I don't presume to say I know exactly what each and every situation is. Catholicism, besides the quite fundamental attitudes towards sexuality and its applicability beyond mere procreation, proscribes no birth control.
No condoms, no pill, no caps. If you have sex it is for procreation. The catholic church has not relented on this stance. There are many countries, not only developing ones, that are predominantly catholic, and thus practice no birth control except against the wishes of their God. Not something to be taken lightly, no matter the logical arguments.
Cathlocism is a very wide ranging and influential religion. It is also one that proscribes either abstention or no birth control. This is not a logical way to reduce overpopulation or the problems associated with it.
I know about it because in the previous generations in my family the philosophy of no birth control was quite apparent. My grandfather is one of *13* brothers. There's only one generation between me and the rampant birth levels of what many might consider a backwards civilisation.
There is a population problem, and it's in the places where you least need a lot of people.
States with massive surpluses of food and resources also tend to have low (or possibly enforced low) birth rates. Thus you get large inputs of resources and a small number of people to share them amongst.
Contrast to the so-called developing world where you get less in the way of food production and either fewer resources or resources that are owned by conglomerates combined with massive reproduction rates. This isn't a population problem, you can only support a given number of people on a certain amount. It's the numbers coming into the system.
Look at 'civilised', literate, well educated countries. They have low birth rates. Each child has more oppertunity to learn and has a higher concentration of investment put into them. This isn't just good planning; areas where infant mortality is high and there's a lack of good nutrition and medicine are going to require high birth rates to gaurantee a small number survive.
We have to remember that it isn't too long ago that the countries we consider now to be civilised and developed had their own underclass of civilians, who had large families with the problems involved in supporting and educating them, with the vicious cycle of their offspring ending up in the same low-paid areas their parents did. Not to mention the effect of Catholicism.
There is a population problem, not maybe in the absolute numbers but where they are concentrated. You can provide all the support you want to areas such as africa but until they are able to cut down the birth rate that support will be spread incredibly thin. I don't advocate killing anyone, but drastically reducing the number of new people to feed, educate, house and provide employment for is, in my mind, the hallmark of a developed society (amongst many other things of course outside the scope of this thread).
I thought more along the lines of 'Sim'Puter. A neat gadget for your favourite virtual person. Bit like an invisble cup of tea for your imaginary friend. Not that I have such things, of course.
Although the simps are probably a better association; quiet, clean, obedient, cute. I want one!
Re:The kernel will tell you if anything went wrong
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Writing Kernel Drivers
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· Score: 3
I recently had a linux box auto-reboot. It was while testing DRI Rage128 acceleration. In the middle of running FlightGear the screen blanked, then it appeared the machine had quietly and cleanly rebooted.
At first I found this amazing, then annoying, then ultimately quite useful.
There's no doubt that eventually I would have crashed X, or the kernel. It might have taken some time, and a lot of effort, and not a little swearing along the way. At least this way I achieved the same success in a minimum of time. I never even had to reach for the reset button.
Actually I see relevance for both 1 and 2 letter names. Look at all the companies and products that begin with 'i' and 'e', e.i.e would be the ultimate in ecommerce sites!;0). Or even w to have w.w.w. That'd rock.
More seriously, there are also big associations with something like 'X'. Would MS, Apple or even good old unix hackers want.x for X-Box, OS X, X Windows, the X-files and so on.
There's also all things like TV (television or transvestites), TG (transgender), cd maybe for record shops, pc for computer shops, ff for us Final Fantasy buffs;0). Frankly as long as you're not screwing with a whole country's TLD what's the point in not allowing us to use them? I now want the w.w domain, I think it'd be really cool, why should some group of boring people stop me using whatever name I want?
And, OT, why is that a small cabel of (US I believe) people control a medium that is totally global? Then again, what's new...
Another great reason to not port games to Linux
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Direct3D on Linux?
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· Score: 3
If everyone's going out and buying Windows games, then running them under WINE on another OS where's the incentive for anyone to spend the time, money and resources on porting those games to unix natively?
Nice temporary measure that screws the long term interests of everyone. The only compromise is where there is a native port please wait a little while for it to come out rather than jumping on the Windows version the second it arrives and send the message to the producers that nobody wants to buy Linux games.
