Mod parent up. I've seen the phrase "begs the question" used wrongly far too many times on/. To "beg the question" means to found a conclusion on a basis which needs to be proved as much as the conclusion itself.
No. For one, the whole of mankind doesn't use XP; you're forgetting about those who use alternative OSes like Linux, Unix, *BSD, OSX, etc. These OSes will remain progressive and advancing because they don't have the sort of problems that set back Windows.
Conversely, i guess you could say that it's a small step forward for Linux et al because this is just one more reason that these OSes are better than Windows in many ways, such that switching to an alternative OS is becoming more and more feasible everyday.
I remember when i bought my first ever 3D accelerator, an S3 Savage3D. It was faster than any other card i'd ever used up until then (but then again, it WAS my first 3d card), and i remember Quake 2 running sooo smoothly in all its hardware-rendered glory.
Over the next few months i started looking around for tweaks that i could perform on the card. I ended up using one program (whose name escapes my memory) that allows you set normally hidden values in the registry to change the Savage3D's core and memory clock speeds, sidebanding, etc. Needless to say i got hooked again on my Savage. Being a regular visitor to S3's website back then, i learned of their next generation chip coming out, the Savage2000, and i thought, this is going to be one helluva chip when it comes out.
Still i wasn't content with the speed i was getting out of my card, and i was still into reading hardware reviews and stuff. I wrote an email to the creator of the hack program i was using, asking him about other tweaks that he knew of. Sadly, he told me that the Savage3D had a hardware flaw right from the start, a very deep-seated bug that essentially crippled the chip, and all future generations of it, starting with the Savage4, and, i realized moments later, the Savage2000 which i had looked forward to. The programmer told me a few details of the flaw, which i can't recall right now, but basically it was a flaw that reduced the (advertised) triangle rate. For example, the Savage3d was touted to be capable of doing 5 million polys/second, but the flaw caused it to do only a quarter of that figure, around 1.25 million polys/sec. In short, a very serious flaw.
It was only a matter of time before the actual Savage2000 chip came out, and floundered miserably against competition from Nvidia, the Geforce 256. Thus began my fascination with Nvidia, and soon after i got my first ever card based on an Nvidia chip.
I think S3 would have been a great graphics chip company if they got the hardware designs down right from the start. Previously, i would insist on using only S3 cards like the Trio32 and the Virge. IMHO they were great cards.
Hmm... i don't remember having to wait for Space Quest or King's Quest to floodfill the screen. I DO remember though, that the drawing technique used in some of the earlier Quest games (in particular King's Quest 1), caused some objects to be drawn last, and it would be really obvious to the player. Imagine the whole scene completely drawn, and one or two last objects placed in. All of the time, these objects were movable and or get-able. For example, in KQ1 there's a boulder that you could move to get a knife under it. Because of the way that particular scene was rendered, it was a giveaway.
In later games though, all objects were drawn simultaneously, so this minor "flaw" disappeared.
Why would i want to use big and bloated WMP under Linux, when i've got MPlayer? (i've noticed two other posts with the URL to their site, so i'm not posting it). The recently released RC2 fixes a lot of bugs that caused MPlayer to just shut down by itself after playing a few movies. Now i could play any number of movies of any type, and things are just great. With its support for win32 codecs, who needs WMP anyway? Oh, and the MPlayer binary i compiled weighs in at a mere 2.8 Mb, all necessary codecs built-in; beat that, WMP.
Okay, i realize that the Linux port of NWN is something that we've all pined for, begged for, and are still waiting for. But come on, a single screenshot is news?! Firstly, how can we be sure that it isn't fabricated at all? And secondly, i'd be much happier if we could, say, download some alpha client code; something more substantial than a mere screenshot.
I still think Bioware should have made good with their promise of bundling the Linux, Mac, and windoze versions in one box.
Anyway, assuming the screenshot is really authentic, it's nice to see progress on one of my favorite games being ported to Linux, and i just hope the Linux version comes out real soon. Right now, the only reason i boot into windoze is to play NWN. Hopefully that's gonna change.
I don't think it's such a big deal that IBM is dropping their laptop Linux support, so long as IBM doesn't do anything that would prevent Linux from running reliably on their laptops, i.e., hiding hardware details that are critical to stable operation. I've been running Slackware with stock kernels on a T20 (with a "Designed for Windows 98/2000" sticker on it) for about 8 months now with no problems whatsoever. Zero crashes. Even if IBM drops this support, i think users would still be able to get Linux to run on their IBM laptops because that is their OS of choice.
