The 30hr Phillips Tivo that CmdrTaco reviewed has an MSRP of $699 (you can buy it for close to $500 if you shop around), but Sony is about to announce (in April) a 30hr unit with an MSRP of $399, that presumably will sell for closer to $300.
Tivo is basically an IBM PowerPC with hardware MPEG-2 decode, custom TV overlay graphics, a 30G HD, and an excellent custom remote control. Not bad for $3-400!!!
Sure you can watch TV on your PC, but Tivo as well as being very cheap is meant as a home theatre component to be located in your living room. I'd sure prefer to watch TV on a 35" TV while lying on my couch than on a 19" monitor in my computer room.
XFree already provides DGA to remove the X protocol and network overhead for local apps, so why not combine this with Qt/fb for a seamless "do the right thing" Qt-based desktop...
A Qt/KDE based app. can determine if it's X display is local or not, and act accordingly: If the display is remote (i.e. over the network), then the normal Qt/X is used, but if the display is local, then the new "embedded" Qt/fb is used "on top of X" via DGA to provide a seamless display.
What would really make this solution would be if XFree accelerated drivers could be used by Qt for direct screen access rather than using the framebuffer which has very limited 2D acceleration only.
The matroxfb driver is slightly accelerated for 2-D, but bottom line is that the framebuffer API is too low level to really allow for much acceleration anyway.
What's really going to limit this to embedded use though is the lack of accelerated 3-D (forget GL Quake!). OpenGL via DRI in XFree 4.0 should rock!
What would be really nice would be if the accelerated drivers for XFree could also be used for Qt or other graphical subsystems, rather than having to rely on a poor common denomenator like the framebuffer.
I finally got off the dime and bought a Matrox G400. Not the fastest 3D, but I'm not a hardcore gamer.
As the Ars comparison showed, the G400 is actually extremely close to the TNT2 in all aspects of performance. The only place where the G400 lagged the TNT2 (horribly, in fact) was on NT where the drivers were to blame....
So if the performance comes down to the driver, and nVidia arn't interested in Linux but Matrox are, then I'd guess the G400 is likely to beat the TNT2 on Linux.
We have just received information that Caldera indeed has made their directed shares program available to international developers, particularly in Europe but including other areas of the globe. In order to do so, they are working with multiple investment firms. Wit Capital is handling only domestic US accounts, which is correct, but Bank of America Security, LLC is handling International accounts. Bank of America can be contacted at 415 627 3115, 600 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA. Account forms are due to them via FAX (415 913 5530) no later than Friday, March 10th, so move quickly if you have this opportunity. We have confirmed participation in Australia as well.
There are open source implementations of standard CODECs such as H.263 (at least one version of vic) and H.261 (openh323.org) which are fine for dial-up and DSL/cable speed streaming video respectively. MPEG-4 is also a good standard low bandwidth CODEC, although I don't know of any open source implementation. At higher bandwidths, MPEG-2 (source from berkley) is available.
I know that some of these such as H.263 and MPEG-2 have patent issues, but the unchallenged existence of these widespread implementations means that they are at least safe to use.
As for an open source streaming video protocol/framework, the MBone stuff or H.323 again make more sense than starting from scratch.
I'd sadly have to agree with the comments that WMP is better than Real. Using them both under windows, accessing WMP/Real alternate streams of the same content, WMP is smoother and also allows me to jump to forward positions in the stream - if I try that with Real I just get audio and the video never really restarts.
However, since Linux is my platfom of choice at home, and I use Sun at work, I'm not happy with either solution. What I'd really prefer is a truly open solution that I can use anywhere, and that the open source community can tune to be the equal of any of the closed source commercail solutions.
Rather than reinventing the wheel, I'd suggest that the MBone tools should be used as the basis of an open source streaming video solution. I've seen a version of vic available with H.263 support which covers dial-up speeds, H.261 is available from a couple of places including openh323, which covers > 64K bps speeds such as cable/ADSL, and for even higher speeds MPEG2 is obviously the preferred choice, with the Berkley CODEC being available.
Those prices are for otherwise identical systems: 30G HD, GeForce, 19" monitor, 256K RAM (gateway base price is $2999 with 128K, so I added the $200 that their configurator adds for a 256K config.).
