>Isn't it amazing that by not complying with a >Microsoft specification, you can go under?
I think that this is a gross oversimplification of what happened. I don't remember seeing too many OEMed #9 cards or chips even in their salad days.
Personally, I think you can chalk up them not moving fast enough to the 3D and portable markets, being shut out of the potenital OEM market by ATI, and suffering the same fate as S3 (until they made some headway with the Savage), Cirrus Logic, and Trident.
I don't think we can blame Microsoft for EVERYTHING.
AFAIK, there is no intention to pull OpenUT or any of the source code. In fact Brendon posted to the OpenUT devel list that he was going to release the new UT 413 headers directly after E3 so we can start developing again.
Also note that Epic has done fairly little development for the Linux port, but rather released enough of the source code to allow the OpenUT group to get the engine running. Since the source release, the code has been ported to SDL for window handling, I/O, and OpenGL, and there is currently heavy development on the sound code, with, with the exception of 3d audio, is already on a par with the windows version.
But there are three things that that gives me much hope for the future with Unreal and Linux:
1) Daniel Volgel, one of the main programmers on OpenUT (probably would be considered the 'lead' programmer) started working for Loki about a week ago. He has a pretty good working relationship with Brandon Reinhart and I would imagine that there would be a dialog between Loki and Epic.
2) AFAIK, the playstation uses OpenGL as it's primary graphics API, and Linux as it's development platform. Heck, I KNOW that Brandon has been doing the UT port on a Linux box. How can you ONLY support D3D and still port to the playstation in a reasonable fashion.
3) It's a long way from here to a new Unreal Engine. Lots of times, and there is lots of time to change their mind.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I've enjoyed hacking on the OpenUT code, and will continue to. And EPIC has done the Linux community a great service in releasing parts of the UT engine source, which can be a great learning experience on how a game engine is written.
OpenUT is very playable on many systems, and this will only improve as the state of accelerated OpenGL (via DRI or GLX) on Linux improves.
Join the OpenUT list at openut.sourceforge.net. I will guarentee it is an installation issue. 99.9% of the maps out there work just fine. In fact, I haven't found one that doesn't, but I know of a few circumstances that would prevent a map from running. jf
> Stop being so arrogant. It's just an executable > attachment.
Er, yes, but Pine/Elm/Mutt etc, do not run attachments automatically, don't include a programming language within the application itself, and aren't really susceptable to this sort of thing.
Go ahead. Write a bash script. But you would have to be a COMPLETE idiot to run an unknown shell script, or any unknown application, recieved in e-mail. You certainly wouldn't get this kind of instant mass destruction.
There will shortly be a correction to the Matrox scores. The utah-glx drivers set the clockspeeds on the G400 to some very conservative numbers compared to the Win98 drivers. If you use a program like 'mgaclock' or 'gmgaclock' and reset the clock speed, the performance goes up quite a bit. jf
> Rob Malda is selling us out. I found these > following cookies that slashdot stores:
Yeah, right.. You forgot one though...
is_idiot
It's a boolean cookie....
> I want an answer as to why those cookies are > being stored
Rob is actually a lab mouse and this is all part of his master plan to take over the world..
> and where Rob Malda is getting the information.
He gets his info from Santa Claus, of course. Santa runs a huge database in conjunction with Doubleclick and Microsoft to track everyone and find out if they're naughty or nice. Much easier than the old fashioned way.
I saw an interview with Issac Hayes (who is 'Chef' on South Park) some time ago, about when he was writing that classic, tender love song, 'The Theme From Shaft'.
At some point, one of the lyrics was:
"You know that Shaft is one bad mother-!@#$%^!#.."
He wrote this down and KNEW that there would be no way to get it past the 60's-era censors or the studio. So, he censored himself and created one of the best musical cliches of all time:
But maybe a better way to do this would be to contact the web people of all the major campaigns and do a 'how did each respond' type of interview.
In lieu of the 'Al Gore Invented the Internet' problems and rancor, it may make for a more rounded interview and more intelligent questions being asked...
Hmmm. Well I've built and used systems with: AMD 386DX/40, AMD 486DX4/100 K5 100, K5 133, K6 233, K6-2 300, and a K6-3 400, all in 7x24 server functions. I only had problems with the K6-2 300, which was really sensitive to the efficency of it's CPU fan, but still ran flawlessly for about a year before I retired it.
