I remember/. on April 1st for the past several years or so was great. There were stories posted for April Fools that were just hystical (like the Seattle riots with the guy shouting "Death to all GUI's!!" as he was being dragged off by police). This is just getting out of control. The whole point of an April Fools joke is that it's not evident until *after* the fact (basically, you fooled someone into believing something false). This stuff is pitifully obvious. So stop. Please. Yes, the All Your Base thing was funny because it was blown out of proportion. It is NOT likewise for/.
BeOS is beautiful. I've used it, and although I found Linux much more suited to my needs, I found it to be a terrific OS. Very powerful. Very efficient. Very fast.
Be, having this great OS, kept showcasing features that weren't quite there. They always proclaimed "excellent for video editing!" and so forth. The problem was (as suggested clearly by the story post) the maturity in the applications simply was not strong enough.
As much as techies believe Be's claims that their OS is a strong multimedia content development platform (we understand that it *is* a powerful OS with great performance, etc), that won't work on the mainstream. Many commercial vendors have trouble now justifying development for Linux. Imagine the push they would need to build for BeOS.
Now, this is not to say that Apple had nothing to do with their demise, but I think this is a big part. To sum it up, they had everything they needed to be great - it's just that their strengths were not properly exploited. (Open sourcing BeOS may have fixed this. Imagine how eager the OSS community would be to build apps. for such a mature and high quality OS!)
Ashcroft, like most politicians, is ignoring the actual cause of this problem. The reason being is probably that most people in the world today would find it an unpopular opinion that bullies cause kids to lose their marbles. Most people out there were highschool bullies.
Schools are just as equally to blame - for their silence and inaction if nothing else. How many of us have gone to our counselors or teachers or principles for help. "They will not leave me alone. Do nothing to them, but they keep hounding me!" How often has the response been something like, "oh, just ignore them/be nice to them. Everyone gets picked on." Pfft. Things are different.
The dynamics of how who gets picked on and why are different and nobody seems to realize this. Now a days, it's the majority - the people who follow the norm, play sports, wear Abercrombe & Fitch, etc. that are doing the bullying. They often move in packs or groups upon individuals or very small groups of smart/independent thinking people. That's a hell of a lot for a person to cope with. In my grade school days, I've been surrounded by groups of 10 or more other students, all bent on name calling, pushing, etc. There was never any escape and the school never did anything. Often times, I was the one who was punished for making a "big deal out of it" or pushing them back.
The story is the same and goes on much longer. But in my pre-highschool days - a far back as early elementary, this kind of treatment has induced violent behavior. I often fantasized about severely injuring my class mates. I dreamed of bringing a gun to school so I could make people not mess with me. I harbored images of the school's smoldering remains. And yes, you guessed it... this was LONG before I had ever even SEEN a video game. And no, I wasn't listening to goth music either.
Again, this story is nothing new. But one thing is certain, it's worse today for the "social outcasts" than it ever was before. Ashcroft's position is a slap in the face. The schools' continued inaction is a cause for yet more dispare. However, with the sudden increased frequency of school violence, they're going to get to the point where they have to act, out of fear if anything else. One of my friends and I were discussing this issue, and he was of the position that this is the only good thing that will come out of these shooting. Schools may do something about the problem (other than installing metal detectors - those only make the 'jocks' feel save). And maybe, just maybe those who do the bullying will think twice.
Who knows. I was one of the fortunate people who didn't suffer any kind of break down from the treatment. But there are a lot of people who simply cannot take it and will lash out against oppression. Ironic how schools do nothing. That's simply historical fact.
...But before you mod me to flamebait, let me explain. While it's true that they sunk a lot of money into R&D for their products, one of their failing points was that they didn't go for the right type of research. Look at Nintendo, Sega's old big rival in the days of 8 and 16-bit consoles. Nintendo was always developing it's own technology for the task. Processors that were VERY well refined for gaming. Look at the SNES. It's amazing what that box could do given it's, what, 2 or 3MHz CPU? Then compare that to the Genesis. Now while there were excellent Genesis games, they didn't quite have the *umph* or the level of eye-candy that the SNES had. Why? Well, it wasn't made with components optimized to the task. I remember reading plans a while back on building a Genesis with off-the-shelf components from Radio Shack. Case in point, the most successful game companies designed and built their own machines with little outside assistence. Sega tried to cut corners by using whatever was available at the time.
