Are they going to release hardware specs at the register level? Will I be able to write code `straight to the metal' (as MS seem to be keen on calling it.)
If not then all XBox games are going to look very similar....
PS2 is *different* to develop for. Not difficult. The joy is that games are going to get better as the developers get time to try all the different ways of doing things with it.
A lot of the developers I've heard complaining about PS2 development are complaining that they have to have some Linux skills to develop on it.
No! DirectX is not good. It is nasty to program for and is not on Linux. OpenGL is much better. It is fast and on many platforms. Easy to program, even for beginner like me. All programmers should use Open GL!
If only it were that simple. Due to the very nature of OpenGL (open standard etc) it is moving much slower than hardware is. DirectX on the other hand gets an almost complete rewrite every year and only has to support one platform. For this reason GL won't be able to quickly take advantage of new card features (vertex/pixel shaders etc). Games publishers require DirectX support -- OpenGL is an optional extra that is mostly put in the schedule because the programmers would like to do an OpenGL version.
However, the DirectX people do seem to be interested in getting the best graphics API possible. When the time comes that it is necessary to support other OSs in order to make DirectX the best then it will probably happen. Look forward to huge licensing fees though. Unfortunately, Linux is not an OS that you're average gamer will have installed so publishers aren't pushing for Linux support. If that ever happens then developers will either move to a cross-platform API or start writing multiple versions of their renderers for different platforms. Which do you think is more likely?
> 1) It's 'good' software. By this I mean most > people (Including myself) think that the > software, while looking like it works - does > exactly what you think it's doing. Oh, some > other programmer has checked it I'm sure. > Unfortunately I don't think that's the case > anymore, after releasing a few things myself - > and receiving one piece of feedback for about > 1000 downloads.
I think it is fair to assume that any packages that are part of a distribution have been checked for security issues before being made a part of that distribution. The moment someone starts to sell you the software, they have also taken the responsability of providing some level of QA on it.
It is *inexcusable* that the bugs mentioned in the article, if they were so easy to be found, made their way into Red Hat. The implication is that noone at Red Hat even performed a cursorary check on the code.
What assurance can Red Hat give that the OSS product they've shipped on their CD doesn't have some trojan functionality hidden inside it? The job of the distributed should be to look for these things.
I know that Debian have a QA project going, and quite strict rules about how a package can get into the distribution -- did they miss the Mailman bugs as well?
I hate to say it, but I was always put off Gnome by the website!
How many of you look under the bonnet?
on
AtheOS
·
· Score: 2
This looks like an interesting project. I'm a little disturbed that an OS is being judged by so many on the basis of a few screenshots, or whether or not it supports anti-aliasing of truetype fonts.
As far as I'm aware, even in OS's such as Windows, the GUI is layered on top of lower level services. Something that WINE shows is that you can take a tightly bonded GUI and run it ontop of another OS.
So, when I get the chance to download and install AtheOS I'll be looking at the relationship between the GUI and the rest of the OS.
What does the kernel provide that makes the GUI better?
Can this be fed back into [insert OS of your choice]?
Surely one of the features that Linux has is that it has support for lots of hardware. Can this be fed into AtheOS?
My thinking for the last few weeks has been that UN*X isn't necessarily the be-all and end-all of OS design -- especially if you're aiming for a desktop OS. The very features that make UN*X great for servers can provide the problems that make it unsuitable for a desktop OS.
Since I consider myself a user, I have to ask what features I'm actually directly using of the OS and what have been abstracted away for me. Once everything is configured, I only use the shell and associated utilities for messing around with files and netscape, xemacs, java, gcc, licq, mesa etc for getting my `work' done. `work' == scratching my itches.
Beyond that, I don't care what OS I'm running. If I had a similar environment under W2K (with a decent WM) then I'd probably be just as happy, although a bit poorer and some of my value systems would have to be chucked out the window.
In short, I have to agree with the person who said that having many OS's available is a good thing, if only to provide research into different design methodoligies.
