we are sunk if that becomes the norm and all game development becomes ms windows centric
It already is MS Windows centric and has been for a long, long time now.
we become the new OS/2, inhabiting a shrinking niche and dying a slow death. Fsck that!
You've been misled. Go ask any of the people really involved with the OS/2 scene back then, most of them say Windows compatibility was a strength not a hinderance. The reason people wrote Windows apps was because it had a higher market share, and because unlike for OS/2 the Win32 Platform SDK was free so it was much more economical to develop software for Windows. Linux has no such disadvantage.
No, not exactly. DirectX is huge and encompasses sound, input (mouse/keyboard/joystick/gamepads), music, media pipelines (think gstreamer), network gaming etc etc. People tend to think "DirectX == 3D graphics" but they're wrong.
Synaptic is a usability disaster zone, it's basically screwed by design. Read any HCI text book to understand why low level apt frontends can never be as easy to use as we need/want.
Not sure why this is modded funny. Alternative currencies have been able to achieve quite astonishing things in the past, and there's a lot of evidence that they lead to a better society for all than regular currencies. See the works of Bernard Leitaer for more information (his books are fascinating).
E16 with the Winter theme, and dock switcher. The "Milk" GTK theme, with some hacked up Firefox theme to make it look like safari.
Milk is nice. The GTK pixmap engine is a bit slow and Milk had a few bugs, which I fixed in a private version (since lost). Only for real OS X junkies though.
It's worth pointing out that the pervasive multi-threading of BeOS was arguably as much a weakness as a strength.
Multi-threaded coding is hard and don't any coding jocks tell you otherwise. It is significantly harder to do 100% correctly (and nothing less than 100% correct will do) than single-threaded coding.
Indeed, according to one of the ex-Be engineers one of the things that hurt BeOS was that writing software for it was quite tricky, it basically meant writing robust thread-safe code even for a simple text editor. There's a good discussion of it here.
Anyway it's sort of academic. One of the main uses of multithreading in BeOS according to be-fan was to do window rendering in a separate thread. Linux will get something very similar within a few months when X compositing lands. OK so it won't be a thread inside the same app, it'll be a separate process which is rendering the entire screen at once but the effect is the same - no matter how busy the app is, you won't be able to "rub out" the contents of the window.
You can use the open source nv driver to get 2D graphics, install the driver using a GUI then simply log out and back in again to get the updated driver. There doesn't need to be text mode involved at any point, though I'm not saying there should *only* be a graphical installer.
But only two links away is a tutorial on Gaussian Blur Overlays - you did realise that there are tutorails for "beginner", "intermediate" and "advanced", right?
No?
I guess maybe you aren't as smart as them then.
Re:I think a ruse is going on at Microsoft
on
Ballmer on Linux
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· Score: 1
Uh, yes. That would be the kernel CREDITS file. Grep it for @microsoft.com
Nope, you can go get it from CVS I think. I checked it out one time, it's definitely their code, though it may be *based* on parts of Loki most of it is new.
Re:You mean windows is better than linux at someth
on
ATI Updates Linux Drivers
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· Score: 2, Interesting
For the compilation to work (which i'd note is a *text* mode installer, not exactly 21st century is it?) you need the kernel source and developer tools installed. This is a really huge set of software that you have to install, keep up to date etc - a security update to the kernel can mean a 40mb download if you have the sources installed too.
And even then the process is prone to inexplicable failures.
I'm beginning to think the only way we'll see easy driver installation on Linux is if people fork the stable kernel series - while Linus and the gang make all the changes they like to the unstable series, a separate team is preserving ABI compatibility whilst backporting non breaking changes. This task wouldn't necessarily be a huge amount of work - the kernel is pretty mature these days, most of the user-visible work is on hardware support anyway. If users don't get kernel updates every other week, it's not such a big deal.
The nVidia installer is GPLd, they could use that rather than writing a huge howto. I guess ATI using software from nVidia would be a bit uncomfortable for them though...
The vast majority of the gun crime rise is due to Yardie violence, which typically involves criminals killing each other in fights over territory and dealers. It's bad, but it wouldn't be any better if people had personal firearms.
