The National Post is not a reliable source of information. They're a right wing newspaper that tries to serve the interest of large corporations. Part of the motivation behind publishing this story is to pressure the Canadian government out of the Kyoto Treaty. This doesn't mean that what the researchers found is not valid, it just means that these stories should be taken with a grain of salt.
Leahy says he will block the bill, but he doesn't state why. What are his intentions? Does he feel the bill is just a plain bad bill or is their some lobby group he is looking out for? I think it's usually the latter when senators try to block bills. Or it could be just partisan politics.
PK
If shareware didn't make money, companies would not make shareware versions of their software. Why do games companies make shareware? Because shareware is great advertisement. If 5% of their clients buy the full version of the software, that is 5% more than what they would have had anyway. To check out a shareware success story, check out Dexterity Software. In particular, check out the articles section. The dude outlines how he successfuly created a shareware company and how he can still make money at it.
According to the third paragraph on page 2, one could file an objection by May 8,2002.
So I'm thinking: I use CDs for backups, not to rip off music CDs. That's my objection....but wait, on page 5, point number 4 states:
The levy is payable on all media that quailify, without regard to end use. No purpose is served by asking that the tariff include a mechanism that would allow those who can prove that they use qualifying media for purposes other than reproducing musical works to be exempted from payment or to receive a refund.
I'm no lawyer, but isn't that infringing on my constitutional rights? I am being presumed guilty of breaking a law without a fair trial.
Then to just shove the broomstick up the poopchute royally, Note 2 on page 6 states:
CPCC may waive the levy on sales to...... music and advertising industries.
This is an absolute infringement of my rights and is a blatant caving in to corporate interests without considering the interests of the public. Think about how this will affect small business and individuals who rely on CDs to backup data.
I encourage all other Canadians here on/. to head to their Member of Parliament's office and let him/her know you feel about this levy.
Unfortunately, I find that I do miss the incredible speed of IE 5x.
IE5 fast, I don't think so. It is slow as molasses compared to Opera. That's what Mozilla should be aiming for.
I installed mozgest the other day. It's just not as usefull as it could be because the pages don't render fast enough. When I mouse gesture for the previous page in history, I need the previous page *now* to let me know that my mouse gesture was succesful.
But on the bug front, Mozilla gets better with every nightly build.
nVidia only makes the Geforce3 and Geforce2MX for the Apple. Check out their products page. The dude probably got confused between G4 and Geforce. There's probably a Geforce2 in that thing. And everybody knows that the Geforce2MX are pretty shit. And 1.1 billion textured pixels, as Apple claims in their add, is about par for the Geforce2MX.
It's usually referenced for graphics. Any paper on computer graphics has this book in it's bibliography. It has a couple chapters on UI and windowing that will give you the basics and point you in the right direction.
Specifically, check out chapter 9 on Dialogue Design and chapter 10 on User Interface Software.
Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice
Foley, van Dam, Feiner, Hughes
(c) 1996
ISBN 0-201-84840-6
Next to Michael, who is the resident security/encryption expert, JonKatz is the luckiest to have a job around here at slashdot. The major reviewer -- JonKatz -- is well, JonKatz. Katz really comes into his own as the premier reviewer here at slashdot. And only a crisp 4 paragraphs long! SPOILAGE WARNING: you may soil your pants if you read review to ending.
The review centers around JonKatz seeming to think that his reviews are actually "News for Nerds" here on slashdot. With his reviews usually containing irrelevant opinions that tend to insult the movies that he reviews, this review seems to lack the usual JonKatz edge.
As the online slashdotters restlessly plan DOS attacks on the slashdot Apache server, so they won't have to put themselves through another JonKatz review, Katz is spoiling movie after movie. The ending is pure JonKatz. This is a second-rate review from a nerd who wishes he was Roger Ebert.
When OpenGL 1.0 was released in 1991, the API was ahead of the hardware and hardware had to catch up.
Somewhere along the line, the hardware surpassed the API. That's when shit hit the fan with the crap-assed extension system.
