It is slower, but on a relatively fast machine (P3-900, 384mb) its not really a big deal. To put it in perspective, its no different than the difference between AA and non-AA KDE on the same machine.
Look here. This is with the version of mozilla included in Debian unstable, patched to work with the gdkxft hack. The real question is will this new patch actually be included in any commonly distributed Mozilla binaries. Because if it isn't, I don't think many are going to recompile the whole damn thing just for anti-aliasing (but that won't stop people from complaining about the lack of it!).
Not necessarily. The license on 32V also covers the encumbered 4.x BSD releases, for instance. aka the dawn of modern UNIX. And this is mainly for educational purposes, as the source has (as noted) already been available under a restrictive but free (cost) license for some time.
seriously, in this day and age, how can the System V source NOT be released!
Caldera still sells a product (UnixWare) based on System V. "How, in this day and age, can the Windows 95 source not be released?" Caldera makes money selling proprietary software. Its that simple.
Re:WMA is about 2x as compact as MP3....
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 2
Thats a deceptive statement. WMA at 128k may sound better than MP3 at the same bitrate, but there is no way to encode WMA at quality comparable to high-quality 256k/320k MP3 files, or the LAME VBR settings which can produce almost-indistinguishable files at ~200k average bitrate. I suspect the same may be true of ogg, but at least its Free so if it can't do high bitrates now it may be modified to do so in the future.
And none of the lossless formats are even as compact as 320k MP3. So MP3 still fills a useful niche in that regard.
(yes, I'm aware that since LAME isn't licensed, its technically illegal, but my, and I suspect your, primary use of it is pirating copyrighted music, so its not as though using a patent-free codec would make what we do any more legal.)
how different (from standard netbsd) is it?
on
Debian NetBSD
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Did they just port apt and dpkg, and put up some Debian-packaged NetBSD binaries? Or have they moved to a Sys V init system, ported the Debian administration and configuration tools, and all the other stuff that makes debian distinctive? They explicitly say that NetBSD doesn't support runlevels, and looking at the package list, it doesn't look like much of the debian tools have made it yet.
If its just a different package system, its pointless. Less work, and more immediately useful results, would be modifying apt to work with the current binary package system (which actually does support dependencies, etc.), and the large number of binaries in this format already available.
If not, its a more questionable proposition. Arguably, its not really BSD anymore...it runs NetBSD binaries and uses that kernel, but the userland is basically Debian, ie, just like any Linux distribution. And most people who want that should just assume use Debian with the Linux kernel, which is a far more mature combination. Yes, for VAXen, toasters, slide rules and other more arcane platforms this won't exactly work, but Debian-NetBSD doesn't seem to have package for these platforms anyway.
[QUOTE] I like the concept of the Flex-ATX case in Tom's review, except for the lack of an AGP slot.[/QUOTE]
Don't know about the shuttle case, but most low-profile *ATX cases, like the AOpen H300 series, can actually accomodate standard-size MicroATX motherboards, many of which do have AGP slots. The only caveat is that they can only take low-profile expansion cards. You can get decent low-profile AGP cards (for instance, all most all reference GeForce2 MX cards fit in low-profile slots with the proper bracket) but the very newest, fastest technology usually isn't available.
I downloaded the ISO and tried to boot into it. Immediately the kernel fb support gave an "unsupported display mode" error. I checked the available modes and there was nothing but text modes available. I have a Matrox G400, which is very well supported by the kernel framebuffer drivers. In fact I use the fb console at 1024x768 on my real linux installation without problems.
The startup looked interesting, at any rate. It failed to detect my NIC (a pretty standard DEC Tulip card) and gave a few other errors I can't remember. Then it tried to run X, but since it was configured to use the framebuffer driver, which wasn't working, it choked. Needless to say if they had at least allowed the option of using the XFree86 accelerated drivers, it would have been fine, but they don't. So then the system shut itself down. This worked ok, except their kernel is compiled without APM support, so it didn't actually turn itself off.
Oh well. I'll try it again later, seems like a decent idea really.
What willbe really interesting is if this becomes kine of like a "Mine", allowing PC users to run some select Mac OS X software along with their Linux apps.