...but I would venture to say that most original viruses began as a 'proof of concept.' While this is all fine and good, the code inevitably seeps out to bored, frustrated, or extreme individuals. These people waste no time incorporating some kind of malicious intent into creative code. I imagine we'll see some zealot take ahold of this, make it damage Windows machines while displaying a colorful message to Linux users like 'aren't you glad you use Linux?' Of course, this may be pushing it but how many times have we seen this progression before?
Not to mention that your post is incorrect at many points: IA64 does have (slow) IA32 compatibility,
For all intensive purposes though, can you really call this compatibility? Doesn't compatibility also encompass and denote a certain level of acceptable performance? I've read that 32-bit code running on IA64 is unusably slow. To the end user in the market, this is the same as not working ("something is obviously broken, my apps are slower than they were on my old machine").
and besides it's primarily aimed for a market which is currently buying Sun Sparcs and the like and doesn't give a shit about IA32 compatibility.
I doubt this. Intel is not aiming for Sun's market. Anybody who buys Sun hardware does so becuase it's insanely reliable, very scalable, and usually better suited to specific tasks (serving, crunching, etc). x86 simply does not match the benefits of using Sun hardware. Moving the PC space into a 64-bit architecture is the next fundamental step forward in faster home/business computing. Support? Was Intel targetting Sun when they released the first 32-bit PC space processors? No. The market wanted faster computers that could handle more memory as demand from applications increased. We're simply doing this again.
Furthermore, there's nothing about NT's DOS emulation which makes the OS unstable or slow - it's all in userspace.
I disagree. My old college buddy, who now works for MS, has had a lot of exposure to members of the Windows team. The general consensus is that NT's old compatibility code is a serious cause of slow-downs an instabilities - especially the DOS stuff, which they would LOVE to ditch entirely (because it would make NT more lucrative to those well versed with *nix). I can't really go into detail because OS's in general are not really my forte (but hey, lots of us regurgitate information passed to us by sources we consider to be trustworthy).
Dude, if a company releases a processor that cannot run any existing binaries on the market, that processor will flop. Plain and simple. You see, as sad as it is, most of the world does not run an open source OS for which programs can be easily compiled for this new non-backwards compatable 64-bit CPU. Intel's strategy for their upcoming CPU is to not make it backwards compatable. This is a *serious* flaw in their plans and I don't think we're going to see them succeed with this venture. There won't be apps for it! Users would bitch and complain and only a few vendors will actually properly update their apps.
But on another point of view, x86 architecture is meant for the mainstream. It's not intended for mission critical or super-computationally intensive work. If you want a 100% true-to-life 64-bit platform, shell out the measily 1000$US for a Sun Blade or play with UltraSPARC's/Alphas/etc. As for the PC arena, backwards compatability is essential (why do you think MS still include old DOS compatability in NT, when removing it would make the OS much more stable and faster?). Users want all their stuff to work. Scientists/technologists are more than happy to ditch backwards compatable stuff, but not everyone.
Not necessarily used to fight, but super-humans ("Replicants") which only lived four years are very close to the mark on this topic. Being synthesized and not clones per say, nobody would care about their health defects and short life span. Considering where technology is now, we may very well have to start a "Retirement" force.:\
You know, it really strains me to bring a system down that's been running for so long. Can you imagine being one of the original mission control members who put it in the sky to begin with. It's gotta hurt to see this thing go down *sigh*.
What if a company decides to market PC's that feature Linux instead of that other 'life on the edge of a crash' OS? Do censorware packages exist for Linux (I don't imagine how they could)? If this bill passes, would it mean that companies would be breaking to law if they sold PC's with *nix?
Can you direct me to a site with utilities for making it more difficult to turn on? I've been searching high and low for a hack that makes you use a combination of the buttons to power on the device since it constantly activiates itself in my pocket. This is very annoying and I figured other V users have experienecd this same misery, and I don't feel like wasting money on the hard case.
Last summer, I was holding a IIIc in my left hand, and a Vx in my right. They were both priced the same. But, I simply could not bring myself to buy the IIIc. It was incredibly ugly.
