Hmm, I don't know, I have yet to encounter a single Samba, Sendmail or kernel panic yet, after a year and a half since I've switched to Linux at home. I have, however, seen BSOD aplenty, even with Win2K (though these have been less frequent, I must admit - it is the best Windows so far, IMHO).
There is an easy solution, which we must hammer to the studio execs:
"Give away the virtual, sell the physical and charge for public performance."
I.e., the actual music or movie is free to download, but if you buy the album or the DVD, you get HIGH-QUALITY packaging and extra non-virtual material (glossy booklet, posters, sweepstakes tickets, Fan Club unique ID, rebate on concerts, etc.). And of course concerts/big screen projections you have to pay for.
This is already happening. I, for example, have (illegally) downloaded LOTR from the net (please, SUE ME, so that I can use the courtroom as a pulpit to spread the good word). The fact is, I also have seen the movie twice in the theater, because nothing compares to a big-screen viewing, and I have bought the Extended DVD, because of the nice packaging which I want to put on my shelf with all my other DVDs. So, despite being a "pirate", I have also paid good money (around 65 canadian dollars) to add to the huge profits already made by NewLine and Mr. Jackson (whom I respect but will nonetheless criticize for his unimaginative stand on the issue).
Again, this is the only FAIR and VIABLE solution for the content industry. We have to INSIST that they take this course, by any means possible (writing to your representatives, posting on the net, calling in on hotlines, writing directly to Movie producers, directors, etc.)
There is a better for the record companies to combat piracy that do not require antagonizing their customers and entrenchingn on fair use rights: add value to their products, so that people will buy them instead of copying them.
Some examples: nice (and durable) packaging; booklets with high-quality photos; discounts for merchandising; sweepstakes tickets (where law permits). This is the only way the music and film industries can get out of this.
Actually, the inverted tricycle design (two wheels in front, one wheel at the back) is quite stable, as stable as a four-wheel design (except when going in reverse, I guess). Of course you'd probably not be able to safely turn with a regular tricycle design at any speed higher than 30 MPH...
For my part, I will personally write Paypal and tell them that I no longer feel that their service is secure enough for me and that their treatment of victims robbed through their service is rotten.
The question is, what other services are there in Internet space that does the same thing they do? Any banks trying to offer secure payment over the Internet?
A screenshot would work fine for your screen.
why not just stick it on your website? I'll do the same.
D'oh! Now, why didn't I think of that first...:-) I can't just put a screenshot up by itself, though, I have to put it inside a web page: my apache is set up so that you can't browse the contents of a folder...I'm sure I can change that for a specific folder, but I really don't feel like touching the configuration right now - my motto is: it works, leave it alone!
The problem I see is that I'm using Cleartype on a 1600x1200 LCD.. and if I take a screenshot, you won't really see what I see unless you are using an LCD with the exact same physical structure as mine... it will actually look fuzzy on your screen.
Actually, considering that the screen shot should be seen on a LCD, I must admit it looks pretty good. I can mentally compensate for the visual artifacts, of which there aren't that much (they don't look "fuzzy" as much as discolored). Pretty slick...
Now, I don't how my screenshot (from a CRT) will look on your display...I've tried to include a couple of windows to show how the fonts behave under a variety of apps...mind you, KDE does a great job when it comes to font consistency (not to start a flame war...I haven't really tried Gnome2 yet).
Not a great screen, but reasonably priced: SyncMaster 955DF from Samsung (500$ canadian for 19"). It does the job!
I can always send you a screenshot (I don't have a digital camera...yet!). My email address at home can be found on my website, under the heading "Courriel" near the bottom of the right hand column (just above the "small type"). The link text is "m'écrire".
But if you say that your display is better than OSX, then I guess that our desktop are pretty close. I'm happy with calling it a draw (though I wouldn't mind a screenshot in any case). Your call.
I can guarantee you that if you saw my Linux desktop with fonts anti-aliased with David Chester's Xft hack, you'd instantly want to switch. Frankly, I have yet to see TTF fonts this beautiful on any system, Mac OSX included, especially in 1600x1200. I mean, look at this screenshot! Sorry, but I work on a Windows machine all day, with anti-aliased turned on, and it doesn't even come close to this.
