I don't know about this wrapper - but Transgaming's wrapper provides great speed for D3D->OpenGL conversion. Sure it isn't 100%, but with my decent system (1.2GHz TBird GF3TI500)games like Tony Hawk2 run Great!
I would say that this thing has great promise - it provides some competition to Transgaming/Winex and competition is always good.
What will this do to Transgaming? They will no longer be able to make changes and keep them to themselves - kind of seems like it destroys their business model.
I guess the only thing they could do is to for Wine themselves and never touch Codweavers code again - but that means that they now have to deal with a completely larger set of problems than they currently are.
Personally I think this is bad for Wine - Transgaming has already given so much back to the Wine project it is not even funny (including the fact that Transgaming is now looking to sponsor some portions of Wine progress) - but this switch is going to create some animosity between the two.
Maybe they should have a dual license - kind of like mysql, where it is GPL, but some companies can license the code and they don't have to contribute back.
It is a tough situation - but let's hope that forward progress does not get stopped because of it!
The thing is, he didn't mention how much you would have to pay for that "Round the Clock" support.
Oracle support is great! They will come fix stuff in the middle of the night if you need them too - the problem is that you have to pay out the @$$ for it.
I thought I was going to get away with not upgrading to XFree4.2 - since my 4.1 is running rock solid on my GeForce3.
But it looks like I'll have to upgrade now - and redo all of that font junk, I hope it is a little easier this time around than the last - I can remember spening at least a couple of hours getting it to work last time......
Also as a former CX debater, L/N is a completely INVALUABLE resource. Just type in this years topic and get millions of relevant articles to site in your cases.
My old partner still debates in college - and he says it's no different, everyone looks to L/N.
Actually he was saying that Gnome wouldn't be very welcome to people who use things like OSX, WinXP, and KDE.
I take "One eye-brow" to be a "whatever" kind of look - and "two eye-brows" to be an excited kind of look that only someone using CDE on Solaris would give to the prospect of using Gnome.
Personally - I don't see how Gnome has a chance in all of this. KDE just has too much eye-candy (Especially with the Mosfet liquid engine) and is way more usable, I know I know the whole damned QT thing. But you know what? I like coding in QT, and I think Trolltech is a fine company. It is certainly better than using a non-object oriented C API.
The negative karma that surrounds recompiling your kernel.
I recompiled my kernel the very first day I installed linux (which was Slackware loaded off of floppy disks that I downloaded over a 28.8 modem - that was a weeks worth of fun:-).
Sure you screw it up every now and again - but if you just read the damn help things and have a little bit of sense it isn't that difficult. And its not like all of your data suddenly goes *poof* when you do screw it up. It just means you need to boot off a recovery disk, and retry it.
make menuconfig
make dep
make bzlilo
make modules modules_install
This is kind of true - but then again the reason we are using *this* OS instead of *that other* OS is that we have the ability to modify it - that is the entire point behind the Free Software Movement.
I think that Distro makers, and software creators should be sensitive to the fact that they are working with people who like to modify their machine.
Now whether or not those said people deserve tech support when they blow it up is another question.
I look at it like this: In windows if you go and remove drivers from a device in the control panel - and then that device doesn't work or your system won't boot, who do you call? Well, you sure as hell don't call Microsoft. If you have a *paid* support contract with the vendor of your computer then you probably call them.
The point is that people can screw up their computers in any number of ways - making a tool EASIER to use isn't going to make that situation worse. At least it will give people with half a clue, but who are too scared right now, the power to try it out.
Personally - I was just looking for a job over Holiday Break, so I was actually physically handing out resumes to local businesses.
In case anyone is interested - the short-term tech job market is really small here in Springfield, MO - especially with the current economy. I actually ended up having a friend just get me a job at Blockbuster Video because I needed that extra cash for Christmas shopping - it is annoying to go from Co-oping at a government agency to being a Tape-Jockey (sigh).
My home printer is an HPDJ400 - not exactly the king of quality:-)
I actually just print it out onto regular paper, then use a digital copier to copy it onto Resume paper - it is MUCH cheaper this way (Did I mention that once apon a time I used to work at Kinko's as a digital printing guy?:-)
This is what I would have done - but what if I needed to edit it at kinkos (which it turns out I did because I mispelled something)?
Kinko's is 30 minutes from my house, so I didn't want to be stuck there with no way to edit it (sanely).
However I have used this to print all sorts of other things (actually I have found that just printing to PS and then e-mailing that to myself, and then using Distiller at Kinko's is the way to go - that way I can choose my quality and output preferences for that printer when I create the PDF) - but in this case it is not what I wanted.
