I think it's already been decided, except for the timing. What do you think would happen to Apple's stock price (hinges on profitability) if they ported their crown jewels to x86? They'd get HAMMERED, and then they'd be suck supporting the tired poor hardware that's so common in x86 land.
There IS a version of Mac OS X for Intel - I've seen it run and I wasted a whole week trying unsuccessfully to get it to run on spare work PC's (prior job).
I think once the hardware sales took off they didn't need OS X Server/x86... this was "plan B".
PowerPC has it all over x86 for elegance and engineering but not price. They'd be completely stupid if they did not have a migration path laid out, but first they have to win developer trust and prove they can move us onto a UNIX base and do it much more quickly than moving us off Motorola 68000's took. Once their customer base is secured they can think about opening the hardware up to competition again.
The difference between offering OS X on x86 and BeOS's move to Intel, is Apple *actually* has a chance to pull it off, especially in light of Microsoft's troubles (post-Y2k, DOJ). Apple gets to tap into the "alternative" development, since they're really just another UNIX, meanwhile Microsoft further isolates itself on the crappy NT kernel (yeah, can't wait for "Consumer NT";-)
> The poll conducted by the Business Software Alliance and the Software & Information Industry Association showed...
Anyone remember what the Mindcraft benchmarks funded by Microsoft showed? What's the fine print and scientific data on this survey? Did they conduct multiple polls until they got the result they wanted? When a survey is funded and trumpeted by someone with an agenda, watch out!
The BSA has many members, but is known as being a lapdog for Microsoft and their privacy-invading tactics. They also act as Microsoft Sales. When you get caught pirating ANY software by the BSA, say Novell Netware... they will offer to "settle" if you purchase licenses of Windows NT. I tried linking the article here, but it looks like there was a web redesign at Boycott Microsoft (http://www.vcnet.com/bms/)
"Research" like this is designed to sway clueless politicians into signing new intellectual property laws, almost always at the expense of your rights and privacy. If the phone company were tapping your phone and selling the records, the politicians would understand this as a privacy invasion... BUT if Microsoft is embedding personal data in Office documents without your consent, they don't get it.
Well, I tried installing Red Hat 5.0, then 5.2, both unsuccessfully on an old 486/100. I never did get that modem working, even though it was a US Robotics internal (NOT a "winmodem", at least according to docs).
When I put SuSE 5.3 on instead, KDE set up the modem so it would at least dial. It always hung up at connection though, even when I manually connected with minicom and my settings looked right. Oh well. Windows does not give much info if something fails, but every OEM out there contributes to the Microsoft by testing their stuff. In Linux land, all that work falls on the developers (who are already volunteering to begin with), the users, and the distro people.
There's just a certain threshhold in popularity we have to pass through before things get easier to install. Another issue is the lack of open sourced installers... (nearly?) every distro has its own installer, and how many system config tools?
Where it exists, we have better quality than Microsoft. There's just a few areas we're not treading yet. Microsoft is taking a harder and harder line against opening up despite their "rumors". They're even killing the Command Line in Windows NT 2K. They are really, really screwed when the big shift occurs. It kind of worries me they're buying all the bandwidth now... another attempt at holding a brick over our heads while refusing to play on a level field. Grrr....
(At least Bill is smart enough to jettison his Microsoft stock. )
It's not available for Linux yet, and there's nothing on Side's product page even though the press release was carried on Linuxtoday like 2 months ago.
The software I test, SynaFlex, would be absolutely KILLER on Linux, but unfortunately (*personal* opinion) we're NT only. A year ago we were on SGI, someething made easy because the UI is all Java, using Alligator for the Java to OpenGL glue. We let you capture D1 video, turn the footage into 3D (depth WITHOUT layers!) and composite 3D. Wicked cool technology..
I suppose it doesn't matter now since my old company was left to rot then disbanded by Rupert..
But when I worked QA for News Internet, the web hosting arm of News Corp, we were analyzing the web logs of FoxNews.com as part of a test. We found that every 30 minutes every page on the site was pulled down by none other than whitehouse.com.
Our guess is they were running a real-time analysis of the stories with some kind of bot. Nothing super-secret or anything, but still scary that the media is "monitored" in such a way.
Reminds me of the urban tale how the US' "No Such Agency" could use computer speech recognition to scan for "keywords" on pay telephones.
It isn't fair to label, sure, and I am using broad generalizations about the community here (shields up!) but I would guess these games are "more portable to Linux" for the following reasons:
1)most of us grew up on early "classics", running on Amiga's, Atari's, Mac or god forbit, a CGA-equipped IBM PC [erk!].
2)Since we started out on those "alternative" platforms, we were also the most likely group to switch to Linux... and here we are...
3)As a group it could be argued we prefer strategy games over other types.. these are the only games we had (like freeciv, nettrek etc.) when we switched to Linux/Unix. It could also be argued a higher percentage of us at one time played D&D/AD&D even though most of the population never has.
5) A large percentage of us also have played MAME or MESS-based games. MAME made it a lot easier to mostly convert my PC to Linux, so I could do something useful with the system.:)
When I finally switched from Atari ST to a PC clone, the only game worth playing on it was Civ... at least until DOOM came along!
If these games are successful, I would like to see them include "original" versions, like Railroad I (cheezy CGA graphics and all). Sure, MESS or DOSemu might run the original if you can locate an old pirated copy, but I'd rather buy it as part of a "remake" which includes the original.