Still, it would be nicer to have some kind of "official" support from IBM to give additional incentive to those considering Linux on laptops. More incentive == more users.
is that Moz 1.0 still hangs when attempting to play audio (in Flash) while some other app is already playing audio. I hate having to stop xmms just to allow the page to load. That's according to the release notes.
Gripes aside, i'm still downloading 1.0 but i'm sure this is going to rock! Kudos to the Mozilla team.
I work at a NEC subsidiary in the Philippines. The higher-ups in management are all Japanese, and we also have many Jap counterparts in Japan. The Japs in the Philippines are very well-adjusted to the local culture and respect local traditions and customs, holidays, etc., thus, they get along quite well with the Filipinos despite the extreme cultural differences. And the Filipinos also appreciate the Japs' effort to adjust. This, i think, should be a top priority when working with foreign programmers. Understanding foreign culture would go a long way toward mutual understanding and goodwill, and would help to create great working relationships.
So Sun is integrating bits of Linux into Solaris. That just proves how great Linux is. Now, if Sun were to return a favor and integrate some really cool parts of Solaris into the Linux kernel, e.g., excellent multiprocessor scalability, tried-and-true enterprise level performance, etc., etc., and make these features available in the mainstream releases...
My first Hawking book was "A Brief History of Time". After reading that one book, i knew that Hawking would be my favorite science non-fiction writer of all time, mainly because of his ability to state in simple, plain words explanations to the complexities of the physical universe we live in and the laws that make the universe tick. I'm no math wizard, but that book gave me a good understanding of the laws of physics without my having to break out a mental sweat over complex math. For those who haven't read that book, i highly recommend it.
Will it record my brand new Celine Dion album? I so wanted to hear it in my car.
And get your car crashed?
Mozilla's rendering engine
on
Netscape 6.2
·
· Score: 1
I've always been a Netscrape user under Linux. I don't want to use Mozilla because i find it too bloated (though newer releases and nightlies are starting to get rid of code bloat), and it takes somewhat longer to load than Netscrape.
Out of curiosity, i ran a copy of Galeon which was installed by default on my box. I got a slick, fast GTK+-based browser with all the essentials, which also uses Gecko, Mozilla's rendering engine. After opening a few sites, including a few hard-to-render ones, i was convinced; personally, i think Gecko is the most accurate rendering engine out there, with Galeon as the perfect lightweight browser.
Oh, and my first complaint was that Galeon didn't have support for flash.. but when i remembered that it uses Gecko, i dropped in Netscape's flash plugin into the mozilla plugins directory, and voila.. flash support on Galeon. Now i've got flash, superb and accurate rendering, and a great, nifty browser.
Electronic Arts should revive...
on
Ultima Revived
·
· Score: 1
Starflight. Starflight was simply THE space adventure game of its time... not that there were many besides it. What Starflight meant to me, and many many others, was a universe of exploration, discovery, and adventure. I spent countless hours in between classes (i was in fifth grade then) playing the game, and it never failed to captivate me for hours on end. And now, with technologies and projects like Mojoworld (read the Slashdot article at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/10/055625 6&mode=thread) which could store a planetary model in 90k or less, there's a lot that could be done to not only revive but ultimately remake the game.
Given that, and the capacity of 2 or 3 CD-ROMs, and it's possible to cram universes upon universes, hundreds of alien races, artifacts, missions, you name it, into one game that will surely rock and immerse us in a universe unlike any before. Not only that, we could open up new possibilities like multiplayer (imagine forming your own fleet of starships with other players)... the possibilities are almost endless.
what the KDE team should work on...
on
Five Years of KDE
·
· Score: 2
is drag-and-drop between KDE and Gnome apps. I'd like to be able to drag and drop a text document, for example, to my KDE printer icon and have it work. Or, say, a text file or spreadsheet from Nautilus to KOffice, or create a link by dragging a KDE desktop icon to a Nautilus window.
Not THAT easily.. you'd most likely need to upgrade critical system tools and utilities like binutils, util-linux, modutils, maybe even gcc. For kernel 2.4.10, these are the needed versions of those and other packages:
The Changes file is more complete though.. read it to know the other changes you might need to make. Oh, and the recommended version of glibc for kernels in the 2.4 series is 2.2.x.. so you might want to upgrade that as well, though it isn't required.
It's part of another article. I think someone forgot to change the formatting on the section titles, though i think it's quite weird they didn't start a new page altogether, or at least put a bigger heading before the new section.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up. I've seen the phrase "begs the question" used wrongly far too many times on /. To "beg the question" means to found a conclusion on a basis which needs to be proved as much as the conclusion itself.
