Anyone that argues that the EPIA platform failed due to its hardware hasn't looked into it much. The EPIA failed due to the worst freakin drivers you've ever had the misfortune of using. Rarely have they had all the features working at one time... actually I think it was NEVER that they've had it all working. Most of the features don't even work at the BIOS level. If they had gotten that right, they'd have done much better.
You want to know why these games? I can tell you a couple. They are cheap to get rights to (like I personally might be able to fund one). They are fun. They are stepping stones to better things.
Epic Interactive has been porting games for a while actually. They have some good Mac ports and other OSs as well.
Hyperion is testing the waters for Linux again. They pulled 2 developers from the icculus.org community to do the port for them and covered the cost of the rights. They are also going to pay those developers back a nominal fee for it.
Look at the GBA game list. Most are old games that have great gameplay and are fun. I'd consider the GBA the most profitable market in gaming.
Honestly, if Gorky 17 doesn't at least break even, I wouldn't blame Hyperion for leaving the Linux market for good. (Honestly, it cost them that little).
Gorky 17 is also a stepping stone to test developers, hype the Gorky world, and gain money to port Gorky Zero. This game IS new. It isn't even out yet. It's been mentioned quite positively on Bluesnews and looks to be a lot of fun.
Finally, these are all games with great gameplay and not first person shooters. Gorky is a fun RPG. That's right, a real RPG for Linux.... what everyone's been asking for. Knights and Merchants is supposed to be a lot of fun in a RTS style game. Software Tycoon is a tycoon game... only one has been Railroad Tycoon 2... a welcome complement.
You may think I'm talking out of my butt and know nothing, but I'm one of those 2 guys porting Gorky 17. Trust me, I'm telling the truth.
If the product is so expensive, you should consider the hardware keys instead of product activation. I know CADKey used to have them. A small device that plugs into the... serial port (might have been parallel port) that had to be checked. Another possibility is a USB version.
I have a first revision eMac. All I have to say is "Don't get one if you can't get AppleCare (because it was purchased too long ago)". They have a part in the monitor that breaks and then you have to either a) get it fixed at a high cost due to lots of labor or b) plug in an external monitor.
As far as I know, that'e the only bug on them, but it's an expensive one.
XFree is under the X License (fairly similar to the BSD license). There is currently no issue with making drivers that are binary only.
The only place you can't put in binary drivers is the Linux Kernel (as it is GPLed).
Epic Games open sourced the UT engine in hopes of getting big sales on Linux and other non-Windows OSs. They eventually pulled back out of it. Basically it took too much time and resources with too little gain.
Actually, The key to setting up CUPS is remove things like foomatic. Just start cupsd and point your web browser to http://127.0.0.1:631. It's actually a pretty darn good and easy to use setup. I've helped quite a few people by just pointing them to that instead of programs that "simplify setting up CUPS".
It's not a free alternative, but it's supposed to be cheaper and can still be used w/ outlook (and therefore should work w/ evolution too).
http://www.suse.com/us/business/products/suse_busi ness/openexchange/
I have no affiliation w/ SuSE. I just find this product interesting.
Yes, you are right, but the poster was commenting on the fact that working at Best Buy reduces the cost of the entertainment portion of the budget. This reallocates money to thing like paying bills and such.
I don't think the example of a plasma TV was a good example. Nor are most of the products at Best Buy aimed towards a child. Therefore, I'm not sure Best Buy would be the place to work for him. If the guy spends a lot on electronic goods, though, it'd help a lot.
There's a huge difference between upping the Optimization level (-O) and changing the processor you compiled for.
The processor can add instructions specific to you processor or compile in a method that is faster for your processor. (On a K6 it is faster to physically move the stack pointer and move the data on the stack than to use push... why? I have no idea, but it was in their optimization guide =)
Changing the -O causes GCC to use tricks to compile the code faster (unrolling loops, inlining functions, etc). This can not only cause executables to increase in size, but it also causes things to break pretty often. Many programs do not compile correctly with all optimizatons turned on.
Speed. I am running a Gentoo system. The big advantage is that you get new packages pretty quickly. All the code can be compiled specifically for you processor (that's right I have an entire system specifically compiled for my Athon Thunderbird). Gentoo also has a bunch of kernel patches applied (most specifically the preemptible kernel patch and the O(1) scheduler kernel patch). These two do wonders for the responsiveness of a desktop system (don't worry, everyone else will get these when kernel 2.6 is adapted).