Commercial games have their own appeal, but does anyone besides me doubt a commercial company has the creativity and resources to match a driven open-source movement like the MAME project, which now has OpenGL support and soon "netplay"? Williams and Activision simply rereleased their old "classics" without [optional] enhancements.:-/
I already own Myth II on a hybrid Mac/PC disk, running it on both computers. Unless there's some kind of trade-up I won't buy the Linux version..
I don't think the other guy was being unappreciative of Slashdot, and he's well within his rights to constructively criticize Slashdot (assuming Rob welcomes such comments, and I would guess he does). Remember Slashdot is a commercial website now... I'm sure those banner ads add up. If they're smart at/. they're also using the polls to generate refined profiles of this community.
A kernel filter would be nice, and it would also have been nice for this story to at least summerize what's new. There's no information here other than "new kernel". I guess I'll find out when I run buildkernel to tweak for the AMD K-6 450 I picked up at the computer show today..:-D
I've been waiting for a DVD application that makes me really go out and buy one. I've been holding off on buying any movies on tape for 18 months in anticipation of going digital.
The problem with the current line of DVD players is they don't add anything to distinguish one from the other - just an extra output or something trivial like that. I want something like a reasonably priced set-top box but also runs software. I'd been hoping Apple would do something like this - a computer like the iMac but without a monitor... just plug it into the TV like an old Atari computer. Looks like Nintendo will get my dollar first..
What I really would like tho is an open, programmable system - a semi-real computer but plays movies and music with the same push-button real-world interface everybody knows. I'm sure one could get the Nintendo SDK - but really that's not open enough for me.To illustrate why, I ALMOST bought a Playstation when the PSXAmp guys announced they were developing an MP3 player for the Playstation. Sure, I have MP3 on my Mac and Linux, but a "real world" interface is something most hardware manufacturers have lost sight of. I don't consider dropping a DVD decoder in a Gateway PC with a whirring fan to be "convergence" -- the implimentation is as important as the technology.
Has RMS ever indicated that he would have a problem taking money from an institution he has some fundamental problems with?
That's a great sound bite, but isn't there a difference between a bribe and an award? If he wins a public award and he did not compromise his strong beliefs, more power to him. "Taking money" can sometime imply under the table, bribery, etc.
Yeah yeah BSD has had this for a while, but the exciting part is the big picture. The various UNIXen will likely stay "fragmented", but if other vendors rally around a common binary that's a big step.
Sure, you probably have to statically link all yer friggin libraries (I'm reacting to the headline NOT the announcement text), maybe not. I'm sure there will be drawbacks, but it's one less thing for the NT crowd to point at.
"I may not understand what I'm installing, but that's not my job. I just need to click Next, Next, Finish here so I can walk to the next system and repeat the process" - anonymous NT admin
I believe Conix make a UNIX that runs on top of MacOS. It's a virtual machine so it runs more slowly, but within that environment everything is UNIX.
I don't expect Darwin to win Open Source converts from the Linux community, and probably neither does Apple. But this does highlight how easy it is to develop for their new OS, how "open" (documented) it is, and shines a powerful spotlight on the Black Box known as Windows NT. Anyone price what a 50-user license of Microsoft Windows NT goes for?? I don't know, but $400 for OS X is a bargain even before considering OS X's performance numbers.
You can port this to anything you like, IF you dare. Going up the software chain, OS X Server is specifically written with portability in mind, even if in practice it's only available right now for PowerPC G3 (I've seen Rhapsody DR2 for Intel but never got the damn thing to install).
I seriously doubt Darwin uses ext2.
Apple has just released some kind of basic GUI for the thing (NOT the MacOS window manager), and I believe you can download compiled binaries now, and have a completely running system that's based on BSD. Their webpage is very short on information, but it looks a bit more readable this week.
The whole thing doesn't interest me too much.. I'm waiting for OS X Server; hopefully in a few weeks that's what I'll be running. I like OS 8.6 but I'd like X if nothing than for the standard suite of UNIX tools on a Mac.
There's a GNU environment available for Windows called CYGWIN... does anyone know if something like this exists for the MacOS, besides the Conix unix-based virtual machine?
Please don't assume the author's fault ("Editor')
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I once sent a mini-flame to an author online, because his story on Linux "infighting" revolved arount Gnome, KDE and problems that still exist even in the new Qt license. The author didn't even MENTION the Harmony Project...
He pleasantly replied he did include Harmony in the first revision, but his editor got crosseyed aver all the acronyms and sent it back with a note to make it more simple (not necessarily "shorter"). So Harmony ended up on the cutting-room floor.
Good articles can be short, clear and quick to the point. But editors are not going to approve something they don't understand. It's the classic case of manager's being where they are without fully knowing how to do their underling's job duties... we see this everywhere. There just isn't enough technical education at the lower grades, som unless you are taking computer degrees or electives a lot of people finish school never hearing of UNIX.
And neither will the Orb be. They're not trying to be a standard - if they were, Iomega wouldn't sue anyone who clones their floppies.
Yes, you can't make Zip disks without permission from Iomega. Part of the agreement details you have to agree to Iomega's price fixing. That is one reason Zip disks still cost about $10 each [*cough* *sputter*].
Give me CD-RW (which I have) and DVD-RAM (which I want). They may not be "THE" standrd, but they ARE standards, so anyone can follow them, so I can happily roll around in 50 cent blank CD's. I need another CD rack now!
