, yet, for the other players to catch up to what all the Pandora is fully capable of- which is vastly more than even the Wiz, which is JUST a gaming handheld.
What it actually cut off was commercial closed source server-side UNIX, which is now all but extinct.
It's not just cutting off server-side Unix as you've stated. It's also doing it to the Windows side. Anyone that states that it's only cutting off UNIX is missing the whole picture and I was pointing it out. You can fail to see anything in the post that's relevant to your post- but in the end, it's much more than displacing UNIX, but people don't see anything other than SALES and use that as basis.
I've got something on the order of 20+ machines in my possession or control. Microsoft claims something on the order of 16 of those as direct sales for their OS. Which would be dead wrong. And, I'm NOT alone in that story either.
I didn't catch that thread, atomicthumbs... It doesn't surprise me, though. Cut all but the DSP, RAM, and flash off and just GO. It would get upwards of 100 hours with that battery they're going with on it.
Actually, I'm not at all surprised. I wasn't sure that they could turn the CPU/GPU off like that and just have the DSP grinding since I'm just getting fully up to speed with board bring-up and I didn't catch MWeston's remark in the forums.
It's VERY possible if you're doing nothing but DSP with the relatively HUGE (>3000MAh capacity...) battery they've got in the thing.
Considering that it's not hard to REPLACE that "gigantic" software stack with something smaller and still accomplish everything that TouchSmart does, they don't NEED Windows or MS to accomplish it. Honest.
If budget allowed, I'd be trying to see what I could do with one of those machines under Linux- because I can see a HTPC or similar in one of those machines that just simply works and the basic use of the machine would be something like TouchSmart.
Lots of Linux in the server space. All you're seeing is SALES, of which, you're very probably going to see a LOT less of those since it's fairly easy to have someone go and pull the latest Ubuntu, Open SuSE, Fedora, CentOS, etc. CD/DVD iso down via the Internet and install to their heart's content. "Sales" are more for support contracts, which there's enough of a business there to keep Red Hat and a few other players at least in that game right now.
It's not Linux that they need to concern themselves with- it won't bite them, even if they move up in versions because of Linus' decision there.
It's the userland space that can turn and bite them hard. While they don't have to relicense things, it does impair what they can/can't do with regards to glibc, etc. on those Linux based devices as later on versions will be licensed under GPLv3 instead of the loophole containing GPLv2. It means they're stuck with older codebases that they're liable to have to support on their own.
If you don't distribute, you don't have to "give back" as you've put it.
If you distribute, you're explicitly required to "give back" as part of the terms of the licensing. The "giving back" is the royalty payment that is supposed to be given in consideration for being licensed to publish copies of the protected work and to make substantively derivative works of the protected work. If you don't pay those royalties, you're in breach of the ONLY agreement you have to do these things in the first place.
If you don't like those terms and you're unwilling to abide by them, do not distribute binaries of the protected works or make substantive derivative works from them.
Most of the ENTERPRISE doesn't typically distribute things unless you're counting IBM or someone like Red Hat or Oracle. In the case of the latter two and companies like them, they have to abide by the DISTRIBUTION terms.
Considering that Hothead did it for Windows/Mac/Linux platforms on Penny Arcade Adventures, I have a feeling that it'll be on those selfsame platforms like PA:Adventures is, possibly using a similar UI with a differing storyline.
If the GPU's still working after that mishap, I'd suggest just getting a new GPU fan for it- they've got performance sinks for a bit less than buying a new card in most cases.
Reduced functionality and the fun and games that WGA appears to be bringing to the fore is actually punishment, NOT alerting the users that their system might be pirated.
Heh... Not that it is much of an issue. I don't use Vista and I only use XP where it's only absolutely needed instead of Linux. Not many instances of that sort of thing these days.
I suspect they'll keep to it. Beagleboards are pricing in at $160 right at the moment. That's the desktop/console cousin to the Pandora- they're using the same SOC, etc. and the Pandora adds a touch-screen, LCD, etc. to the mix. $350's not hard to keep within in light of what's involved here.
If you think it's not a good thing, perhaps the Pandora isn't a device for you. Again, it's a UMPC with gaming features designed in instead of bolted on. That makes it a bit different than a PSP or DS, obviously. If you're not looking for that, it might not make sense to you- but it doesn't make it poorly designed. It's only that way, in your not so humble opinion, because you're mapping what YOU want in a handheld gaming device on to it.
How would you know what makes sense? If you're going for a UMPC type device with gaming capabilities, that QUERTY keyboard is a nice (and expected) feature. If you're just looking for a handheld, it might be overkill.
The Pandora is a UMPC type device, tuned for gameplay first and foremost.
I would not go so far as stating 100 hours. The rather large (for a handheld, that is...) Li-Ion battery they expect to ship it with will give it roughly 10 or so hours of runtime with the power consumption of the components on the bringup board I got. This is at the clock speed of 600MHz. Underclock it and it'll consume a lot less juice and with the DSP core in there, it should be able to play MP3's, etc. with much less juice. Something like 20+ hours, maybe.