No. For one, the whole of mankind doesn't use XP; you're forgetting about those who use alternative OSes like Linux, Unix, *BSD, OSX, etc. These OSes will remain progressive and advancing because they don't have the sort of problems that set back Windows.
Conversely, i guess you could say that it's a small step forward for Linux et al because this is just one more reason that these OSes are better than Windows in many ways, such that switching to an alternative OS is becoming more and more feasible everyday.
I remember when i bought my first ever 3D accelerator, an S3 Savage3D. It was faster than any other card i'd ever used up until then (but then again, it WAS my first 3d card), and i remember Quake 2 running sooo smoothly in all its hardware-rendered glory.
Over the next few months i started looking around for tweaks that i could perform on the card. I ended up using one program (whose name escapes my memory) that allows you set normally hidden values in the registry to change the Savage3D's core and memory clock speeds, sidebanding, etc. Needless to say i got hooked again on my Savage. Being a regular visitor to S3's website back then, i learned of their next generation chip coming out, the Savage2000, and i thought, this is going to be one helluva chip when it comes out.
Still i wasn't content with the speed i was getting out of my card, and i was still into reading hardware reviews and stuff. I wrote an email to the creator of the hack program i was using, asking him about other tweaks that he knew of. Sadly, he told me that the Savage3D had a hardware flaw right from the start, a very deep-seated bug that essentially crippled the chip, and all future generations of it, starting with the Savage4, and, i realized moments later, the Savage2000 which i had looked forward to. The programmer told me a few details of the flaw, which i can't recall right now, but basically it was a flaw that reduced the (advertised) triangle rate. For example, the Savage3d was touted to be capable of doing 5 million polys/second, but the flaw caused it to do only a quarter of that figure, around 1.25 million polys/sec. In short, a very serious flaw.
It was only a matter of time before the actual Savage2000 chip came out, and floundered miserably against competition from Nvidia, the Geforce 256. Thus began my fascination with Nvidia, and soon after i got my first ever card based on an Nvidia chip.
I think S3 would have been a great graphics chip company if they got the hardware designs down right from the start. Previously, i would insist on using only S3 cards like the Trio32 and the Virge. IMHO they were great cards.
He made the source to his brewer program available for download. Gives meaning to "Free (as in beer)"!
Washing machines replacing (or being installed in) huge breweries!
1) Find a way to brew beer in a washing machine
2) ???
3) Profit!
Hmm... i don't remember having to wait for Space Quest or King's Quest to floodfill the screen. I DO remember though, that the drawing technique used in some of the earlier Quest games (in particular King's Quest 1), caused some objects to be drawn last, and it would be really obvious to the player. Imagine the whole scene completely drawn, and one or two last objects placed in. All of the time, these objects were movable and or get-able. For example, in KQ1 there's a boulder that you could move to get a knife under it. Because of the way that particular scene was rendered, it was a giveaway.
In later games though, all objects were drawn simultaneously, so this minor "flaw" disappeared.
Why would i want to use big and bloated WMP under Linux, when i've got MPlayer? (i've noticed two other posts with the URL to their site, so i'm not posting it). The recently released RC2 fixes a lot of bugs that caused MPlayer to just shut down by itself after playing a few movies. Now i could play any number of movies of any type, and things are just great. With its support for win32 codecs, who needs WMP anyway? Oh, and the MPlayer binary i compiled weighs in at a mere 2.8 Mb, all necessary codecs built-in; beat that, WMP.
there is no such thing as a no-win situation? (As spoken by Kirk, ST 2: The Wrath of Khan).
It's the Endurium, i tell you!
what are some of the "Linux diseases" these disks cure? What if i have a broken floppy drive?
Okay, i realize that the Linux port of NWN is something that we've all pined for, begged for, and are still waiting for. But come on, a single screenshot is news?! Firstly, how can we be sure that it isn't fabricated at all? And secondly, i'd be much happier if we could, say, download some alpha client code; something more substantial than a mere screenshot.
I still think Bioware should have made good with their promise of bundling the Linux, Mac, and windoze versions in one box.
Anyway, assuming the screenshot is really authentic, it's nice to see progress on one of my favorite games being ported to Linux, and i just hope the Linux version comes out real soon. Right now, the only reason i boot into windoze is to play NWN. Hopefully that's gonna change.
I don't think it's such a big deal that IBM is dropping their laptop Linux support, so long as IBM doesn't do anything that would prevent Linux from running reliably on their laptops, i.e., hiding hardware details that are critical to stable operation. I've been running Slackware with stock kernels on a T20 (with a "Designed for Windows 98/2000" sticker on it) for about 8 months now with no problems whatsoever. Zero crashes. Even if IBM drops this support, i think users would still be able to get Linux to run on their IBM laptops because that is their OS of choice.