The Dell/Intel system is almost **DOUBLE** !!!! the price of the Gateway/AMD system!!!
The Rambus memory used by the PIII is of course the reason, and is why Intel is forced to price the CPU itself under AMD. If you check my history I predicted this yesterday, and stand by my predition that AMD will not drop their price in response - they have no need to!
Presumably he got a lot of those shares by way of being on the board, and the reason companies do this is to help ensure that the board member's interests are aligned with those of the shareholders. However, where he got the shares from is unimportant.. what's important is that he is doing the right thing for the Inprise shareholders - the fact that he happens to be a major shareholder is really somewhat irrelevant.
Inprise certainly has much greater growth potential and share price appreciation potential on it's own than a combined Corel-Inprise would. Look for Corel's P/E ration to sink from its current 50-60 to a more normal 20-30... the absurd Linux premiums are disappearing, and companies like RedHat, VA Linux and Corel are all sinking to normal business valuations.
IMO, Inprise as a stand alone company with excellent technology is way better positioned to grow as a boutique Linux tools specialist, than Corel is likely to succeed in using Linux to pull it out of it's mismanaged Windows past.
Consumers have known for a while that AMD has the fastest processors out, but Intel still has the reputation of being market leader.
Given AMD's stock rise today, shareholders appreciate AMD delivering on their promises...
The announcement isn't that empty either - remember that AMD's policy is to announce when then can deliver in production quantity... Of course Intel will now "announce" the 1GHz PIII in the next day or so, but by their own admission they won't really be able to deliver it until Q3.
Bear in mind that the Athlon uses SDRAM, not the PIIIs Rambus memory, so a 128K Athlon system will be $500 or so cheaper based on that. Of course a lot of these premuim 1GHz systems will be used as servers with 512K or more....
Anyway, seeing as Intel don't expect to ship production quantities of the 1GHz PIII until Q3, Athlon is the only game in town, and they in the nice position of being able to enjoy that end of the price curve!
As a dual citizen Brit/Yank now living in the States, I feel uniquely qualified to talk about asses and arses.
Us yanks don't call asses arses, nor do we call them bums although our northerly hoser neighbors do. An ass is an ass or a butt. Butt is probably milder, more like bum. A bum over here is someone who lies in the street peeing in his pants.
Yeah, kind of funny how the "Coppermine" still uses Aluminum interconnect! AMD have already moved to copper in their Dresden mfg facility, so Intel's definitely going to have problems keeping up with AMD's speeds.
Apparently Intel is having *hideous* speed problems with Merced/Itanium. AMD's "Sledgehammer" may well crush Intel.
AMD is already ahead in the speed wars (850 vs 800), and with the 1GHz Athlon will also announce the 900 and 950MHz parts vs Intel's as yet unannounced (850), 866 and 933MHz PIIIs... Never mind the fact that the Athlon is a superior design.
AMD have no need to push lower speed prices down by announcing the faster parts, since they're already ahead and well positioned. Intel on the other hand is playing catch-up and hence is forced to announce faster parts even before it is capable of shipping them in volume (thereby hurting it's sales).
The applications which will use the power of these types of processor speeds are things like speech recognition and real-time video compression/decompression (video conferecing). Games of course always make use of whatever power is available - more speed enables more realistic games in terms of things like 3-D, textures, lighting, object modelling, etc.
Thinking "do I want/need to run my current apps faster" is the wrong question. Sure a few extra FPS never hurt a game, but it's "what will I be able to do that I could never do before" that is the much more interesting question.
BTW, a 1GHz CPU is probably capable of real-time MPEG-2 compression, which is quite a feat!
Athlon is kicking Intel's ass, and there's really not much they can do about it for now. Investors and the technical press all seem pretty well clued in about Intel's current problems, and judging by this forum the tech-savvy (i.e. likely to buy a premium 1GHz system) end users also realize what's going on.... so who are Intel hoping to fool by announcing a 1GHz PIII that everyone knows they can't deliver in anything other than perhaps sample quantity? Apparently AMD *already* can produce the 1GHz Athlon, and are just waiting for the strategically best time to announce (and deliver!) it.
I'm looking forward to Intel's next processor announcement: "The 600MHz toaster over heating element"... they've got problems ahead.
