How about screen corners and edges for optimized mouse use? Hardly utilized (Gnome not at all, KDE a little)
That's one of my pet peeves as well, but you gotta be careful when describing the feature set of rapidly evolving software like Gnome. If you haven't pulled it from CVS today, you really don't know that your view of the software is correct.
The Gnome developers actually agree with us about the edge issues (they have a link to Fitts' law on developer.gnome.org), and in the latest gnome-core, it's possible to make a panel's contents flush with the edge. I can now access the foot menu with an uncoordinated flick of the mouse into the lower left corner.
Sadly, not much more than the foot menu works this way yet. I believe it's actually an issue of the underlying gtk+ widgets, and that it's being worked on.
So, basically, your statement should be modified to "Gnome a little, KDE a little).
As for the lack of select-by-typing in listboxes etc., I'm with you 100%. It's such an immensely useful feature and the lack of it in gtk+ really slows me down. --
I always thought people who say "virii" belonged to the same category as those who use "whom" incorrectly: People who are trying to sound more sophisticated than they actually are.
I wonder if they might be more like those who say "boxen". Nobody thinks "boxen" is the proper plural of "box"; they just think it sounds cool.
So help me out here. Is my initial assessment correct, or does it simply betray my arrogance in assuming others must be stupid? --
The post I'm replying to started at 0 and went down to -1 because it said "Why isn't slashdot running a story on OpenAL? Is this a MS conspiracy?"
However, I checked out the link to OpenAL. It looks interesting. Excerpts:
OpenAL, the Open Audio Library, seeks to become the audio counterpart to OpenGL for audio. With OpenAL it is possible to create three-dimensional sound across many platforms, such as Linux, Apple Macintosh, Windows and more, with quality suitable for professional projects like games and multimedia applications.
and
OpenAL is being sponsored by commercial software and hardware companies to help make open source work. Here is a current list of the member and partner companies:
Creative Labs
Loki Entertainment Software
But you gotta wonder if these people are serious whan they name part of their library "Al-Core".
This certainly is offtopic here, but in case the AC is right and Slashdot is not posting this for some sinister reason, I figured I'd make it seen using my +1 bonus.
Still, there's no reason to assume the worst; we don't even know if this has been submitted as a story, so don't call me a paranoid conspiracy theorist or anything:-) --
Your post is a bit misleading. Glide is 3dfx's baby through and through. Only 3dfx-based cards will ever support the glide API directly.(*)
Quake II/III can draw using either Glide or OpenGL. If you select OpenGL, Glide isn't involved at all. So you're not quite right when you say you need a card with Glide support to play Quake III on Linux. You have a choice between Glide (3dfx only) and OpenGL (all others).
That's not to say that any card with Linux OpenGL drivers will perform as well under Linux as it does under Windows. This is where that direct rendering thing comes in. My TNT2 card only manages about 20 FPS in Q3A on my machine because the OpenGL calls need to pass through the X server. When XFree 4.0 comes out (and somebody said "early March") and drivers using its Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) are released, this bottleneck will be removed and owners of TNT2 and other non-3dfx cards can enjoy the full power offered by their hardware.
(*) I believe there's a library that translates Glide calls to OpenGL calls, enabling software that was written only for the Glide API to run on any OpenGL implementation. 3dfx's lawyers were hassling the authors and I don't know how that turned out. --
Don't worry about it. This kind of thing gets picked up in meta moderation.
Anyway, you're not entirely right. First posts cannot be redundant in the context of the article, but in the context a larger set of articles, they can be. This one clearly isn't, though.
Also, while it can be satisfying to shout off insults to poeple who seem to so richly deserve them, it can be embarrassing if it turns out that they were uncalled for. For instance, if the moderator in this case simply made a mistake and later posts an apology, undoing his moderation. --
The STAND people have demonstrated quite clearly the ways in which this law could be abused. I think it's pretty stupid that the law isn't off the table entirely.