The font battle has been won, and the winner is Xft+freetype+Chester's font hack.
Again, I just did what you suggested (with opaque resize and move, Konqueror, KDE 3.04, 1600x1200 in 24bpp; hardware: Athlon 900, 1024 GB RAM, GeForce 4 TI 4400).
I had five Konq windows open (did I mention I can't wait for tabbed browsing?) and dragged the top one over the others like crazy. I did get a little bit of redraw, but we're talking nothing that lasts more than a quarter of a second, here. Hardly worth ranting about. Seriously, I think you're being too much of a perfectionist; the very slight redraw I get is not even on the "annoying" level. Perhaps, as someone else has mentioned, X wasn't running with a high enough priority on the machines you were managing?
I can still see Gnome and KDE menus paint across the screen chunkily -- yes, this is on a P-4 machine with whizzy graphics cards, a gig of RAM, etc.
Perhaps your setup is faulty. On my system (Athlon 900 with 1GB of RAM - granted I have a GeForce 4...) the KDE menu pops in, with no redraw at all. And this is in 1600x1200, 24bpp.
Honestly, XFree86 has never seemed slow to me. It does seem to be the weak link as far as system stability is concerned, though: X has been involved in nearly every one of the (few) system hangs I've experienced.
Is changing bpp on-the-fly also covered by this new (très cool) extension? I skimmed through the announcement but could not find anything about this. Anybody know if color depth switching is planned?
Sorry, guys, but I've trademarked the letter "e". You both owe me big time and I'll sue you if you don't pay (try defending yourself without using the letter "e")!
Aha! But it's not on this page. As I said, they seem to say that they have a version for Mandrake, but on the download page it only mentions RedHat...Anyoned tried it on Mandrake yet?
...yet the announcement tends to indicate that there is a version available for my favorite distro. Does that mean that I can use the RedHat version on my Mandrake system? Or just that I didn't look in the right place?
I'm really eager to try this. This looks like it could really be useful for my Mom, who's completely computer illiterate but wants to surf the Internet and send e-mail.
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell.
on
XBox Linux HOWTOs
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· Score: 2
"Rumor has it..." is not using weasel words, it's telling it like it is. I've heard rumors, and they might not be true, but they do come from people working in the industry. Remember that MS has two things working against it: 1) it hasn't been selling as many Xbox as it thought - it's doing okay in the states, but European and Japanes sales are below expectations; 2) it has cut its selling price not because it could afford to due to its sales, but rather because it wanted to keep up with the PS2.
But don't take my word for it: read this June 24 analysis on RedHerring. So, now it's your estimate, based on a faulty analogy with the PC world (which is cheaper, because the demand is much higher than for the Xbox - i.e. it's always more costly to produce a console that to assemble a PC; read up on it if you don't believe me) against insider rumors and professional analysis...Which is not to say that you can't be right...MS could be lying about their costs, I guess, though I don't see the point in that. After all, Sony's not shy to report that they're making money on every PS2 sold. And, as you say, they might have some people who made some stupid purchasing decisions.
Peace.
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell.
on
XBox Linux HOWTOs
·
· Score: 2
I don't know what you mean by customers, but I'm talking about game developers and publishers who work with MS on Xbox titles. Now, I haven't heard anything from MS directly (and even if I did I wouldn't quote them - I don't want to put my employer or myself in any kind of legal trouble), but the grapevine is almost unanimous in saying that MS is still losing money on each Xbox title. I think it's a mistake to apply the same standards as for PCs to consoles, anyway - MS has gotten into specific, exclusive deals with a set number of manufacturers, it can't just go shopping for a better deal once every three months. So I'll go on believing rumors from people in the industry rather than estimates based on dubious analogies with what it would cost to make an equivalent machine in the PC world. Even though it can now run Linux, the Xbox is not just a generic PC built from the cheapest parts that can be scrounged...it's a game console, with specific hardware and costs. Sony makes money off of every PS2 they sell, and Nintendo probably breaks even, but as far as I know, and until someone comes up with some hard data, we'll have to believe analysts and insiders when they say that MS doesn't.