So OpenGL needs to forward thinking. Make the hardware push the limits to catch up to the API again. And that is exactly the reason behing the Shading Language.
Good luck guys. Can't wait to see the unveiling next year at Siggraph!!
GLUT is very ugly to work with. It is not Object-Oriented. I use it somewhat like I use MFC. Great to get things up and running quick. But I wouldn't use it for production level code.
The input handling is annoying at best. It is similar to handling the WM_KEYDOWN and associated messages. Who want's to do that. That is an inflexible solution. That is why DirectInput was invented. To give a OO, abstracted view of the input devices connected to your machine.
Just to add to that. I really hope SDL really takes off. Without trying to be rendundant, developers really need a cross-platform library that matches DirectX. I can't wait until the first major game is released using SDL or something similar. That's the better solution to getting games for Linux rather than WineX or whatever other emulator you want. And contrary to what they claim, Wine is an emulator.
You have to admit that Windoze is king in the PC gaming market. So let's develop a library that allows developers to make games on Windoze...and then get Linux, Mac, etc ports for free.
How about the first-time workers wage. That is the most racist, discriminatory piece of legislation in years.
It discriminates against youth, despite what the Liberals may have you believe. It discriminates against immigrants.
The Liberals want to stimulate the economy. Helping McDonald's chop $2/hour off of their lowest wage isn't going to help the econmony.
It makes the poor poorer and the rich richer.
And why does everyone think cutting taxes is a silver bullet. You get what you pay for. Cut taxes and you've just taken money away from health and education.
Have you ever been to the downton eastide in Vancouver. That place is a mess. It was much better in the early 90s before the federal government decided to stop funding low-cost housing. Now what we are starting to see is Americain style ghetos up here in Canada too.
A program written in C++ can be written in Java. Both languages are complete.
However...
Java is not OO complete. There's a subtle difference there. No multiple inheritence, no operator overloading. Sure these features may be "dangerous", but let the programmer make the decision, not the language.
Not to mention the virtual machine being inherently slow.
The fact that Java is proprietary language controlled by Sun.
These are the reasons to sway you from Java (if they are important in producing your application). Not some silly Java sucks argument. If you can live with the above. Go for it.
Wrapper implies layer, layer implies slower. You've said that yourself.
1ms per frame is significant. It's the difference between 60fps and missing the VSYNC and rendering at 30fps.
Developers want to write to the metal. Transgaming should spend it's resources helping developers write to the metal. Listen to the developers, give them what they want.
SL
And that is the problem with WineX. That is why developers do not use Java to develop games. [Please don't turn this into a C++/Java flame war] But the fact of the matter is, whenever you put another layer between the hardware and end user software you incur an overhead.
This isn't a problem with *most* applications. However, for games to run at 60 fps, you need to render a frame every 16ms or so. With this kind of constraint you do not want to be farting around with a VM.
There are alternatives to this. The problem right now is the fact that a lot of developers use Direct3D rather than OpenGL to develop games. You could argue about what API you like better, but both APIs are functionaly complete [minus the time it takes for extensions to be approved when new hardware comes out]. Therefore, using a Turing machine argument, applications that are developed using Direct3D can be developed using OpenGL, and vice versa.
But why do developers use Direct3D? Because cross-platform operability is not a big concern. It's a catch-22 situation. Developers do not develop games for Linux because nobody buys them. Noboby buys games for Linux because there are no games developed for Linux.
Now, Quake 3 was an exception to the above argument. It was released for Linux...but nobody bought it strictly to play on Linux. And developers still don't have any confidence about releasing games for Linux.
My advice, when Doom3 is released a year and a half down the road. Buy it. Play it. Play it on Linux. That is the only way to convince developers that Linux is a viable platform.
First of all CounterStrike is a mod. As in modification to the game Half-Life. Second of all Half-Life was built on the Quake2 engine.