Pretty unlikely. Remember, its partially *source* compatible. OS X PowerPC binaries compiled against Cocoa cannot possibly run under Linux/GNUstep on x86. Since most Mac software is distributed commercial in binary-only form its unlikely that any of it will be instantly available on linux, and even if it is, they are as likely to port it using something "standard" like Qt even if it means rewriting much of the program, than to try to get it to work with GNUStep in its present form.
And certainly software sold by Apple itself, like iTunes, is about as likely to be ported to linux as, say, Microsoft Office, GNUstep or no.
I recently got my drivers license. In the process of doing so, I was told that someone in Alabama with the same name birthdate as myself had multiple DUI convictions. So it seems this information is already national available to government agencies. I don't think we need to be really worried until they start talking about tying it to biometrics or something ridiculous like that. I mean, its worrisome, but only to the extent that systems like this have been worrisome since their introductions in the previous century. Not a new, or necessarily worse, problem.
As though no one possessing a valid ID has ever committed a terrorist attack...
[QUOTE]On another note, will this PDA support WinCE applications? Palm OS? If not, I see this going nowhere...[/QUOTE]
It was mentioned that there is already an X11 implementation for it, and a Unix Palm emulator already has been ported. So yes, in a manner of speaking.
There will be no Intel version of Solaris 9. It is, in effect, a dead program. There's no reason for them to continue to provide it for download if it is going to be completely dropped momentarily. Soon enough it will no longer be for sale to commercial users.
And as for the source code...haven't they tried taking it down a couple times already? Probably if they get enough flame mail they will put it back up and try to claim it was a "mistake".
Try using Google Groups [google.com]. Free USENET reading and posting...
I think the caps are probably aimed mainly at posting, and particularly to curb binary posting.
Earthlink's news server, for instance, while allowing uncapped downloads, has an undocumented daily post limit of around 60 (in my experience). Now I have never needed to post 60 real discussion messages. But with standard chunk size (10000 lines), the cap makes posting any large binaries virtually impossible.
Of course, Google does not carry alt.binaries at all. So in effect these people, like many others, are going to be forced to fork over another 10 bucks a month to a third party news provider to continue their alt.binaries addiction.
Well if Apple did succeed, and would have more
market share, then everybody would call them the
"Monopoly", is not it?
No, this is whats called vertical integration. Its actually an obstacle to becoming a monopoly. If microsoft had started from the beginning with the goal of complete domination of desktop software, internet services, and (soon, with the Xbox and its successor, Homestation) hardware, they would achieve nothing. Rather, they started with programming languages, and pushed their product alongside strong prodcuts from other manufacturers and achieved their monopoly very gradually.
Its true, if Apple had 90% market share it would be truly frightening. But they haven't, ever. In fact, it hasn't even been their goal since Jobs took over (or maybe even before that). They're basically resigned to declining market share, and have decided to concentrate on extracting as much money as they can from their remaining locked-in customers, while attracting enough new users to replace those who defect (like a cigarette company). Hence the iPod, and such. They figure they can keep cutting costs and keep prices high, and they'll still be able to turn a profit.
It ROCKS on my linux box (older puter K6-II 300 mhz cpu, 288 megs ram, 4 gigs cpu)...:)
You are aware, of course, that with that much memory you would have no trouble running either GNOME or KDE. That ISN'T a low-end computer by any stretch of the imagination and if you want to see how any of this stuff really stacks up, you need to look at a machine several orders of magnitude older and slower.
Why not just use FVWM instead of that fancy IceWM or the other new window managers?
I will not argue that FVWM is pretty damn cool. But, especially considering how it looks (which is bad, any way you shake it), its really only marginally qualifies as fast and light.
Regarding IceWM, it has an incredibly usable default configuration, and IIRC binaries for it run under 400k! And its fully themable to boot.
Blackbox is the other oft-mentioned choice, its more geared to the user whose idea of a GUI involves switching between Xterms running Emacs, and its theming is rather more limited than IceWM (basically you just pick your gradients, no customizable widgets location/functions or pixmaps or anything), but its very, very fast.