I believe some licenses provide for this sort of thing. Isn't this what the Sun Community License does?
In some cases the code might represent something that it doesn't make sense to share. If you're algorithm is what gives you your competitive edge then you don't want your competitors to see it. I'm having trouble thinking of examples -- maybe a novel voice recognition system.
In other cases, especially when the value of your product isn't necessarily technological advances (eg core Windows) but just the fact that all the existing ideas have been put together then freeing up the source has to make sense.
Oh, I agree. I was thinking along more large-scale ideas. Take gcc -- if you end up with 20 different contractors making changes, with some finding their way in and others not. Then put independencies between the changes and you end up with a mess.
The successful software does tend to have a centralized administration, so the masses can go to one place to download it. Code forks are fine, but they have to be maintained. If you ended up with 20 different emacsen, incompatible with each other, then there would be problems. I suppose what I meant was possibly splintering rather than forking.
Does anyone know if something like this has happened?
The difference is that Ford don't provide blueprints for the car. That's pretty much what giving the source away would do.
I operate in three modes -- free-beer software consumer, commercial developer and open-source developer.
As a free-beer software consumer, I look for binaries of packages I want to use. I can't be hassled with compiling them myself -- give me an rpm or deb and I'm happy.
As an open-source developer (a grand title to give myself -- I've released a few GPL'd things, including the original kpackage) I decide to give my software away for free -- mainly because I'm interested in fame! However, because I know that my work will best benefit from contributions from others, I release the whole thing under the GPL. Others can contribute, or examine my implementation and decide that it's crap (Python/Qt). This also means that if I stop maintaining my work then it can be taken over, as Toivo Pedaste has done with kpackage. However, *this is my choice* and I accept that others may decide otherwise. I may try and convince them, but the arguments will not be ideoligical.
As a commerical developer, I am being employed by someone to develop a product. It is not up to me to decide the licensing terms. If appropriate, then I can attempt to convince them that going open-source would be a good idea. In many cases it wouldn't. Open sourcing something like a arcady driving game just doesn't make sense. It wouldn't bring in any benefit for the driving game. However, a game engine might benefit from many eyes.
BTW: If you're reading Toivo, then thanks for keeping my credit on there! It is really appreciated.
I like this idea. I'm not sure if it would result in an improvement to the package for everyone. If you've got your original authors being 'jerky' then they may decide not to allow changes made by their competitors to be merged into the main source tree. The result would either be code forks or innumerable patches.
Note that this is based on the original authors being 'jerky' -- but that would depend on your point of view.
From Station Terminus's News Page: System Spec for Linux includes a 3d accelerator with Glide drivers. The Mac spec says OpenGL support, while Windows is Glide or Direct3D. How come no OpenGL for Linux?
Maybe I'm missing it, but there doesn't seem to be a demo available for download.
I don't know many people who are prepared to buy a game without having played a demo first -- has anyone heard what VVs' position is on the demo front?
I've just today finished the last of my 3rd year project at Sussex Uni.
I'm not sure how you'll be assessed, but the thing I found most important was that you are assessed on your report, not necessarily on how well what you do works.
If you can try and target your research to something that will allow a good write up, then you're on to a winner. For example, someone did an email client that attempts to learn what you do with emails. The thing that made the report good was that he was able to test it on different people and collect data and evaluate it.
I've been using Home Highway for about a year now and it all works fine. BT Internet gives me a flat-fee connection from 6pm-midnight weekdays and 00:00 Saturday to 23:59 Sunday (although often they screw up -- I was connect all day yesterday).
RedHotAnt (www.redhotant.com) is a UK based ISP who give you toll-free access at all time, and they also give setup instructions for Amiga, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD (I think). Service is a little poor, and lots of guilt pressure is applied to try and make you disconnect, but otherwise I've been impressed.
It is with great pleasure now BT cannot charge me for any phone calls. Calls on my voice line are routed through CallNet. (CallNet is supposibly another toll-free ISP, but I've so far had 2 hours of connectivity before I gave up on them.) The data line is always dialed to toll-free numbers.