I don't believe the hard problem is a problem at all. I've exchanged views with David Chalmer's on this, but needless to say he disagreed!;-)
I think that the experience of consciousness is just an emergent phenomenon of creatures (or could be machines) that have a brain architecture that supports consciousness (the inward looking sense), as well as other higher order functions.
If you consider the "feel" of vision, what it comes down to is simply the spatial nature of the sense itself. We don't just register a description of a scene the way a zombie suposedly would, but rather directly access the scene itself as a 2-dimensional spatial composite of blobs of colour, texture, movement, etc. We directly see the spatial realtionships between objects - thoise that touch, those that don't, which are above/below others, which are bigger/smaller/etc. I assert that it is our internal representation of visual scenes, which directly preserves and represents the spatial qualities of the scence, that gives rise to the qualia of vision. Similarly hearing is a temporal rather than spatial sense, which is what gives it it's own qualia/feel. A bat may be blind, but it still has some sort of spatial awareness of it's surroundings though it's echolocation capabilities - but the phenomenal experience of the bat (for some reason a common concern of philosophers!) is going to be determined by the inherently temporal/sequential nature of the echolocation process.
So, given the above, I'd claim that the "feel" of any sense is determined purely by the inherent characteristics of the sense (e.g. spatial vs temporal), no more, no less. In a spatial representation two otherwise similar objects of different color (a property that's applies to the whole surface of the object) are going to appear the same other than having a differentiating surface "quality". That's all that color is - a surface differentiator. There is no absolute "greenness" quale... green objects just remind us of other similarly colored objects. We don't say that a shirt has a 3/4 level greeness, but rather that it is leaf green or ivy green. Given the continuum of greenness, a term such as "dark green" makes sense to us only because we can roughly place it on the spectrum and thereby visualize previously encountered occurrences of the color, or perhaps even synthesize the the color due to past experience with green objects, and the ability to apply the "dark" modifier.
The quale of vision thus derives from the spatial nature of vision. The quale of color derives from it's surface differentiator nature etc. These quales have nothing to do with being human, and everthing to to with representation and having the cortical ability to manipulate, compare, save and recall these representations.
The quale of consciousness is a result of it's inward looking and hence somewhat self-referential nature.
I remember being absolutely WOWed by the Lisa when I saw it introduced at the Personal Computer World show in London. This was the first GUI most of us had ever seen (or anyone outside of Xerox), and it was really mind blowing.
Still, as far as it's success goes, not only was it really slow, but it also cost around 10,000 pounds (UK), which back then was a LOT of money (my salary as a programmer was 6,000 at that time). I've always thought of the Lisa as more of a prototype for the Mac rather than the real production machine it was meant to be.
Linus is obviously a believer in open source, but that's not the same as him being an open source crusader. Everything I've ever read about Linus points to him being 100% practical and down to earth rather than motivated by free software idealism (for that try RMS or ESR). He didn't start Linux to create a free OS for others, or with any intent to further open source (a term which didn't even exist at the time), but simply to fill his own needs. His intent was never to start a distributed development project - he was in fact surprised when people started sending him patches.
If Transmeta even asked Linus for advice on if they should "open source" any aspect of the Crusoe technology (why would they?), I'm sure that his answer would have been a pragmatic one based on Transmeta's own interests and his own as a Transmeta employee and presumably option holder. I think it's his pragmatism that is probably the reason for Linux's success as a distributed OS project.
Not off-hand, but you should be able to find it on the web. I orginally read about it on the PSYCHE-B mailing list (there should be web archives), but I think that you'll find references with many of the discussions of book. I think the book baffled many people due to it's sheer complexity and breadth of the arguments he used... the computability refutaution was by a prominent mathematician:-)
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The 30hr Phillips Tivo that CmdrTaco reviewed has an MSRP of $699 (you can buy it for close to $500 if you shop around), but Sony is about to announce (in April) a 30hr unit with an MSRP of $399, that presumably will sell for closer to $300.
Tivo is basically an IBM PowerPC with hardware MPEG-2 decode, custom TV overlay graphics, a 30G HD, and an excellent custom remote control. Not bad for $3-400!!!