Face it. An important 'feature' of a PDA, or any high tech device you carry around with you for that matter, needs to *look* cool. Now granted you have the advantages of being able to carry a V in your shirt pocket... but it's also a very sweet looking little machine.
One issue with the m505. I really don't understand color on the Palm platform. It just doesn't make sense. They're horrid gaming boxes, the resolution is extremely low, there's no multimedia applications, and software - not even Palm's - takes advantage of that pallet. These are the kind of things that encourage one to buy a WinCE device, not a Palm.
I noticed that the PalmOS 4.0 page indicates that the upgrade requires one of the new Palm models. Now, are the new features only updates that are relevant to the new features of the recently released Palms? It looks to me that they included some new toys that benefit other people as well. *doh* Why screw current users over.:-(
The Palm platform is largely unchanged - except for additional memory - since its early days. New 'official' improvements to the OS should be available to everyone, right? Grr... damn marketing drones.
3d/fx was going the way of the dinosaur from the very beginning. Their refusal to spend money on research and riding the wave of old technology did them in.
nVidia CERTAINLY has competition. Ever hear of ATI? Oh, and remember this story ?
Microsoft is NOT riding anyone's coattails. They have made it very clear that nVidia is responsible for the core technologies involved. MS do not even want to try being a hardware company. They're software and hence, they request hardware from nVidia.
nVidia is NOT zeroing in on DX8. This is 100% aboslute bull. Did you happen to notice that their new flagship product was first announced on the Macintosh? Somehow I doubt OS X uses DX8... gee. OpenGL ring a bell?
Get your facts straight, and then you may distort them at your leisure.
OKay... listen. Go thru that site. Look at the pictures. They're all pretty amazing... and for the first time in a while, I think we're looking at some serious progress in 3D graphics (credit of course, goes to nVidia). Even if one has a flare added - it may be a feature to be added anyway.
This modification is as minor as the baby oil on fruit or pushing vegies in soup to the top. No, it's not nearly that intense. Just relax.
I can't believe shit like this gets posted as a front-page story on/.
X is here to stay and we'd be stupid to get rid of it. This project uses the Linux frame buffer, which compared to X, is VERY slow (offers no accelleration (yet) for either 2D or 3D graphics). X is also an industry standard.
GTKfb and Qt embedded are both for small devices - embedded devices of course - where storage is very limited and advanced graphics cabilities are not required (such as your palm top computer or toilet management system (tm)).
One important thing I see lacking from CS (or at least in my college) is the lack of options to specialize or at least learn a specific topic. If I wanted to say, grow up and be a Linux systems programmer, there's no classes I could take that would gear me up for the task. If I decided I wanted to write 3D engines, there's nothing there. In the old days, if you wanted to learn there things, you did it on your own - (Linus, Carmack, etc.). I find myself so bogged down with course loads from classes I'm not very interested in such that I don't really have the time to teach myself programming in any distinct areas. So, it'd be extremely beneficial, I think, if my college offered a series of courses that, for example, stepped through the early phases of learning 3D programming, to using API's, and lastly, to writing a full-fledged graphics engine/renderer/etc.
Is this a good idea or am I looking for something here that I'll learn in the industry? I've been told on a few occassions that it's alright if your college is extremely generalized, since once you're out in the industry, you learn these types of things based on where you want to guide your career. Is this a believable statement?
Slashdot Mirror
I remember /. on April 1st for the past several years or so was great. There were stories posted for April Fools that were just hystical (like the Seattle riots with the guy shouting "Death to all GUI's!!" as he was being dragged off by police). This is just getting out of control. The whole point of an April Fools joke is that it's not evident until *after* the fact (basically, you fooled someone into believing something false). This stuff is pitifully obvious. So stop. Please. Yes, the All Your Base thing was funny because it was blown out of proportion. It is NOT likewise for /.
Tell me, without Be, what exactly is Lain going to run on her Navi?
Be, having this great OS, kept showcasing features that weren't quite there. They always proclaimed "excellent for video editing!" and so forth. The problem was (as suggested clearly by the story post) the maturity in the applications simply was not strong enough.
As much as techies believe Be's claims that their OS is a strong multimedia content development platform (we understand that it *is* a powerful OS with great performance, etc), that won't work on the mainstream. Many commercial vendors have trouble now justifying development for Linux. Imagine the push they would need to build for BeOS.
