The reason there is a noticable difference between 30, 60 and even 90 fps under quake is that these numbers measure the average fps. Depending upon the scene being rendered, the actual fps for that individual scene could drop low enough that you could see some lag and/or choppiness.
Another thing to consider is the refresh rate on your monitor. If your monitor is running at 60Hz, you're not going to SEE anything above 60fps. This effect can readily be seen on glxgears. If you could actually SEE the fps rate in the thousands that glxgears will normally report, the gears would be a blur. Instesad what you actually see is the fps divided by your monitor's refresh rate. This is why playing with the resolution of the window glxgears is running in can make the gears appear to rotate backwards. It is also the reason for the clipping and distortion you'll commonly see as different frames show up on different raster line segments.
Re:I'll take terrorism over totalitarianism
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Snooping on VOIP
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· Score: 1
Exactly:)
I'll take terrorism over totalitarianism
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Snooping on VOIP
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The law enforcement community has been begging for the unrestricted right to spy on the american people for some time now. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm much more fearful of government agents with gestapo-like powers than I am of deluded wackos from the 3rd world. The intelligence community already spies on the rest of the world, which is where the threat is coming from. That should be enough. If not, then that is what our military is for, to defend the country against our enemies...which are OUT THERE, not HERE. I'd rather have terrorists over to my house for dinner three nights a week than see law enforcement aquire unnecessary powers that are a greater danger to the public than the terrorism they are purported to prevent.
The abundance of those who would trade freedom for the temporary illusion of security are proof positive that 50% of the population is of below average intelligence.
There is no reason to buy one of these Dell printers when you can buy another brand that doesn't have this "feature." Depending upon what you're printing and how much, it may be worthwhile to invest in a decent laser printer. The price per-page on laser printers is far less than that of inkjet printers. If you print a lot, a laser printer will eventually pay for itself. You do have to be careful of course in what you buy since not all are made the same. I couldn't tell you what to buy right now, but I bought a Lexmark 12ppm laser printer three years ago and I've yet to run out of toner for it. The price was $499 on clearance. When I do need to replace the toner cartridge I can buy 3rd party and refilled cartridges very cheaply. If I want to add more memory to the printer I can do that very cheaply as well because it works with standard 72-pin EDO simms.
Here is a little bit of printer tivia for you. The printer division of HP makes derives 75% of its profits from the sale of ink and toner cartridges. Remember that the next time some company tries to lock you in to buying cartridges from them.
The thing is, propagandizing isn't what keeps people glued to the screen to get those advertising dollars. Creating programming that people want to watch is what does that.
Incidentally I've just found out that you can thank the screen writer's and screen actor's guilds for the prevalence of propaganda shows. These guilds are largely made up of left-wing loonies.
You're right of course but the entertainment value is just too much to pass up. I really should be nicer to them I guess, I mean I don't pick on Amiga die-hards, but then they don't act like Scientologists either.
Be went down the tubes because for several reasons, but the switch to x86 was not one of them. Intel literally paid them to port their OS to the x86 and if they had not done so they would have gone out of business long before they did.
Be failed because of Linux. If Linux and would-be replacement products, such as FreeBSD, did not exist, then Be might have been more successful. The problem is that strong competition hurts weak competitors far more than it does strong ones. Linux is strong competition when it comes to the market for operating systems. Microsoft is hurting because of Linux, what does that say about companies that are not in Microsoft's position? Linux obliterated SCO, and if it wasn't for the fact that Sun sells big iron it would be hurting more than it already is because of Linux. IBM is pushing Linux on their big iron for the simple reason that IBM sells big iron, what OS is running on it is irrelevant to them. If hackers will create a top-notch commodity OS for them for free then they're going to laugh all the way to the bank. Sun will likely follow suit if they know what is good for them.
BeOS was a commercial desktop operating system, and that means its survival was dependent upon the applications that could be run on it. It lacked the applications that Windows has, and the niche applications that ran on it were not enough to sustain the company. The problem with niche products is that they MUST fulfill a specific requirement that other more popular or widely used products cannot. BeOS was unable to find such a role, or at least one that was significant enough to keep them afloat.
I was sorry to see them go. Just as I'll be sorry to see Apple go believe it or not. I started out on an Apple II+ and until the mid-80's 6502 based Apple's were all I used. I switched to PC's when EGA became popular and because the 286 was a speed demon compared to a 1 Mhz 6502. I didn't switch to the Mac because 1) I was a kid and couldn't afford one, and 2) they simply weren't expandable the way the PC was. The lack of expansion slots really hurt the early macs in my opinion. Apple had a golden opportunity back then to move to an open hardware platform, and they missed it. The Mac clones in mid 90's was a case of too little, too late. Being proprietary works for big iron, for now at least, but it doesn't work when you are competing with commodity hardware based upon an open standard.
People blame Microsoft for Apple's decline, but they're wrong. Microsoft didn't cripple Apple. Compaq did, Dell did, Gateway did. Every mom and pop PC chop shop and Taiwaneese producer of standard PC components did. Along the way they killed off Commodore, Atari, Sinclair, and a host of other companies whose names are lost to history. Microsoft merely rode the PC wave to the top. The only reason Apple survived back then was because they were the strongest producer of proprietary systems. The Mac was truly a killer computer back then. Even so, open standards always win in the end, even if they are technically inferior. A PC circa 1988 was a bad joke compared to the Mac-II. But because there was competition within the PC market continuous improvement were made at a greater rate than what Apple could do on its own.