Therefore:
improve drivers for Quake3 => improve drivers for Quake2
improve drivers for Quake2 => improve drivers for Half-Life
improve drivers for Half-Life => improve drivers for CounterStrike
Next, Quake3 was built using OpenGL. Therefore, you will see an improvement in other applications that use OpenGL. Check the link provided, Carmack does similiar things that most OpenGL coders do when pushing geometry through the pipeline.
ISA is for suckers. Nobody releases ISA products anymore anyway. You have to remember that Hammer won't be prevalent in the market for a couple of years. ISA will have been dead for a while.
PCI is also for suckers. The networking will move onto USB etc. Which makes sense, you want to be able to connect networked products, such as your Palm, on the fly.
Just like AGP is dedicated for graphics, don't be surprised to see something dedicated for SCSI as it becomes more prevalent.
You don't need IDE if you have SCSI.
There you go, no more concern over limited number of PCI slots.
SL
Nevermind hobbyists, how about students. So it's gonna cost me $1000 to do my homework when my university upgrades to XP. How is Microsoft supposed to foster new developers. Sounds like they are shooting themselves in the foot.
SL
I understand that you are angry. You may have lost someone close to you in the terrorist attacks. You may have lost your sense of security. All I would like to say is that if these attacks took place to increase the level of security then they may be justified. But if the motivation is purely revenge, that makes me sick. Bush thumps the bible every time he makes a national address. I believe the bible has a few words to say about revenge. I just wish Bush wouldn't paraphrase the parts that he sees fit.
Secondly, it is ironic that an anonymous poster is calling me a coward.
Thirdly, one of the best quotes I have come across that sums up this situation is: "An eye for an eye is making us blind". Would someone like to step back and explain to me what the goals of these actions are. And how these goals will actually be accomplished by bombing the crater known as Afghanistan.
I'm sick and tired of the moderators calling anyone who mentions the word peace a troll. I agree, some of them are trolls just trying to start bickering. But I would really like to know what criteria has been set out to label posters as being trolls.
Slashdot Mirror
PK
Leahy says he will block the bill, but he doesn't state why. What are his intentions? Does he feel the bill is just a plain bad bill or is their some lobby group he is looking out for? I think it's usually the latter when senators try to block bills. Or it could be just partisan politics. PK
Torontonian: All your mouse are belong to us.
SL: AAAAAAAAHHH!!!
The carpal-tunnel in my wrist thanks you.
If shareware didn't make money, companies would not make shareware versions of their software. Why do games companies make shareware? Because shareware is great advertisement. If 5% of their clients buy the full version of the software, that is 5% more than what they would have had anyway. To check out a shareware success story, check out Dexterity Software. In particular, check out the articles section. The dude outlines how he successfuly created a shareware company and how he can still make money at it.
So I'm thinking: I use CDs for backups, not to rip off music CDs. That's my objection....but wait, on page 5, point number 4 states:
The levy is payable on all media that quailify, without regard to end use. No purpose is served by asking that the tariff include a mechanism that would allow those who can prove that they use qualifying media for purposes other than reproducing musical works to be exempted from payment or to receive a refund.
I'm no lawyer, but isn't that infringing on my constitutional rights? I am being presumed guilty of breaking a law without a fair trial.
Then to just shove the broomstick up the poopchute royally, Note 2 on page 6 states:
CPCC may waive the levy on sales to ...... music and advertising industries.
This is an absolute infringement of my rights and is a blatant caving in to corporate interests without considering the interests of the public. Think about how this will affect small business and individuals who rely on CDs to backup data.
I encourage all other Canadians here on /. to head to their Member of Parliament's office and let him/her know you feel about this levy.
...so that's about $0.06US
IE5 fast, I don't think so. It is slow as molasses compared to Opera. That's what Mozilla should be aiming for.
I installed mozgest the other day. It's just not as usefull as it could be because the pages don't render fast enough. When I mouse gesture for the previous page in history, I need the previous page *now* to let me know that my mouse gesture was succesful.