Clear cases are as much a statement of style as opaque beige (or otherwise) cases.
What do you get with clear or translucent cases? The same plastic cover, hopefully with the same level of RF shielding. You also get to see the contents of your case.
Does it have LEDs you can observe? (generally) No. Are there moving parts you can watch? (generally) No. Does it mean an object which is visually irregular, with dark green+solder colouring and odd-looking/shaped objects? Yes.
I personally don't like the iMac/iBook (and the multitude of products which they spawned) because I think they look cheap, flimsy and plasticy. Note that's look. What we're talking about is pure looks. Being able to see inside your case, apart from a small minority of cases, is nothing more than a gimmick.
Do I like iMac cases? No. Do I like the stuff you can get on ThinkGeek for transparent, inner lit extras? Yes. But it's all about looks. My PC sits under my desk and I as long as it doesn't fall over or spew interference into my pocket radio I couldn't give a munki's. For something sat on a desk in a tv programme etc it can make a difference.
Is this really something that will pass the test of time or will it be something you look at for a few days, show off to your mates, then becomes simply the housing for the machine you use for the next year or two you own it?
I am simply grateful that style in terms of hardware generally doesn't hamper performance. Style in other areas of software (particularly webpages, after I spent I long time trying to use one that afaict only works on IE...) can.
I think what I've been trying to say (through a lot of rambling) is that style is one thing, and can be useful sometimes but generally we'd be happier with things that just worked well, even if they looked crap. The ability to see the circuitry on a product, to me, implies something that's cheap
You still have the options of an external modem (pricey, but guaranteed to work)
Although I have precious little experience with modems (and if our ISP had got its act together and got digital cable in our area sooner we'd be on a broadband cable-modem. Bastards.) I prefer externals.
You know it's going to work, on anything. They're not that big or annoying, the biggest thing I think is the extra psu. But the main advantage I find is that it's currently sat on top our little server/router box.
From my chair here I can see or hear if it loses connection. I can see when it's being accessed, and have a good idea of the amount of bandwidth going through. And hear the dialup tones etc. I can also do this from bed, a good thing when your housemate's still up whilst you're reposing in state. You can get some or all of these with internals but not to the same extent and stuck round the back not as easy to see. Sure there's software utils and such to keep an eye on these things but the little LEDs on the modem are infallible.
On something as slow and 'unreliable' as a modem I find it invaluable. On a NIC etc you've so much more bandwidth and stability in the connection I don't care so much and rely more on my gkrellm krells and network scripts. I *know* my LAN will stay up barring a power cut. My modem, however, is a totally different story, and as a weak link to the net I need;) I am prone to watching it in a paranoid way. Plus it's a funky neon green; can't beat having little doodads like that around to make you look like a funki geek;0).
As we all know, the more little strange boxes you have around with blinking LEDs the better.
I have some friends in the recording industry here in Nova Scotia, who strive to make good folk music in the Scottish tradition. They sing in Gaelic. They are affected by napster, because it is a small market for such things. They can barely support themselves as it is, and are only kept afloat by sales of albums.
As usual, the small, quality setups are the ones who get it in the neck but can do little about it whilst the big conglomerates who pump out crap can make a huge legal stink over it, yet they can afford the losses much more (and would probably do music good if they were bankrupted anyway). Same goes for application piracy.
Ain't right either way but I find it ironic. Of course what we need are laws and ways to enforce them (legally and technologically) that benefit the owner's rights, not to enable already huge companies to sink their fingers even deeper into the pie.
I have to say the single most frustrating and annoying thing I can have on my computer is a dodgy mouse. One slip of the ball and one gesture could easily become another. "Reload Page" might become "Post flamebait to/.";0).
And don't forget that by the time the XBox actually appears from behind its protective vapourous covering the spec being quoted here (+kb/mouse/justasgood 3d card) will most likely be quite a bit less and look very competitive indeed with this 'next-gen console' (*ahem*stripped down pc in a box*ahem*).
Only you can do what you like with your own but be highly restricted re the functionality of the xbox. There's some logic missing here but I can't quite see where MS missed it... Still when people lap up the hype by the bucket load who needs logic?