I know what you reall meant about standards.. I'm just trying to point out the difference between a standard and a monopoly -- just like Windows is the "standard" while UNIX is "a" standard.
If you have a choice, investigate alternatives to Zip/Orb... portable CD-RW on USB (and soon FireWire) are excellent uses of the technology (as opposed to CD-RW drives linked via a Centronics printer port... bleck!:)
I tried this location last because I preferred a.gz ISO, but all the other links were too slow or WORSE were international - it's bad enough we have non-local bandwidth polluters like Yahoo Boston, the server being located god knows where, without me dragging 500 megs kicking and screaming through some small countries connection to the backbone..
Of course, I could do an FTP install and really conserve bandwidth, but I don't have a T1 at home and I do at work..:)
Thank you-wasRe: ISO mirror list from Ars Technica
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'tanks..
I was downloading RH6 over the company T1, but the dang server at the local Boston mirror rpmfind.net threw a recursive set of links to me. My NT system started acting wierd when it created a PATH\var\var\var\var\var\var\var\var\var\var\var\v ar\... on me.
Guess what happened when I told NT to delete the tree? "Cannot delete directory Gnome - directory too deep". What a crappy OS.... or maybe it's smart enough to know what I was doing??:-D
(I was able to delete the tree in multiple passes, by going to the bottom, working up).
To the holders of intellectual property, like music, "digital" means "perfect time to take away freedom". It's not that digital to digital copies are potentially lossless that cares them - that is a red herring. You could always make acceptable recordings on tape (note: I think tape sucks, but my point is if people PAY for tape then tape is "acceptable").
The record companies are more sly than we think, and instead LOOK FORWARD to digital, because here they CAN control what we can do, through software. Think about it.
Yes, you'll allways be able to run the analog outputs of your sound card to something like a sound card input or tape device, but how many people are going to be that resourceful? To put the question differently, how many people use the built-in editing capability supplied with 2 VCR's, and how many people have NEVER recorded a TV show?
Don't forget either... we're still using analog sound boards. Sometime down the road we'll be switching over to something "all-digital" - given that chance what is the likelyhood they'll try to introduce some copy protection at ALL levels of the listening experience?
X11Amp is OK.. same with rippers and encoders for Linux. They do the job, but there isn't ANYTHING for Linux that gives us an "all in one" GUI with a natural interface. Think about it.
I bet this product will sell like hotcakes, even though I think the Xing encoder, while fast, sounds like crap. I much prefer using Markus Barth's CD-Copy for Windows, along with BLADEENC.dll and 160 or 192k data rates.
It would be nice to have something "like" this for Linux, but BETTER. Personally, I don't like their product and more importantly I don't trust ANYONE who talks FUD like "MP3 dying". Puh-leeze.
Like the MAME project, this is an ideal open source application from the FUN perspective... should be easy to attract contributions, no? I was amazed at how quickly freecddb was put together after the CDDB folks took our submissions and made them their "property".
There's just so much more that could be done than what Real is doing:
* MULTIPLE LEVELS "User-defined repeat" so you hear a track once in a while at a frequency you have some control over. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is cool to have... but you're still bound to hear it far too often.
* SONG SCHEDULING Alarms, something for Friday @ 5PM, etc.
* LIST PRE-EMPTING Care to interrupt the current playlist with another song, or playlist, then see it return to the first playlist?
* REMOTE PLAYBACK Instead of playing locally, tell another system to start playing. Lots of people have second computers that run on minimal horsepower... host the GUI on one computer while sending only "play this" commands to that old 486/100 running Linux or DOS. X is piggish enough on my P120 thank you...
Something like this could really catch on. It would be a shame to see MP3 eclipsed by a PRODUCT, which then controls the future of things.:-/
I'm not a fan of regulation, but I think even less of POOR regulation.
The reality is we have a few cable companies who DO NOT COMPETE with each other. Instead, they sit tight on their asses and continually charge just a little more than the national average in an always upward cycle.
Why aren't these titans competing with each other? Because we don't raise awareness locally, that Town/City Hall is sometimes BY CHOICE granting "exclusivity" to the local franchise, usually over expensive dinner paid for by same company. Why risk a good thing by trying to "invade" someone else's turf.
I could care less if we had just 3 or 4 cable companies, as long as they were coast to coast and I could choose between them all, like I do with long distance carriers. How can ANYONE - besides the cable companies - actually LIKE the way things are today? If you hate all forms or regulation, there's enough red tape to irrate you... BUT, if you favor regulation to protect the consumer, what we have is not enough since it's obvious the prices of cable rise FASTER than inflation or in other words they are sticking it to us.
I'd just like to see the whole thing go away. We HAVE the Internet - give me an international video file server that streams TV quality video faster than I can download it... and the American-style cable companies can go to hell. Why can't someone just step in and serve the pent-up demand.. or is Hollywood going to say it's none of their business until we're all downloading their latest products, free, on Internet Relay Chat??
Feh... can anyone think of an industry where everyone to a greater extend hates all available choices? I'm glad it's Friday.
An open system? Hahahaha! The Powers That Be are already pissed about MP3. Are we going to see FireWire ports on any of these things? Not a CHANCE.
How many years did it take that US company to get a dual-VHS deck on the market. The same Sony that owns makes hardware also makes content, and they and others kept the company in court for YEARS with frivalous lawsuits.