The position Apple is in today is not one I would want to be in. They've got the PC hardware industry on one side, and the Linux movement on the other. They can't keep up with Intel and AMD, and if they were to become a pure OS/software company, Linux would eat them alive. They can't stay on their current hardware because Motorola and IBM gave up on the PPC as a desktop processor back when Apple axed CHRP. Neither company is going to pay to develop faster chips just for Apple's sake. That means that staying on PPC is staying on a sinking ship. The only way that Apple could make a successful transition to x86 is if they were able to create killer apps that only ran on OS-X. With even Microsoft's killer apps like Office and IE getting hit with open source alter
Your response was so witty and incisive. I can almost smell the Crayola.
Did you think my post was about Microsoft? I write five paragraphs and the only thing you see is the single sentence with the word "Microsoft" in it.
I am the hacker who says Microsoft! Go forth now and bring me a shrubbery before I am forced to say it again!
As for what Linux's place is on the desktop is, I can't really say. I can say that it doesn't really matter where it is currently however because it is growing very quickly on the desktop and its growth potential is an order of magnitude greater than anything Apple could dare to hope for. I work for the college of engineering at the 4th largest university in the country and this fall all of the computers in our labs (400+) will be configured to dual boot Linux and Windows. Guess whose job it is to come up with the configuration we'll be using?
I was tempted to mention Darwin and I'm glad that you have. I'm glad that darwin for the x86 exists and I'm very glad that Apple has been wise enough to keep the source to it open.
The problem is that, so far at least, Darwin on the x86 has been plagued by a lack of driver support. The last time I played with it back in 2001 it wouldn't even run on motherboards that weren't based on the 440BX chipset. If Darwin is going to be anything other than a curiosity to members of the open source community who don't own macs, then this will have to change. If this has changed then I'll be very glad to hear it.
It's amazing how easily the hornets nest of mac users is stirred up. What doesn't suprise me is how little you actually have to say about what I wrote. My comment about Microsoft was a comparison, not an statement of advocacy for that company or a defense of its position or practices. My only point where it was concerned was that the end goal of both Microsoft and Apple was a monopoly position and that Microsoft was able to achieve this position because the PC is an open standard whereas the Mac is not. The fact that you chose not to respond to this point means that I must assume you either agree with it or didn't comprehend it the first place.
I don't know what Safari is, and more to the point don't care, but this does not mean my observations as to its relevance and the relevance of the company behind it are invalid. If Apple ports it to other platforms the way it has Quicktime then it has a chance, till then it simply doesn't matter.
If you think that every company is a failed monopoly then you need to demand a refund on the tuition you paid for your econ classes because you were robbed.
I'll admit that I don't even know what Safari is, but since it will most likely on run on Macs when it is finished what difference does it make if Apple pulls the betas or even stops development altogether? Until Apple ports its OS to an open platform it isn't going to matter what they do or don't do as far as I'm concerned. I don't care if OS-X will make french toast and give me a blow job, as long as I have to shell out $$$ for a proprietary system that is over-priced for the ammount of power it has I'm not going to run it.
I've heard rumors about apple demonstrating OS-X running on Athlon based systems that were literally welded shut. While this is interesting I'm almost certain that Apple won't ever sell a version of OS-X for x86 that will run on anything BUT these special boxes.
Apple is a failed monopoly. They played the keep everything proprietary game and were overrun with open standards based best-of-breed PCs. Once upon a time PC's tried to emulate the Mac, now the shoe is on the other foot. The reason that Microsoft is a successful Monopoly is because it was able to ride the open-platform that is the PC to the top. Apple certainly could have done the same thing. Once upon a time, back in the mid to late 80's, the Mac made the PC look second-rate. If Apple had gotten out of the hardware business and focused on MacOS and applications for the Mac, chances are pretty decent that the Mac would have won, or at the very least still have enough of a market share to be a significant platform.
Nowadays the only people using them are die-hards and people who got them in order to play with their version of Unix. I'd like to play with their unix too, but I'll be damned if I'm going to buy a whole new computer to do it.
A very big part of why Linux is so successful is because it runs on ordinary commodity PCs. If it were tied to something like the Sparc or the MIPS or the PPC it would be nothing but a curiosity and FreeBSD would be where it is now.
Enterprise sucks for the same reason that The Young Indiana Jones sucked, it is little more than a vehicle for left-wing politically correct propaganda. The producers behind Young Indiana Jones seemed to believe that using special effects to make it look like they were filming in exotic places would actually make people want to watch despite the fact that the show itself was little more than a gimick to push PC. Enterprise seems to rely on Ms. Spocks cleavage for the same purpose. Personally I like the little asian translator girl better, but neither is enough to make me want to watch the show. A perfect example of the shows purpose as propaganda can be seen in the "AIDS awareness" episode called Stigma. The details of this can be seen here:
http://www.trektoday.com/news/010203_03.shtml
I don't know about you, but I've been aware of AIDS for almost 20 years now and I don't need Rick Berman and company to tell me about it.