If you want crime to go away, get guns in the hands of the citizens.
This has got to be a troll. America is one of the few nations with a high degree of personal firearms, and has crime "gone away" there? I think not.
Re:I think a ruse is going on at Microsoft
on
Ballmer on Linux
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· Score: 1
I think at least the top heads at Microsoft are running macs with os X over there.
That's nice. Do you have any evidence for this?
No? Thought not.
What's more interesting, perhaps, is that at least one senior Windows engineer has a Linux box in his office and has done almost since the start of the project. He has even contributed to the kernel project himself!
Re:Microsoft. Software patents. Mono
on
Ballmer on Linux
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· Score: 2, Interesting
ECMA allow patented technologies to be "standardised". They are IMHO a totally bogus standards organization.
You know, back in the early nineties they even standardised the Windows API. OpenWin32 it was called, iirc. Wow. That did a whole bunch of good for competition in the market, didn't it?
Where did he get this figure? MSN Music site itself says they have over a million.
Mossberg thinks eventually MS will catch up.
Right. Version 3 will probably be slick. Hey, you know, the site design is already pretty clean and easy. The focus is clearly on the music, almost the detriment of the site itself.
"Toxic" may be bad in your opinion but it's proven very popular on dance floors. I actually quite like it, so sue me. It's got a catchy tune and good production (which yes virginia, does make a difference).
That says nothing about what I think of Britney of course. She has so little to do with the music itself that the Britney->Toxic association is just a convenient way to identify the track.
The GPL talks not just about derivative works but also combined works, which is far more easily done. Linking two pieces of code together in such a way that removing one would break the other basically makes it a combined work.
First you fight about KDE/GNOME, then GTK/Qt, packaging, installation, on and on and on.
That's a bit harsh. It's like saying Windows developers fight about Delphi vs Visual Basic vs Access vs Visual C++ and then have to choose BDE, ADO, DAO, DBExpress etc.
Actuallly - no. People use whatever they evaluate to be the best (or are most experienced with etc).
If you want to write a GUI app go right ahead. If I was doing a GUI database app I'd probably use GTK or Qt because they're so much easier than dealing with the general badness of Microsofts GUI APIs (I don't have any faith that the Delphi VCL will be around for the long run...)
For the general case I'd agree, but Blender and similar apps are designed to be powerful first, easy to use second. For instance, emacs could also be described as a mess of keyboard shortcuts, mouse clicks etc - it actually assumes you have a 3 button mouse!
Yet, once you learn it, it is a very usable app that does promote exploration via its extensive online help, apropos command and so on.
For the types of non-technical market the Mac traditionally targetted yes a one button mouse may have made sense (if you ignore all the people now used to it), but that doesn't mean it makes sense for everybody.
Slashdot Mirror
It already is MS Windows centric and has been for a long, long time now.
we become the new OS/2, inhabiting a shrinking niche and dying a slow death. Fsck that!
You've been misled. Go ask any of the people really involved with the OS/2 scene back then, most of them say Windows compatibility was a strength not a hinderance. The reason people wrote Windows apps was because it had a higher market share, and because unlike for OS/2 the Win32 Platform SDK was free so it was much more economical to develop software for Windows. Linux has no such disadvantage.
No, not exactly. DirectX is huge and encompasses sound, input (mouse/keyboard/joystick/gamepads), music, media pipelines (think gstreamer), network gaming etc etc. People tend to think "DirectX == 3D graphics" but they're wrong.
Moving "more processing" doesn't necessarily mean moving the entire graphics subsystem into user mode.
Synaptic is a usability disaster zone, it's basically screwed by design. Read any HCI text book to understand why low level apt frontends can never be as easy to use as we need/want.
Not sure why this is modded funny. Alternative currencies have been able to achieve quite astonishing things in the past, and there's a lot of evidence that they lead to a better society for all than regular currencies. See the works of Bernard Leitaer for more information (his books are fascinating).
Milk is nice. The GTK pixmap engine is a bit slow and Milk had a few bugs, which I fixed in a private version (since lost). Only for real OS X junkies though.