We'll see devices like this, but only as they allow GREATER copy protection. Hollywood (and their overseas owners...) *still* view home taping as piracy - BUT - they are helpless to stop it and the law does not favor them.
Don't think they won't try again with digital... it's their "IP" and they'll wring every dollar they can out of it. This is another reason we need to fight for openness on the computer... because with an open system we an defeat greedy corporations. Rest assured, with closed systems the battle will be lost, unless you want to be driven underground with the real pirates just to tape TV.:-
Because Windows is increasingly more closed, there's just no way Microsoft can make it all things to all people. Not just that, but if your "thing" doesn't blip on their radar map (say, you're affected by MIDI bugs introduced in Win95) your up The Creek as they say.
What you want to do is trade in some control of the system for automation, and that's perfectly legitimate. Don't let this keep you away from following Linux, and don't let anyone tell you you're wrong and Linux is just not for you.
The fact that Linux does not do this well NOW does not mean it will never do it... there just needs to be a critical mass of people who absolutely require an easier interface. I know UNIX fairly well (not a guru), but administering Linux is so much different than running an X display to a Solaris box down the hall, and I get stuck trying to filter information from a myriad of README files, info pages, abandoned man pages and so on. Linux documentation is generally not very professional (which is fair, since most of it is volunteer based).
I like Gnome and AfterStep more, but perhaps KDE is what you need?
If World Domination(tm) is a goal then more user friendly pieces will develop and make it into the Linux distributions.
Is there a difference? You bet! Is it noticable? Depends... can you tell the difference between MP3 128/44 (a crappy resolution BTW) and and a REAL CD? If your equipment is 18 years old, probably NOT! lol..:-D
Not to mention CD's are only 16-bit audio, and higher frequencies are sometimes noticably "jaggy" or stairstepped. Can you see the difference between a.tiff image and a.jpeg? The average person is not going to notice this, just like the average person until recently bought tapes (the WORST!).
Most of the improvement people attribute to CD's comes from the fact that they used cassettes or maybe 8-track. Another contribution came from better mastering processes and less generation loss during editing. I've heard vynal on GOOD equipment and nothing else comes close.
Mind you, *I* won't pay $100 to $1,000 for a record needle, but some people do. I'm busy enough re-encoding all my CD's to MP3 for a home media intranet.
I believe commercial software companies deserve the right to exist; please do not draw a different conclusion (or I won't have a job!:)
Software companies are finding it is increasingly difficult to persuade customers to upgrade. It's mind-boggling how many corporate computers still run Windows 3.1 and skipped Windows 95 altogether. Even with Microsoft pressure in the form of total OS abandonment, these companies will continue to maintain their 16-bit essentially data entry applications. This has Microsoft concerned enough to investigate yearly-licensing fees on future versions of their software (the main obstacle is verirification) to generate a much more predictable stream of cash.
Banner-ad software, like DIVX, is an attempt to generate a continious revenue stream. There may be some short-term success from this but in the long run the sometimes touchy 'community' we belong to will produce a few disgruntled people to "crack" the software and remove the ads, especially if the system compromises your privacy like the ill-fated Microsoft WebTV hardware. With the most-excellent Sherlock tool in MacOS System 8.5, when you select a page, it displays the banner ad for whatever was on that page (appease the portal folks..). Within days some folks had a banner stripper for the search utility. Such filtering software has existed for Linux for a long time, so you can block annoying ads if you choose (I do not do this).
Because computing is increasingly becoming Open, not only will it will be easier to bypass or block ads, but we'll have less of a reason to use it in the first place: open source software is measurably exceeding commercial quality in places where it exists. There are serious rough spots, like integrated and hyperlinked helpfiles, but we've gotten so good because we stick to the problem needing a solution and not masking things over with animated paperclips and forcing browsers down each other's throats.
Television OTOH is not a very democratic medium. I was at NAB last week, and things like FireWire prosumer videocameras and Final Cut Pro are going to do the same things that the laser printer and PageMaker or Calimus did for desktop publishing. We won't however see a lot of feature-length streaming movies on the web because bandwidth is too expensive, and television is too entrenched to be replaced by streaming net TV. That kind of power to the Disney's (ABC) and the Westinghouses (CBS? forget) means they can go beyond simply embedding their logo's in the right hand corner of what you watch. We're going to see things like banner ads on the screen perhaps instead of commercial breaks that you depend on to take a leak. If they can get away with it, optical sensors will return information such as when you got up and left the room (example: Microsoft "emotion" or facereading technology). I know many people who refuse to put political bumperstickers on their vehicles (myself included) because it makes them unwary... would you want to tell a server you turned off the State Of The Union speech?
I got a little off track here, but with closed technology we will get the short end of the stick. Software like this scares me because they will not simply serve ads. We've seen Microsoft get away with taking advantage of "Win 98 registration bugs" to harvest names, while at the same time claiming they weren't aware of the bugs (huh??). Just imagine if all this technology was in use 50 years ago during the "Red Scare", would the technology have been abused? You bet.
Going forward, do you really want your computer, or the media (or some inevitable hybrid of the two) monitoring you?
1: "58 of 122" postings? Says a lot you guys...
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Oops!:) Somehow my filtering got reset to 1. Normally I keep it at 0 to not miss AC posts.
There was a lot of useless platform bashing however.:-/
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's already been decided, except for the timing. What do you think would happen to Apple's stock price (hinges on profitability) if they ported their crown jewels to x86? They'd get HAMMERED, and then they'd be suck supporting the tired poor hardware that's so common in x86 land.