Still, it would be nicer to have some kind of "official" support from IBM to give additional incentive to those considering Linux on laptops. More incentive == more users.
is that Moz 1.0 still hangs when attempting to play audio (in Flash) while some other app is already playing audio. I hate having to stop xmms just to allow the page to load. That's according to the release notes.
Gripes aside, i'm still downloading 1.0 but i'm sure this is going to rock! Kudos to the Mozilla team.
I work at a NEC subsidiary in the Philippines. The higher-ups in management are all Japanese, and we also have many Jap counterparts in Japan. The Japs in the Philippines are very well-adjusted to the local culture and respect local traditions and customs, holidays, etc., thus, they get along quite well with the Filipinos despite the extreme cultural differences. And the Filipinos also appreciate the Japs' effort to adjust. This, i think, should be a top priority when working with foreign programmers. Understanding foreign culture would go a long way toward mutual understanding and goodwill, and would help to create great working relationships.
So Sun is integrating bits of Linux into Solaris. That just proves how great Linux is. Now, if Sun were to return a favor and integrate some really cool parts of Solaris into the Linux kernel, e.g., excellent multiprocessor scalability, tried-and-true enterprise level performance, etc., etc., and make these features available in the mainstream releases...
Funny you should mention gravity.. i somehow remember a user's plan file that i got to read when i ran finger on our company mail server. It went,
There's no such thing as gravity... the Earth sucks!
Oh okay.. i admit it was funny at first.. but, oh nevermind..
My first Hawking book was "A Brief History of Time". After reading that one book, i knew that Hawking would be my favorite science non-fiction writer of all time, mainly because of his ability to state in simple, plain words explanations to the complexities of the physical universe we live in and the laws that make the universe tick. I'm no math wizard, but that book gave me a good understanding of the laws of physics without my having to break out a mental sweat over complex math. For those who haven't read that book, i highly recommend it.
And don't forget!
C: Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
--
Shut up and play yer guitar!
And get your car crashed?
Out of curiosity, i ran a copy of Galeon which was installed by default on my box. I got a slick, fast GTK+-based browser with all the essentials, which also uses Gecko, Mozilla's rendering engine. After opening a few sites, including a few hard-to-render ones, i was convinced; personally, i think Gecko is the most accurate rendering engine out there, with Galeon as the perfect lightweight browser.
Oh, and my first complaint was that Galeon didn't have support for flash.. but when i remembered that it uses Gecko, i dropped in Netscape's flash plugin into the mozilla plugins directory, and voila.. flash support on Galeon. Now i've got flash, superb and accurate rendering, and a great, nifty browser.
Starflight. Starflight was simply THE space adventure game of its time... not that there were many besides it. What Starflight meant to me, and many many others, was a universe of exploration, discovery, and adventure. I spent countless hours in between classes (i was in fifth grade then) playing the game, and it never failed to captivate me for hours on end. And now, with technologies and projects like Mojoworld (read the Slashdot article at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/10/055625 6&mode=thread) which could store a planetary model in 90k or less, there's a lot that could be done to not only revive but ultimately remake the game.
Given that, and the capacity of 2 or 3 CD-ROMs, and it's possible to cram universes upon universes, hundreds of alien races, artifacts, missions, you name it, into one game that will surely rock and immerse us in a universe unlike any before. Not only that, we could open up new possibilities like multiplayer (imagine forming your own fleet of starships with other players)... the possibilities are almost endless.
is drag-and-drop between KDE and Gnome apps. I'd like to be able to drag and drop a text document, for example, to my KDE printer icon and have it work. Or, say, a text file or spreadsheet from Nautilus to KOffice, or create a link by dragging a KDE desktop icon to a Nautilus window.
I suggest a MySQL ID... free, open, and if it breaks, it isn't your fault!
Not THAT easily.. you'd most likely need to upgrade critical system tools and utilities like binutils, util-linux, modutils, maybe even gcc. For kernel 2.4.10, these are the needed versions of those and other packages:
gcc - 2.95.3
make - 3.77
binutils - 2.9.1.0.25
util-linux - 2.10o
modutils - 2.4.2
e2fsprogs - 1.19
ppp - 2.4.0
The Changes file is more complete though.. read it to know the other changes you might need to make. Oh, and the recommended version of glibc for kernels in the 2.4 series is 2.2.x.. so you might want to upgrade that as well, though it isn't required.
It's part of another article. I think someone forgot to change the formatting on the section titles, though i think it's quite weird they didn't start a new page altogether, or at least put a bigger heading before the new section.