It would be so nice if the producers understood that stories that are little more than contrivances and vehicles for political and social propaganda aren't something that people are going to relate to. The sad thing is, the people behind this program probably don't even realize what they're doing. Hollywood is so intellectually inbred that they probably believe the programs they're creating will actually resonate with audiences. While these shows might resonate with the people behind the camera, out here in the real world they come accross as a steaming pile of PC.
The job of television programming is to entertain. It is NOT the job of television programming to propagandize. Whenever the people behind a program become deluded into believing that they can use the show to push whatever social or political ideology they subscribe to, the quality invariably suffers.
Part of what makes Farscape so great is that the show doesn't have an agenda beyond entertaining its audience. It makes me wonder if the fact that it is an US/Australian production has anything to do with that. Did the producers have to leave the country before they could make a decent show? What role did its lack of preachiness play in USA network's decision to cancel it? If you ask me, they cancelled it because it makes the rest of their lineup look like a bad joke. I'm almost afraid to see what its replacement, Tremors, is going to be like. How can one create a sustained story line from such a simplistic plot as people running away from underground monsters? Its good enough for an action movie, but hardly something that makes for a weekly TV show.
I can't really complain though since I almost never watch TV. Farscape and Stargate are about the only things I make an effort to watch on a regular basis, and now that Farscape has been killed off I suspect I won't even bother to tune in for Stargate.
I first installed slackware 3.3 on a compaq 386sx-16 with six megs of memory and a 60 meg hard drive. I got X running on my diamond speedstar pro video card in 8 bit mode.
I'm still amazed at how much I was actually able to do without knowing anything. I was able to roll my own kernel and the only thing I couldn't make work was my 8 bit Future Domain SCSI card.
Porn is a problem...for people who are opposed to it. If someone is opposed to it then what use is something like this to them when they're not going to be looking at it anyway?
It seems to me that you'll just have a big group of people who will all be watching each other not look at porn. The thing is, they wouldn't be looking at porn in the first place. Oh well, if this will occupy their time and keep them out of everyone else's business then perhaps in the end it will be a positive thing. The more that sexually repressed people and groups are distracted and preoccupied, the happier the rest of the world will be.
I think it is truly sad that anyone even CARES about porn. It is irrelevant to anyone who isn't a pervert, whether you're talking about the perverts who are obsessed with looking at it, or the ones who are obsessed with repressing their own sexual desires (if only they would do it right and stop breeding...). For the rest of us porn is an occasionally interesting distraction and nothing more. I've seen my share of porn and the vast majority of it is completely pointless. I get more out of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and a Victoria's Secret catalog than I've ever gotten out of porn. Porn is for adolescent males and males who never grew past adolesence. Even so, that doesn't make it a social problem or something in need of remedy. Unless of course you mean that it needs to be better than it is.
This scheme does nothing but prove that technology gives people new ways to express their stupidity.
I do hope you're joking because your plans range from impractical to improbable to simply impossible.
If you can create a Java interpreter for the 6510, James Randi will pay you a million dollars for demonstrating the existence of supernatural phenomena. The Cubs will probably win the world series right afterwards.
What I just can't comprehend is why anyone would WANT to censor the internet. It is a sad and silly lie that anything anyone might see, hear, or read is somehow going to alter their personality or corrupt their character. Yet on a daily basis I see people acting on this idiocy as if it were fact. I've seen mothers fearful that their daughters are going to listen to Britney Spears for fear of them somehow turning into harlots. I've seen this kind of behavior and this kind of attitude all my life and I STILL can't figure it out, at least not by using logic or common sense. The only conclusion that fits the facts is ignorance, foolishness, and maybe even a little mental illness. The thing that suprises me most is how people forget what it is like to be young. Their memory is selective at best. They may remember some things, but they completely forget that young people know how to think. They lack experience of course, but that doesn't make them into human tape recorders. It doesn't make them any more "impressionable" than anyone else.
Censorship is a tribute to the destructive power of stupid people in large groups.
I agree with everything you've written, however your response seems to be aimed at Bruce Perens when in fact it was another poster who you should be responding to.
For me the issue with Gnome vs KDE has nothing to do with point and drool file managers or other idiot-friendly GUI based tools.
For me the entire issue is the window manager. KDE has a better window manager. It is more configurable and you can actually turn OFF the fucking bullshit animation that does nothing but make things slower.
If Gnome finally gets a decent window manager then I'll be as happy to use it as I am with KDE. Till then it can go jump.
This kind of slow, incremental wearing away of human rights is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany.
People need to wake up and understand that there are ALWAYS people who want to disenfranchise the rest of us. The wolf is ALWAYS at the door. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
There are three things that people can do.
1) Vote 2) Join the ACLU 3) Joine the NRA
The reason for the first is obvious. The reasons for the second and third are that the ACLU is a strong champion of individual rights, even if they are part of the loony left. The NRA is of course a strong champion of individual rights as well, even if they are part of the loony right. I'm a member of both and give generously to them.