;-)
There IS a version of Mac OS X for Intel - I've seen it run and I wasted a whole week trying unsuccessfully to get it to run on spare work PC's (prior job).
I think once the hardware sales took off they didn't need OS X Server/x86... this was "plan B".
PowerPC has it all over x86 for elegance and engineering but not price. They'd be completely stupid if they did not have a migration path laid out, but first they have to win developer trust and prove they can move us onto a UNIX base and do it much more quickly than moving us off Motorola 68000's took. Once their customer base is secured they can think about opening the hardware up to competition again.
The difference between offering OS X on x86 and BeOS's move to Intel, is Apple *actually* has a chance to pull it off, especially in light of Microsoft's troubles (post-Y2k, DOJ). Apple gets to tap into the "alternative" development, since they're really just another UNIX, meanwhile Microsoft further isolates itself on the crappy NT kernel (yeah, can't wait for "Consumer NT"
> The poll conducted by the Business Software Alliance and the Software & Information Industry Association showed...
Anyone remember what the Mindcraft benchmarks funded by Microsoft showed? What's the fine print and scientific data on this survey? Did they conduct multiple polls until they got the result they wanted? When a survey is funded and trumpeted by someone with an agenda, watch out!
The BSA has many members, but is known as being a lapdog for Microsoft and their privacy-invading tactics. They also act as Microsoft Sales. When you get caught pirating ANY software by the BSA, say Novell Netware... they will offer to "settle" if you purchase licenses of Windows NT. I tried linking the article here, but it looks like there was a web redesign at Boycott Microsoft (http://www.vcnet.com/bms/)
"Research" like this is designed to sway clueless politicians into signing new intellectual property laws, almost always at the expense of your rights and privacy. If the phone company were tapping your phone and selling the records, the politicians would understand this as a privacy invasion... BUT if Microsoft is embedding personal data in Office documents without your consent, they don't get it.
Well, I tried installing Red Hat 5.0, then 5.2, both unsuccessfully on an old 486/100. I never did get that modem working, even though it was a US Robotics internal (NOT a "winmodem", at least according to docs).
When I put SuSE 5.3 on instead, KDE set up the modem so it would at least dial. It always hung up at connection though, even when I manually connected with minicom and my settings looked right. Oh well. Windows does not give much info if something fails, but every OEM out there contributes to the Microsoft by testing their stuff. In Linux land, all that work falls on the developers (who are already volunteering to begin with), the users, and the distro people.
There's just a certain threshhold in popularity we have to pass through before things get easier to install. Another issue is the lack of open sourced installers... (nearly?) every distro has its own installer, and how many system config tools?
Where it exists, we have better quality than Microsoft. There's just a few areas we're not treading yet. Microsoft is taking a harder and harder line against opening up despite their "rumors". They're even killing the Command Line in Windows NT 2K. They are really, really screwed when the big shift occurs. It kind of worries me they're buying all the bandwidth now... another attempt at holding a brick over our heads while refusing to play on a level field. Grrr....
(At least Bill is smart enough to jettison his Microsoft stock. )
It's not available for Linux yet, and there's nothing on Side's product page even though the press release was carried on Linuxtoday like 2 months ago.
The software I test, SynaFlex, would be absolutely KILLER on Linux, but unfortunately (*personal* opinion) we're NT only. A year ago we were on SGI, someething made easy because the UI is all Java, using Alligator for the Java to OpenGL glue. We let you capture D1 video, turn the footage into 3D (depth WITHOUT layers!) and composite 3D. Wicked cool technology..
I suppose it doesn't matter now since my old company was left to rot then disbanded by Rupert..
:-D
But when I worked QA for News Internet, the web hosting arm of News Corp, we were analyzing the web logs of FoxNews.com as part of a test. We found that every 30 minutes every page on the site was pulled down by none other than whitehouse.com.
Our guess is they were running a real-time analysis of the stories with some kind of bot. Nothing super-secret or anything, but still scary that the media is "monitored" in such a way.
Reminds me of the urban tale how the US' "No Such Agency" could use computer speech recognition to scan for "keywords" on pay telephones.
That WAS an urban legend, right??
It isn't fair to label, sure, and I am using broad generalizations about the community here (shields up!) but I would guess these games are "more portable to Linux" for the following reasons:
:)
:-/
1)most of us grew up on early "classics", running on Amiga's, Atari's, Mac or god forbit, a CGA-equipped IBM PC [erk!].
2)Since we started out on those "alternative" platforms, we were also the most likely group to switch to Linux... and here we are...
3)As a group it could be argued we prefer strategy games over other types.. these are the only games we had (like freeciv, nettrek etc.) when we switched to Linux/Unix. It could also be argued a higher percentage of us at one time played D&D/AD&D even though most of the population never has.
5) A large percentage of us also have played MAME or MESS-based games. MAME made it a lot easier to mostly convert my PC to Linux, so I could do something useful with the system.
When I finally switched from Atari ST to a PC clone, the only game worth playing on it was Civ... at least until DOOM came along!
If these games are successful, I would like to see them include "original" versions, like Railroad I (cheezy CGA graphics and all). Sure, MESS or DOSemu might run the original if you can locate an old pirated copy, but I'd rather buy it as part of a "remake" which includes the original.
Commercial games have their own appeal, but does anyone besides me doubt a commercial company has the creativity and resources to match a driven open-source movement like the MAME project, which now has OpenGL support and soon "netplay"? Williams and Activision simply rereleased their old "classics" without [optional] enhancements.