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell.
on
XBox Linux HOWTOs
·
· Score: 2
A game controller]...]wholesale for a buck or so apiece.
Man, we're not talking about a Gravis Gamepad, here! Also, even with large production, the NV25 is still an expensive chip to produce. We're talking about a chip that's about as complex as a Pentium IV, here.
In any case, the sources I refer to are not not competitors to MS, but customers who have no interest in MS losing money. It wouldn't make sense for MS to tell them that it's still losing money on the console. So until you come up with hard evidence, I'll have to go with the rumors (not that it's keeping me up awake at night!)
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell.
on
XBox Linux HOWTOs
·
· Score: 2
Don't forget, the Xbox has a NV25 chip, a DVD drive and an above-average (and custom-made) sound chipset. It also comes with a game controller and Tv adapter. The fact is, from what I've heard, MS still loses about 50 to 75 dollars on each unit. But perhaps you have hard data that contradicts this information (which, admittedly, is only hearsay, but from people in the industry, nonetheless).
Re:MS *makes* money on every XBox they sell.
on
XBox Linux HOWTOs
·
· Score: 2
I'd be curious to see any hard data on this. As far as I can tell (from a few contacts in the industry), MS still sells Xboxen at a loss, mainly because of the Hard Drive - remember, even though the cost of manufacturing the unit may have come down a little, MS did slash the list price of the console, from 300$ to 200$...Meanwhile, Sony is making a profit on each PS2 sold - and it's leading in software sales as well. Personally, I'm not too happy with this, as I still haven't forgiven Sony for killing off the Dreamcast:-) but it's hard to choose between two evil empires!
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Hmm, I don't know, I have yet to encounter a single Samba, Sendmail or kernel panic yet, after a year and a half since I've switched to Linux at home. I have, however, seen BSOD aplenty, even with Win2K (though these have been less frequent, I must admit - it is the best Windows so far, IMHO).
CS runs very well under WineX (I play regularly), and so does StarCraft. Unreal Tournament (and UT2003) has a native linux version.
Also, the thing most popular in indian cybercafes is not games, but e-mail.
There is an easy solution, which we must hammer to the studio execs:
"Give away the virtual, sell the physical and charge for public performance."
I.e., the actual music or movie is free to download, but if you buy the album or the DVD, you get HIGH-QUALITY packaging and extra non-virtual material (glossy booklet, posters, sweepstakes tickets, Fan Club unique ID, rebate on concerts, etc.). And of course concerts/big screen projections you have to pay for.
This is already happening. I, for example, have (illegally) downloaded LOTR from the net (please, SUE ME, so that I can use the courtroom as a pulpit to spread the good word). The fact is, I also have seen the movie twice in the theater, because nothing compares to a big-screen viewing, and I have bought the Extended DVD, because of the nice packaging which I want to put on my shelf with all my other DVDs. So, despite being a "pirate", I have also paid good money (around 65 canadian dollars) to add to the huge profits already made by NewLine and Mr. Jackson (whom I respect but will nonetheless criticize for his unimaginative stand on the issue).
Again, this is the only FAIR and VIABLE solution for the content industry. We have to INSIST that they take this course, by any means possible (writing to your representatives, posting on the net, calling in on hotlines, writing directly to Movie producers, directors, etc.)
Sorry, had too many (Guinnesses, that is...) Hips!
The joke here being that Alec Guiness played Ben Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy...
There is a better for the record companies to combat piracy that do not require antagonizing their customers and entrenchingn on fair use rights: add value to their products, so that people will buy them instead of copying them.
Some examples: nice (and durable) packaging; booklets with high-quality photos; discounts for merchandising; sweepstakes tickets (where law permits). This is the only way the music and film industries can get out of this.
Actually, the inverted tricycle design (two wheels in front, one wheel at the back) is quite stable, as stable as a four-wheel design (except when going in reverse, I guess). Of course you'd probably not be able to safely turn with a regular tricycle design at any speed higher than 30 MPH...