I know what supposedly supports these chipsets. I've tried it with prepackaged rpms or self compiled, or the whacked out mess that 3dfx produced on their site. Zip.
I've sent the odd report to utah glx but there comes a point it's just not worth it any more. I have better things to do with my time than enter hand to hand combat with device drivers just so I can play the one or two games it's worth having 3d for or having fancier screensavers.
Oh, and you can play Q3 on a PS2;0). As well as many games you can't get on any PC platform. Which work. Which don't crash. Which don't take up months of your time just to get running. And which also plays DVDs. And you can just go plug in that huge TV in the next room. And so what about price? A new highend 3d card will set you back about as much as a current gen console. And that's *just* the gfx card.
Nice to hear some people are getting it working, but it's too late for me, I've already given up and will only believe it when any distro I install just so happens to get it working for me. But if it takes more than 5 minutes to set up I ain't interested. I can well do without the hassle. Which is a shame cos pretty much everything else works fine.
Thanks for modding me down as a troll for pointing out a weak point in Linux hardware support.
Lord preserve us from ever saying something against linux even when you use it as your primary OS on all your machines and run a Linux network.
I mean, it's not as if wouldn't love to go out and support linux by buying games for it but it'd be pointless as I have nothing they'd run on (at more than 1fps) and I'm not that flush with cash.
AC might just make its way onto my harddrive, though. But only once I've given the demo a bloody good run on X4...
Sorry for pointing out the experiences of both myself and friends with linux 3d support, I'll just lie through my teeth next time. *ahem* All my machines, even those that don't have hardware 3d support under XFree86 3.3.6 or 4.0.3 have high quality hardware 3D acceleration, which is not only stable but also faster than under Windows. I didn't have to anything special, I just installed Linux and it set it all up for me at the click of a button. Yep, I'm off out right now to the store to pick up all those great Loki games. I have nothing to worry about like my machine randomly crashing, slow jerky performance or my OS locking up tighter than a tom cat's arsehole. Those Windows and Mac OS using phewls won't know what hit them when they see my machine blow theirs away at Quake3.
Is that better? Using slashdot sure is an educating experience.
Voodoo 3 3000
S3 Virge GX
S3 Savage
ATI Rage 128
Intel i740
nVidia TNT2
ATI Rage LT Pro
Trident Cyber something or other
Not one of these using distro rpms, utah glx or X4 (with or without nVidia binaries) has shown the slightest ability to run 3D either at all or stabily (that's if they're even supported for 3D in the first place).
And from the experiece of people I've talked to:
Ati Rage Pro on PPC
Voodoo 2
G400
didn't want to know either.
Great, chum, your setup works. Ever wondered why people complain so much about 3D acceleration under linux? It's cos it's such a hit and miss affair. I don't personally know anyone here or anyone on the net *bar one person with an nvidia tnt* who's had 3D working under linux properly. Goes to show don't it. And I know how you feel; I'm currently converting some people here from Windows and they're installing SuSE 6.4. I never had any bother at all with it, but they're finding problems with sound cards, graphics cards (not even 3D) and modems and god knows what on what are perfectly functioning machines with a perfectly functioning linux distro. But it doesn't matter how many times I say "But it works fine on anything I've done!", they're still not working.
We wouldn't complain if it sodding worked would we? Particularly when on the same machine they boot into Windows and, ooh, it all just works. Not the fault of the developers, if they're given sod all to work with what do you expect but saying "but mine works!" doesn't change the fact that after a hell of a lot of work I have been unable to get it going on anything I own or admin or on friend's machines. Thus, I do not buy 3d linux games and am even wary over buying 2d ones after Heroes 3 decided it didn't like me much after upgrading to X4.0.2.
It's the one thing really lacking from my hardware support under linux and I've seen nothing to change this view in the 3 years I've been using it. This isn't to say it can't be fun getting Windows to work on it either, but you stand a much better chance.
To put it simply I'll believe Linux has good 3D support when I see it with my own, gOoOgly, eyes. And why bother when I have yet to see any of my games consoles to crash?
If you're that proud of your heritage then you wouldn't be posting as anonymous.
