It's always nice to see new linux software, even propritary..
Still I don't quite see the market. Office people want what they know: MS Office,
if your not using that, it really doesn't matter what you're using. So why not chose something that doesn't cost 120 bucks, like StarOffice or KOffice?
Still, I haven't used the software, maybe it IS an OfficeXP killer. My point is: It'd have to be.
More open licences give more freedom, in the sense
that developers have a greater choice over which freedoms they want to give and which they wish to keep.
Not everyone agrees with RMS's philosophy, so we
need alternatives.
Although IMHO the GPL is the best licence out there.
>But how exactly do you go about finding the details of the SCUMM syntax so you can make an
>interpreter for it. Is it all reverse-engineered or is there actually a doc available on it.
I belive it's all reverse-engineered. Quite impressive, I know.
(Having done some reverse-engineering of Lucasarts games myself. (My TIE-fighter cockpit has fuzzy dice!))
I very much doubt that these kinds of 'political' discussions are less common in large corporations.
In fact, I belive they may have more of them.
The main difference is, in an open source project like Linux,
these debates get fought-out openly instead of in corporate conference rooms.
This means more people are debating and studying the problem, which (hopefully) leads to the better
decision-making.
Nanotechnology is barely a science yet, and
already these guys are coming out of the woodwork!
All applications for this technology so far are mostly speculation,
but these people have already deemed it a potential threat!
And the most relavent question remains unanswered:
Why would a terrorist leader choose to use nanotech over,
for instance germ warfare, which by comparison is
far simpler, cheaper and more effective.??
In my opinion, there is no future for linux gaming if wine is the only way to go..
The problem is: at the moment, the best gaming API
is Microsoft DirectX, like it or not, and
the likelyhood of DirectX becoming a cross-platform API is zilch.
So obviously, Wine is needed at the moment, partly as a windows-simulator,
but also as an implementation of DirectX on linux.
In the long run, however, It's unhealthy to be dependent on an API dictated by microsoft.
We need a new, open, alternative.
Perhaps SDL 2.0 or OpenGL 2.0 is the answer needed?
Linux needs a killer DirectX-killer-API, much in the same way DirectX was the
MSDOS-killer that moved games development to windows.
However, if wine is the future of linux gaming,
we are (indirectly) giving that future to Microsoft.
It seems the fate of many new technologys goes something like this:
1) Hyped
2) Introduced
3) Debunked
4) Used
5) Taken for granted
(Of course, the process is not entirely linear.)
At the moment, a lot of people are debunking 3G,
a natural response to the hype. As there are no
phones on the market as of yet, it's too early to
say what will happen.
It's likely the people will, in fact, use 3G but
maybe not in the way intended.
(Much as the european phone companies had no idea
that SMS messaging would be a major future source
of revenue when the GSM standard was introduced)
>"It will not be some special exception for
>copyright owners," Glazier [RIAA] said.
>"It will be a general fix to bring back current law."
"Bring back current law".. can't quite figure that
one out..
I think what he means is to bring back good ol' 19th century copyright law, where IP owners would
round up a posse and lynch the evil pirates.
Ok, as everyone else is pointing out, the medicine prize would be much more appropriate.
But how can you say that it isn't as technically challenging?
Curing AIDS is incredibly challenging; billions of
dollars are being spent, and thousands of people are doing research in the field. Yet no cure as of yet.
By comparison, there are only about 10-20 research groups in the
world working on BECs. I'd say AIDS is the tougher problem.
And no, it doesn't have to benifit society,
in fact, the prize in physics rarely goes to more
'applied' science. On the other hand, it also rarely goes to entirely theoretical science.
So, this is a relatively typical prize: an experimental verification of an important theory,
(as the name implies, the theory of Bose-Einstein condensates goes all the way back to Uncle Albert)
>> When are they going to come up with a heat
>> sinking device that runs like the engine block
>> on a car (I.E. the water/freon/liquid
>> nitrogen/liquid helium/butane actually flows in
>> channels built for it within a heatsink block)
What you really want isn't just a flowing fluid getting heated up, what you want is a fluid
that gets vaporized by the heat. Since the energy expended in vaporization is usually much larger
than the heat capacity.
(Compare the time it takes to bring a pot to a boil to the time it takes for all the water to
boil away)
It's a bit more complicated technically tho.
(vapor bubbles cause cavitation which can damage pumps)
>Talk to yer granddad or someone your granddad's
>age if your granddad didn't work with computers
>about the IBM 360, or just about any other main-
>frame of that era.
Historical note: Amdahl Corp. built 360/370
clones back then that didn't need water cooling,
they were more power efficient. (Cheaper too)
Fijitsu now owns 'em.
Doubt it, what's in a name?
Nuclear medicine is all about radioactive isotopes and such,
whereas MRI has nothing to do with radioactivity.
I go with the reasoning that patients would be uneasy climbing into any machine named nuclear-something.
Another thing is that in Sweden, where I live,
we don't have that much hospital politics, (it's
all one big public health-care system)
and they call it "magnetröntgen":
"magnetic-x-ray" (an even less acurate term,
because the radiation is in the radio band, not
the X-ray band)
Slashdot Mirror
It's always nice to see new linux software, even propritary..
Still I don't quite see the market. Office people want what they know: MS Office,
if your not using that, it really doesn't matter what you're using. So why not chose something that doesn't cost 120 bucks, like StarOffice or KOffice?