I already own Myth II on a hybrid Mac/PC disk, running it on both computers. Unless there's some kind of trade-up I won't buy the Linux version..
I don't think the other guy was being unappreciative of Slashdot, and he's well within his rights to constructively criticize Slashdot (assuming Rob welcomes such comments, and I would guess he does). Remember Slashdot is a commercial website now... I'm sure those banner ads add up. If they're smart at /. they're also using the polls to generate refined profiles of this community.
:-D
A kernel filter would be nice, and it would also have been nice for this story to at least summerize what's new. There's no information here other than "new kernel". I guess I'll find out when I run buildkernel to tweak for the AMD K-6 450 I picked up at the computer show today..
I've been waiting for a DVD application that makes me really go out and buy one. I've been holding off on buying any movies on tape for 18 months in anticipation of going digital.
The problem with the current line of DVD players is they don't add anything to distinguish one from the other - just an extra output or something trivial like that. I want something like a reasonably priced set-top box but also runs software. I'd been hoping Apple would do something like this - a computer like the iMac but without a monitor... just plug it into the TV like an old Atari computer. Looks like Nintendo will get my dollar first..
What I really would like tho is an open, programmable system - a semi-real computer but plays movies and music with the same push-button real-world interface everybody knows. I'm sure one could get the Nintendo SDK - but really that's not open enough for me.To illustrate why, I ALMOST bought a Playstation when the PSXAmp guys announced they were developing an MP3 player for the Playstation. Sure, I have MP3 on my Mac and Linux, but a "real world" interface is something most hardware manufacturers have lost sight of. I don't consider dropping a DVD decoder in a Gateway PC with a whirring fan to be "convergence" -- the implimentation is as important as the technology.
That's a great sound bite, but isn't there a difference between a bribe and an award? If he wins a public award and he did not compromise his strong beliefs, more power to him. "Taking money" can sometime imply under the table, bribery, etc.
I'd cash in a winning lottery ticket...
Yeah yeah BSD has had this for a while, but the exciting part is the big picture. The various UNIXen will likely stay "fragmented", but if other vendors rally around a common binary that's a big step.
Sure, you probably have to statically link all yer friggin libraries (I'm reacting to the headline NOT the announcement text), maybe not. I'm sure there will be drawbacks, but it's one less thing for the NT crowd to point at.
"I may not understand what I'm installing, but that's not my job. I just need to click Next, Next, Finish here so I can walk to the next system and repeat the process" - anonymous NT admin
I believe Conix make a UNIX that runs on top of MacOS. It's a virtual machine so it runs more slowly, but within that environment everything is UNIX.
I don't expect Darwin to win Open Source converts from the Linux community, and probably neither does Apple. But this does highlight how easy it is to develop for their new OS, how "open" (documented) it is, and shines a powerful spotlight on the Black Box known as Windows NT. Anyone price what a 50-user license of Microsoft Windows NT goes for?? I don't know, but $400 for OS X is a bargain even before considering OS X's performance numbers.
I haven't seen Darwin running.
You can port this to anything you like, IF you dare. Going up the software chain, OS X Server is specifically written with portability in mind, even if in practice it's only available right now for PowerPC G3 (I've seen Rhapsody DR2 for Intel but never got the damn thing to install).
I seriously doubt Darwin uses ext2.
Apple has just released some kind of basic GUI for the thing (NOT the MacOS window manager), and I believe you can download compiled binaries now, and have a completely running system that's based on BSD. Their webpage is very short on information, but it looks a bit more readable this week.
The whole thing doesn't interest me too much.. I'm waiting for OS X Server; hopefully in a few weeks that's what I'll be running. I like OS 8.6 but I'd like X if nothing than for the standard suite of UNIX tools on a Mac.
There's a GNU environment available for Windows called CYGWIN... does anyone know if something like this exists for the MacOS, besides the Conix unix-based virtual machine?
I once sent a mini-flame to an author online, because his story on Linux "infighting" revolved arount Gnome, KDE and problems that still exist even in the new Qt license. The author didn't even MENTION the Harmony Project...
He pleasantly replied he did include Harmony in the first revision, but his editor got crosseyed aver all the acronyms and sent it back with a note to make it more simple (not necessarily "shorter"). So Harmony ended up on the cutting-room floor.
Good articles can be short, clear and quick to the point. But editors are not going to approve something they don't understand. It's the classic case of manager's being where they are without fully knowing how to do their underling's job duties... we see this everywhere. There just isn't enough technical education at the lower grades, som unless you are taking computer degrees or electives a lot of people finish school never hearing of UNIX.
And neither will the Orb be. They're not trying to be a standard - if they were, Iomega wouldn't sue anyone who clones their floppies.
:)
Yes, you can't make Zip disks without permission from Iomega. Part of the agreement details you have to agree to Iomega's price fixing. That is one reason Zip disks still cost about $10 each [*cough* *sputter*].
Give me CD-RW (which I have) and DVD-RAM (which I want). They may not be "THE" standrd, but they ARE standards, so anyone can follow them, so I can happily roll around in 50 cent blank CD's. I need another CD rack now!
I know what you reall meant about standards.. I'm just trying to point out the difference between a standard and a monopoly -- just like Windows is the "standard" while UNIX is "a" standard.