Firstly there is the issue of Red Hat's mistake in leaving a potential security hole in something that goes out to users. Ok, so it may well be the users fault if they install piranah by accident or install it on purpose and don't change the password, but a good distro should protect users from themselves.
Secondly, there is the way that the MSNBC article is worded. Basically seems to be saying, "forget about the IIS problem, look, look, Red Hat has it too! See! Red Hat has a huge, I mean really really really huge, big security hole!! And they don't care! They're downplaying it!"
That was what the big bold bit before the rest of the story said. Of course, the actual story with real facts in it makes a little more sense.
I just had a quick look at their "graphical wizard".
Now, my experience of writing drivers extends to an RTC driver in NT, a very quick look at the code for an Artec AS6E linux driver and attempts to get the S3 driver in GGI to work. Not really very much.
This Wizard seems to do the equivelant of cat/proc/pci and a bit of simple code that would come straight out of the hardware spec. How much did it cost again? I want to give them my money;-)
Re:seems like it's missing a few things
on
Jet3d Game Engine
·
· Score: 1
I have to disagree. When I was working on my first OpenGL game, I was very tempted to try NURBS for modelling cars and maybe larger objects.
I thought that as well, but there's the "transfer memory and personality in this person" bit. Basically, what they're saying is that they're looking for technology more than just producing a genetic identical, but a real 'clone' in the Multiplicity sense of the work.
However, I think the whole thing is either a hoax or a scam.
I'd recommend the Enders Game series:Enders Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind -- I haven't read the new 'parallquel' yet.
Unlike Asimov, Card can really write about people. Asimov is very good at producing scientifically believable scenarios, whereas Card deals with philosophical issues.
(Warning though, I started various people in my house on the series and we've started having clashes as people wait for the next book to be available)
Slashdot Mirror
Are they going to release hardware specs at the register level? Will I be able to write code `straight to the metal' (as MS seem to be keen on calling it.)
If not then all XBox games are going to look very similar....
PS2 is *different* to develop for. Not difficult.
The joy is that games are going to get better as the developers get time to try all the different ways of doing things with it.
A lot of the developers I've heard complaining about PS2 development are complaining that they have to have some Linux skills to develop on it.
If only it were that simple. Due to the very nature of OpenGL (open standard etc) it is moving much slower than hardware is. DirectX on the other hand gets an almost complete rewrite every year and only has to support one platform. For this reason GL won't be able to quickly take advantage of new card features (vertex/pixel shaders etc). Games publishers require DirectX support -- OpenGL is an optional extra that is mostly put in the schedule because the programmers would like to do an OpenGL version.
However, the DirectX people do seem to be interested in getting the best graphics API possible. When the time comes that it is necessary to support other OSs in order to make DirectX the best then it will probably happen. Look forward to huge licensing fees though. Unfortunately, Linux is not an OS that you're average gamer will have installed so publishers aren't pushing for Linux support. If that ever happens then developers will either move to a cross-platform API or start writing multiple versions of their renderers for different platforms. Which do you think is more likely?
> 1) It's 'good' software. By this I mean most
> people (Including myself) think that the
> software, while looking like it works - does
> exactly what you think it's doing. Oh, some
> other programmer has checked it I'm sure.
> Unfortunately I don't think that's the case
> anymore, after releasing a few things myself -
> and receiving one piece of feedback for about
> 1000 downloads.
I think it is fair to assume that any packages that are part of a distribution have been checked for security issues before being made a part of that distribution. The moment someone starts to sell you the software, they have also taken the responsability of providing some level of QA on it.
It is *inexcusable* that the bugs mentioned in the article, if they were so easy to be found, made their way into Red Hat. The implication is that noone at Red Hat even performed a cursorary check on the code.
What assurance can Red Hat give that the OSS product they've shipped on their CD doesn't have some trojan functionality hidden inside it? The job of the distributed should be to look for these things.