I think you are confusing CS (Computer Science) with ISM (Info Systems Management).
I don't know about everyone else but when I hear "IT" that says to me: ISM not CS. ISMs do not have to take "OS theory" or "algorithms" in most places - and if they do - and they get a good grade in them, then they are probably not the ones running an MS OS.
I understand what you are trying to say - but the resume thing is a poor example.
I personally use Linux as my main OS (read as 90% of my computing time - the other 10% is Black and White playing). But... My resume is still done in Word2k.
Why? Well, I first did it years ago in Word95. When I opened it in StarOffice 5.2 - it opened just fine (I use a bunch of crazy formatting to make it all fit so I was amazed). So I thought, great! But then I edited it in SO and saved it in Word format and e-mailed it to myself so I could print it out at Kinko's. Lo and behold when I got to kinkos and opened it - almost all of the formatting was lost and I had to redo the whole thing in Word2k. (have recently tried beta6 with same results)
I wouldn't want a potential job to be given to someone else because their formatting stayed, and mine didn't - so I am going to stick with using Word2k for my resume.
My School is great (UMR) - we even learn assembly on Sparc processors, and we usually don't have to code in any particular language or for any particular OS. But unfortunately most HR departments out there are not so open, and Word is the defacto standard, so that is what I have to use.
BTW - This post stuck out to me because I use a pirated copy of Win2k and Office2k to do my Resume - so you really struck a nerve.
Just go into your printers control panel and "Add a New Printer" then just add a generic Postscript printer.
After you have added it right click on it and go to properties - there is an option in there to "Print to file". Check it, then click 'OK'.
Now when you want to print to postscript just select that "printer" and when you click 'Print' it will bring up a dialog asking you where to save the file - save it somewhere with a.ps extension. And voila! Guess what's in the file? Postscript.
You can either drop this into Adobe Distiller to create a PDF - or bring it over to a Mac and print it by dragging it to the Printer icon. Or put it on a Linux box and do "lpr -p printerfilename.ps" and it will print it (if you have your printer set up correctly) - or you could use ghoscript to create a PDF out of it.
You can learn some interesting stuff working for Kinko's for 6 months as a digital printing guy:-)
Holy shit dude - that really is bad news. That was one of the best forums on the entire net - I go there almost daily to answer questions (but have been moving across the country since last friday so I haven't had a chance).
Wow - let's hope they just took them down for maintenance or something.
Slack isn't going anywhere. The recent story posted on here titled "Is Slackware Dying?" - was completely overestimating the severity of the situation.
Just becaus *one* developer decides to drop his work on a part (a small part at that) of the OS - does not mean it is dying.
Patrick and the gang are still banging away at Slack 9. If you don't believe me, then go to ftp.slackware.com and checkout the changelog for the *current* version - it shows several updates.
This OS will never die because other people will continue to maintain it even if the main people fall out. I would personally become a project lead on Slackware if it needed it - and I know several other people who would also.
So go crawl back under your Redhat rock and install an RPM (or don't because of the damn dependencies) or something.
It is called "Follow Pointer Sloppilly", oooooohhh, aahhhhh!
Seriously though - all I do is put my eterm over the part of mozilla I don't need to see - and because my focus follows my mouse pointer I can use each of them without fucking up the foucs- thus allowing me to basically have an L-Shaped Mozilla window.
Combine this with my scrollmouse and i can type in my eterm and still scroll through mozilla in the background using my scrollwheel. All very handy.
Have you ever thought about the possibility that maybe you just don't know how to use the tools you have to their fullest potential? Do you not think people have thought about the fact that sometimes you want windows to overlap and be usable at the same time? Don't kid yourself into thinking that you are bright and no one has thought of these things before - they are old tricks as far as window managers are concerned.
I have never read that before. It is an interesting read while you are using KDE. You sit there and read "and have a clock in the bottom right with the date next to it" and you look down in the bottom right of your screen and there it is - very eerie that this guy new how he wanted all of this stuff all the way back in 96 and now look at what KDE has become.
This project is a complete success. I applaud all those who work on it - and give me a nice stable cohesive environment to work in every day.
It was called Sega Activator. It was a plastic ring that you put together (about 4 foot or so in diameter) that shot infrared beams up out of it (would have been cool if you coulds see them - but then it wouldn't have been infrared huh?)
You connected it to your Sega Genesis just like a normal controller. It was made to be played with fighting games. You had a "beam break" and a "low beam break" that you could do in all 8 directions (N,S,E,W,NE,NW,SE,SW)
Each one did something a little bit different in the game.
Let me tell you - playing Mortal Kombat on this thing was quite the workout! To do special moves you had to do all kinds of crazy things - you would very quickly workup a sweat.