But on the bug front, Mozilla gets better with every nightly build.
nVidia only makes the Geforce3 and Geforce2MX for the Apple. Check out their products page. The dude probably got confused between G4 and Geforce. There's probably a Geforce2 in that thing. And everybody knows that the Geforce2MX are pretty shit. And 1.1 billion textured pixels, as Apple claims in their add, is about par for the Geforce2MX.
Specifically, check out chapter 9 on Dialogue Design and chapter 10 on User Interface Software.
Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice Foley, van Dam, Feiner, Hughes (c) 1996 ISBN 0-201-84840-6
The review centers around JonKatz seeming to think that his reviews are actually "News for Nerds" here on slashdot. With his reviews usually containing irrelevant opinions that tend to insult the movies that he reviews, this review seems to lack the usual JonKatz edge.
As the online slashdotters restlessly plan DOS attacks on the slashdot Apache server, so they won't have to put themselves through another JonKatz review, Katz is spoiling movie after movie. The ending is pure JonKatz. This is a second-rate review from a nerd who wishes he was Roger Ebert.
Wrong! We blame JonKatz.
But I blame JonKatz. Why?
Isn't it always his fault?
Somewhere along the line, the hardware surpassed the API. That's when shit hit the fan with the crap-assed extension system.
So OpenGL needs to forward thinking. Make the hardware push the limits to catch up to the API again. And that is exactly the reason behing the Shading Language.
Good luck guys. Can't wait to see the unveiling next year at Siggraph!!
The input handling is annoying at best. It is similar to handling the WM_KEYDOWN and associated messages. Who want's to do that. That is an inflexible solution. That is why DirectInput was invented. To give a OO, abstracted view of the input devices connected to your machine.
Just to add to that. I really hope SDL really takes off. Without trying to be rendundant, developers really need a cross-platform library that matches DirectX. I can't wait until the first major game is released using SDL or something similar. That's the better solution to getting games for Linux rather than WineX or whatever other emulator you want. And contrary to what they claim, Wine is an emulator.
You have to admit that Windoze is king in the PC gaming market. So let's develop a library that allows developers to make games on Windoze...and then get Linux, Mac, etc ports for free.
It discriminates against youth, despite what the Liberals may have you believe. It discriminates against immigrants.
The Liberals want to stimulate the economy. Helping McDonald's chop $2/hour off of their lowest wage isn't going to help the econmony.
It makes the poor poorer and the rich richer.
And why does everyone think cutting taxes is a silver bullet. You get what you pay for. Cut taxes and you've just taken money away from health and education.
Have you ever been to the downton eastide in Vancouver. That place is a mess. It was much better in the early 90s before the federal government decided to stop funding low-cost housing. Now what we are starting to see is Americain style ghetos up here in Canada too.
A program written in C++ can be written in Java. Both languages are complete.
However...
Java is not OO complete. There's a subtle difference there. No multiple inheritence, no operator overloading. Sure these features may be "dangerous", but let the programmer make the decision, not the language.
Poor floating point support. Check this paper.
Not to mention the virtual machine being inherently slow.
The fact that Java is proprietary language controlled by Sun.
These are the reasons to sway you from Java (if they are important in producing your application). Not some silly Java sucks argument. If you can live with the above. Go for it.
>>great you can mangle triangles and blit them to the screen fast
what are you talking about?
blit: the process of transferring a bitmap to a display surface via a blitter
Just because you can use some fancy term doesn't mean that you know what your talking about.
blitting is primarily a 2D process. The NV17M is a 3D accelerator. Geez get your poop straight.
The bottom line is nVidia makes the best solutions for hardcore graphics on the desktop and laptops.
You don't see the point! You'd rather have 2 hours more working time!
Well there's people out there that would like 2 hours more of CounterStrike time.
And obviously there is a market for chips like these out there. Or else nVidia would have stopped with the Go.
You want to talk about transmeta. Well, I didn't see them at Siggraph this year. The premier computer graphics conference.
nVidia kicked 3dfx and other's asses by putting out kick ass products that people want to buy.
They did it by embracing OpenGL when everybody else was drooling over M$'s Direct3D.