The big things you lose on Gentoo is the stability and tech support. Don't get me wrong, it can be very stable, but the bigger distributions have a lot more people to check such things. The biggest thing though has to be time. You can spend a lot of time tweaking the settings and it can take a while to get a program (even with a fast internet connection and computer). As someone coming from Mandrake, you will also most miss the graphical setup programs, but you will end up learning a lot more about how the innards of Linux works.
As much as I am really rooting for AMD, I must say that I wish the Athlon's had this feature.
The average user is not going to notice a big difference right now because most applications have been so optimized for single processor computers that they perform poorly on SMP computers.
The big thing that hyperthreading is going to do is allow for more registers on the X86 architecture w/o changing the instruction set at all. This is the big enhancement and why I am so excited about it.
Could you:
- install a form of Linux/PPC on a server and all the clients
- install Mac On Linux on the server along with the applications you want on the clients
- Make the Mac disk image on the server readonly
- install X11 on the clients and have them connect to the server
- Only accept X11 connections on the server from within the campus
Only real issue I see would be licenses... but it should work if you have site licenses.
MPEG-4 -- I know it's the latest and greatest and should work in many streaming media players, but please read the license. You will have to pay a lot to stream MPEG-4 video. If you can eat the costs, then it's great. The thing is that you were talking about free and that'll be tough.
Something you may want to keep your eyes on is Theora (www.theora.org). It will combine Vorbis Audio and VP3 Video in OGG packets. Though it may be a while before it's up and running.
You are talking about making "web games," so I'm assuming you are going to make a suite of games, not just one. My approach I was going to use, was to release a suite of games for free under the GPL. Then use a updater program that would automatically update the games when new versions (bug fixes) come out.
Then, I was going to charge for "exclusive rights" to certain games. It would be written in that the money would also support the creation of another GPLed game.
I know this means that it's not ALL GPL, but it's a way to do it. Perhaps you could say that the "exclusive rights" would only be for a year, then the program goes GPL.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone that argues that the EPIA platform failed due to its hardware hasn't looked into it much. The EPIA failed due to the worst freakin drivers you've ever had the misfortune of using. Rarely have they had all the features working at one time... actually I think it was NEVER that they've had it all working. Most of the features don't even work at the BIOS level. If they had gotten that right, they'd have done much better.
You want to know why these games? I can tell you a couple. They are cheap to get rights to (like I personally might be able to fund one). They are fun. They are stepping stones to better things. Epic Interactive has been porting games for a while actually. They have some good Mac ports and other OSs as well. Hyperion is testing the waters for Linux again. They pulled 2 developers from the icculus.org community to do the port for them and covered the cost of the rights. They are also going to pay those developers back a nominal fee for it. Look at the GBA game list. Most are old games that have great gameplay and are fun. I'd consider the GBA the most profitable market in gaming. Honestly, if Gorky 17 doesn't at least break even, I wouldn't blame Hyperion for leaving the Linux market for good. (Honestly, it cost them that little). Gorky 17 is also a stepping stone to test developers, hype the Gorky world, and gain money to port Gorky Zero. This game IS new. It isn't even out yet. It's been mentioned quite positively on Bluesnews and looks to be a lot of fun. Finally, these are all games with great gameplay and not first person shooters. Gorky is a fun RPG. That's right, a real RPG for Linux.... what everyone's been asking for. Knights and Merchants is supposed to be a lot of fun in a RTS style game. Software Tycoon is a tycoon game... only one has been Railroad Tycoon 2... a welcome complement. You may think I'm talking out of my butt and know nothing, but I'm one of those 2 guys porting Gorky 17. Trust me, I'm telling the truth.
If the product is so expensive, you should consider the hardware keys instead of product activation. I know CADKey used to have them. A small device that plugs into the... serial port (might have been parallel port) that had to be checked. Another possibility is a USB version.
I don't know how good an ASF file is overall, but I know it supports multiple frame rates.
I have a first revision eMac. All I have to say is "Don't get one if you can't get AppleCare (because it was purchased too long ago)". They have a part in the monitor that breaks and then you have to either a) get it fixed at a high cost due to lots of labor or b) plug in an external monitor.