Unfortunately the thing stopped working after just a little while of having it (about 4 months or so) - so I no longer have it:-(
It was a cool idea though and I would buy another one if someone marketed it.
It isnt necessarily about "focus" - it is also about stacking.
One of the things that pisses me off about windows is that if a program has focus it has to be "on top" of everything else. This makes it really inconvenient to use a command line and a browser at the same time - or write HTML and view it at the same time.
Not to mention the lack of virtual desktops in windows (ya bla bla addons).
Add this to the fact that most programs depend on being Maximized (I think the maximize button is the devil - it creates so many bad habits) - and you realize just how inefficient windows is.
Why stop there?? Just head over to Transgaming and get rid of Windows once and for all.
Like you say - I would rather give $5 a month to a company that is open source like Transgaming than I would to M$. So it might not mean native ports - but at least I am not feeding the beast (directly anyway).
I will personally be buying the CrossOver plugin - and was actually thinking about doing so last night (funny how timing is) - but now that there is a demo I will get to try it out first - which is great.
"But RPN is not the best choice for scientific work, nor for student work."
Well, that's why you buy an HP49G and choose between RPN or algebraic. Oh, and the 49G's Algebraic implementation is the best I have ever seen. It has a full "History" menu implementation that actually gives you access to your most recently used equations (Like the history bar in IE)
Also the Equation Writer on the HP49G is the most incredible thing I have ever used in my life. The interface is so intuitive - and once you learn the basics of the controls you can write huge equations and manipulate them very quickly.
The fact that they do all of this on completely underpowered hardware is absolutely remarkable.
This is not to say the TIs are bad calculators at all. But for me I am more productive with a 49G - and it is because of this that this announcement makes me very sad. HP has done a lot for the industry and it is just sad to see them go.
Slashdot Mirror
Well,
I don't know about this wrapper - but Transgaming's wrapper provides great speed for D3D->OpenGL conversion. Sure it isn't 100%, but with my decent system (1.2GHz TBird GF3TI500)games like Tony Hawk2 run Great!
I would say that this thing has great promise - it provides some competition to Transgaming/Winex and competition is always good.
Derek
What will this do to Transgaming? They will no longer be able to make changes and keep them to themselves - kind of seems like it destroys their business model.
I guess the only thing they could do is to for Wine themselves and never touch Codweavers code again - but that means that they now have to deal with a completely larger set of problems than they currently are.
Personally I think this is bad for Wine - Transgaming has already given so much back to the Wine project it is not even funny (including the fact that Transgaming is now looking to sponsor some portions of Wine progress) - but this switch is going to create some animosity between the two.
Maybe they should have a dual license - kind of like mysql, where it is GPL, but some companies can license the code and they don't have to contribute back.
It is a tough situation - but let's hope that forward progress does not get stopped because of it!
Derek
The thing is, he didn't mention how much you would have to pay for that "Round the Clock" support.
Oracle support is great! They will come fix stuff in the middle of the night if you need them too - the problem is that you have to pay out the @$$ for it.
Derek
I thought I was going to get away with not upgrading to XFree4.2 - since my 4.1 is running rock solid on my GeForce3.
But it looks like I'll have to upgrade now - and redo all of that font junk, I hope it is a little easier this time around than the last - I can remember spening at least a couple of hours getting it to work last time......
Derek
Also as a former CX debater, L/N is a completely INVALUABLE resource. Just type in this years topic and get millions of relevant articles to site in your cases.
My old partner still debates in college - and he says it's no different, everyone looks to L/N.
Derek
Actually he was saying that Gnome wouldn't be very welcome to people who use things like OSX, WinXP, and KDE.
I take "One eye-brow" to be a "whatever" kind of look - and "two eye-brows" to be an excited kind of look that only someone using CDE on Solaris would give to the prospect of using Gnome.
Personally - I don't see how Gnome has a chance in all of this. KDE just has too much eye-candy (Especially with the Mosfet liquid engine) and is way more usable, I know I know the whole damned QT thing. But you know what? I like coding in QT, and I think Trolltech is a fine company. It is certainly better than using a non-object oriented C API.
Derek
The negative karma that surrounds recompiling your kernel.
:-).
I recompiled my kernel the very first day I installed linux (which was Slackware loaded off of floppy disks that I downloaded over a 28.8 modem - that was a weeks worth of fun
Sure you screw it up every now and again - but if you just read the damn help things and have a little bit of sense it isn't that difficult. And its not like all of your data suddenly goes *poof* when you do screw it up. It just means you need to boot off a recovery disk, and retry it.
make menuconfig
make dep
make bzlilo
make modules modules_install
I don't know what is so damned hard about that.