All the rest (including the 386, minus the K6-2) are still in service somewhere in someone's computer and doing fine.
When the K7 SMP systems arrive, that will be my next system. I've used almost nothing but AMD chips for the last 7 years (currently I'm running a dual 433 celeron system) and have nothing but good things to say about them. The only down side I can really find is that supporting chipsets (Via, SIS, etc) do not do some functions as well as the Intel equivilents, like PCI DMA throughput. Nothing wrong with the AMD chip, though..
I wonder how long (or if it has already happened) until an employee of an online business decides to improve the value of his stock options by taking out his company's top rival(s) for a couple of hours. There are times (say around December 15th for many merchants) when something like could be devestating.
Room temperature is about 70 F, and I BELIEVE that 48 C -> ~118 F. That qualifies as 'slighly warm' in silicon temperatures. A P3, on the other hand, would give you a pretty nasty burn, if you touched it with your bare hand.
I've been consulting, installing, and using Secure Computing's Sidewinder firewall for about 3.5 years now, which includes the "Patented Type Enforcement Technology". Here's the skinny..
Type enforcement was developed by Secure Computing to be run on a Motorola mini computer system for the NSA about 10-15 years ago. This was specificly designed to be a system to hold both classified and non-classified information, with both classified and non-classified users.
What type enforcement does is create a series of domains within the context of the operating system. Each file and user is assigned to a domain, or a series of domains, and cannot pass domain boundaries, unless explicitly allowed. Attempting to cross boundaries will result in the offending application being killed by the system kernel, the attempted logged, and alarms rung.
The important thing here is that the domain permissions and rules are set in the kernel itself, and changing those rules requires a recompile. I know that Secure Computing was working on a 'type enforcement lite', where the rules were enforced by a userspace daemon, but I hadn't seen anything about that for quite awhile.
Sidewinder is a damned effective firewall, due to the type enforcement. Even if someone breaks a proxy or service running on the outside of the firewall, you still haven't breached the firewall, since there is no logical path to the inside domains or the internal ethernet card, except through a series of named pipes between dual IP stacks (one for the 'outside' and one for the 'inside'). Breaking through those is extremely non-trivial, since every time you touch the wrong domain, you get kicked and logged.
Type enforcement is real, and it's been around for a very long time. And works very well.
I have a friend who has her PHD in astro-physics (works as a high-power computer geek now, go figure) and who's ex is a professor and somewhat respected person in the field.
When I first met them a few years ago, in one of our conversations, I asked if 'Brief History of Time' was considered basic theoretical physics theory.
The answer suprised me. They told me that not only were most of the things in the book not considered basic theory, but many if not most of the ideas put forward as fact were highly controversial and hotly contested in the field of astro-physics.
It seems that Hawking, while respected, well thought of, and certainly a smart cookie, is not the all-influential demigod that most of us believe that he is.
Well, considering that the submitter, 'a_little_bird' is a kristin_deangelis@idg.com, and IDG is the one handing out the money, it seems pretty positive....
I guess that depends on who Kristin actually is....
I nominate David Hinds for the sometimes thankless job of maintaining the pcmcia-cs driver package for the last several years.
For over 5 years (The first version in the CHANGES file with a date is 2.8.1, which was released 18-Dec-1995), pcmcia-cs has been one of the mainstays of Linux device drivers, providing lowlevel drivers for pcmcia and cardbus devices, and the card management tools, which I feel work as well or better than any other PCMCIA management system out there for any platform.
Anyone who has a laptop owes a great debt to David, who has never received much recognition for his work. Remember that Linux based laptops were one of the eary entries for Linux into the workplace (but I NEED a Unix system when I travel and a portable Sun is $30,000!), and this would not have been possible without David.
PI's web site. Here's a rundown from one of their graphics It lists several different paths through the X system that can be programmed for.
3D Direct Rendering
-Raw OpenGL compat Rendering Library -> Hardware -GLX/DRI -> Kernel Module -> Hardware -XLib -> X Transport -> X Server -> Hardware
X11 2D (Normal X)
-XLib -> X Transport -> X Server -> Hardware
3D Indirect Rendering
GXLib -> X Transport -> X server -> Hardware XLib -> X Transport -> X Server -> Hardware
So while, yes 2D is done the same old way, There are many new 3D options available, including bare wire access to the hardware.