And yes, both of these are, properly themed, beautiful. FVWM is not, and it is larger and slower.
Wonder if we could find the first use of "teh" on there.... now that's a milestone!
One thing you want to consider is the release of Microsoft Word 6.0 in (IIRC) 1994. That was the release that pioneered the "autocorrect" feature which, by default, converts "teh" to "the". So, tens of millions of people who began using computers after that began using "teh" without even realizing it. This "feature" is so ubiquitous now that even my IRC client (xchat) supports it.
That, of course, would be the beginning of its prevalence, not of its use. It is something that has been happening, for sure, since the introduction of the qwerty keyboard in the 19th century (to slow down typists and prevent jams...).
The i845 actually does and has supported DDR SDRAM since it was designed. Only, Intel has only allowed motherboard manufacturers to produce SDRAM-based boards thus far, allegedly for "validation" reasons, although clearly pressure from Rambus has had something to do with it.
Then there are the DDR P4 chipsets from both VIA and SiS. Don't forget about that.
but when the previous guys went bust selling the same service for a higher price than you intend to retail at, this may not be the wisest move...
The 'previous guys' had accrued a billion dollars of debt building the infrastructure to provide the service. They had to charge the higher price in order to have any hope of becoming profitable eventually.
Aerie has acquired none of that debt -- they got the entire network for a tiny fraction of what it cost to build it. So they can operate it at a lower cost (btw, this was what AT&T tried to do with @home).
And how is anybody supposed to remember that Konqueror is a web browser or that GIMP is an image manipulation program?
Good point, I've had to use some windows boxes at school and I've had the exact same problem. How is anybody supposed to remember that Outlook is a mail client, Excel a spreadsheet and Access a database?
3-4 years ago that would have been a great time to make that claim. Now, they are owned by Daimler Benz, and if they are to be believing, hemmoraging massive amounts of money. True, shortly before that they were one of the most profitable corporations in the world. But they have always been affected more than most by the cyclical nature of the auto business -- they have been "near death" several times in the past 25 years and then made an "amazing recovery".
Geeze. I mean, no argument that the 5200 was pretty much Apple's low-water mark for desktop machines, but that's like complaining that you bought a Yugo. It's not like it got any good reviews ever.
Arrgh don't remind me of those accursed things! At my high school those things were all we had in the labs. Even the late-model 225 MHz ones* seemed terribly slow running Netscape to the 486/33 I had at home. And that was even taking into account the far better net connection at school!
*-I don't believe those were actually sold at retail, they were only available to gullible school districts.
If you look at the history of Radio broadcasting, the entire purpose of government regulation of frequency allocations was give interference-free access to the most desirable bands to commercial broadcasters, while forcing non-commercial users who used radio for personal communication or experimentation (the ancestors of modern amateur radio operators) into less desirable frequencies (and then, when those were proven to be useful by the efforts of the amateurs, taking much of that bandwidth away from the public, also).
But now regulation clearly could serve the opposite purpose. After all, if all regulations were eliminated, and everybody were allowed to transmit wherever they like, the big corporate interests (cellphone companies, broadcasters, etc.) would probably be able to effectively claim everything, since they could run higher-power transmitters and more of them than any individual could hope to. If there is to be any kind of non-commercial use of RF, it clearly needs exclusive bandwidth protected by the FCC (as hams, CB users, GPRS/PRS, wireless networks, etc. already have).
Of course regulation as it stands serves the opposite purpose...making as much money as possible auctioning off public spectrum to cellphone companies, etc. But that does not mean that its elimination would solve the problem of the commercialization of public spectrum.
[QUOTE]Integrated Savage 2000 is pretty nasty[/QUOTE]
Its actually not a Savage 2000. Its the Savage 2000 2d core combined with a stripped 3d engine roughly comparable to the Savage 4 (with less memory bandwidth of course). Which really isn't bad compared to the alternatives from SiS (proprietary core, about as fast as a TNT2 m64), ALi (licensed TNT2 m64 core), and especially Intel (blech i740 derivative, absolutely abysmal for 3d). Thats the competition it was designed for.