Let's see, who would I be more afraid of in my country: people with ancient traditions and spirituality, a people that has survived all the shit that white supremicists have thrown at them and been successful by their own labours or a bunch of hicks whose sole aim in life, it would appear, is to promote violence and xenophobia. National Alliance, National Front. You don't seem to realise your whole ethnic heritage is one enormous mix of many races. What you going to do next? Start picking on anyone who isn't from your town? Your family? Anyone but you?
If there's any race of people I want to see eradicated from this planet it's the useless wasters with barely more braincells than my arse who somehow think that being a pasty white skinhead makes them homo superior. Crawl back under the rock and let people get on with their lives. You might actually do something worthwhile and constructive with all that spare time...
The magnitude of magnetization in a magnetic material is not dependent on the Earth's magnetic field at all. In magnetic materials each atom can have a moment (think of it as a microscopic bar magnet). The level of magnetic field you then get from it then depends on how they line up (the magnetic ordering).
If they all line up in the same direction you get ferromagnetism ('strong magnet'), half up and half down gives you antiferromagnetism (doesn't appear to be magnetic cos all the moments cancel) or ferrimagnetism, some up and some down (varying levels of magnetic attraction). The type of ordering is influenced by the chemical and physical structure of the material (alloy/oxide/bulk/thin film etc).
The only effect the Earth's field has is perhaps the overall direction of the magnetization, not the ordering of the moments themselves. This is much more sensitive to things like temperature and applied external fields. The Earth's field is really quite weak compared to a permanent or electromagnet.
A magnet is a magnet on earth, in a space station or floating around in space because magnetism is inherent to certain materials (if they're below the ordering temperature obviously;0). To be technical it's related to unpaired electrons in 3d(Transition metal)/4f(Rare Earth)/5d(Actinide) shells but that's already more than I wish to think about magnetic theory on a Sunday with a hangover;).
(I also doubt that a small permanent magnet attached to the walls would affect wireless communications in any appreciable way, but I'm often wrong).
Voodoo 3: SuSE rpms, 3dfx rpms, XFree 4 self compiled. Can be fast while it works but will crash and while better now they would consistently fuck my gfx card needing a reset and still do on occassion.
ATI Rage Pro: SuSE rpms, self-compiled XFree+Utah GLX, XFree 4. Again, can be fast with the hardware accel but will crash my machine.
Nvidia TNT: whole host of SuSE and self-compiled XFree/GLX/NVidia-GLX combinations. Poor quality, poor stability, that's if they work at all.
To Tom's Hardware, Ars Technica and every fucker else on the planet who compares G400/Nvidia/3dfx etc etc etc: how in the name of greek buggery did you get any of the this to actually work and to continue to work without fucking your system up the arse? I am a (admittedly amatuer) sys admin. I know my way around unix and pc systems yet I am simply unable to get a fully functional 3D unix system on a freenix.
Linux. BSD. 3D. It just doesn't work. If it does you're a very lucky rarity. That, my friends, is one of the very influential and quite understandable reasons we have sod all games support on Unix.
Meanwhile software Mesa rendering has worked, been stable and produced superior rendering to any hardware based system I've tried to set up. It's just slow as buggery. I now no longer even try. I just slip the disc into my console and forget all about OpenGl/Mesa/DirectX/Utah/XFree3/XFree4/DRI and all the crap I've wasted hours, days or even weeks on to end up with nothing but a form of output that I know will do nothing on my systems but lead them to a reset or suck every available cpu cycle out of them but give back nothing more than a handful of fps.
To all you people out there running stable 3D freenix systems: fuck off and die. But before you do, tell every distribution packager or BSD maintainer how the hell you did it. We'd all really like to know...
(disregard the whole PS2/dreamcast/Dolphin/Xbox bollox)
The biggest and simplest reason I personally do not bother much with games on Linux is the hassle.
I have yet to see a linux machine running 3D stabily and quickly. As the vast majority of newer games being ported are 3D based this means on any machine I own or admin either dodgy performance or inevitable crashes.
Meanwhile, I stick a CD/DVD into my PS2, turn it on, grab the controller and get playing it. With fantastic performance and no crashes.