Two items on the NT video subsystem:
Note that one of NT's major sources of instabilities is in its video drivers. Any wrong call inside the driver can and does blue screen the box. With X's user-space model, this can't happen easily. There is a trade off on performance, but with X you get stability, multiple screens, and native network windowing, with the tradeoff being in having to use an asynchronous display instead of a synchronous display. (Displaying graphics synchronously gives faster graphics at the expense of CPU)
Also note that DRI is essentially an improved version of SGI's GLX implementation on Irix (SGI's version of Unix), which ABSOLUTELY SMOKES 3D rendering on NT, on neo-equivalent boxes. If you've never seen 3D done on a SGI O2 or better, you haven't seen good 3D. X isn't such a dog then...:)
I think the big problem is that Jim Carrey got 'big' with "Ace Ventura" and "The Mask", and for awhile he was typcast in created "Jim Carrey zannyness" vehicles.
I think that I's only been since "Liar, Liar" that he's been able to show any more serious talent...
Slashdot Mirror
>Isn't it amazing that by not complying with a
>Microsoft specification, you can go under?
I think that this is a gross oversimplification of what happened. I don't remember seeing too many OEMed #9 cards or chips even in their salad days.
Personally, I think you can chalk up them not moving fast enough to the 3D and portable markets, being shut out of the potenital OEM market by ATI, and suffering the same fate as S3 (until they made some headway with the Savage), Cirrus Logic, and Trident.
I don't think we can blame Microsoft for EVERYTHING.
AFAIK, there is no intention to pull OpenUT or any of the source code. In fact Brendon posted to the OpenUT devel list that he was going to release the new UT 413 headers directly after E3 so we can start developing again.
Also note that Epic has done fairly little development for the Linux port, but rather released enough of the source code to allow the OpenUT group to get the engine running. Since the source release, the code has been ported to SDL for window handling, I/O, and OpenGL, and there is currently heavy development on the sound code, with, with the exception of 3d audio, is already on a par with the windows version.
But there are three things that that gives me much hope for the future with Unreal and Linux:
1) Daniel Volgel, one of the main programmers on OpenUT (probably would be considered the 'lead' programmer) started working for Loki about a week ago. He has a pretty good working relationship with Brandon Reinhart and I would imagine that there would be a dialog between Loki and Epic.
2) AFAIK, the playstation uses OpenGL as it's primary graphics API, and Linux as it's development platform. Heck, I KNOW that Brandon has been doing the UT port on a Linux box. How can you ONLY support D3D and still port to the playstation in a reasonable fashion.
3) It's a long way from here to a new Unreal Engine. Lots of times, and there is lots of time to change their mind.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I've enjoyed hacking on the OpenUT code, and will continue to. And EPIC has done the Linux community a great service in releasing parts of the UT engine source, which can be a great learning experience on how a game engine is written.
OpenUT is very playable on many systems, and this will only improve as the state of accelerated OpenGL (via DRI or GLX) on Linux improves.
jf
Join the OpenUT list at openut.sourceforge.net. I will guarentee it is an installation issue. 99.9% of the maps out there work just fine. In fact, I haven't found one that doesn't, but I know of a few circumstances that would prevent a map from running. jf
> Stop being so arrogant. It's just an executable
> attachment.
Er, yes, but Pine/Elm/Mutt etc, do not run attachments automatically, don't include a programming language within the application itself, and aren't really susceptable to this sort of thing.
Go ahead. Write a bash script. But you would have to be a COMPLETE idiot to run an unknown shell script, or any unknown application, recieved in e-mail. You certainly wouldn't get this kind of instant mass destruction.
jf
(Laughing manically!)
There will shortly be a correction to the Matrox scores. The utah-glx drivers set the clockspeeds on the G400 to some very conservative numbers compared to the Win98 drivers. If you use a program like 'mgaclock' or 'gmgaclock' and reset the clock speed, the performance goes up quite a bit. jf
> Rob Malda is selling us out. I found these
> following cookies that slashdot stores:
Yeah, right.. You forgot one though...
is_idiot
It's a boolean cookie....
> I want an answer as to why those cookies are
> being stored
Rob is actually a lab mouse and this is all part of his master plan to take over the world..
> and where Rob Malda is getting the information.
He gets his info from Santa Claus, of course. Santa runs a huge database in conjunction with Doubleclick and Microsoft to track everyone and find out if they're naughty or nice. Much easier than the old fashioned way.
Santa knows EVERYTHING!