I know that Debian have a QA project going, and quite strict rules about how a package can get into the distribution -- did they miss the Mailman bugs as well?
Finally! The site is *much* improved!
I hate to say it, but I was always put off Gnome by the website!
This looks like an interesting project. I'm a little disturbed that an OS is being judged by so many on the basis of a few screenshots, or whether or not it supports anti-aliasing of truetype fonts.
As far as I'm aware, even in OS's such as Windows, the GUI is layered on top of lower level services. Something that WINE shows is that you can take a tightly bonded GUI and run it ontop of another OS.
So, when I get the chance to download and install AtheOS I'll be looking at the relationship between the GUI and the rest of the OS.
What does the kernel provide that makes the GUI better?
Can this be fed back into [insert OS of your choice]?
Surely one of the features that Linux has is that it has support for lots of hardware. Can this be fed into AtheOS?
My thinking for the last few weeks has been that UN*X isn't necessarily the be-all and end-all of OS design -- especially if you're aiming for a desktop OS. The very features that make UN*X great for servers can provide the problems that make it unsuitable for a desktop OS.
Since I consider myself a user, I have to ask what features I'm actually directly using of the OS and what have been abstracted away for me. Once everything is configured, I only use the shell and associated utilities for messing around with files and netscape, xemacs, java, gcc, licq, mesa etc for getting my `work' done. `work' == scratching my itches.
Beyond that, I don't care what OS I'm running. If I had a similar environment under W2K (with a decent WM) then I'd probably be just as happy, although a bit poorer and some of my value systems would have to be chucked out the window.
In short, I have to agree with the person who said that having many OS's available is a good thing, if only to provide research into different design methodoligies.
I believe some licenses provide for this sort of thing. Isn't this what the Sun Community License does?
In some cases the code might represent something that it doesn't make sense to share. If you're algorithm is what gives you your competitive edge then you don't want your competitors to see it. I'm having trouble thinking of examples -- maybe a novel voice recognition system.
In other cases, especially when the value of your product isn't necessarily technological advances (eg core Windows) but just the fact that all the existing ideas have been put together then freeing up the source has to make sense.
Oh, I agree. I was thinking along more large-scale ideas. Take gcc -- if you end up with 20 different contractors making changes, with some finding their way in and others not. Then put independencies between the changes and you end up with a mess.
The successful software does tend to have a centralized administration, so the masses can go to one place to download it. Code forks are fine, but they have to be maintained. If you ended up with 20 different emacsen, incompatible with each other, then there would be problems. I suppose what I meant was possibly splintering rather than forking.
Does anyone know if something like this has happened?
> Possessing the source code puts the consumer
> in the position of power.
Releasing the source code extends your potential development team greatly.
The difference is that Ford don't provide blueprints for the car. That's pretty much what giving the source away would do.
I operate in three modes -- free-beer software consumer, commercial developer and open-source developer.
As a free-beer software consumer, I look for binaries of packages I want to use. I can't be hassled with compiling them myself -- give me an rpm or deb and I'm happy.
As an open-source developer (a grand title to give myself -- I've released a few GPL'd things, including the original kpackage) I decide to give my software away for free -- mainly because I'm interested in fame! However, because I know that my work will best benefit from contributions from others, I release the whole thing under the GPL. Others can contribute, or examine my implementation and decide that it's crap (Python/Qt). This also means that if I stop maintaining my work then it can be taken over, as Toivo Pedaste has done with kpackage. However, *this is my choice* and I accept that others may decide otherwise. I may try and convince them, but the arguments will not be ideoligical.
As a commerical developer, I am being employed by someone to develop a product. It is not up to me to decide the licensing terms. If appropriate, then I can attempt to convince them that going open-source would be a good idea. In many cases it wouldn't. Open sourcing something like a arcady driving game just doesn't make sense. It wouldn't bring in any benefit for the driving game. However, a game engine might benefit from many eyes.
BTW: If you're reading Toivo, then thanks for keeping my credit on there! It is really appreciated.