Laws like this can only come to pass when our representatives in congress are not representing us. The only way that situation can arise is if the voters in general have not been holding them accountable. Any legislator who would put forward legislation intended to deny us our rights is a traitor because they have broken their vow to defend and protect the constitution. Should we re-elect such a person? I'd rather elect a pig straight from someone's barn to office than see someone like that remain in power. The american political landscape is dominated by party politics and this is a big part of the problem. People will vote for someone because of their party, or will vote for a party because that is what they've always done, or because they've been suckered by the propaganda that both major parties just love to spew out. It is sad to see so many people led around by the nose and irritating to have to hear them regurgitate the propaganda that they've swallowed down with relish. Look past the propaganda and bullshit. Be willing to vote for a different party. Become informed about issues that matter and the party's agenda on these issues. If people would do this then a lot of this kind of bullshit would cease to exist.
Lee
Is there a better window manager yet?
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Gnome 2.2 Released
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· Score: 1
I'm sick of how Gnome wants to "shade" windows when I double click on their titlebar. That feature is useful on a Mac running MacOS 9 or below because windows on this OS lack proper maximize and minimize buttons. The only way to get a window out of the way is to shade it or drag it someplace. That feature is of dubious value on systems where it is not needed. Even so I realize that some people might like it and I'm certainly not going to tell them how to run their systems. However wouldn't it be nice to at least have that behavior be configurable?
This points to a much larger issue for me when it comes to Gnome, the fact that both sawfish and metacity the ability to customize the window manager's behavior is severely lacking. Oh sure, you can put a different skin on the windows and all that, but other than that you can't do much of anything.
I'm a command prompt jockey. I don't care one bit about the file managers in either KDE or Gnome because they're useless to me. If I want to manage files I fire up an xterm. I use KDE for the simple reason that with it you can customize the behavior of the window manager. If Gnome would add in similar functionality I'd be just as happy to use it instead. Also, is there a way to set it up so that nautilus doesn't fire up every time you log in? I've not looked for it very hard I'll admit, but it is annoying to have it fire up when I don't use it.
I can't tell you how sickened I am by all this. First I read what has happened then I read people here arguing about what kinds of things people should buy with these vouchers.
The problem is that THIS IS NOT A SOLUTION. Microsoft violates anti-trust laws as a matter of standard operating proceedure, and a slap on the wrist is all they get? Nothing is done to remedy the problem of their ill-gotten market position. A billion dollars is chump change to them when it is a one time "fine," Even if the "fine" were ten billion dollars, how long will it take them to recoup it due to their ill gotten market position?
This is just a bunch of sick bullshit that California has agreed to so they wouldn't go home completely empty handed.
The difference between the GPL and BSD licenses would be irrelevant if everyone out there was willing to always redistribute their code changes when they distributed a binary based upon them.
The problem is that some people want to take the code and run. The issue is one of human nature. Some people want to reap the benefits of what others have contributed without being willing to contribute back themselves. The GPL forces them to do this whenever they redistribute their code. If they make changes and use it internally only, and don't pass out binaries based upon those changes, then this aspect of the GPL does not affect them, but then again how would you police them if it did?
Some people look at the GPL and see communism. Well, they're right. The old marxist adage of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is pretty much what the GPL implements. This model works for software when it is VOLUNTARY because the value of that software to its creators is not diminished when others use it, especially if they contribute back. If the product were something physical like a bicycle, then there would only be so many bikes to go around and unless the producers were paid to make more there would be no more bicycles produced unless people who recieved bicycles came into the factory and contributed parts for new ones or ran the machines to produce them.
The main problem with communism is that the only understanding that most poeple have of it is what they've seen in places like the Soviet Union where it was tied to, and made the excuse for, a totalitarian regime. Communism can work on a voluntary basis for some things, but not everything. It does not work when it is put in place by force. This kind of communism is to me one of the greatest evils ever created by man. Enslavement is enslavement no matter what kind of ideological bullshit you use to justify it. Even the Russian people knew this. It is summed up in the old russian adage "I'll pretend to work as long as they pretend to pay me." Such enslavement is only possible where the rights of free people are oppressed by violence. In a free society it is not possible to continuously rob people of the proceeds of their efforts under the guise that you're making everyone equal because everyone is equally bad off.
The good news is that the GPL is not about communism as practiced in the Soviet Union. It is not about enslavement it is about freedom. It exists within a free society. Stallman and the rest of the FSF bunch can be the biggest Marxist/Leninist idiots the world has ever seen. Now I'm not saying that they are, I'm only pointing out that it wouldn't matter one iota. The reason is that the GPL must compete with other methods of software distribution and compensation. No one is and no one can be FORCED to write code and place it under the GPL. However, if you want make use of or modify GPL'd code, then you're bound by the GPL. This is good because only the people who want to play do so.
Well they can be adamant all they want, it doesn't mean I HAVE to do anything. If they want my copyrights, they can pay me for the opportunity cost of forfeiting the ability to use my own code in commercial applications.
Besides, there is a difference between GPL'd code and FSF code. GCC is FSF code, something that some other party writes and places under the GPL is not.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason there is a noticable difference between 30, 60 and even 90 fps under quake is that these numbers measure the average fps. Depending upon the scene being rendered, the actual fps for that individual scene could drop low enough that you could see some lag and/or choppiness.