You're presuming that you have REAL broadband- like what I have back at my house. Download of OSX is only PRACTICAL if you've got 20Mbits going to ALL of your customers. Not going to happen for some time to come in the US, the main market for Macs...
And if they construct it the way you describe, it causes other problems that cause BAD PR downstream. And, Apple's ALL about PR if nothing else.
Here's why - a modern game can cost upwards of $20M to make. You can't just make a bit of it at a time, you've got to commit to the whole thing. The developers have to get access to the entire funding before they start.
Heh... A goodly portion of that expense is how someone DOES that development- I need only point to Introversion Studios, S2 Games, and studios like them to show that you can have those same production values, but yet only spend maybe a million on developing the same caliber of title.
The main reason that a title can run $20mil is because you've got companies like Vivendi or Sony running the show- and they're running it more like it was interactive movies than games in many cases.
Commander Keen Wolfenstein 3D Duke Nukem Doom Jazz Jackrabbit
In their day, they were some of the big titles. In fact, you might not have Unreal Tournament 3, Quake 4, or Prey as a result of these companies running things this way as they got to be the big plays in the space because of what they did early on.
It's just that the media companies (Read: RIAA or MPAA member companies...) have gotten involved as well as ordinary businessmen who all don't get the Shareware space.
Considering that they sell out of Fry's and now Best Buy of all things, I don't think you realize how unviable that route will be for Apple. They need those other places because they can't afford to open up a bunch of those Apple stores to offset the loss of those venues.
Yeah, you'd just be violating the EULA on the consumer's end- which gets YOU off the hook. You don't incite anything out of the end-users. You sell something with Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE, etc. on it as a pre-install. If someone wants MacOS, they could just blow out the preinstall or do some BootCamp type thing and have their cake and eat it too.
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It's my understanding that VIA has recently provided a dump of new "cleaner" code to x.org that supports the Unichrome lineup more properly. (By the way, thanks...)
However, this doesn't help fully in the big-picture sense of things.
Right now, an Atom based netbook will have 3D capable of doing Compiz (I know, I've played with it on at least two differing eeePC models right now...) and some lower-end FOSS 3D games out of the box. With what has been given out so far, you still can't do this with VIA's offerings, which include the netbook designs and the EPIA boards. That, alone, isn't a good thing or selling point, really, for those designs right now. What is VIA planning to do in regards to fixing the 3D situation on the stuff that you have already released stuff for?
The aforementioned only talks to Unichrome/Unichrome Pro/Unichrome II. What's the story with the other Chrome lineup? Are we going to see FOSS support for those chips or are they even relevant going forward?
I suggest a Wiz, then. You'll have to wait a while, yet, for the other players to catch up to what all the Pandora is fully capable of- which is vastly more than even the Wiz, which is JUST a gaming handheld.
Not if you want to run the latest stuff... Windows98 won't let you play WoW, for example. But MacOS or Linux will in some fashion.
It's not just cutting off server-side Unix as you've stated. It's also doing it to the Windows side. Anyone that states that it's only cutting off UNIX is missing the whole picture and I was pointing it out. You can fail to see anything in the post that's relevant to your post- but in the end, it's much more than displacing UNIX, but people don't see anything other than SALES and use that as basis.
I've got something on the order of 20+ machines in my possession or control. Microsoft claims something on the order of 16 of those as direct sales for their OS. Which would be dead wrong. And, I'm NOT alone in that story either.
I didn't catch that thread, atomicthumbs... It doesn't surprise me, though. Cut all but the DSP, RAM, and flash off and just GO. It would get upwards of 100 hours with that battery they're going with on it.
Actually, I'm not at all surprised. I wasn't sure that they could turn the CPU/GPU off like that and just have the DSP grinding since I'm just getting fully up to speed with board bring-up and I didn't catch MWeston's remark in the forums.
It's VERY possible if you're doing nothing but DSP with the relatively HUGE (>3000MAh capacity...) battery they've got in the thing.
Considering that it's not hard to REPLACE that "gigantic" software stack with something smaller and still accomplish everything that TouchSmart does, they don't NEED Windows or MS to accomplish it. Honest.
If budget allowed, I'd be trying to see what I could do with one of those machines under Linux- because I can see a HTPC or similar in one of those machines that just simply works and the basic use of the machine would be something like TouchSmart.
Uh... No.
Lots of Linux in the server space. All you're seeing is SALES , of which, you're very probably going to see a LOT less of those since it's fairly easy to have someone go and pull the latest Ubuntu, Open SuSE, Fedora, CentOS, etc. CD/DVD iso down via the Internet and install to their heart's content. "Sales" are more for support contracts, which there's enough of a business there to keep Red Hat and a few other players at least in that game right now.
It's not Linux that they need to concern themselves with- it won't bite them, even if they move up in versions because of Linus' decision there.