Have any changes been made to the bill that prevent the scenario in "Operation Dear Jack"? I don't see any information to that effect on www.stand.org.uk.
I'm really interested in seeing what happens when the bill becomes law and STAND repeats operation Dear Jack. One thing I'm pretty sure of is that Home Secretary Jack Straw is not going to jail for failing to hand over the decryption keys. --
Perhaps I'm being too cynical here, but I believe the day a media conglomorate exec overcomes his fear of the Internet and does something sensible with it is the day a genetically engineered flying pig crashes through his penthouse window and hits him on the head. --
I just looked at one of those cards. Pretty bare. Your first suggestion sounds about right.
Well, at least now I have some place to put my TNT2 (having replaced it with a Voodoo3 in my home machine -- oh, if only nVidia hadn't made us wait for XFree 4.0!) --
We recently got 5 new machines at work and they all had 32MB ATI Rage128 Pro cards (can't recall the exact name - there was a two letter code in there somewhere). We also got some nice crisp 19" monitors so for the first time, we're enjoying 1600x1200 desktops.
One problem was immediately apparent. When large chunks of the screen need to be moved around, like when a window is dragged or its contents scrolled, the display lags. It isn't just that movement is choppy, it actually lags. You pick up the window, drag, release, and watch the window move along the path you traced over the next second or two. Scrolling is the same, and that really kills you. Imagine having to wait for your machine to recover after scrolling.
This happens in Win98 and NT. In XFree86, there's an even bigger problem: severe font corruption when acceleration is turned on. This leads me to believe the acceleration function for moving/copying regions is broken on these cards and has been disabled in the windows drivers to prevent the same font corruption symptoms from showing up.
I can't be certain this isn't related to some of the other hardware in these machines, but I can't be certain these cards aren't simply broken either, so I recommend you check for these problems before buying a Rage128. --
They're doing something sneaky. X uses its own module loader instead of relying on the OS. The same modules will work on all OS's for the same architecture. --
This isn't just any old release, this is the last XFree before 4.0, one of the most eagerly awaited releases in recent times. Even if the article had said nothing but "XFree86 is now expected in early March", that would have been news for nerds, stuff that matters. --
RealNetworks are probably the closest thing that Linux users have to an ally in the streaming media format battle. They release players for Linux, at least.
But I just can't bring myself to like them. The privacy invasion, the spamming, the half-assed "look! we're hip to this Linux thing" way in which they have supported Linux, it all turns me off in a big way. They're so cheap. I'm actually sad that they're going to be getting good vibes from a lot of Linux users now. --
Slashdot Mirror
Are you the guy who wrote my mainboard manual?
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But I'm pretty sure you already know. Good troll!
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The Gnome developers actually agree with us about the edge issues (they have a link to Fitts' law on developer.gnome.org), and in the latest gnome-core, it's possible to make a panel's contents flush with the edge. I can now access the foot menu with an uncoordinated flick of the mouse into the lower left corner.
Sadly, not much more than the foot menu works this way yet. I believe it's actually an issue of the underlying gtk+ widgets, and that it's being worked on.
So, basically, your statement should be modified to "Gnome a little, KDE a little).
As for the lack of select-by-typing in listboxes etc., I'm with you 100%. It's such an immensely useful feature and the lack of it in gtk+ really slows me down.
--
No. See here.
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"999TB should be enough for everybody"? ;-P
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I wonder if they might be more like those who say "boxen". Nobody thinks "boxen" is the proper plural of "box"; they just think it sounds cool.
So help me out here. Is my initial assessment correct, or does it simply betray my arrogance in assuming others must be stupid?
--
Flamebait?!
--
However, I checked out the link to OpenAL. It looks interesting. Excerpts:
and But you gotta wonder if these people are serious whan they name part of their library "Al-Core".This certainly is offtopic here, but in case the AC is right and Slashdot is not posting this for some sinister reason, I figured I'd make it seen using my +1 bonus.