The only commercial game I play on my linux systems is Heroes of Might and Magic 3. A purely 2D game. A very good 2D game, and there are others (civilisation etc).
I do not blame vendors or developers for ignoring a platform who's support for the technology they are using is sketchy at best. The same applies for people with USB products etc. If your support has only reached reasonable maturity in the last few months it's a bit much to have them provide packages for you there and then.
The unfortunate upshot of this is that while things are developing games producers are becoming more and more entrenched in the DirectX-type dependency which will forever more tie them to a single platform. Another great reason (for me) for being loyal to console and/or arcade developers (Square/Namco/Capcom/Konami I love you!).
Condensed matter physicists, biologists and organic chemists have long had to make do with ball-and-stick figures to display their work in phat 3d.
Recently with decent computing power and graphics we've been able to have rotatable, light-shaded etc molecules onscreen with stuff like Rasmol etc, but it is still quite hard to get a feel for them.
Ultimately what would be nice is StarTrek-type hologram projection (that you can see and feel) but just being able to realtime manipulate a proper 3d image is the next best thing.
Now, let's see if I can con, er, persuade the dept to buy one of these for demonstrations;0). This is an ideal 'gather round and watch' piece of equipment for labs and lectures in many disciplines.
Slashdot Mirror
No condoms, no pill, no caps. If you have sex it is for procreation. The catholic church has not relented on this stance. There are many countries, not only developing ones, that are predominantly catholic, and thus practice no birth control except against the wishes of their God. Not something to be taken lightly, no matter the logical arguments.
Cathlocism is a very wide ranging and influential religion. It is also one that proscribes either abstention or no birth control. This is not a logical way to reduce overpopulation or the problems associated with it.
I know about it because in the previous generations in my family the philosophy of no birth control was quite apparent. My grandfather is one of *13* brothers. There's only one generation between me and the rampant birth levels of what many might consider a backwards civilisation.
States with massive surpluses of food and resources also tend to have low (or possibly enforced low) birth rates. Thus you get large inputs of resources and a small number of people to share them amongst.
Contrast to the so-called developing world where you get less in the way of food production and either fewer resources or resources that are owned by conglomerates combined with massive reproduction rates. This isn't a population problem, you can only support a given number of people on a certain amount. It's the numbers coming into the system.
Look at 'civilised', literate, well educated countries. They have low birth rates. Each child has more oppertunity to learn and has a higher concentration of investment put into them. This isn't just good planning; areas where infant mortality is high and there's a lack of good nutrition and medicine are going to require high birth rates to gaurantee a small number survive.
We have to remember that it isn't too long ago that the countries we consider now to be civilised and developed had their own underclass of civilians, who had large families with the problems involved in supporting and educating them, with the vicious cycle of their offspring ending up in the same low-paid areas their parents did. Not to mention the effect of Catholicism.
There is a population problem, not maybe in the absolute numbers but where they are concentrated. You can provide all the support you want to areas such as africa but until they are able to cut down the birth rate that support will be spread incredibly thin. I don't advocate killing anyone, but drastically reducing the number of new people to feed, educate, house and provide employment for is, in my mind, the hallmark of a developed society (amongst many other things of course outside the scope of this thread).
Although the simps are probably a better association; quiet, clean, obedient, cute. I want one!
At first I found this amazing, then annoying, then ultimately quite useful.
There's no doubt that eventually I would have crashed X, or the kernel. It might have taken some time, and a lot of effort, and not a little swearing along the way. At least this way I achieved the same success in a minimum of time. I never even had to reach for the reset button.
A new feature for 2.5 perhaps...
More seriously, there are also big associations with something like 'X'. Would MS, Apple or even good old unix hackers want .x for X-Box, OS X, X Windows, the X-files and so on.
There's also all things like TV (television or transvestites), TG (transgender), cd maybe for record shops, pc for computer shops, ff for us Final Fantasy buffs ;0). Frankly as long as you're not screwing with a whole country's TLD what's the point in not allowing us to use them? I now want the w.w domain, I think it'd be really cool, why should some group of boring people stop me using whatever name I want?
And, OT, why is that a small cabel of (US I believe) people control a medium that is totally global? Then again, what's new...