Now, this is not to say that Apple had nothing to do with their demise, but I think this is a big part. To sum it up, they had everything they needed to be great - it's just that their strengths were not properly exploited. (Open sourcing BeOS may have fixed this. Imagine how eager the OSS community would be to build apps. for such a mature and high quality OS!)
Schools are just as equally to blame - for their silence and inaction if nothing else. How many of us have gone to our counselors or teachers or principles for help. "They will not leave me alone. Do nothing to them, but they keep hounding me!" How often has the response been something like, "oh, just ignore them/be nice to them. Everyone gets picked on." Pfft. Things are different.
The dynamics of how who gets picked on and why are different and nobody seems to realize this. Now a days, it's the majority - the people who follow the norm, play sports, wear Abercrombe & Fitch, etc. that are doing the bullying. They often move in packs or groups upon individuals or very small groups of smart/independent thinking people. That's a hell of a lot for a person to cope with. In my grade school days, I've been surrounded by groups of 10 or more other students, all bent on name calling, pushing, etc. There was never any escape and the school never did anything. Often times, I was the one who was punished for making a "big deal out of it" or pushing them back.
The story is the same and goes on much longer. But in my pre-highschool days - a far back as early elementary, this kind of treatment has induced violent behavior. I often fantasized about severely injuring my class mates. I dreamed of bringing a gun to school so I could make people not mess with me. I harbored images of the school's smoldering remains. And yes, you guessed it... this was LONG before I had ever even SEEN a video game. And no, I wasn't listening to goth music either.
Again, this story is nothing new. But one thing is certain, it's worse today for the "social outcasts" than it ever was before. Ashcroft's position is a slap in the face. The schools' continued inaction is a cause for yet more dispare. However, with the sudden increased frequency of school violence, they're going to get to the point where they have to act, out of fear if anything else. One of my friends and I were discussing this issue, and he was of the position that this is the only good thing that will come out of these shooting. Schools may do something about the problem (other than installing metal detectors - those only make the 'jocks' feel save). And maybe, just maybe those who do the bullying will think twice.
Who knows. I was one of the fortunate people who didn't suffer any kind of break down from the treatment. But there are a lot of people who simply cannot take it and will lash out against oppression. Ironic how schools do nothing. That's simply historical fact.
...But before you mod me to flamebait, let me explain. While it's true that they sunk a lot of money into R&D for their products, one of their failing points was that they didn't go for the right type of research. Look at Nintendo, Sega's old big rival in the days of 8 and 16-bit consoles. Nintendo was always developing it's own technology for the task. Processors that were VERY well refined for gaming. Look at the SNES. It's amazing what that box could do given it's, what, 2 or 3MHz CPU? Then compare that to the Genesis. Now while there were excellent Genesis games, they didn't quite have the *umph* or the level of eye-candy that the SNES had. Why? Well, it wasn't made with components optimized to the task. I remember reading plans a while back on building a Genesis with off-the-shelf components from Radio Shack. Case in point, the most successful game companies designed and built their own machines with little outside assistence. Sega tried to cut corners by using whatever was available at the time.
...but I would venture to say that most original viruses began as a 'proof of concept.' While this is all fine and good, the code inevitably seeps out to bored, frustrated, or extreme individuals. These people waste no time incorporating some kind of malicious intent into creative code. I imagine we'll see some zealot take ahold of this, make it damage Windows machines while displaying a colorful message to Linux users like 'aren't you glad you use Linux?' Of course, this may be pushing it but how many times have we seen this progression before?
We can't let this happen. I fear for the availablility of great Canadian music! *whimper*
For all intensive purposes though, can you really call this compatibility? Doesn't compatibility also encompass and denote a certain level of acceptable performance? I've read that 32-bit code running on IA64 is unusably slow. To the end user in the market, this is the same as not working ("something is obviously broken, my apps are slower than they were on my old machine").
and besides it's primarily aimed for a market which is currently buying Sun Sparcs and the like and doesn't give a shit about IA32 compatibility.
I doubt this. Intel is not aiming for Sun's market. Anybody who buys Sun hardware does so becuase it's insanely reliable, very scalable, and usually better suited to specific tasks (serving, crunching, etc). x86 simply does not match the benefits of using Sun hardware. Moving the PC space into a 64-bit architecture is the next fundamental step forward in faster home/business computing. Support? Was Intel targetting Sun when they released the first 32-bit PC space processors? No. The market wanted faster computers that could handle more memory as demand from applications increased. We're simply doing this again.