Still, there's no reason to assume the worst; we don't even know if this has been submitted as a story, so don't call me a paranoid conspiracy theorist or anything :-)
--
Quake II/III can draw using either Glide or OpenGL. If you select OpenGL, Glide isn't involved at all. So you're not quite right when you say you need a card with Glide support to play Quake III on Linux. You have a choice between Glide (3dfx only) and OpenGL (all others).
That's not to say that any card with Linux OpenGL drivers will perform as well under Linux as it does under Windows. This is where that direct rendering thing comes in. My TNT2 card only manages about 20 FPS in Q3A on my machine because the OpenGL calls need to pass through the X server. When XFree 4.0 comes out (and somebody said "early March") and drivers using its Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) are released, this bottleneck will be removed and owners of TNT2 and other non-3dfx cards can enjoy the full power offered by their hardware.
(*) I believe there's a library that translates Glide calls to OpenGL calls, enabling software that was written only for the Glide API to run on any OpenGL implementation. 3dfx's lawyers were hassling the authors and I don't know how that turned out.
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It was mentioned in the slashdot purity test in the last batch of quickies.
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How can you mistype 86? Haven't you had enough practice with {vi,emacs,ed} /etc/X11/XF86Config? :-)
--
Anyway, you're not entirely right. First posts cannot be redundant in the context of the article, but in the context a larger set of articles, they can be. This one clearly isn't, though.
Also, while it can be satisfying to shout off insults to poeple who seem to so richly deserve them, it can be embarrassing if it turns out that they were uncalled for. For instance, if the moderator in this case simply made a mistake and later posts an apology, undoing his moderation.
--
Have any changes been made to the bill that prevent the scenario in "Operation Dear Jack"? I don't see any information to that effect on www.stand.org.uk.
I'm really interested in seeing what happens when the bill becomes law and STAND repeats operation Dear Jack. One thing I'm pretty sure of is that Home Secretary Jack Straw is not going to jail for failing to hand over the decryption keys.
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I take it you haven't read the book. It's a lot clearer than the movie. I recommend it.
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Perhaps I'm being too cynical here, but I believe the day a media conglomorate exec overcomes his fear of the Internet and does something sensible with it is the day a genetically engineered flying pig crashes through his penthouse window and hits him on the head.
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Yeah. In one specific area.
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Well, at least now I have some place to put my TNT2 (having replaced it with a Voodoo3 in my home machine -- oh, if only nVidia hadn't made us wait for XFree 4.0!)
--
I hope I'd notice the difference between 600MHz and 5-8MHz :-)
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One problem was immediately apparent. When large chunks of the screen need to be moved around, like when a window is dragged or its contents scrolled, the display lags. It isn't just that movement is choppy, it actually lags. You pick up the window, drag, release, and watch the window move along the path you traced over the next second or two. Scrolling is the same, and that really kills you. Imagine having to wait for your machine to recover after scrolling.
This happens in Win98 and NT. In XFree86, there's an even bigger problem: severe font corruption when acceleration is turned on. This leads me to believe the acceleration function for moving/copying regions is broken on these cards and has been disabled in the windows drivers to prevent the same font corruption symptoms from showing up.
I can't be certain this isn't related to some of the other hardware in these machines, but I can't be certain these cards aren't simply broken either, so I recommend you check for these problems before buying a Rage128.
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See section 2.1 of the 3.9.17 relnotes
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They're doing something sneaky. X uses its own module loader instead of relying on the OS. The same modules will work on all OS's for the same architecture.
--
This isn't just any old release, this is the last XFree before 4.0, one of the most eagerly awaited releases in recent times. Even if the article had said nothing but "XFree86 is now expected in early March", that would have been news for nerds, stuff that matters.
--
But I just can't bring myself to like them. The privacy invasion, the spamming, the half-assed "look! we're hip to this Linux thing" way in which they have supported Linux, it all turns me off in a big way. They're so cheap. I'm actually sad that they're going to be getting good vibes from a lot of Linux users now.
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