Nice temporary measure that screws the long term interests of everyone. The only compromise is where there is a native port please wait a little while for it to come out rather than jumping on the Windows version the second it arrives and send the message to the producers that nobody wants to buy Linux games.
What do you get with clear or translucent cases? The same plastic cover, hopefully with the same level of RF shielding. You also get to see the contents of your case.
Does it have LEDs you can observe? (generally) No. Are there moving parts you can watch? (generally) No. Does it mean an object which is visually irregular, with dark green+solder colouring and odd-looking/shaped objects? Yes.
I personally don't like the iMac/iBook (and the multitude of products which they spawned) because I think they look cheap, flimsy and plasticy. Note that's look. What we're talking about is pure looks. Being able to see inside your case, apart from a small minority of cases, is nothing more than a gimmick.
Do I like iMac cases? No. Do I like the stuff you can get on ThinkGeek for transparent, inner lit extras? Yes. But it's all about looks. My PC sits under my desk and I as long as it doesn't fall over or spew interference into my pocket radio I couldn't give a munki's. For something sat on a desk in a tv programme etc it can make a difference.
Is this really something that will pass the test of time or will it be something you look at for a few days, show off to your mates, then becomes simply the housing for the machine you use for the next year or two you own it?
I am simply grateful that style in terms of hardware generally doesn't hamper performance. Style in other areas of software (particularly webpages, after I spent I long time trying to use one that afaict only works on IE...) can.
I think what I've been trying to say (through a lot of rambling) is that style is one thing, and can be useful sometimes but generally we'd be happier with things that just worked well, even if they looked crap. The ability to see the circuitry on a product, to me, implies something that's cheap
Although I have precious little experience with modems (and if our ISP had got its act together and got digital cable in our area sooner we'd be on a broadband cable-modem. Bastards.) I prefer externals.
You know it's going to work, on anything. They're not that big or annoying, the biggest thing I think is the extra psu. But the main advantage I find is that it's currently sat on top our little server/router box.
From my chair here I can see or hear if it loses connection. I can see when it's being accessed, and have a good idea of the amount of bandwidth going through. And hear the dialup tones etc. I can also do this from bed, a good thing when your housemate's still up whilst you're reposing in state. You can get some or all of these with internals but not to the same extent and stuck round the back not as easy to see. Sure there's software utils and such to keep an eye on these things but the little LEDs on the modem are infallible.
On something as slow and 'unreliable' as a modem I find it invaluable. On a NIC etc you've so much more bandwidth and stability in the connection I don't care so much and rely more on my gkrellm krells and network scripts. I *know* my LAN will stay up barring a power cut. My modem, however, is a totally different story, and as a weak link to the net I need ;) I am prone to watching it in a paranoid way. Plus it's a funky neon green; can't beat having little doodads like that around to make you look like a funki geek ;0).
As we all know, the more little strange boxes you have around with blinking LEDs the better.
As usual, the small, quality setups are the ones who get it in the neck but can do little about it whilst the big conglomerates who pump out crap can make a huge legal stink over it, yet they can afford the losses much more (and would probably do music good if they were bankrupted anyway). Same goes for application piracy.
Ain't right either way but I find it ironic. Of course what we need are laws and ways to enforce them (legally and technologically) that benefit the owner's rights, not to enable already huge companies to sink their fingers even deeper into the pie.
I have to say the single most frustrating and annoying thing I can have on my computer is a dodgy mouse. One slip of the ball and one gesture could easily become another. "Reload Page" might become "Post flamebait to /." ;0).
Spare us 10p for a graphics tablet!
Only you can do what you like with your own but be highly restricted re the functionality of the xbox. There's some logic missing here but I can't quite see where MS missed it... Still when people lap up the hype by the bucket load who needs logic?
I've sent the odd report to utah glx but there comes a point it's just not worth it any more. I have better things to do with my time than enter hand to hand combat with device drivers just so I can play the one or two games it's worth having 3d for or having fancier screensavers.
Oh, and you can play Q3 on a PS2 ;0). As well as many games you can't get on any PC platform. Which work. Which don't crash. Which don't take up months of your time just to get running. And which also plays DVDs. And you can just go plug in that huge TV in the next room. And so what about price? A new highend 3d card will set you back about as much as a current gen console. And that's *just* the gfx card.