Sure you can watch TV on your PC, but Tivo as well as being very cheap is meant as a home theatre component to be located in your living room. I'd sure prefer to watch TV on a 35" TV while lying on my couch than on a 19" monitor in my computer room.
Tivo records in MPEG-2, at three different quality levels.
According to the Tivo AV forum many people even find the lowest quality (1GB/hr) quite acceptable.
There's a new DirectTV + Tivo box coming out soon that will record raw DirectTV (MPEG-2) downloads, and thus be indistinguisable from DirectTV.
XFree already provides DGA to remove the X protocol and network overhead for local apps, so why not combine this with Qt/fb for a seamless "do the right thing" Qt-based desktop...
A Qt/KDE based app. can determine if it's X display is local or not, and act accordingly: If the display is remote (i.e. over the network), then the normal Qt/X is used, but if the display is local, then the new "embedded" Qt/fb is used "on top of X" via DGA to provide a seamless display.
What would really make this solution would be if XFree accelerated drivers could be used by Qt for direct screen access rather than using the framebuffer which has very limited 2D acceleration only.
The matroxfb driver is slightly accelerated for 2-D, but bottom line is that the framebuffer API is too low level to really allow for much acceleration anyway.
What's really going to limit this to embedded use though is the lack of accelerated 3-D (forget GL Quake!). OpenGL via DRI in XFree 4.0 should rock!
What would be really nice would be if the accelerated drivers for XFree could also be used for Qt or other graphical subsystems, rather than having to rely on a poor common denomenator like the framebuffer.
I finally got off the dime and bought a Matrox G400. Not the fastest 3D, but I'm not a hardcore gamer.
As the Ars comparison showed, the G400 is actually extremely close to the TNT2 in all aspects of performance. The only place where the G400 lagged the TNT2 (horribly, in fact) was on NT where the drivers were to blame....
So if the performance comes down to the driver, and nVidia arn't interested in Linux but Matrox are, then I'd guess the G400 is likely to beat the TNT2 on Linux.
From lwn:
We have just received information that Caldera indeed has made their directed shares program available to international developers, particularly in Europe but including other areas of the globe. In order to do so, they are working with multiple investment firms. Wit Capital is handling only domestic US accounts, which is correct, but Bank of America Security, LLC is handling International accounts. Bank of America can be contacted at 415 627 3115, 600 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA. Account forms are due to them via FAX (415 913 5530) no later than Friday, March 10th, so move quickly if you have this opportunity. We have confirmed participation in Australia as well.
There are open source implementations of standard CODECs such as H.263 (at least one version of vic) and H.261 (openh323.org) which are fine for dial-up and DSL/cable speed streaming video respectively. MPEG-4 is also a good standard low bandwidth CODEC, although I don't know of any open source implementation. At higher bandwidths, MPEG-2 (source from berkley) is available.
I know that some of these such as H.263 and MPEG-2 have patent issues, but the unchallenged existence of these widespread implementations means that they are at least safe to use.
As for an open source streaming video protocol/framework, the MBone stuff or H.323 again make more sense than starting from scratch.
The "if you can hear it, you can rip it" maxim applies equally to video: If you can see it, you can rip it.
I'd sadly have to agree with the comments that WMP is better than Real. Using them both under windows, accessing WMP/Real alternate streams of the same content, WMP is smoother and also allows me to jump to forward positions in the stream - if I try that with Real I just get audio and the video never really restarts.
However, since Linux is my platfom of choice at home, and I use Sun at work, I'm not happy with either solution. What I'd really prefer is a truly open solution that I can use anywhere, and that the open source community can tune to be the equal of any of the closed source commercail solutions.
Rather than reinventing the wheel, I'd suggest that the MBone tools should be used as the basis of an open source streaming video solution. I've seen a version of vic available with H.263 support which covers dial-up speeds, H.261 is available from a couple of places including openh323, which covers > 64K bps speeds such as cable/ADSL, and for even higher speeds MPEG2 is obviously the preferred choice, with the Berkley CODEC being available.
Dell 1GHz PIII: $5999
Gateway 1GHz Athlon: $3199
Those prices are for otherwise identical systems: 30G HD, GeForce, 19" monitor, 256K RAM (gateway base price is $2999 with 128K, so I added the $200 that their configurator adds for a 256K config.).