I like this idea. I'm not sure if it would result in an improvement to the package for everyone. If you've got your original authors being 'jerky' then they may decide not to allow changes made by their competitors to be merged into the main source tree. The result would either be code forks or innumerable patches.
Note that this is based on the original authors being 'jerky' -- but that would depend on your point of view.
From Station Terminus's News Page:
System Spec for Linux includes a 3d accelerator with Glide drivers. The Mac spec says OpenGL support, while Windows is Glide or Direct3D. How come no OpenGL for Linux?
Maybe I'm missing it, but there doesn't seem to be a demo available for download.
I don't know many people who are prepared to buy a game without having played a demo first -- has anyone heard what VVs' position is on the demo front?
I've just today finished the last of my 3rd year project at Sussex Uni.
I'm not sure how you'll be assessed, but the thing I found most important was that you are assessed on your report, not necessarily on how well what you do works.
If you can try and target your research to something that will allow a good write up, then you're on to a winner. For example, someone did an email client that attempts to learn what you do with emails. The thing that made the report good was that he was able to test it on different people and collect data and evaluate it.
12 fits, not parts.
I've been using Home Highway for about a year now and it all works fine. BT Internet gives me a flat-fee connection from 6pm-midnight weekdays and 00:00 Saturday to 23:59 Sunday (although often they screw up -- I was connect all day yesterday).
RedHotAnt (www.redhotant.com) is a UK based ISP who give you toll-free access at all time, and they also give setup instructions for Amiga, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD (I think). Service is a little poor, and lots of guilt pressure is applied to try and make you disconnect, but otherwise I've been impressed.
It is with great pleasure now BT cannot charge me for any phone calls. Calls on my voice line are routed through CallNet. (CallNet is supposibly another toll-free ISP, but I've so far had 2 hours of connectivity before I gave up on them.) The data line is always dialed to toll-free numbers.
Firstly there is the issue of Red Hat's mistake in leaving a potential security hole in something that goes out to users. Ok, so it may well be the users fault if they install piranah by accident or install it on purpose and don't change the password, but a good distro should protect users from themselves.
Secondly, there is the way that the MSNBC article is worded. Basically seems to be saying, "forget about the IIS problem, look, look, Red Hat has it too! See! Red Hat has a huge, I mean really really really huge, big security hole!! And they don't care! They're downplaying it!"
That was what the big bold bit before the rest of the story said. Of course, the actual story with real facts in it makes a little more sense.
I have to second that. I've been looking at Enhydra, and am very impressed with what I've seem.
What Lindus forgot to mention was the Enhydra is open source!
I just had a quick look at their "graphical wizard".
/proc/pci and a bit of simple code that would come straight out of the hardware spec. How much did it cost again? I want to give them my money ;-)
Now, my experience of writing drivers extends to an RTC driver in NT, a very quick look at the code for an Artec AS6E linux driver and attempts to get the S3 driver in GGI to work. Not really very much.
This Wizard seems to do the equivelant of cat
I have to disagree. When I was working on my first OpenGL game, I was very tempted to try NURBS for modelling cars and maybe larger objects.
:-(
Their web site seems to be down
Proof that websites using IIS don't, and have, never suffered from DoS problems can be found Here
This site is exactly what it seems (it is linked off of the Realien site)
Re the 'misguided quote'.
I thought that as well, but there's the "transfer memory and personality in this person" bit. Basically, what they're saying is that they're looking for technology more than just producing a genetic identical, but a real 'clone' in the Multiplicity sense of the work.
However, I think the whole thing is either a hoax or a scam.
Well I loved the series when I was 13.
Oh. But then again, I am British....
I would really recommend getting the radio series.
I'd recommend the Enders Game series :Enders Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind -- I haven't read the new 'parallquel' yet.
Unlike Asimov, Card can really write about people. Asimov is very good at producing scientifically believable scenarios, whereas Card deals with philosophical issues.
(Warning though, I started various people in my house on the series and we've started having clashes as people wait for the next book to be available)