Derek
This is kind of true - but then again the reason we are using *this* OS instead of *that other* OS is that we have the ability to modify it - that is the entire point behind the Free Software Movement.
I think that Distro makers, and software creators should be sensitive to the fact that they are working with people who like to modify their machine.
Now whether or not those said people deserve tech support when they blow it up is another question.
I look at it like this: In windows if you go and remove drivers from a device in the control panel - and then that device doesn't work or your system won't boot, who do you call? Well, you sure as hell don't call Microsoft. If you have a *paid* support contract with the vendor of your computer then you probably call them.
The point is that people can screw up their computers in any number of ways - making a tool EASIER to use isn't going to make that situation worse. At least it will give people with half a clue, but who are too scared right now, the power to try it out.
Derek
Personally - I was just looking for a job over Holiday Break, so I was actually physically handing out resumes to local businesses.
In case anyone is interested - the short-term tech job market is really small here in Springfield, MO - especially with the current economy. I actually ended up having a friend just get me a job at Blockbuster Video because I needed that extra cash for Christmas shopping - it is annoying to go from Co-oping at a government agency to being a Tape-Jockey (sigh).
Derek
Exactly...
:-)
:-)
My home printer is an HPDJ400 - not exactly the king of quality
I actually just print it out onto regular paper, then use a digital copier to copy it onto Resume paper - it is MUCH cheaper this way (Did I mention that once apon a time I used to work at Kinko's as a digital printing guy?
Derek
This is what I would have done - but what if I needed to edit it at kinkos (which it turns out I did because I mispelled something)?
Kinko's is 30 minutes from my house, so I didn't want to be stuck there with no way to edit it (sanely).
However I have used this to print all sorts of other things (actually I have found that just printing to PS and then e-mailing that to myself, and then using Distiller at Kinko's is the way to go - that way I can choose my quality and output preferences for that printer when I create the PDF) - but in this case it is not what I wanted.
Derek
I think you are confusing CS (Computer Science) with ISM (Info Systems Management).
I don't know about everyone else but when I hear "IT" that says to me: ISM not CS. ISMs do not have to take "OS theory" or "algorithms" in most places - and if they do - and they get a good grade in them, then they are probably not the ones running an MS OS.
Derek
I understand what you are trying to say - but the resume thing is a poor example.
I personally use Linux as my main OS (read as 90% of my computing time - the other 10% is Black and White playing). But... My resume is still done in Word2k.
Why? Well, I first did it years ago in Word95. When I opened it in StarOffice 5.2 - it opened just fine (I use a bunch of crazy formatting to make it all fit so I was amazed). So I thought, great! But then I edited it in SO and saved it in Word format and e-mailed it to myself so I could print it out at Kinko's. Lo and behold when I got to kinkos and opened it - almost all of the formatting was lost and I had to redo the whole thing in Word2k. (have recently tried beta6 with same results)
I wouldn't want a potential job to be given to someone else because their formatting stayed, and mine didn't - so I am going to stick with using Word2k for my resume.
My School is great (UMR) - we even learn assembly on Sparc processors, and we usually don't have to code in any particular language or for any particular OS. But unfortunately most HR departments out there are not so open, and Word is the defacto standard, so that is what I have to use.
BTW - This post stuck out to me because I use a pirated copy of Win2k and Office2k to do my Resume - so you really struck a nerve.
Derek
You can make Word print Postscript.
.ps extension. And voila! Guess what's in the file? Postscript.
:-)
Just go into your printers control panel and "Add a New Printer" then just add a generic Postscript printer.
After you have added it right click on it and go to properties - there is an option in there to "Print to file". Check it, then click 'OK'.
Now when you want to print to postscript just select that "printer" and when you click 'Print' it will bring up a dialog asking you where to save the file - save it somewhere with a
You can either drop this into Adobe Distiller to create a PDF - or bring it over to a Mac and print it by dragging it to the Printer icon. Or put it on a Linux box and do "lpr -p printer filename.ps" and it will print it (if you have your printer set up correctly) - or you could use ghoscript to create a PDF out of it.
You can learn some interesting stuff working for Kinko's for 6 months as a digital printing guy
Derek
Where the *$&@ are they???????????
Holy shit dude - that really is bad news. That was one of the best forums on the entire net - I go there almost daily to answer questions (but have been moving across the country since last friday so I haven't had a chance).
Wow - let's hope they just took them down for maintenance or something.
Damn
Derek
After re-reading your original post....
Sorry about that - touchy subject ever since I saw that damned "Is Slackware Dying" post on here a while ago.