As much as all of you praise the nForce as an OEM solution, its really way to expensive to be competitive with any of these, and its capabilities (except maybe sound...but then again, you could do a SiS-730/740 board with onboard CMI-8738 sound for less than most nForce boards go for) are useless to anyone who would consider an integrated solution.
Re:I just got to wonder.......
on
Lineo Frees CP/M
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Something also to consider:
If Microsoft had not gotten ahold of 86-DOS when IBM came around looking for an OS, might they have licensed XENIX (or a cut-down derivative thereof) to IBM? It certainly ran on 16-bit x86 architecture machines and Microsoft had it prior to 1981.
Moreover, if that had happened, widespread acceptance of 32-bit Unix workstations (based on, say, the 68k) might have occured in the 1980s, because everyone would be by then using Unix anyway on their PCs.
Slashdot Mirror
It is slower, but on a relatively fast machine (P3-900, 384mb) its not really a big deal. To put it in perspective, its no different than the difference between AA and non-AA KDE on the same machine.
Look here. This is with the version of mozilla included in Debian unstable, patched to work with the gdkxft hack. The real question is will this new patch actually be included in any commonly distributed Mozilla binaries. Because if it isn't, I don't think many are going to recompile the whole damn thing just for anti-aliasing (but that won't stop people from complaining about the lack of it!).
Not necessarily. The license on 32V also covers the encumbered 4.x BSD releases, for instance. aka the dawn of modern UNIX. And this is mainly for educational purposes, as the source has (as noted) already been available under a restrictive but free (cost) license for some time.
Caldera still sells a product (UnixWare) based on System V. "How, in this day and age, can the Windows 95 source not be released?" Caldera makes money selling proprietary software. Its that simple.
Thats a deceptive statement. WMA at 128k may sound better than MP3 at the same bitrate, but there is no way to encode WMA at quality comparable to high-quality 256k/320k MP3 files, or the LAME VBR settings which can produce almost-indistinguishable files at ~200k average bitrate. I suspect the same may be true of ogg, but at least its Free so if it can't do high bitrates now it may be modified to do so in the future.
And none of the lossless formats are even as compact as 320k MP3. So MP3 still fills a useful niche in that regard.
(yes, I'm aware that since LAME isn't licensed, its technically illegal, but my, and I suspect your, primary use of it is pirating copyrighted music, so its not as though using a patent-free codec would make what we do any more legal.)
Did they just port apt and dpkg, and put up some Debian-packaged NetBSD binaries? Or have they moved to a Sys V init system, ported the Debian administration and configuration tools, and all the other stuff that makes debian distinctive? They explicitly say that NetBSD doesn't support runlevels, and looking at the package list, it doesn't look like much of the debian tools have made it yet.
If its just a different package system, its pointless. Less work, and more immediately useful results, would be modifying apt to work with the current binary package system (which actually does support dependencies, etc.), and the large number of binaries in this format already available.
If not, its a more questionable proposition. Arguably, its not really BSD anymore...it runs NetBSD binaries and uses that kernel, but the userland is basically Debian, ie, just like any Linux distribution. And most people who want that should just assume use Debian with the Linux kernel, which is a far more mature combination. Yes, for VAXen, toasters, slide rules and other more arcane platforms this won't exactly work, but Debian-NetBSD doesn't seem to have package for these platforms anyway.
[QUOTE] I like the concept of the Flex-ATX case in Tom's review, except for the lack of an AGP slot.[/QUOTE]
Don't know about the shuttle case, but most low-profile *ATX cases, like the AOpen H300 series, can actually accomodate standard-size MicroATX motherboards, many of which do have AGP slots. The only caveat is that they can only take low-profile expansion cards. You can get decent low-profile AGP cards (for instance, all most all reference GeForce2 MX cards fit in low-profile slots with the proper bracket) but the very newest, fastest technology usually isn't available.
I downloaded the ISO and tried to boot into it. Immediately the kernel fb support gave an "unsupported display mode" error. I checked the available modes and there was nothing but text modes available. I have a Matrox G400, which is very well supported by the kernel framebuffer drivers. In fact I use the fb console at 1024x768 on my real linux installation without problems.