Another thing to consider is the refresh rate on your monitor. If your monitor is running at 60Hz, you're not going to SEE anything above 60fps. This effect can readily be seen on glxgears. If you could actually SEE the fps rate in the thousands that glxgears will normally report, the gears would be a blur. Instesad what you actually see is the fps divided by your monitor's refresh rate. This is why playing with the resolution of the window glxgears is running in can make the gears appear to rotate backwards. It is also the reason for the clipping and distortion you'll commonly see as different frames show up on different raster line segments.
Exactly :)
The law enforcement community has been begging for the unrestricted right to spy on the american people for some time now. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm much more fearful of government agents with gestapo-like powers than I am of deluded wackos from the 3rd world. The intelligence community already spies on the rest of the world, which is where the threat is coming from. That should be enough. If not, then that is what our military is for, to defend the country against our enemies...which are OUT THERE, not HERE. I'd rather have terrorists over to my house for dinner three nights a week than see law enforcement aquire unnecessary powers that are a greater danger to the public than the terrorism they are purported to prevent.
The abundance of those who would trade freedom for the temporary illusion of security are proof positive that 50% of the population is of below average intelligence.
There is no reason to buy one of these Dell printers when you can buy another brand that doesn't have this "feature." Depending upon what you're printing and how much, it may be worthwhile to invest in a decent laser printer. The price per-page on laser printers is far less than that of inkjet printers. If you print a lot, a laser printer will eventually pay for itself. You do have to be careful of course in what you buy since not all are made the same. I couldn't tell you what to buy right now, but I bought a Lexmark 12ppm laser printer three years ago and I've yet to run out of toner for it. The price was $499 on clearance. When I do need to replace the toner cartridge I can buy 3rd party and refilled cartridges very cheaply. If I want to add more memory to the printer I can do that very cheaply as well because it works with standard 72-pin EDO simms.
Here is a little bit of printer tivia for you. The printer division of HP makes derives 75% of its profits from the sale of ink and toner cartridges. Remember that the next time some company tries to lock you in to buying cartridges from them.
Lee
The thing is, propagandizing isn't what keeps people glued to the screen to get those advertising dollars. Creating programming that people want to watch is what does that.
Incidentally I've just found out that you can thank the screen writer's and screen actor's guilds for the prevalence of propaganda shows. These guilds are largely made up of left-wing loonies.
I'm more than happy to...
link
LOL!!
You're right of course but the entertainment value is just too much to pass up. I really should be nicer to them I guess, I mean I don't pick on Amiga die-hards, but then they don't act like Scientologists either.
Be went down the tubes because for several reasons, but the switch to x86 was not one of them. Intel literally paid them to port their OS to the x86 and if they had not done so they would have gone out of business long before they did.
Be failed because of Linux. If Linux and would-be replacement products, such as FreeBSD, did not exist, then Be might have been more successful. The problem is that strong competition hurts weak competitors far more than it does strong ones. Linux is strong competition when it comes to the market for operating systems. Microsoft is hurting because of Linux, what does that say about companies that are not in Microsoft's position? Linux obliterated SCO, and if it wasn't for the fact that Sun sells big iron it would be hurting more than it already is because of Linux. IBM is pushing Linux on their big iron for the simple reason that IBM sells big iron, what OS is running on it is irrelevant to them. If hackers will create a top-notch commodity OS for them for free then they're going to laugh all the way to the bank. Sun will likely follow suit if they know what is good for them.
BeOS was a commercial desktop operating system, and that means its survival was dependent upon the applications that could be run on it. It lacked the applications that Windows has, and the niche applications that ran on it were not enough to sustain the company. The problem with niche products is that they MUST fulfill a specific requirement that other more popular or widely used products cannot. BeOS was unable to find such a role, or at least one that was significant enough to keep them afloat.
I was sorry to see them go. Just as I'll be sorry to see Apple go believe it or not. I started out on an Apple II+ and until the mid-80's 6502 based Apple's were all I used. I switched to PC's when EGA became popular and because the 286 was a speed demon compared to a 1 Mhz 6502. I didn't switch to the Mac because 1) I was a kid and couldn't afford one, and 2) they simply weren't expandable the way the PC was. The lack of expansion slots really hurt the early macs in my opinion. Apple had a golden opportunity back then to move to an open hardware platform, and they missed it. The Mac clones in mid 90's was a case of too little, too late. Being proprietary works for big iron, for now at least, but it doesn't work when you are competing with commodity hardware based upon an open standard.
People blame Microsoft for Apple's decline, but they're wrong. Microsoft didn't cripple Apple. Compaq did, Dell did, Gateway did. Every mom and pop PC chop shop and Taiwaneese producer of standard PC components did. Along the way they killed off Commodore, Atari, Sinclair, and a host of other companies whose names are lost to history. Microsoft merely rode the PC wave to the top. The only reason Apple survived back then was because they were the strongest producer of proprietary systems. The Mac was truly a killer computer back then. Even so, open standards always win in the end, even if they are technically inferior. A PC circa 1988 was a bad joke compared to the Mac-II. But because there was competition within the PC market continuous improvement were made at a greater rate than what Apple could do on its own.
