Sony's still mapping the interest for Linux
on
X-server for PS2
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Since Slashdot rejected my submission several days ago, I have to remind that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is now mapping the interest for PS2-Linux release in Europe, Australia and other SCEE regions as well. Also the interest registration for the US (which was noted by Slashdot here) is still up and running.
So if you want to see Linux on PS2 outside Japan, do your share and register here for European version or here
for American version. And remember, this is only to see if there's interest, so the registrations don't commit either side to anything.
After you've watched the original you should definitely see the C64 version of Second Reality (I'm not kidding) to help put things back into perspective. 1MHz/64kB should be enough for everyone. You can download it at
ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/parties/1997/theparty97/c6 4/smash_secondreality_d64.zip and it should work on any good C64 emulator. At least Vice works just fine.
While all the media is hyping that the worm reactivates, everyone has forgotten that it isn't instant, it won't infect a million machines in a few minutes. The start is slow. This will be much, much worse in a day or two.
My linux box has had already four infection attempts in the last three hours. I checked the pages on the infected machines. All of them had the following front page (or similar in different language):
Under Construction - The site you were trying to reach does not currently have a default page. It may be in the process of being upgraded.
This is the default page of IIS, right? So the owners don't probably even know they're running IIS. Windows is soooo easy to install. Why would you patch something you don't even know you have?
You know, there's more to the world than just the US of A. At current exchange rates full-priced CDs in Europe cost usually around $16-$22. I pay $17-$18 for my new CDs and $6-$10 for used CDs. A couple of years ago when EU hadn't yet crashed the value of the money the price range for CDs was more like $21-$30.
As for DVDs, many people in Europe are aware of region modified players. Basically every PAL player can play NTSC discs by default, and region modifications are easy (but often not very cheap) to get. For many people (like myself) the reason is not the price, it's the number of discs available. About one third of my collection is not available in Europe, though some discs are all-region.
Also, there are often significant differences between the different region versions of the same title. Some European discs have to give up some extras to get space for more audio tracks. Sometimes even the quality of video and audio can vary, though usually PAL video is superior to NTSC despite the slight speed difference.
In Finland most new full-priced DVDs cost around $20-$30, with some bargain titles being even $10 or less. A bit surprisingly, ordering new discs from Australia seems to be the cheapest option ($14-$18 including P&P), even cheaper than getting discs from the US. And many Australian discs are identical to European versions, even having two region codes (R2 and R4, Europe and Australia).
Okay, this text is based on the conversation I had last October with a friend of mine, who happened to be one of the Pyramid3D software developers at VLSI Solution. I have to emphasize that all opinions are his, and this is heavily from the P3D point of view, naturally. Unfortunately he is on holiday right now, and I just have to relay his views here.
Years ago Bitboys approached VLSI with the promise that they had designed a 3D-engine. When the money was assigned, it was found out that it was actually only code directly from some game, and had no any real definitions behind it. The actual P3D development was done by VLSI Solution, who had 20 people working on it full-time since 1995, for over three years. Bitboys were bought out of the project around 1997.
After Bitboys no longer worked with P3D, Glaze3D appeared out of nowhere. [I remember seeing mostly the same Glaze3D page on Bitboys web site way over a year ago. Now it only has two new images, and probably some revised specs.] A lot of Glaze3D's publicity material is actually from P3D demos, including some of the screenshots on the page. Even if there is something real now, in the beginning Bitboys were advertising technology that didn't exist with the demo material from completely another project.
In short: Glaze3D is most likely an illegal product that will probably never be released.
Pyramid3D does exist, and there are beta versions of the actual card. It was demoed at Assembly '97, IIRC, and in summer 1998 it was nearly completed. But as we know, TriTech dropped the project and P3D will never hit the shelves. There may be some P3D-based products, like inexpensive video converters, though. TriTech was supposed to do the marketing for P3D, but they actually never did anything else than host a webpage.
P3D would have had good 2D (300MHz RAMDAC), good 3D (probably not much chance against today's cards), and both video-in and video-out that support basically all usual formats (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) and their mutations. [I have seen some NTSC->PAL conversions done with P3D, very good quality for real-time conversion.] It was the first card to have ready DirectX6 drivers. Open source drivers for Linux/FreeBSD were also developed. The target price was $100 with 16MB RAM. And this was early 1998. What a pity.