The startup looked interesting, at any rate. It failed to detect my NIC (a pretty standard DEC Tulip card) and gave a few other errors I can't remember. Then it tried to run X, but since it was configured to use the framebuffer driver, which wasn't working, it choked. Needless to say if they had at least allowed the option of using the XFree86 accelerated drivers, it would have been fine, but they don't. So then the system shut itself down. This worked ok, except their kernel is compiled without APM support, so it didn't actually turn itself off.
Oh well. I'll try it again later, seems like a decent idea really.
Pretty unlikely. Remember, its partially *source* compatible. OS X PowerPC binaries compiled against Cocoa cannot possibly run under Linux/GNUstep on x86. Since most Mac software is distributed commercial in binary-only form its unlikely that any of it will be instantly available on linux, and even if it is, they are as likely to port it using something "standard" like Qt even if it means rewriting much of the program, than to try to get it to work with GNUStep in its present form.
And certainly software sold by Apple itself, like iTunes, is about as likely to be ported to linux as, say, Microsoft Office, GNUstep or no.
I recently got my drivers license. In the process of doing so, I was told that someone in Alabama with the same name birthdate as myself had multiple DUI convictions. So it seems this information is already national available to government agencies. I don't think we need to be really worried until they start talking about tying it to biometrics or something ridiculous like that. I mean, its worrisome, but only to the extent that systems like this have been worrisome since their introductions in the previous century. Not a new, or necessarily worse, problem.
As though no one possessing a valid ID has ever committed a terrorist attack...
[QUOTE]On another note, will this PDA support WinCE applications? Palm OS? If not, I see this going nowhere...[/QUOTE]
It was mentioned that there is already an X11 implementation for it, and a Unix Palm emulator already has been ported. So yes, in a manner of speaking.
There will be no Intel version of Solaris 9. It is, in effect, a dead program. There's no reason for them to continue to provide it for download if it is going to be completely dropped momentarily. Soon enough it will no longer be for sale to commercial users.
And as for the source code...haven't they tried taking it down a couple times already? Probably if they get enough flame mail they will put it back up and try to claim it was a "mistake".
I think the caps are probably aimed mainly at posting, and particularly to curb binary posting.
Earthlink's news server, for instance, while allowing uncapped downloads, has an undocumented daily post limit of around 60 (in my experience). Now I have never needed to post 60 real discussion messages. But with standard chunk size (10000 lines), the cap makes posting any large binaries virtually impossible.
Of course, Google does not carry alt.binaries at all. So in effect these people, like many others, are going to be forced to fork over another 10 bucks a month to a third party news provider to continue their alt.binaries addiction.
No, this is whats called vertical integration. Its actually an obstacle to becoming a monopoly. If microsoft had started from the beginning with the goal of complete domination of desktop software, internet services, and (soon, with the Xbox and its successor, Homestation) hardware, they would achieve nothing. Rather, they started with programming languages, and pushed their product alongside strong prodcuts from other manufacturers and achieved their monopoly very gradually.
Its true, if Apple had 90% market share it would be truly frightening. But they haven't, ever. In fact, it hasn't even been their goal since Jobs took over (or maybe even before that). They're basically resigned to declining market share, and have decided to concentrate on extracting as much money as they can from their remaining locked-in customers, while attracting enough new users to replace those who defect (like a cigarette company). Hence the iPod, and such. They figure they can keep cutting costs and keep prices high, and they'll still be able to turn a profit.
You are aware, of course, that with that much memory you would have no trouble running either GNOME or KDE. That ISN'T a low-end computer by any stretch of the imagination and if you want to see how any of this stuff really stacks up, you need to look at a machine several orders of magnitude older and slower.
One thing you want to consider is the release of Microsoft Word 6.0 in (IIRC) 1994. That was the release that pioneered the "autocorrect" feature which, by default, converts "teh" to "the". So, tens of millions of people who began using computers after that began using "teh" without even realizing it. This "feature" is so ubiquitous now that even my IRC client (xchat) supports it.