As far as I know, that'e the only bug on them, but it's an expensive one.
XFree is under the X License (fairly similar to the BSD license). There is currently no issue with making drivers that are binary only. The only place you can't put in binary drivers is the Linux Kernel (as it is GPLed).
Epic Games open sourced the UT engine in hopes of getting big sales on Linux and other non-Windows OSs. They eventually pulled back out of it. Basically it took too much time and resources with too little gain.
Actually, The key to setting up CUPS is remove things like foomatic. Just start cupsd and point your web browser to http://127.0.0.1:631. It's actually a pretty darn good and easy to use setup. I've helped quite a few people by just pointing them to that instead of programs that "simplify setting up CUPS".
It's not a free alternative, but it's supposed to be cheaper and can still be used w/ outlook (and therefore should work w/ evolution too). http://www.suse.com/us/business/products/suse_busi ness/openexchange/
I have no affiliation w/ SuSE. I just find this product interesting.
Yes, you are right, but the poster was commenting on the fact that working at Best Buy reduces the cost of the entertainment portion of the budget. This reallocates money to thing like paying bills and such. I don't think the example of a plasma TV was a good example. Nor are most of the products at Best Buy aimed towards a child. Therefore, I'm not sure Best Buy would be the place to work for him. If the guy spends a lot on electronic goods, though, it'd help a lot.
There's a huge difference between upping the Optimization level (-O) and changing the processor you compiled for.
The processor can add instructions specific to you processor or compile in a method that is faster for your processor. (On a K6 it is faster to physically move the stack pointer and move the data on the stack than to use push... why? I have no idea, but it was in their optimization guide =)
Changing the -O causes GCC to use tricks to compile the code faster (unrolling loops, inlining functions, etc). This can not only cause executables to increase in size, but it also causes things to break pretty often. Many programs do not compile correctly with all optimizatons turned on.
Speed. I am running a Gentoo system. The big advantage is that you get new packages pretty quickly. All the code can be compiled specifically for you processor (that's right I have an entire system specifically compiled for my Athon Thunderbird). Gentoo also has a bunch of kernel patches applied (most specifically the preemptible kernel patch and the O(1) scheduler kernel patch). These two do wonders for the responsiveness of a desktop system (don't worry, everyone else will get these when kernel 2.6 is adapted). The big things you lose on Gentoo is the stability and tech support. Don't get me wrong, it can be very stable, but the bigger distributions have a lot more people to check such things. The biggest thing though has to be time. You can spend a lot of time tweaking the settings and it can take a while to get a program (even with a fast internet connection and computer). As someone coming from Mandrake, you will also most miss the graphical setup programs, but you will end up learning a lot more about how the innards of Linux works.
As much as I am really rooting for AMD, I must say that I wish the Athlon's had this feature. The average user is not going to notice a big difference right now because most applications have been so optimized for single processor computers that they perform poorly on SMP computers. The big thing that hyperthreading is going to do is allow for more registers on the X86 architecture w/o changing the instruction set at all. This is the big enhancement and why I am so excited about it.
Could you: - install a form of Linux/PPC on a server and all the clients - install Mac On Linux on the server along with the applications you want on the clients - Make the Mac disk image on the server readonly - install X11 on the clients and have them connect to the server - Only accept X11 connections on the server from within the campus Only real issue I see would be licenses... but it should work if you have site licenses.
MPEG-4 -- I know it's the latest and greatest and should work in many streaming media players, but please read the license. You will have to pay a lot to stream MPEG-4 video. If you can eat the costs, then it's great. The thing is that you were talking about free and that'll be tough. Something you may want to keep your eyes on is Theora (www.theora.org). It will combine Vorbis Audio and VP3 Video in OGG packets. Though it may be a while before it's up and running.
You are talking about making "web games," so I'm assuming you are going to make a suite of games, not just one. My approach I was going to use, was to release a suite of games for free under the GPL. Then use a updater program that would automatically update the games when new versions (bug fixes) come out. Then, I was going to charge for "exclusive rights" to certain games. It would be written in that the money would also support the creation of another GPLed game. I know this means that it's not ALL GPL, but it's a way to do it. Perhaps you could say that the "exclusive rights" would only be for a year, then the program goes GPL.