Wow - never thought I would be one of those twerps on here spraying crap out of their mouths cause they didn't fully (or correctly) read a post.
Derek
Get out of here with your Slackware FUD.
Slack isn't going anywhere. The recent story posted on here titled "Is Slackware Dying?" - was completely overestimating the severity of the situation.
Just becaus *one* developer decides to drop his work on a part (a small part at that) of the OS - does not mean it is dying.
Patrick and the gang are still banging away at Slack 9. If you don't believe me, then go to ftp.slackware.com and checkout the changelog for the *current* version - it shows several updates.
This OS will never die because other people will continue to maintain it even if the main people fall out. I would personally become a project lead on Slackware if it needed it - and I know several other people who would also.
So go crawl back under your Redhat rock and install an RPM (or don't because of the damn dependencies) or something.
Derek
Well - I can do this.
It is called "Follow Pointer Sloppilly", oooooohhh, aahhhhh!
Seriously though - all I do is put my eterm over the part of mozilla I don't need to see - and because my focus follows my mouse pointer I can use each of them without fucking up the foucs- thus allowing me to basically have an L-Shaped Mozilla window.
Combine this with my scrollmouse and i can type in my eterm and still scroll through mozilla in the background using my scrollwheel. All very handy.
Have you ever thought about the possibility that maybe you just don't know how to use the tools you have to their fullest potential? Do you not think people have thought about the fact that sometimes you want windows to overlap and be usable at the same time? Don't kid yourself into thinking that you are bright and no one has thought of these things before - they are old tricks as far as window managers are concerned.
Derek
What's funny is that I couldn't remember the name of the "Power Glove" and actually had to go google for it :-)
Wow - nice link!
I have never read that before. It is an interesting read while you are using KDE. You sit there and read "and have a clock in the bottom right with the date next to it" and you look down in the bottom right of your screen and there it is - very eerie that this guy new how he wanted all of this stuff all the way back in 96 and now look at what KDE has become.
This project is a complete success. I applaud all those who work on it - and give me a nice stable cohesive environment to work in every day.
Thanks!
Derek
I had one as a kid.
:-(
It was called Sega Activator. It was a plastic ring that you put together (about 4 foot or so in diameter) that shot infrared beams up out of it (would have been cool if you coulds see them - but then it wouldn't have been infrared huh?)
You connected it to your Sega Genesis just like a normal controller. It was made to be played with fighting games. You had a "beam break" and a "low beam break" that you could do in all 8 directions (N,S,E,W,NE,NW,SE,SW)
Each one did something a little bit different in the game.
Let me tell you - playing Mortal Kombat on this thing was quite the workout! To do special moves you had to do all kinds of crazy things - you would very quickly workup a sweat.
Unfortunately the thing stopped working after just a little while of having it (about 4 months or so) - so I no longer have it
It was a cool idea though and I would buy another one if someone marketed it.
Derek
It isnt necessarily about "focus" - it is also about stacking.
One of the things that pisses me off about windows is that if a program has focus it has to be "on top" of everything else. This makes it really inconvenient to use a command line and a browser at the same time - or write HTML and view it at the same time.
Not to mention the lack of virtual desktops in windows (ya bla bla addons).
Add this to the fact that most programs depend on being Maximized (I think the maximize button is the devil - it creates so many bad habits) - and you realize just how inefficient windows is.
Derek
Why stop there?? Just head over to Transgaming and get rid of Windows once and for all.
Like you say - I would rather give $5 a month to a company that is open source like Transgaming than I would to M$. So it might not mean native ports - but at least I am not feeding the beast (directly anyway).
I will personally be buying the CrossOver plugin - and was actually thinking about doing so last night (funny how timing is) - but now that there is a demo I will get to try it out first - which is great.
Derek
I was just looking at this last night. Does it work as well as they say? Is the installation seamless?
Is it worth the money? I think it might be for me (Now that I spend all of my time in linux).
Give some details.
Derek
"But RPN is not the best choice for scientific work, nor for student work."
Well, that's why you buy an HP49G and choose between RPN or algebraic. Oh, and the 49G's Algebraic implementation is the best I have ever seen. It has a full "History" menu implementation that actually gives you access to your most recently used equations (Like the history bar in IE)
Also the Equation Writer on the HP49G is the most incredible thing I have ever used in my life. The interface is so intuitive - and once you learn the basics of the controls you can write huge equations and manipulate them very quickly.
The fact that they do all of this on completely underpowered hardware is absolutely remarkable.
This is not to say the TIs are bad calculators at all. But for me I am more productive with a 49G - and it is because of this that this announcement makes me very sad. HP has done a lot for the industry and it is just sad to see them go.
Derek