Still, I haven't used the software, maybe it IS an OfficeXP killer. My point is: It'd have to be.
Couldn't they've pulled it off a few weeks earlier, in time for my math exam??!
More open licences give more freedom, in the sense
that developers have a greater choice over which freedoms they want to give and which they wish to keep.
Not everyone agrees with RMS's philosophy, so we
need alternatives.
Although IMHO the GPL is the best licence out there.
>But how exactly do you go about finding the details of the SCUMM syntax so you can make an
>interpreter for it. Is it all reverse-engineered or is there actually a doc available on it.
I belive it's all reverse-engineered. Quite impressive, I know.
(Having done some reverse-engineering of Lucasarts games myself. (My TIE-fighter cockpit has fuzzy dice!))
Now Monkey Island lives again!
Just one question: Does this violate the DMCA? Given the copy-protection schemes in the games, that is.
I very much doubt that these kinds of 'political' discussions are less common in large corporations.
In fact, I belive they may have more of them.
The main difference is, in an open source project like Linux,
these debates get fought-out openly instead of in corporate conference rooms.
This means more people are debating and studying the problem, which (hopefully) leads to the better
decision-making.
Nanotechnology is barely a science yet, and
already these guys are coming out of the woodwork!
All applications for this technology so far are mostly speculation,
but these people have already deemed it a potential threat!
And the most relavent question remains unanswered:
Why would a terrorist leader choose to use nanotech over,
for instance germ warfare, which by comparison is
far simpler, cheaper and more effective.??
In my opinion, there is no future for linux gaming if wine is the only way to go..
The problem is: at the moment, the best gaming API
is Microsoft DirectX, like it or not, and
the likelyhood of DirectX becoming a cross-platform API is zilch.
So obviously, Wine is needed at the moment, partly as a windows-simulator,
but also as an implementation of DirectX on linux.
In the long run, however, It's unhealthy to be dependent on an API dictated by microsoft.
We need a new, open, alternative.
Perhaps SDL 2.0 or OpenGL 2.0 is the answer needed?
Linux needs a killer DirectX-killer-API, much in the same way DirectX was the
MSDOS-killer that moved games development to windows.
However, if wine is the future of linux gaming,
we are (indirectly) giving that future to Microsoft.
It seems the fate of many new technologys goes something like this:
1) Hyped
2) Introduced
3) Debunked
4) Used
5) Taken for granted
(Of course, the process is not entirely linear.)
At the moment, a lot of people are debunking 3G,
a natural response to the hype. As there are no
phones on the market as of yet, it's too early to
say what will happen.
It's likely the people will, in fact, use 3G but
maybe not in the way intended.
(Much as the european phone companies had no idea
that SMS messaging would be a major future source
of revenue when the GSM standard was introduced)
.. on the 30:th.
(Three days left 'till Civ3!!)
Yet another US-centric calendar.
I hope it's configureable.
(I want the week numbers displayed too!)
As a californian emigré to Sweden, I gotta say
that the personal freedom might not warrant the change of climate (literally).
Otherwise: Komm too sveeden.. See ze lövley lakes..
>"It will not be some special exception for
>copyright owners," Glazier [RIAA] said.
>"It will be a general fix to bring back current law."
"Bring back current law".. can't quite figure that
one out..
I think what he means is to bring back good ol' 19th century copyright law, where IP owners would
round up a posse and lynch the evil pirates.
Ok, as everyone else is pointing out, the medicine prize would be much more appropriate.
But how can you say that it isn't as technically challenging?
Curing AIDS is incredibly challenging; billions of
dollars are being spent, and thousands of people are doing research in the field. Yet no cure as of yet.
By comparison, there are only about 10-20 research groups in the
world working on BECs. I'd say AIDS is the tougher problem.
And no, it doesn't have to benifit society,
in fact, the prize in physics rarely goes to more
'applied' science. On the other hand, it also rarely goes to entirely theoretical science.
So, this is a relatively typical prize: an experimental verification of an important theory,
(as the name implies, the theory of Bose-Einstein condensates goes all the way back to Uncle Albert)
I belive some of the Honywells used water cooling back in the '70s.
>> When are they going to come up with a heat
>> sinking device that runs like the engine block
>> on a car (I.E. the water/freon/liquid
>> nitrogen/liquid helium/butane actually flows in
>> channels built for it within a heatsink block)
What you really want isn't just a flowing fluid getting heated up, what you want is a fluid
that gets vaporized by the heat. Since the energy expended in vaporization is usually much larger
than the heat capacity.
(Compare the time it takes to bring a pot to a boil to the time it takes for all the water to
boil away)
It's a bit more complicated technically tho.
(vapor bubbles cause cavitation which can damage pumps)
>Talk to yer granddad or someone your granddad's
>age if your granddad didn't work with computers
>about the IBM 360, or just about any other main-
>frame of that era.
Historical note: Amdahl Corp. built 360/370
clones back then that didn't need water cooling,
they were more power efficient. (Cheaper too)
Fijitsu now owns 'em.
Doubt it, what's in a name? Nuclear medicine is all about radioactive isotopes and such, whereas MRI has nothing to do with radioactivity. I go with the reasoning that patients would be uneasy climbing into any machine named nuclear-something. Another thing is that in Sweden, where I live, we don't have that much hospital politics, (it's all one big public health-care system) and they call it "magnetröntgen": "magnetic-x-ray" (an even less acurate term, because the radiation is in the radio band, not the X-ray band)