If you have a choice, investigate alternatives to Zip/Orb... portable CD-RW on USB (and soon FireWire) are excellent uses of the technology (as opposed to CD-RW drives linked via a Centronics printer port... bleck!
I much prefer .ISO images. Earlier folks posted lots of .ISO links; here is one that is fast FOR ME (95k/sec).
t 60.iso
.gz ISO, but all the other links were too slow or WORSE were international - it's bad enough we have non-local bandwidth polluters like Yahoo Boston, the server being located god knows where, without me dragging 500 megs kicking and screaming through some small countries connection to the backbone..
:)
ftp://ftp.ens.utulsa.edu/pub/linux/redhat/RedHa
I tried this location last because I preferred a
Of course, I could do an FTP install and really conserve bandwidth, but I don't have a T1 at home and I do at work..
'tanks..
v ar\... on me.
:-D
I was downloading RH6 over the company T1, but the dang server at the local Boston mirror rpmfind.net threw a recursive set of links to me. My NT system started acting wierd when it created a PATH\var\var\var\var\var\var\var\var\var\var\var\
Guess what happened when I told NT to delete the tree? "Cannot delete directory Gnome - directory too deep". What a crappy OS.... or maybe it's smart enough to know what I was doing??
(I was able to delete the tree in multiple passes, by going to the bottom, working up).
To the holders of intellectual property, like music, "digital" means "perfect time to take away freedom". It's not that digital to digital copies are potentially lossless that cares them - that is a red herring. You could always make acceptable recordings on tape (note: I think tape sucks, but my point is if people PAY for tape then tape is "acceptable").
.dll and 160 or 192k data rates.
The record companies are more sly than we think, and instead LOOK FORWARD to digital, because here they CAN control what we can do, through software. Think about it.
Yes, you'll allways be able to run the analog outputs of your sound card to something like a sound card input or tape device, but how many people are going to be that resourceful? To put the question differently, how many people use the built-in editing capability supplied with 2 VCR's, and how many people have NEVER recorded a TV show?
Don't forget either... we're still using analog sound boards. Sometime down the road we'll be switching over to something "all-digital" - given that chance what is the likelyhood they'll try to introduce some copy protection at ALL levels of the listening experience?
X11Amp is OK.. same with rippers and encoders for Linux. They do the job, but there isn't ANYTHING for Linux that gives us an "all in one" GUI with a natural interface. Think about it.
I bet this product will sell like hotcakes, even though I think the Xing encoder, while fast, sounds like crap. I much prefer using Markus Barth's CD-Copy for Windows, along with BLADEENC
It would be nice to have something "like" this for Linux, but BETTER. Personally, I don't like their product and more importantly I don't trust ANYONE who talks FUD like "MP3 dying". Puh-leeze.
:-/
Like the MAME project, this is an ideal open source application from the FUN perspective... should be easy to attract contributions, no? I was amazed at how quickly freecddb was put together after the CDDB folks took our submissions and made them their "property".
There's just so much more that could be done than what Real is doing:
* MULTIPLE LEVELS
"User-defined repeat" so you hear a track once in a while at a frequency you have some control over. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is cool to have... but you're still bound to hear it far too often.
* SONG SCHEDULING
Alarms, something for Friday @ 5PM, etc.
* LIST PRE-EMPTING
Care to interrupt the current playlist with another song, or playlist, then see it return to the first playlist?
* REMOTE PLAYBACK
Instead of playing locally, tell another system to start playing. Lots of people have second computers that run on minimal horsepower... host the GUI on one computer while sending only "play this" commands to that old 486/100 running Linux or DOS. X is piggish enough on my P120 thank you...
Something like this could really catch on. It would be a shame to see MP3 eclipsed by a PRODUCT, which then controls the future of things.
I'm not a fan of regulation, but I think even less of POOR regulation.
The reality is we have a few cable companies who DO NOT COMPETE with each other. Instead, they sit tight on their asses and continually charge just a little more than the national average in an always upward cycle.
Why aren't these titans competing with each other? Because we don't raise awareness locally, that Town/City Hall is sometimes BY CHOICE granting "exclusivity" to the local franchise, usually over expensive dinner paid for by same company. Why risk a good thing by trying to "invade" someone else's turf.
I could care less if we had just 3 or 4 cable companies, as long as they were coast to coast and I could choose between them all, like I do with long distance carriers. How can ANYONE - besides the cable companies - actually LIKE the way things are today? If you hate all forms or regulation, there's enough red tape to irrate you... BUT, if you favor regulation to protect the consumer, what we have is not enough since it's obvious the prices of cable rise FASTER than inflation or in other words they are sticking it to us.
I'd just like to see the whole thing go away. We HAVE the Internet - give me an international video file server that streams TV quality video faster than I can download it... and the American-style cable companies can go to hell. Why can't someone just step in and serve the pent-up demand.. or is Hollywood going to say it's none of their business until we're all downloading their latest products, free, on Internet Relay Chat??
Feh... can anyone think of an industry where everyone to a greater extend hates all available choices? I'm glad it's Friday.
An open system? Hahahaha! The Powers That Be are already pissed about MP3. Are we going to see FireWire ports on any of these things? Not a CHANCE.
:-
How many years did it take that US company to get a dual-VHS deck on the market. The same Sony that owns makes hardware also makes content, and they and others kept the company in court for YEARS with frivalous lawsuits.
We'll see devices like this, but only as they allow GREATER copy protection. Hollywood (and their overseas owners...) *still* view home taping as piracy - BUT - they are helpless to stop it and the law does not favor them.