Hope this clears some points about the relationship between Pyramid3D and Glaze3D.
Slashdot Mirror
So if you want to see Linux on PS2 outside Japan, do your share and register here for European version or here for American version. And remember, this is only to see if there's interest, so the registrations don't commit either side to anything.
After you've watched the original you should definitely see the C64 version of Second Reality (I'm not kidding) to help put things back into perspective. 1MHz/64kB should be enough for everyone. You can download it at ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/parties/1997/theparty97/c6 4/smash_secondreality_d64.zip and it should work on any good C64 emulator. At least Vice works just fine.
While all the media is hyping that the worm reactivates, everyone has forgotten that it isn't instant, it won't infect a million machines in a few minutes. The start is slow. This will be much, much worse in a day or two.
My linux box has had already four infection attempts in the last three hours. I checked the pages on the infected machines. All of them had the following front page (or similar in different language):
Under Construction - The site you were trying to reach does not currently have a default page. It may be in the process of being upgraded.
This is the default page of IIS, right? So the owners don't probably even know they're running IIS. Windows is soooo easy to install. Why would you patch something you don't even know you have?
You know, there's more to the world than just the US of A. At current exchange rates full-priced CDs in Europe cost usually around $16-$22. I pay $17-$18 for my new CDs and $6-$10 for used CDs. A couple of years ago when EU hadn't yet crashed the value of the money the price range for CDs was more like $21-$30.
As for DVDs, many people in Europe are aware of region modified players. Basically every PAL player can play NTSC discs by default, and region modifications are easy (but often not very cheap) to get. For many people (like myself) the reason is not the price, it's the number of discs available. About one third of my collection is not available in Europe, though some discs are all-region.
Also, there are often significant differences between the different region versions of the same title. Some European discs have to give up some extras to get space for more audio tracks. Sometimes even the quality of video and audio can vary, though usually PAL video is superior to NTSC despite the slight speed difference.
In Finland most new full-priced DVDs cost around $20-$30, with some bargain titles being even $10 or less. A bit surprisingly, ordering new discs from Australia seems to be the cheapest option ($14-$18 including P&P), even cheaper than getting discs from the US. And many Australian discs are identical to European versions, even having two region codes (R2 and R4, Europe and Australia).
Okay, this text is based on the conversation I had last October with a friend of mine, who happened to be one of the Pyramid3D software developers at VLSI Solution. I have to emphasize that all opinions are his, and this is heavily from the P3D point of view, naturally. Unfortunately he is on holiday right now, and I just have to relay his views here.
Years ago Bitboys approached VLSI with the promise that they had designed a 3D-engine. When the money was assigned, it was found out that it was actually only code directly from some game, and had no any real definitions behind it. The actual P3D development was done by VLSI Solution, who had 20 people working on it full-time since 1995, for over three years. Bitboys were bought out of the project around 1997.
After Bitboys no longer worked with P3D, Glaze3D appeared out of nowhere. [I remember seeing mostly the same Glaze3D page on Bitboys web site way over a year ago. Now it only has two new images, and probably some revised specs.] A lot of Glaze3D's publicity material is actually from P3D demos, including some of the screenshots on the page. Even if there is something real now, in the beginning Bitboys were advertising technology that didn't exist with the demo material from completely another project.
In short: Glaze3D is most likely an illegal product that will probably never be released.
Pyramid3D does exist, and there are beta versions of the actual card. It was demoed at Assembly '97, IIRC, and in summer 1998 it was nearly completed. But as we know, TriTech dropped the project and P3D will never hit the shelves. There may be some P3D-based products, like inexpensive video converters, though. TriTech was supposed to do the marketing for P3D, but they actually never did anything else than host a webpage.
P3D would have had good 2D (300MHz RAMDAC), good 3D (probably not much chance against today's cards), and both video-in and video-out that support basically all usual formats (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) and their mutations. [I have seen some NTSC->PAL conversions done with P3D, very good quality for real-time conversion.] It was the first card to have ready DirectX6 drivers. Open source drivers for Linux/FreeBSD were also developed. The target price was $100 with 16MB RAM. And this was early 1998. What a pity.
Hope this clears some points about the relationship between Pyramid3D and Glaze3D.
-sph