The Dell/Intel system is almost **DOUBLE** !!!! the price of the Gateway/AMD system!!!
The Rambus memory used by the PIII is of course the reason, and is why Intel is forced to price the CPU itself under AMD. If you check my history I predicted this yesterday, and stand by my predition that AMD will not drop their price in response - they have no need to!
Presumably he got a lot of those shares by way of being on the board, and the reason companies do this is to help ensure that the board member's interests are aligned with those of the shareholders. However, where he got the shares from is unimportant.. what's important is that he is doing the right thing for the Inprise shareholders - the fact that he happens to be a major shareholder is really somewhat irrelevant.
Inprise certainly has much greater growth potential and share price appreciation potential on it's own than a combined Corel-Inprise would. Look for Corel's P/E ration to sink from its current 50-60 to a more normal 20-30... the absurd Linux premiums are disappearing, and companies like RedHat, VA Linux and Corel are all sinking to normal business valuations.
IMO, Inprise as a stand alone company with excellent technology is way better positioned to grow as a boutique Linux tools specialist, than Corel is likely to succeed in using Linux to pull it out of it's mismanaged Windows past.
Hope you're having a good time!
Consumers have known for a while that AMD has the fastest processors out, but Intel still has the reputation of being market leader.
Given AMD's stock rise today, shareholders appreciate AMD delivering on their promises...
The announcement isn't that empty either - remember that AMD's policy is to announce when then can deliver in production quantity... Of course Intel will now "announce" the 1GHz PIII in the next day or so, but by their own admission they won't really be able to deliver it until Q3.
Bear in mind that the Athlon uses SDRAM, not the PIIIs Rambus memory, so a 128K Athlon system will be $500 or so cheaper based on that. Of course a lot of these premuim 1GHz systems will be used as servers with 512K or more....
Anyway, seeing as Intel don't expect to ship production quantities of the 1GHz PIII until Q3, Athlon is the only game in town, and they in the nice position of being able to enjoy that end of the price curve!
The 1 GHz Athlon is basically a crippled chip
Well, if so, then it's a "crippled chip" that benchmarks faster than any processor Intel has ever released.
As a dual citizen Brit/Yank now living in the States, I feel uniquely qualified to talk about asses and arses.
Us yanks don't call asses arses, nor do we call them bums although our northerly hoser neighbors do. An ass is an ass or a butt. Butt is probably milder, more like bum. A bum over here is someone who lies in the street peeing in his pants.
I hope that cleared it up.
The 1GHz PIII is going to use Rambus too, I think. The IGHz Athlon will use SDRAM.
:-)
That's a huge price penalty to put on Intel systems, even with the just announced cheaper RIMM packaging.
Of course, as an AMD shareholder, I'm enjoying every moment of this!
Yeah, kind of funny how the "Coppermine" still uses Aluminum interconnect! AMD have already moved to copper in their Dresden mfg facility, so Intel's definitely going to have problems keeping up with AMD's speeds.
Apparently Intel is having *hideous* speed problems with Merced/Itanium. AMD's "Sledgehammer" may well crush Intel.
AMD is already ahead in the speed wars (850 vs 800), and with the 1GHz Athlon will also announce the 900 and 950MHz parts vs Intel's as yet unannounced (850), 866 and 933MHz PIIIs... Never mind the fact that the Athlon is a superior design.
AMD have no need to push lower speed prices down by announcing the faster parts, since they're already ahead and well positioned. Intel on the other hand is playing catch-up and hence is forced to announce faster parts even before it is capable of shipping them in volume (thereby hurting it's sales).
The applications which will use the power of these types of processor speeds are things like speech recognition and real-time video compression/decompression (video conferecing). Games of course always make use of whatever power is available - more speed enables more realistic games in terms of things like 3-D, textures, lighting, object modelling, etc.
Thinking "do I want/need to run my current apps faster" is the wrong question. Sure a few extra FPS never hurt a game, but it's "what will I be able to do that I could never do before" that is the much more interesting question.
BTW, a 1GHz CPU is probably capable of real-time MPEG-2 compression, which is quite a feat!