The position Apple is in today is not one I would want to be in. They've got the PC hardware industry on one side, and the Linux movement on the other. They can't keep up with Intel and AMD, and if they were to become a pure OS/software company, Linux would eat them alive. They can't stay on their current hardware because Motorola and IBM gave up on the PPC as a desktop processor back when Apple axed CHRP. Neither company is going to pay to develop faster chips just for Apple's sake. That means that staying on PPC is staying on a sinking ship. The only way that Apple could make a successful transition to x86 is if they were able to create killer apps that only ran on OS-X. With even Microsoft's killer apps like Office and IE getting hit with open source alter
Your response was so witty and incisive. I can almost smell the Crayola.
Did you think my post was about Microsoft? I write five paragraphs and the only thing you see is the single sentence with the word "Microsoft" in it.
I am the hacker who says Microsoft! Go forth now and bring me a shrubbery before I am forced to say it again!
As for what Linux's place is on the desktop is, I can't really say. I can say that it doesn't really matter where it is currently however because it is growing very quickly on the desktop and its growth potential is an order of magnitude greater than anything Apple could dare to hope for. I work for the college of engineering at the 4th largest university in the country and this fall all of the computers in our labs (400+) will be configured to dual boot Linux and Windows. Guess whose job it is to come up with the configuration we'll be using?
I was tempted to mention Darwin and I'm glad that you have. I'm glad that darwin for the x86 exists and I'm very glad that Apple has been wise enough to keep the source to it open.
The problem is that, so far at least, Darwin on the x86 has been plagued by a lack of driver support. The last time I played with it back in 2001 it wouldn't even run on motherboards that weren't based on the 440BX chipset. If Darwin is going to be anything other than a curiosity to members of the open source community who don't own macs, then this will have to change. If this has changed then I'll be very glad to hear it.
Lee
It's amazing how easily the hornets nest of mac users is stirred up. What doesn't suprise me is how little you actually have to say about what I wrote. My comment about Microsoft was a comparison, not an statement of advocacy for that company or a defense of its position or practices. My only point where it was concerned was that the end goal of both Microsoft and Apple was a monopoly position and that Microsoft was able to achieve this position because the PC is an open standard whereas the Mac is not. The fact that you chose not to respond to this point means that I must assume you either agree with it or didn't comprehend it the first place.
I don't know what Safari is, and more to the point don't care, but this does not mean my observations as to its relevance and the relevance of the company behind it are invalid. If Apple ports it to other platforms the way it has Quicktime then it has a chance, till then it simply doesn't matter.
If you think that every company is a failed monopoly then you need to demand a refund on the tuition you paid for your econ classes because you were robbed.
I'll admit that I don't even know what Safari is, but since it will most likely on run on Macs when it is finished what difference does it make if Apple pulls the betas or even stops development altogether? Until Apple ports its OS to an open platform it isn't going to matter what they do or don't do as far as I'm concerned. I don't care if OS-X will make french toast and give me a blow job, as long as I have to shell out $$$ for a proprietary system that is over-priced for the ammount of power it has I'm not going to run it.
:)
I've heard rumors about apple demonstrating OS-X running on Athlon based systems that were literally welded shut. While this is interesting I'm almost certain that Apple won't ever sell a version of OS-X for x86 that will run on anything BUT these special boxes.
Apple is a failed monopoly. They played the keep everything proprietary game and were overrun with open standards based best-of-breed PCs. Once upon a time PC's tried to emulate the Mac, now the shoe is on the other foot. The reason that Microsoft is a successful Monopoly is because it was able to ride the open-platform that is the PC to the top. Apple certainly could have done the same thing. Once upon a time, back in the mid to late 80's, the Mac made the PC look second-rate. If Apple had gotten out of the hardware business and focused on MacOS and applications for the Mac, chances are pretty decent that the Mac would have won, or at the very least still have enough of a market share to be a significant platform.
Nowadays the only people using them are die-hards and people who got them in order to play with their version of Unix. I'd like to play with their unix too, but I'll be damned if I'm going to buy a whole new computer to do it.
A very big part of why Linux is so successful is because it runs on ordinary commodity PCs. If it were tied to something like the Sparc or the MIPS or the PPC it would be nothing but a curiosity and FreeBSD would be where it is now.
Flame me all you want, I've got karma to spare
Enterprise sucks for the same reason that The Young Indiana Jones sucked, it is little more than a vehicle for left-wing politically correct propaganda. The producers behind Young Indiana Jones seemed to believe that using special effects to make it look like they were filming in exotic places would actually make people want to watch despite the fact that the show itself was little more than a gimick to push PC. Enterprise seems to rely on Ms. Spocks cleavage for the same purpose. Personally I like the little asian translator girl better, but neither is enough to make me want to watch the show. A perfect example of the shows purpose as propaganda can be seen in the "AIDS awareness" episode called Stigma. The details of this can be seen here:
http://www.trektoday.com/news/010203_03.shtml
I don't know about you, but I've been aware of AIDS for almost 20 years now and I don't need Rick Berman and company to tell me about it.