Nice to hear some people are getting it working, but it's too late for me, I've already given up and will only believe it when any distro I install just so happens to get it working for me. But if it takes more than 5 minutes to set up I ain't interested. I can well do without the hassle. Which is a shame cos pretty much everything else works fine.
Lord preserve us from ever saying something against linux even when you use it as your primary OS on all your machines and run a Linux network.
I mean, it's not as if wouldn't love to go out and support linux by buying games for it but it'd be pointless as I have nothing they'd run on (at more than 1fps) and I'm not that flush with cash.
AC might just make its way onto my harddrive, though. But only once I've given the demo a bloody good run on X4...
Sorry for pointing out the experiences of both myself and friends with linux 3d support, I'll just lie through my teeth next time. *ahem* All my machines, even those that don't have hardware 3d support under XFree86 3.3.6 or 4.0.3 have high quality hardware 3D acceleration, which is not only stable but also faster than under Windows. I didn't have to anything special, I just installed Linux and it set it all up for me at the click of a button. Yep, I'm off out right now to the store to pick up all those great Loki games. I have nothing to worry about like my machine randomly crashing, slow jerky performance or my OS locking up tighter than a tom cat's arsehole. Those Windows and Mac OS using phewls won't know what hit them when they see my machine blow theirs away at Quake3.
Is that better? Using slashdot sure is an educating experience.
Voodoo 3 3000
S3 Virge GX
S3 Savage
ATI Rage 128
Intel i740
nVidia TNT2
ATI Rage LT Pro
Trident Cyber something or other
Not one of these using distro rpms, utah glx or X4 (with or without nVidia binaries) has shown the slightest ability to run 3D either at all or stabily (that's if they're even supported for 3D in the first place).
And from the experiece of people I've talked to:
Ati Rage Pro on PPC
Voodoo 2
G400
didn't want to know either.
Great, chum, your setup works. Ever wondered why people complain so much about 3D acceleration under linux? It's cos it's such a hit and miss affair. I don't personally know anyone here or anyone on the net *bar one person with an nvidia tnt* who's had 3D working under linux properly. Goes to show don't it. And I know how you feel; I'm currently converting some people here from Windows and they're installing SuSE 6.4. I never had any bother at all with it, but they're finding problems with sound cards, graphics cards (not even 3D) and modems and god knows what on what are perfectly functioning machines with a perfectly functioning linux distro. But it doesn't matter how many times I say "But it works fine on anything I've done!", they're still not working.
We wouldn't complain if it sodding worked would we? Particularly when on the same machine they boot into Windows and, ooh, it all just works. Not the fault of the developers, if they're given sod all to work with what do you expect but saying "but mine works!" doesn't change the fact that after a hell of a lot of work I have been unable to get it going on anything I own or admin or on friend's machines. Thus, I do not buy 3d linux games and am even wary over buying 2d ones after Heroes 3 decided it didn't like me much after upgrading to X4.0.2.
It's the one thing really lacking from my hardware support under linux and I've seen nothing to change this view in the 3 years I've been using it. This isn't to say it can't be fun getting Windows to work on it either, but you stand a much better chance.
To put it simply I'll believe Linux has good 3D support when I see it with my own, gOoOgly, eyes. And why bother when I have yet to see any of my games consoles to crash?
Let's see, who would I be more afraid of in my country: people with ancient traditions and spirituality, a people that has survived all the shit that white supremicists have thrown at them and been successful by their own labours or a bunch of hicks whose sole aim in life, it would appear, is to promote violence and xenophobia. National Alliance, National Front. You don't seem to realise your whole ethnic heritage is one enormous mix of many races. What you going to do next? Start picking on anyone who isn't from your town? Your family? Anyone but you?
If there's any race of people I want to see eradicated from this planet it's the useless wasters with barely more braincells than my arse who somehow think that being a pasty white skinhead makes them homo superior. Crawl back under the rock and let people get on with their lives. You might actually do something worthwhile and constructive with all that spare time...