Don't think they won't try again with digital... it's their "IP" and they'll wring every dollar they can out of it. This is another reason we need to fight for openness on the computer... because with an open system we an defeat greedy corporations. Rest assured, with closed systems the battle will be lost, unless you want to be driven underground with the real pirates just to tape TV.
Because Windows is increasingly more closed, there's just no way Microsoft can make it all things to all people. Not just that, but if your "thing" doesn't blip on their radar map (say, you're affected by MIDI bugs introduced in Win95) your up The Creek as they say.
What you want to do is trade in some control of the system for automation, and that's perfectly legitimate. Don't let this keep you away from following Linux, and don't let anyone tell you you're wrong and Linux is just not for you.
The fact that Linux does not do this well NOW does not mean it will never do it... there just needs to be a critical mass of people who absolutely require an easier interface. I know UNIX fairly well (not a guru), but administering Linux is so much different than running an X display to a Solaris box down the hall, and I get stuck trying to filter information from a myriad of README files, info pages, abandoned man pages and so on. Linux documentation is generally not very professional (which is fair, since most of it is volunteer based).
I like Gnome and AfterStep more, but perhaps KDE is what you need?
If World Domination(tm) is a goal then more user friendly pieces will develop and make it into the Linux distributions.
Um, a little math, oh arrogant one:
:-D
.tiff image and a .jpeg? The average person is not going to notice this, just like the average person until recently bought tapes (the WORST!).
CD Frequency Range
FIXED RANGE 20 Hz - 20 KHz
LP Frequency Range
Roughly 10 Hz through 22 KHz
Is there a difference? You bet! Is it noticable? Depends... can you tell the difference between MP3 128/44 (a crappy resolution BTW) and and a REAL CD? If your equipment is 18 years old, probably NOT! lol..
Not to mention CD's are only 16-bit audio, and higher frequencies are sometimes noticably "jaggy" or stairstepped. Can you see the difference between a
Most of the improvement people attribute to CD's comes from the fact that they used cassettes or maybe 8-track. Another contribution came from better mastering processes and less generation loss during editing. I've heard vynal on GOOD equipment and nothing else comes close.
Mind you, *I* won't pay $100 to $1,000 for a record needle, but some people do. I'm busy enough re-encoding all my CD's to MP3 for a home media intranet.
An ad-infested web browser, so you don't have to pay for Netscape's. Hmmm... lol... :-D
I believe commercial software companies deserve the right to exist; please do not draw a different conclusion (or I won't have a job! :)
Software companies are finding it is increasingly difficult to persuade customers to upgrade. It's mind-boggling how many corporate computers still run Windows 3.1 and skipped Windows 95 altogether. Even with Microsoft pressure in the form of total OS abandonment, these companies will continue to maintain their 16-bit essentially data entry applications. This has Microsoft concerned enough to investigate yearly-licensing fees on future versions of their software (the main obstacle is verirification) to generate a much more predictable stream of cash.
Banner-ad software, like DIVX, is an attempt to generate a continious revenue stream. There may be some short-term success from this but in the long run the sometimes touchy 'community' we belong to will produce a few disgruntled people to "crack" the software and remove the ads, especially if the system compromises your privacy like the ill-fated Microsoft WebTV hardware. With the most-excellent Sherlock tool in MacOS System 8.5, when you select a page, it displays the banner ad for whatever was on that page (appease the portal folks..). Within days some folks had a banner stripper for the search utility. Such filtering software has existed for Linux for a long time, so you can block annoying ads if you choose (I do not do this).
Because computing is increasingly becoming Open, not only will it will be easier to bypass or block ads, but we'll have less of a reason to use it in the first place: open source software is measurably exceeding commercial quality in places where it exists. There are serious rough spots, like integrated and hyperlinked helpfiles, but we've gotten so good because we stick to the problem needing a solution and not masking things over with animated paperclips and forcing browsers down each other's throats.
Television OTOH is not a very democratic medium. I was at NAB last week, and things like FireWire prosumer videocameras and Final Cut Pro are going to do the same things that the laser printer and PageMaker or Calimus did for desktop publishing. We won't however see a lot of feature-length streaming movies on the web because bandwidth is too expensive, and television is too entrenched to be replaced by streaming net TV. That kind of power to the Disney's (ABC) and the Westinghouses (CBS? forget) means they can go beyond simply embedding their logo's in the right hand corner of what you watch. We're going to see things like banner ads on the screen perhaps instead of commercial breaks that you depend on to take a leak. If they can get away with it, optical sensors will return information such as when you got up and left the room (example: Microsoft "emotion" or facereading technology). I know many people who refuse to put political bumperstickers on their vehicles (myself included) because it makes them unwary... would you want to tell a server you turned off the State Of The Union speech?
I got a little off track here, but with closed technology we will get the short end of the stick. Software like this scares me because they will not simply serve ads. We've seen Microsoft get away with taking advantage of "Win 98 registration bugs" to harvest names, while at the same time claiming they weren't aware of the bugs (huh??). Just imagine if all this technology was in use 50 years ago during the "Red Scare", would the technology have been abused? You bet.
Going forward, do you really want your computer, or the media (or some inevitable hybrid of the two) monitoring you?
Oops! :) Somehow my filtering got reset to 1. Normally I keep it at 0 to not miss AC posts.
:-/
There was a lot of useless platform bashing however.