It would be so nice if the producers understood that stories that are little more than contrivances and vehicles for political and social propaganda aren't something that people are going to relate to. The sad thing is, the people behind this program probably don't even realize what they're doing. Hollywood is so intellectually inbred that they probably believe the programs they're creating will actually resonate with audiences. While these shows might resonate with the people behind the camera, out here in the real world they come accross as a steaming pile of PC.
The job of television programming is to entertain. It is NOT the job of television programming to propagandize. Whenever the people behind a program become deluded into believing that they can use the show to push whatever social or political ideology they subscribe to, the quality invariably suffers.
Part of what makes Farscape so great is that the show doesn't have an agenda beyond entertaining its audience. It makes me wonder if the fact that it is an US/Australian production has anything to do with that. Did the producers have to leave the country before they could make a decent show? What role did its lack of preachiness play in USA network's decision to cancel it? If you ask me, they cancelled it because it makes the rest of their lineup look like a bad joke. I'm almost afraid to see what its replacement, Tremors, is going to be like. How can one create a sustained story line from such a simplistic plot as people running away from underground monsters? Its good enough for an action movie, but hardly something that makes for a weekly TV show.
I can't really complain though since I almost never watch TV. Farscape and Stargate are about the only things I make an effort to watch on a regular basis, and now that Farscape has been killed off I suspect I won't even bother to tune in for Stargate.
Lee
I first installed slackware 3.3 on a compaq 386sx-16 with six megs of memory and a 60 meg hard drive. I got X running on my diamond speedstar pro video card in 8 bit mode.
I'm still amazed at how much I was actually able to do without knowing anything. I was able to roll my own kernel and the only thing I couldn't make work was my 8 bit Future Domain SCSI card.
Porn is a problem...for people who are opposed to it. If someone is opposed to it then what use is something like this to them when they're not going to be looking at it anyway?
It seems to me that you'll just have a big group of people who will all be watching each other not look at porn. The thing is, they wouldn't be looking at porn in the first place. Oh well, if this will occupy their time and keep them out of everyone else's business then perhaps in the end it will be a positive thing. The more that sexually repressed people and groups are distracted and preoccupied, the happier the rest of the world will be.
I think it is truly sad that anyone even CARES about porn. It is irrelevant to anyone who isn't a pervert, whether you're talking about the perverts who are obsessed with looking at it, or the ones who are obsessed with repressing their own sexual desires (if only they would do it right and stop breeding...). For the rest of us porn is an occasionally interesting distraction and nothing more. I've seen my share of porn and the vast majority of it is completely pointless. I get more out of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and a Victoria's Secret catalog than I've ever gotten out of porn. Porn is for adolescent males and males who never grew past adolesence. Even so, that doesn't make it a social problem or something in need of remedy. Unless of course you mean that it needs to be better than it is.
This scheme does nothing but prove that technology gives people new ways to express their stupidity.
Lee
I do hope you're joking because your plans range from impractical to improbable to simply impossible.
If you can create a Java interpreter for the 6510, James Randi will pay you a million dollars for demonstrating the existence of supernatural phenomena. The Cubs will probably win the world series right afterwards.
Lee
What I just can't comprehend is why anyone would WANT to censor the internet. It is a sad and silly lie that anything anyone might see, hear, or read is somehow going to alter their personality or corrupt their character. Yet on a daily basis I see people acting on this idiocy as if it were fact. I've seen mothers fearful that their daughters are going to listen to Britney Spears for fear of them somehow turning into harlots. I've seen this kind of behavior and this kind of attitude all my life and I STILL can't figure it out, at least not by using logic or common sense. The only conclusion that fits the facts is ignorance, foolishness, and maybe even a little mental illness. The thing that suprises me most is how people forget what it is like to be young. Their memory is selective at best. They may remember some things, but they completely forget that young people know how to think. They lack experience of course, but that doesn't make them into human tape recorders. It doesn't make them any more "impressionable" than anyone else.
Censorship is a tribute to the destructive power of stupid people in large groups.
I agree with everything you've written, however your response seems to be aimed at Bruce Perens when in fact it was another poster who you should be responding to.
Doesn't SCO know that IBM fought the federal government for decades and finally won?
I don't remember the details of the case, but I don't think IBM is the best company to get into a legal pissing contest with.
For me the issue with Gnome vs KDE has nothing to do with point and drool file managers or other idiot-friendly GUI based tools.
For me the entire issue is the window manager. KDE has a better window manager. It is more configurable and you can actually turn OFF the fucking bullshit animation that does nothing but make things slower.
If Gnome finally gets a decent window manager then I'll be as happy to use it as I am with KDE. Till then it can go jump.
Lee
This kind of slow, incremental wearing away of human rights is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany.
People need to wake up and understand that there are ALWAYS people who want to disenfranchise the rest of us. The wolf is ALWAYS at the door. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
There are three things that people can do.
1) Vote
2) Join the ACLU
3) Joine the NRA
The reason for the first is obvious. The reasons for the second and third are that the ACLU is a strong champion of individual rights, even if they are part of the loony left. The NRA is of course a strong champion of individual rights as well, even if they are part of the loony right. I'm a member of both and give generously to them.