Macromedia already have. They've got porting projects for Flash and Dreamweaver active right now.
Multi-threaded coding is hard and don't any coding jocks tell you otherwise. It is significantly harder to do 100% correctly (and nothing less than 100% correct will do) than single-threaded coding.
Indeed, according to one of the ex-Be engineers one of the things that hurt BeOS was that writing software for it was quite tricky, it basically meant writing robust thread-safe code even for a simple text editor. There's a good discussion of it here.
Anyway it's sort of academic. One of the main uses of multithreading in BeOS according to be-fan was to do window rendering in a separate thread. Linux will get something very similar within a few months when X compositing lands. OK so it won't be a thread inside the same app, it'll be a separate process which is rendering the entire screen at once but the effect is the same - no matter how busy the app is, you won't be able to "rub out" the contents of the window.
You can use the open source nv driver to get 2D graphics, install the driver using a GUI then simply log out and back in again to get the updated driver. There doesn't need to be text mode involved at any point, though I'm not saying there should *only* be a graphical installer.
Red Hat don't guarantee a stable interface, far from it. They regularly backport breaking changes from the unstable series.
No?
I guess maybe you aren't as smart as them then.
Uh, yes. That would be the kernel CREDITS file. Grep it for @microsoft.com
Nope, you can go get it from CVS I think. I checked it out one time, it's definitely their code, though it may be *based* on parts of Loki most of it is new.
And even then the process is prone to inexplicable failures.
I'm beginning to think the only way we'll see easy driver installation on Linux is if people fork the stable kernel series - while Linus and the gang make all the changes they like to the unstable series, a separate team is preserving ABI compatibility whilst backporting non breaking changes. This task wouldn't necessarily be a huge amount of work - the kernel is pretty mature these days, most of the user-visible work is on hardware support anyway. If users don't get kernel updates every other week, it's not such a big deal.
Ironically while their code is extremely closed (even the "open source" driver is obfuscated), their corporate culture appears to be quite open.
The nVidia installer is GPLd, they could use that rather than writing a huge howto. I guess ATI using software from nVidia would be a bit uncomfortable for them though ...
If you want crime to go away, get guns in the hands of the citizens.
This has got to be a troll. America is one of the few nations with a high degree of personal firearms, and has crime "gone away" there? I think not.
That's nice. Do you have any evidence for this?
No? Thought not.
What's more interesting, perhaps, is that at least one senior Windows engineer has a Linux box in his office and has done almost since the start of the project. He has even contributed to the kernel project himself!
You know, back in the early nineties they even standardised the Windows API. OpenWin32 it was called, iirc. Wow. That did a whole bunch of good for competition in the market, didn't it?
Where did he get this figure? MSN Music site itself says they have over a million.
Mossberg thinks eventually MS will catch up.
Right. Version 3 will probably be slick. Hey, you know, the site design is already pretty clean and easy. The focus is clearly on the music, almost the detriment of the site itself.
That says nothing about what I think of Britney of course. She has so little to do with the music itself that the Britney->Toxic association is just a convenient way to identify the track.
The issue is that it'll be patented, not how complex the code is.
The GPL talks not just about derivative works but also combined works, which is far more easily done. Linking two pieces of code together in such a way that removing one would break the other basically makes it a combined work.
That's a bit harsh. It's like saying Windows developers fight about Delphi vs Visual Basic vs Access vs Visual C++ and then have to choose BDE, ADO, DAO, DBExpress etc.
Actuallly - no. People use whatever they evaluate to be the best (or are most experienced with etc).
If you want to write a GUI app go right ahead. If I was doing a GUI database app I'd probably use GTK or Qt because they're so much easier than dealing with the general badness of Microsofts GUI APIs (I don't have any faith that the Delphi VCL will be around for the long run ...)
Yet, once you learn it, it is a very usable app that does promote exploration via its extensive online help, apropos command and so on.
For the types of non-technical market the Mac traditionally targetted yes a one button mouse may have made sense (if you ignore all the people now used to it), but that doesn't mean it makes sense for everybody.