They did it by putting out vey good Linux drivers when other companies didn't give a crap.
They did it by pushing the envelope. And they are doing it again by pretty much bringing the Geforce3 to the laptop.
The only reason you call it waste is because you don't need the 3D accelerator. You'd rather be working away on the train.
SL
Wrapper implies layer, layer implies slower. You've said that yourself. 1ms per frame is significant. It's the difference between 60fps and missing the VSYNC and rendering at 30fps. Developers want to write to the metal. Transgaming should spend it's resources helping developers write to the metal. Listen to the developers, give them what they want. SL
And that is the problem with WineX. That is why developers do not use Java to develop games. [Please don't turn this into a C++/Java flame war] But the fact of the matter is, whenever you put another layer between the hardware and end user software you incur an overhead.
This isn't a problem with *most* applications. However, for games to run at 60 fps, you need to render a frame every 16ms or so. With this kind of constraint you do not want to be farting around with a VM.
There are alternatives to this. The problem right now is the fact that a lot of developers use Direct3D rather than OpenGL to develop games. You could argue about what API you like better, but both APIs are functionaly complete [minus the time it takes for extensions to be approved when new hardware comes out]. Therefore, using a Turing machine argument, applications that are developed using Direct3D can be developed using OpenGL, and vice versa.
But why do developers use Direct3D? Because cross-platform operability is not a big concern. It's a catch-22 situation. Developers do not develop games for Linux because nobody buys them. Noboby buys games for Linux because there are no games developed for Linux.
Now, Quake 3 was an exception to the above argument. It was released for Linux...but nobody bought it strictly to play on Linux. And developers still don't have any confidence about releasing games for Linux.
My advice, when Doom3 is released a year and a half down the road. Buy it. Play it. Play it on Linux. That is the only way to convince developers that Linux is a viable platform.
SL
First of all CounterStrike is a mod. As in modification to the game Half-Life. Second of all Half-Life was built on the Quake2 engine.
Therefore:
improve drivers for Quake3 => improve drivers for Quake2
improve drivers for Quake2 => improve drivers for Half-Life
improve drivers for Half-Life => improve drivers for CounterStrike
Next, Quake3 was built using OpenGL. Therefore, you will see an improvement in other applications that use OpenGL. Check the link provided, Carmack does similiar things that most OpenGL coders do when pushing geometry through the pipeline.
http://www.quake3arena.com/news/glopt.html
SL
ISA is for suckers. Nobody releases ISA products anymore anyway. You have to remember that Hammer won't be prevalent in the market for a couple of years. ISA will have been dead for a while. PCI is also for suckers. The networking will move onto USB etc. Which makes sense, you want to be able to connect networked products, such as your Palm, on the fly. Just like AGP is dedicated for graphics, don't be surprised to see something dedicated for SCSI as it becomes more prevalent. You don't need IDE if you have SCSI. There you go, no more concern over limited number of PCI slots. SL
Nevermind hobbyists, how about students. So it's gonna cost me $1000 to do my homework when my university upgrades to XP. How is Microsoft supposed to foster new developers. Sounds like they are shooting themselves in the foot. SL
I understand that you are angry. You may have lost someone close to you in the terrorist attacks. You may have lost your sense of security. All I would like to say is that if these attacks took place to increase the level of security then they may be justified. But if the motivation is purely revenge, that makes me sick. Bush thumps the bible every time he makes a national address. I believe the bible has a few words to say about revenge. I just wish Bush wouldn't paraphrase the parts that he sees fit. Secondly, it is ironic that an anonymous poster is calling me a coward. Thirdly, one of the best quotes I have come across that sums up this situation is: "An eye for an eye is making us blind". Would someone like to step back and explain to me what the goals of these actions are. And how these goals will actually be accomplished by bombing the crater known as Afghanistan.
I'm sick and tired of the moderators calling anyone who mentions the word peace a troll. I agree, some of them are trolls just trying to start bickering. But I would really like to know what criteria has been set out to label posters as being trolls.