Athlon is kicking Intel's ass, and there's really not much they can do about it for now. Investors and the technical press all seem pretty well clued in about Intel's current problems, and judging by this forum the tech-savvy (i.e. likely to buy a premium 1GHz system) end users also realize what's going on.... so who are Intel hoping to fool by announcing a 1GHz PIII that everyone knows they can't deliver in anything other than perhaps sample quantity? Apparently AMD *already* can produce the 1GHz Athlon, and are just waiting for the strategically best time to announce (and deliver!) it.
I'm looking forward to Intel's next processor announcement: "The 600MHz toaster over heating element"... they've got problems ahead.
I don't believe the hard problem is a problem at all. I've exchanged views with David Chalmer's on this, but needless to say he disagreed! ;-)
I think that the experience of consciousness is just an emergent phenomenon of creatures (or could be machines) that have a brain architecture that supports consciousness (the inward looking sense), as well as other higher order functions.
If you consider the "feel" of vision, what it comes down to is simply the spatial nature of the sense itself. We don't just register a description of a scene the way a zombie suposedly would, but rather directly access the scene itself as a 2-dimensional spatial composite of blobs of colour, texture, movement, etc. We directly see the spatial realtionships between objects - thoise that touch, those that don't, which are above/below others, which are bigger/smaller/etc. I assert that it is our internal representation of visual scenes, which directly preserves and represents the spatial qualities of the scence, that gives rise to the qualia of vision. Similarly hearing is a temporal rather than spatial sense, which is what gives it it's own qualia/feel. A bat may be blind, but it still has some sort of spatial awareness of it's surroundings though it's echolocation capabilities - but the phenomenal experience of the bat (for some reason a common concern of philosophers!) is going to be determined by the inherently temporal/sequential nature of the echolocation process.
So, given the above, I'd claim that the "feel" of any sense is determined purely by the inherent characteristics of the sense (e.g. spatial vs temporal), no more, no less. In a spatial representation two otherwise similar objects of different color (a property that's applies to the whole surface of the object) are going to appear the same other than having a differentiating surface "quality". That's all that color is - a surface differentiator. There is no absolute "greenness" quale... green objects just remind us of other similarly colored objects. We don't say that a shirt has a 3/4 level greeness, but rather that it is leaf green or ivy green. Given the continuum of greenness, a term such as "dark green" makes sense to us only because we can roughly place it on the spectrum and thereby visualize previously encountered occurrences of the color, or perhaps even synthesize the the color due to past experience with green objects, and the ability to apply the "dark" modifier.
The quale of vision thus derives from the spatial nature of vision. The quale of color derives from it's surface differentiator nature etc. These quales have nothing to do with being human, and everthing to to with representation and having the cortical ability to manipulate, compare, save and recall these representations.
The quale of consciousness is a result of it's inward looking and hence somewhat self-referential nature.
I remember being absolutely WOWed by the Lisa when I saw it introduced at the Personal Computer World show in London. This was the first GUI most of us had ever seen (or anyone outside of Xerox), and it was really mind blowing.
Still, as far as it's success goes, not only was it really slow, but it also cost around 10,000 pounds (UK), which back then was a LOT of money (my salary as a programmer was 6,000 at that time). I've always thought of the Lisa as more of a prototype for the Mac rather than the real production machine it was meant to be.
Linus is obviously a believer in open source, but that's not the same as him being an open source crusader. Everything I've ever read about Linus points to him being 100% practical and down to earth rather than motivated by free software idealism (for that try RMS or ESR). He didn't start Linux to create a free OS for others, or with any intent to further open source (a term which didn't even exist at the time), but simply to fill his own needs. His intent was never to start a distributed development project - he was in fact surprised when people started sending him patches.
If Transmeta even asked Linus for advice on if they should "open source" any aspect of the Crusoe technology (why would they?), I'm sure that his answer would have been a pragmatic one based on Transmeta's own interests and his own as a Transmeta employee and presumably option holder. I think it's his pragmatism that is probably the reason for Linux's success as a distributed OS project.
Not off-hand, but you should be able to find it on the web. I orginally read about it on the PSYCHE-B mailing list (there should be web archives), but I think that you'll find references with many of the discussions of book. I think the book baffled many people due to it's sheer complexity and breadth of the arguments he used... the computability refutaution was by a prominent mathematician :-)