It's the userland space that can turn and bite them hard. While they don't have to relicense things, it does impair what they can/can't do with regards to glibc, etc. on those Linux based devices as later on versions will be licensed under GPLv3 instead of the loophole containing GPLv2. It means they're stuck with older codebases that they're liable to have to support on their own.
Actually, you've got it wrong.
If you don't distribute, you don't have to "give back" as you've put it.
If you distribute, you're explicitly required to "give back" as part of the terms of the licensing. The "giving back" is the royalty payment that is supposed to be given in consideration for being licensed to publish copies of the protected work and to make substantively derivative works of the protected work. If you don't pay those royalties, you're in breach of the ONLY agreement you have to do these things in the first place.
If you don't like those terms and you're unwilling to abide by them, do not distribute binaries of the protected works or make substantive derivative works from them.
GPL limits distribution, not use.
Most of the ENTERPRISE doesn't typically distribute things unless you're counting IBM or someone like Red Hat or Oracle. In the case of the latter two and companies like them, they have to abide by the DISTRIBUTION terms.
Don't spread FUD, please.
Considering that Hothead did it for Windows/Mac/Linux platforms on Penny Arcade Adventures, I have a feeling that it'll be on those selfsame platforms like PA:Adventures is, possibly using a similar UI with a differing storyline.
If the GPU's still working after that mishap, I'd suggest just getting a new GPU fan for it- they've got performance sinks for a bit less than buying a new card in most cases.
Heh... Too bad what they're doing will just encourage MORE of it, a shift to Linux or MacOS, or both.
What a load of rubbish THAT is.
Reduced functionality and the fun and games that WGA appears to be bringing to the fore is actually punishment, NOT alerting the users that their system might be pirated.
Heh... Not that it is much of an issue. I don't use Vista and I only use XP where it's only absolutely needed instead of Linux. Not many instances of that sort of thing these days.
I suspect they'll keep to it. Beagleboards are pricing in at $160 right at the moment. That's the desktop/console cousin to the Pandora- they're using the same SOC, etc. and the Pandora adds a touch-screen, LCD, etc. to the mix. $350's not hard to keep within in light of what's involved here.
If you think it's not a good thing, perhaps the Pandora isn't a device for you. Again, it's a UMPC with gaming features designed in instead of bolted on. That makes it a bit different than a PSP or DS, obviously. If you're not looking for that, it might not make sense to you- but it doesn't make it poorly designed. It's only that way, in your not so humble opinion, because you're mapping what YOU want in a handheld gaming device on to it.
How would you know what makes sense? If you're going for a UMPC type device with gaming capabilities, that QUERTY keyboard is a nice (and expected) feature. If you're just looking for a handheld, it might be overkill.
The Pandora is a UMPC type device, tuned for gameplay first and foremost.
I would not go so far as stating 100 hours. The rather large (for a handheld, that is...) Li-Ion battery they expect to ship it with will give it roughly 10 or so hours of runtime with the power consumption of the components on the bringup board I got. This is at the clock speed of 600MHz. Underclock it and it'll consume a lot less juice and with the DSP core in there, it should be able to play MP3's, etc. with much less juice. Something like 20+ hours, maybe.
Oh, there's issues with 32-bit browsers.
Odd lock-ups of the browser with Flash content. Doesn't happen as consistently as it does with the 64-bit crowd, but it DOES happen all the same.
You're presuming that you have REAL broadband- like what I have back at my house. Download of OSX is only PRACTICAL if you've got 20Mbits going to ALL of your customers. Not going to happen for some time to come in the US, the main market for Macs...
And if they construct it the way you describe, it causes other problems that cause BAD PR downstream. And, Apple's ALL about PR if nothing else.
Heh... A goodly portion of that expense is how someone DOES that development- I need only point to Introversion Studios, S2 Games, and studios like them to show that you can have those same production values, but yet only spend maybe a million on developing the same caliber of title.
The main reason that a title can run $20mil is because you've got companies like Vivendi or Sony running the show- and they're running it more like it was interactive movies than games in many cases.
I've seen titles go this route...
Commander Keen
Wolfenstein 3D
Duke Nukem
Doom
Jazz Jackrabbit
In their day, they were some of the big titles. In fact, you might not have Unreal Tournament 3, Quake 4, or Prey as a result of these companies running things this way as they got to be the big plays in the space because of what they did early on.
It's just that the media companies (Read: RIAA or MPAA member companies...) have gotten involved as well as ordinary businessmen who all don't get the Shareware space.
That'll work...
Considering that they sell out of Fry's and now Best Buy of all things, I don't think you realize how unviable that route will be for Apple. They need those other places because they can't afford to open up a bunch of those Apple stores to offset the loss of those venues.
Yeah, you'd just be violating the EULA on the consumer's end- which gets YOU off the hook. You don't incite anything out of the end-users. You sell something with Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE, etc. on it as a pre-install. If someone wants MacOS, they could just blow out the preinstall or do some BootCamp type thing and have their cake and eat it too.