If they all line up in the same direction you get ferromagnetism ('strong magnet'), half up and half down gives you antiferromagnetism (doesn't appear to be magnetic cos all the moments cancel) or ferrimagnetism, some up and some down (varying levels of magnetic attraction). The type of ordering is influenced by the chemical and physical structure of the material (alloy/oxide/bulk/thin film etc).
The only effect the Earth's field has is perhaps the overall direction of the magnetization, not the ordering of the moments themselves. This is much more sensitive to things like temperature and applied external fields. The Earth's field is really quite weak compared to a permanent or electromagnet.
A magnet is a magnet on earth, in a space station or floating around in space because magnetism is inherent to certain materials (if they're below the ordering temperature obviously ;0). To be technical it's related to unpaired electrons in 3d(Transition metal)/4f(Rare Earth)/5d(Actinide) shells but that's already more than I wish to think about magnetic theory on a Sunday with a hangover ;).
(I also doubt that a small permanent magnet attached to the walls would affect wireless communications in any appreciable way, but I'm often wrong).
Voodoo 3: SuSE rpms, 3dfx rpms, XFree 4 self compiled. Can be fast while it works but will crash and while better now they would consistently fuck my gfx card needing a reset and still do on occassion.
ATI Rage Pro: SuSE rpms, self-compiled XFree+Utah GLX, XFree 4. Again, can be fast with the hardware accel but will crash my machine.
Nvidia TNT: whole host of SuSE and self-compiled XFree/GLX/NVidia-GLX combinations. Poor quality, poor stability, that's if they work at all.
To Tom's Hardware, Ars Technica and every fucker else on the planet who compares G400/Nvidia/3dfx etc etc etc: how in the name of greek buggery did you get any of the this to actually work and to continue to work without fucking your system up the arse? I am a (admittedly amatuer) sys admin. I know my way around unix and pc systems yet I am simply unable to get a fully functional 3D unix system on a freenix.
Linux. BSD. 3D. It just doesn't work. If it does you're a very lucky rarity. That, my friends, is one of the very influential and quite understandable reasons we have sod all games support on Unix.
Meanwhile software Mesa rendering has worked, been stable and produced superior rendering to any hardware based system I've tried to set up. It's just slow as buggery. I now no longer even try. I just slip the disc into my console and forget all about OpenGl/Mesa/DirectX/Utah/XFree3/XFree4/DRI and all the crap I've wasted hours, days or even weeks on to end up with nothing but a form of output that I know will do nothing on my systems but lead them to a reset or suck every available cpu cycle out of them but give back nothing more than a handful of fps.
To all you people out there running stable 3D freenix systems: fuck off and die. But before you do, tell every distribution packager or BSD maintainer how the hell you did it. We'd all really like to know...
The biggest and simplest reason I personally do not bother much with games on Linux is the hassle.
I have yet to see a linux machine running 3D stabily and quickly. As the vast majority of newer games being ported are 3D based this means on any machine I own or admin either dodgy performance or inevitable crashes.
Meanwhile, I stick a CD/DVD into my PS2, turn it on, grab the controller and get playing it. With fantastic performance and no crashes.
The only commercial game I play on my linux systems is Heroes of Might and Magic 3. A purely 2D game. A very good 2D game, and there are others (civilisation etc).
I do not blame vendors or developers for ignoring a platform who's support for the technology they are using is sketchy at best. The same applies for people with USB products etc. If your support has only reached reasonable maturity in the last few months it's a bit much to have them provide packages for you there and then.
The unfortunate upshot of this is that while things are developing games producers are becoming more and more entrenched in the DirectX-type dependency which will forever more tie them to a single platform. Another great reason (for me) for being loyal to console and/or arcade developers (Square/Namco/Capcom/Konami I love you!).
Recently with decent computing power and graphics we've been able to have rotatable, light-shaded etc molecules onscreen with stuff like Rasmol etc, but it is still quite hard to get a feel for them.
Ultimately what would be nice is StarTrek-type hologram projection (that you can see and feel) but just being able to realtime manipulate a proper 3d image is the next best thing.
Now, let's see if I can con, er, persuade the dept to buy one of these for demonstrations ;0). This is an ideal 'gather round and watch' piece of equipment for labs and lectures in many disciplines.