I have news for you. Microsoft doesn't give a crap about Linux or OS software and whatever insignificant market share they have.
Ballmer: Linux Is Top Threat To Windows
Microsoft acknowledges Linux threat
Ballmer: Microsoft sees the Linux challenge
You mention that "lots of big companies" are starting to deply Linux to the business desktop. Name a few.
Wall Street Embraces Linux
Linux for the Rest of Us
DreamWorks switches to HP, Linux
Secure Linux desktop begins shipping to UK police force
For my part, I will personally write Paypal and tell them that I no longer feel that their service is secure enough for me and that their treatment of victims robbed through their service is rotten.
The question is, what other services are there in Internet space that does the same thing they do? Any banks trying to offer secure payment over the Internet?
A screenshot would work fine for your screen. why not just stick it on your website? I'll do the same.
:-) I can't just put a screenshot up by itself, though, I have to put it inside a web page: my apache is set up so that you can't browse the contents of a folder...I'm sure I can change that for a specific folder, but I really don't feel like touching the configuration right now - my motto is: it works, leave it alone!
D'oh! Now, why didn't I think of that first...
Check the screenshot here.
The problem I see is that I'm using Cleartype on a 1600x1200 LCD.. and if I take a screenshot, you won't really see what I see unless you are using an LCD with the exact same physical structure as mine... it will actually look fuzzy on your screen.
Actually, considering that the screen shot should be seen on a LCD, I must admit it looks pretty good. I can mentally compensate for the visual artifacts, of which there aren't that much (they don't look "fuzzy" as much as discolored). Pretty slick...
Now, I don't how my screenshot (from a CRT) will look on your display...I've tried to include a couple of windows to show how the fonts behave under a variety of apps...mind you, KDE does a great job when it comes to font consistency (not to start a flame war...I haven't really tried Gnome2 yet).
Well, looks like a draw to me...
Not a great screen, but reasonably priced: SyncMaster 955DF from Samsung (500$ canadian for 19"). It does the job!
I can always send you a screenshot (I don't have a digital camera...yet!). My email address at home can be found on my website, under the heading "Courriel" near the bottom of the right hand column (just above the "small type"). The link text is "m'écrire".
But if you say that your display is better than OSX, then I guess that our desktop are pretty close. I'm happy with calling it a draw (though I wouldn't mind a screenshot in any case). Your call.
I can guarantee you that if you saw my Linux desktop with fonts anti-aliased with David Chester's Xft hack, you'd instantly want to switch. Frankly, I have yet to see TTF fonts this beautiful on any system, Mac OSX included, especially in 1600x1200. I mean, look at this screenshot! Sorry, but I work on a Windows machine all day, with anti-aliased turned on, and it doesn't even come close to this.
The font battle has been won, and the winner is Xft+freetype+Chester's font hack.
Again, I just did what you suggested (with opaque resize and move, Konqueror, KDE 3.04, 1600x1200 in 24bpp; hardware: Athlon 900, 1024 GB RAM, GeForce 4 TI 4400).
I had five Konq windows open (did I mention I can't wait for tabbed browsing?) and dragged the top one over the others like crazy. I did get a little bit of redraw, but we're talking nothing that lasts more than a quarter of a second, here. Hardly worth ranting about. Seriously, I think you're being too much of a perfectionist; the very slight redraw I get is not even on the "annoying" level. Perhaps, as someone else has mentioned, X wasn't running with a high enough priority on the machines you were managing?
Indeed, my X runs at nice -10 (default setup on Mandrake 9.0). That may be why it's so snappy and responsive...
I can still see Gnome and KDE menus paint across the screen chunkily -- yes, this is on a P-4 machine with whizzy graphics cards, a gig of RAM, etc.
Perhaps your setup is faulty. On my system (Athlon 900 with 1GB of RAM - granted I have a GeForce 4...) the KDE menu pops in, with no redraw at all. And this is in 1600x1200, 24bpp.
Honestly, XFree86 has never seemed slow to me. It does seem to be the weak link as far as system stability is concerned, though: X has been involved in nearly every one of the (few) system hangs I've experienced.