Furthermore, there's nothing about NT's DOS emulation which makes the OS unstable or slow - it's all in userspace.
I disagree. My old college buddy, who now works for MS, has had a lot of exposure to members of the Windows team. The general consensus is that NT's old compatibility code is a serious cause of slow-downs an instabilities - especially the DOS stuff, which they would LOVE to ditch entirely (because it would make NT more lucrative to those well versed with *nix). I can't really go into detail because OS's in general are not really my forte (but hey, lots of us regurgitate information passed to us by sources we consider to be trustworthy).
But on another point of view, x86 architecture is meant for the mainstream. It's not intended for mission critical or super-computationally intensive work. If you want a 100% true-to-life 64-bit platform, shell out the measily 1000$US for a Sun Blade or play with UltraSPARC's/Alphas/etc. As for the PC arena, backwards compatability is essential (why do you think MS still include old DOS compatability in NT, when removing it would make the OS much more stable and faster?). Users want all their stuff to work. Scientists/technologists are more than happy to ditch backwards compatable stuff, but not everyone.
Not necessarily used to fight, but super-humans ("Replicants") which only lived four years are very close to the mark on this topic. Being synthesized and not clones per say, nobody would care about their health defects and short life span. Considering where technology is now, we may very well have to start a "Retirement" force. :\
You know, it really strains me to bring a system down that's been running for so long. Can you imagine being one of the original mission control members who put it in the sky to begin with. It's gotta hurt to see this thing go down *sigh*.
What if a company decides to market PC's that feature Linux instead of that other 'life on the edge of a crash' OS? Do censorware packages exist for Linux (I don't imagine how they could)? If this bill passes, would it mean that companies would be breaking to law if they sold PC's with *nix?
Can you direct me to a site with utilities for making it more difficult to turn on? I've been searching high and low for a hack that makes you use a combination of the buttons to power on the device since it constantly activiates itself in my pocket. This is very annoying and I figured other V users have experienecd this same misery, and I don't feel like wasting money on the hard case.
Face it. An important 'feature' of a PDA, or any high tech device you carry around with you for that matter, needs to *look* cool. Now granted you have the advantages of being able to carry a V in your shirt pocket... but it's also a very sweet looking little machine.
One issue with the m505. I really don't understand color on the Palm platform. It just doesn't make sense. They're horrid gaming boxes, the resolution is extremely low, there's no multimedia applications, and software - not even Palm's - takes advantage of that pallet. These are the kind of things that encourage one to buy a WinCE device, not a Palm.
The Palm platform is largely unchanged - except for additional memory - since its early days. New 'official' improvements to the OS should be available to everyone, right? Grr... damn marketing drones.
It's a good thing they didn't call it the "m404". Hell, I have difficulty finding my existing Palm from time to time. :-)
3d/fx was going the way of the dinosaur from the very beginning. Their refusal to spend money on research and riding the wave of old technology did them in.
nVidia CERTAINLY has competition. Ever hear of ATI? Oh, and remember this story ?
Microsoft is NOT riding anyone's coattails. They have made it very clear that nVidia is responsible for the core technologies involved. MS do not even want to try being a hardware company. They're software and hence, they request hardware from nVidia.
nVidia is NOT zeroing in on DX8. This is 100% aboslute bull. Did you happen to notice that their new flagship product was first announced on the Macintosh? Somehow I doubt OS X uses DX8... gee. OpenGL ring a bell?
Get your facts straight, and then you may distort them at your leisure.
This modification is as minor as the baby oil on fruit or pushing vegies in soup to the top. No, it's not nearly that intense. Just relax.
I can't believe shit like this gets posted as a front-page story on /.
GTKfb and Qt embedded are both for small devices - embedded devices of course - where storage is very limited and advanced graphics cabilities are not required (such as your palm top computer or toilet management system (tm)).
Is this a good idea or am I looking for something here that I'll learn in the industry? I've been told on a few occassions that it's alright if your college is extremely generalized, since once you're out in the industry, you learn these types of things based on where you want to guide your career. Is this a believable statement?