That, of course, would be the beginning of its prevalence, not of its use. It is something that has been happening, for sure, since the introduction of the qwerty keyboard in the 19th century (to slow down typists and prevent jams...).
The i845 actually does and has supported DDR SDRAM since it was designed. Only, Intel has only allowed motherboard manufacturers to produce SDRAM-based boards thus far, allegedly for "validation" reasons, although clearly pressure from Rambus has had something to do with it.
Then there are the DDR P4 chipsets from both VIA and SiS. Don't forget about that.
Don't do it that way. Figure out how often, minimum, you need to have it done, and then use cron. Thats what its there for.
The 'previous guys' had accrued a billion dollars of debt building the infrastructure to provide the service. They had to charge the higher price in order to have any hope of becoming profitable eventually.
Aerie has acquired none of that debt -- they got the entire network for a tiny fraction of what it cost to build it. So they can operate it at a lower cost (btw, this was what AT&T tried to do with @home).
Good point, I've had to use some windows boxes at school and I've had the exact same problem. How is anybody supposed to remember that Outlook is a mail client, Excel a spreadsheet and Access a database?
3-4 years ago that would have been a great time to make that claim. Now, they are owned by Daimler Benz, and if they are to be believing, hemmoraging massive amounts of money. True, shortly before that they were one of the most profitable corporations in the world. But they have always been affected more than most by the cyclical nature of the auto business -- they have been "near death" several times in the past 25 years and then made an "amazing recovery".
Arrgh don't remind me of those accursed things! At my high school those things were all we had in the labs. Even the late-model 225 MHz ones* seemed terribly slow running Netscape to the 486/33 I had at home. And that was even taking into account the far better net connection at school!
*-I don't believe those were actually sold at retail, they were only available to gullible school districts.
If you look at the history of Radio broadcasting, the entire purpose of government regulation of frequency allocations was give interference-free access to the most desirable bands to commercial broadcasters, while forcing non-commercial users who used radio for personal communication or experimentation (the ancestors of modern amateur radio operators) into less desirable frequencies (and then, when those were proven to be useful by the efforts of the amateurs, taking much of that bandwidth away from the public, also).
But now regulation clearly could serve the opposite purpose. After all, if all regulations were eliminated, and everybody were allowed to transmit wherever they like, the big corporate interests (cellphone companies, broadcasters, etc.) would probably be able to effectively claim everything, since they could run higher-power transmitters and more of them than any individual could hope to. If there is to be any kind of non-commercial use of RF, it clearly needs exclusive bandwidth protected by the FCC (as hams, CB users, GPRS/PRS, wireless networks, etc. already have).
Of course regulation as it stands serves the opposite purpose...making as much money as possible auctioning off public spectrum to cellphone companies, etc. But that does not mean that its elimination would solve the problem of the commercialization of public spectrum.
[QUOTE]Integrated Savage 2000 is pretty nasty[/QUOTE]
Its actually not a Savage 2000. Its the Savage 2000 2d core combined with a stripped 3d engine roughly comparable to the Savage 4 (with less memory bandwidth of course). Which really isn't bad compared to the alternatives from SiS (proprietary core, about as fast as a TNT2 m64), ALi (licensed TNT2 m64 core), and especially Intel (blech i740 derivative, absolutely abysmal for 3d). Thats the competition it was designed for.
As much as all of you praise the nForce as an OEM solution, its really way to expensive to be competitive with any of these, and its capabilities (except maybe sound...but then again, you could do a SiS-730/740 board with onboard CMI-8738 sound for less than most nForce boards go for) are useless to anyone who would consider an integrated solution.
Something also to consider:
If Microsoft had not gotten ahold of 86-DOS when IBM came around looking for an OS, might they have licensed XENIX (or a cut-down derivative thereof) to IBM? It certainly ran on 16-bit x86 architecture machines and Microsoft had it prior to 1981.
Moreover, if that had happened, widespread acceptance of 32-bit Unix workstations (based on, say, the 68k) might have occured in the 1980s, because everyone would be by then using Unix anyway on their PCs.