Is changing bpp on-the-fly also covered by this new (très cool) extension? I skimmed through the announcement but could not find anything about this. Anybody know if color depth switching is planned?
I knew of a book in french, called "La disparition" by Georges Perec (no e in the title, but four in his name). What's the english book?
Sorry, guys, but I've trademarked the letter "e". You both owe me big time and I'll sue you if you don't pay (try defending yourself without using the letter "e")!
:-)
Aha! But it's not on this page. As I said, they seem to say that they have a version for Mandrake, but on the download page it only mentions RedHat...Anyoned tried it on Mandrake yet?
...yet the announcement tends to indicate that there is a version available for my favorite distro. Does that mean that I can use the RedHat version on my Mandrake system? Or just that I didn't look in the right place?
I'm really eager to try this. This looks like it could really be useful for my Mom, who's completely computer illiterate but wants to surf the Internet and send e-mail.
"Rumor has it..." is not using weasel words, it's telling it like it is. I've heard rumors, and they might not be true, but they do come from people working in the industry. Remember that MS has two things working against it: 1) it hasn't been selling as many Xbox as it thought - it's doing okay in the states, but European and Japanes sales are below expectations; 2) it has cut its selling price not because it could afford to due to its sales, but rather because it wanted to keep up with the PS2.
But don't take my word for it: read this June 24 analysis on RedHerring. So, now it's your estimate, based on a faulty analogy with the PC world (which is cheaper, because the demand is much higher than for the Xbox - i.e. it's always more costly to produce a console that to assemble a PC; read up on it if you don't believe me) against insider rumors and professional analysis...Which is not to say that you can't be right...MS could be lying about their costs, I guess, though I don't see the point in that. After all, Sony's not shy to report that they're making money on every PS2 sold. And, as you say, they might have some people who made some stupid purchasing decisions.
Peace.
I don't know what you mean by customers, but I'm talking about game developers and publishers who work with MS on Xbox titles. Now, I haven't heard anything from MS directly (and even if I did I wouldn't quote them - I don't want to put my employer or myself in any kind of legal trouble), but the grapevine is almost unanimous in saying that MS is still losing money on each Xbox title. I think it's a mistake to apply the same standards as for PCs to consoles, anyway - MS has gotten into specific, exclusive deals with a set number of manufacturers, it can't just go shopping for a better deal once every three months. So I'll go on believing rumors from people in the industry rather than estimates based on dubious analogies with what it would cost to make an equivalent machine in the PC world. Even though it can now run Linux, the Xbox is not just a generic PC built from the cheapest parts that can be scrounged...it's a game console, with specific hardware and costs. Sony makes money off of every PS2 they sell, and Nintendo probably breaks even, but as far as I know, and until someone comes up with some hard data, we'll have to believe analysts and insiders when they say that MS doesn't.
A game controller]...]wholesale for a buck or so apiece.
Man, we're not talking about a Gravis Gamepad, here! Also, even with large production, the NV25 is still an expensive chip to produce. We're talking about a chip that's about as complex as a Pentium IV, here.
In any case, the sources I refer to are not not competitors to MS, but customers who have no interest in MS losing money. It wouldn't make sense for MS to tell them that it's still losing money on the console. So until you come up with hard evidence, I'll have to go with the rumors (not that it's keeping me up awake at night!)
Don't forget, the Xbox has a NV25 chip, a DVD drive and an above-average (and custom-made) sound chipset. It also comes with a game controller and Tv adapter. The fact is, from what I've heard, MS still loses about 50 to 75 dollars on each unit. But perhaps you have hard data that contradicts this information (which, admittedly, is only hearsay, but from people in the industry, nonetheless).
I'd be curious to see any hard data on this. As far as I can tell (from a few contacts in the industry), MS still sells Xboxen at a loss, mainly because of the Hard Drive - remember, even though the cost of manufacturing the unit may have come down a little, MS did slash the list price of the console, from 300$ to 200$...Meanwhile, Sony is making a profit on each PS2 sold - and it's leading in software sales as well. Personally, I'm not too happy with this, as I still haven't forgiven Sony for killing off the Dreamcast :-) but it's hard to choose between two evil empires!