Laws like this can only come to pass when our representatives in congress are not representing us. The only way that situation can arise is if the voters in general have not been holding them accountable. Any legislator who would put forward legislation intended to deny us our rights is a traitor because they have broken their vow to defend and protect the constitution. Should we re-elect such a person? I'd rather elect a pig straight from someone's barn to office than see someone like that remain in power. The american political landscape is dominated by party politics and this is a big part of the problem. People will vote for someone because of their party, or will vote for a party because that is what they've always done, or because they've been suckered by the propaganda that both major parties just love to spew out. It is sad to see so many people led around by the nose and irritating to have to hear them regurgitate the propaganda that they've swallowed down with relish. Look past the propaganda and bullshit. Be willing to vote for a different party. Become informed about issues that matter and the party's agenda on these issues. If people would do this then a lot of this kind of bullshit would cease to exist.
Lee
I'm sick of how Gnome wants to "shade" windows when I double click on their titlebar. That feature is useful on a Mac running MacOS 9 or below because windows on this OS lack proper maximize and minimize buttons. The only way to get a window out of the way is to shade it or drag it someplace. That feature is of dubious value on systems where it is not needed. Even so I realize that some people might like it and I'm certainly not going to tell them how to run their systems. However wouldn't it be nice to at least have that behavior be configurable?
This points to a much larger issue for me when it comes to Gnome, the fact that both sawfish and metacity the ability to customize the window manager's behavior is severely lacking. Oh sure, you can put a different skin on the windows and all that, but other than that you can't do much of anything.
I'm a command prompt jockey. I don't care one bit about the file managers in either KDE or Gnome because they're useless to me. If I want to manage files I fire up an xterm. I use KDE for the simple reason that with it you can customize the behavior of the window manager. If Gnome would add in similar functionality I'd be just as happy to use it instead. Also, is there a way to set it up so that nautilus doesn't fire up every time you log in? I've not looked for it very hard I'll admit, but it is annoying to have it fire up when I don't use it.
Don't mind me, I'm just ranting.....
Lee
I can't tell you how sickened I am by all this. First I read what has happened then I read people here arguing about what kinds of things people should buy with these vouchers.
The problem is that THIS IS NOT A SOLUTION. Microsoft violates anti-trust laws as a matter of standard operating proceedure, and a slap on the wrist is all they get? Nothing is done to remedy the problem of their ill-gotten market position. A billion dollars is chump change to them when it is a one time "fine," Even if the "fine" were ten billion dollars, how long will it take them to recoup it due to their ill gotten market position?
This is just a bunch of sick bullshit that California has agreed to so they wouldn't go home completely empty handed.
Am I the only person who sees this?
The difference between the GPL and BSD licenses would be irrelevant if everyone out there was willing to always redistribute their code changes when they distributed a binary based upon them.
The problem is that some people want to take the code and run. The issue is one of human nature. Some people want to reap the benefits of what others have contributed without being willing to contribute back themselves. The GPL forces them to do this whenever they redistribute their code. If they make changes and use it internally only, and don't pass out binaries based upon those changes, then this aspect of the GPL does not affect them, but then again how would you police them if it did?
Some people look at the GPL and see communism. Well, they're right. The old marxist adage of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is pretty much what the GPL implements. This model works for software when it is VOLUNTARY because the value of that software to its creators is not diminished when others use it, especially if they contribute back. If the product were something physical like a bicycle, then there would only be so many bikes to go around and unless the producers were paid to make more there would be no more bicycles produced unless people who recieved bicycles came into the factory and contributed parts for new ones or ran the machines to produce them.
The main problem with communism is that the only understanding that most poeple have of it is what they've seen in places like the Soviet Union where it was tied to, and made the excuse for, a totalitarian regime. Communism can work on a voluntary basis for some things, but not everything. It does not work when it is put in place by force. This kind of communism is to me one of the greatest evils ever created by man. Enslavement is enslavement no matter what kind of ideological bullshit you use to justify it. Even the Russian people knew this. It is summed up in the old russian adage "I'll pretend to work as long as they pretend to pay me." Such enslavement is only possible where the rights of free people are oppressed by violence. In a free society it is not possible to continuously rob people of the proceeds of their efforts under the guise that you're making everyone equal because everyone is equally bad off.
The good news is that the GPL is not about communism as practiced in the Soviet Union. It is not about enslavement it is about freedom. It exists within a free society. Stallman and the rest of the FSF bunch can be the biggest Marxist/Leninist idiots the world has ever seen. Now I'm not saying that they are, I'm only pointing out that it wouldn't matter one iota. The reason is that the GPL must compete with other methods of software distribution and compensation. No one is and no one can be FORCED to write code and place it under the GPL. However, if you want make use of or modify GPL'd code, then you're bound by the GPL. This is good because only the people who want to play do so.
Lee
Well they can be adamant all they want, it doesn't mean I HAVE to do anything. If they want my copyrights, they can pay me for the opportunity cost of forfeiting the ability to use my own code in commercial applications.
Besides, there is a difference between GPL'd code and FSF code. GCC is FSF code, something that some other party writes and places under the GPL is not.