Puh-LEEZ.
Funny you should say this:
:)
I saw an interview with Issac Hayes (who is 'Chef' on South Park) some time ago, about when he was writing that classic, tender love song, 'The Theme From Shaft'.
At some point, one of the lyrics was:
"You know that Shaft is one bad mother-!@#$%^!#.."
He wrote this down and KNEW that there would be no way to get it past the 60's-era censors or the studio. So, he censored himself and created one of the best musical cliches of all time:
"You know that Shaft is one bad mother-...."
"Shut your mouth!"
"But I'm talking about Shaft!"
"We can dig it..."
Sometimes censorship is good!
But maybe a better way to do this would be to contact the web people of all the major campaigns and do a 'how did each respond' type of interview.
In lieu of the 'Al Gore Invented the Internet' problems and rancor, it may make for a more rounded interview and more intelligent questions being asked...
jf
Hmmm. Well I've built and used systems with: AMD 386DX/40, AMD 486DX4/100 K5 100, K5 133, K6 233, K6-2 300, and a K6-3 400, all in 7x24 server functions. I only had problems with the K6-2 300, which was really sensitive to the efficency of it's CPU fan, but still ran flawlessly for about a year before I retired it.
All the rest (including the 386, minus the K6-2) are still in service somewhere in someone's computer and doing fine.
When the K7 SMP systems arrive, that will be my next system. I've used almost nothing but AMD chips for the last 7 years (currently I'm running a dual 433 celeron system) and have nothing but good things to say about them. The only down side I can really find is that supporting chipsets (Via, SIS, etc) do not do some functions as well as the Intel equivilents, like PCI DMA throughput. Nothing wrong with the AMD chip, though..
jf
I wonder how long (or if it has already happened) until an employee of an online business decides to improve the value of his stock options by taking out his company's top rival(s) for a couple of hours. There are times (say around December 15th for many merchants) when something like could be devestating.
D-O-S: Not just for script kiddies any more....
jf
My bad.. Exo- , Endo-.. Not terms I use every day... :)
>My chip (Celeron) is running right now at 34 F
Wow! An exothermic chip?
:)
Room temperature is about 70 F, and I BELIEVE that 48 C -> ~118 F. That qualifies as 'slighly warm' in silicon temperatures. A P3, on the other hand, would give you a pretty nasty burn, if you touched it with your bare hand.
jf
A little background.
I've been consulting, installing, and using Secure Computing's Sidewinder firewall for about 3.5 years now, which includes the "Patented Type Enforcement Technology". Here's the skinny..
Type enforcement was developed by Secure Computing to be run on a Motorola mini computer system for the NSA about 10-15 years ago. This was specificly designed to be a system to hold both classified and non-classified information, with both classified and non-classified users.
What type enforcement does is create a series of domains within the context of the operating system. Each file and user is assigned to a domain, or a series of domains, and cannot pass domain boundaries, unless explicitly allowed. Attempting to cross boundaries will result in the offending application being killed by the system kernel, the attempted logged, and alarms rung.
The important thing here is that the domain permissions and rules are set in the kernel itself, and changing those rules requires a recompile. I know that Secure Computing was working on a 'type enforcement lite', where the rules were enforced by a userspace daemon, but I hadn't seen anything about that for quite awhile.
Sidewinder is a damned effective firewall, due to the type enforcement. Even if someone breaks a proxy or service running on the outside of the firewall, you still haven't breached the firewall, since there is no logical path to the inside domains or the internal ethernet card, except through a series of named pipes between dual IP stacks (one for the 'outside' and one for the 'inside'). Breaking through those is extremely non-trivial, since every time you touch the wrong domain, you get kicked and logged.
Type enforcement is real, and it's been around for a very long time. And works very well.
jf
I have a friend who has her PHD in astro-physics (works as a high-power computer geek now, go figure) and who's ex is a professor and somewhat respected person in the field.
When I first met them a few years ago, in one of our conversations, I asked if 'Brief History of Time' was considered basic theoretical physics theory.
The answer suprised me. They told me that not only were most of the things in the book not considered basic theory, but many if not most of the ideas put forward as fact were highly controversial and hotly contested in the field of astro-physics.
It seems that Hawking, while respected, well thought of, and certainly a smart cookie, is not the all-influential demigod that most of us believe that he is.
He does get great press, though....
jf
Well, considering that the submitter, 'a_little_bird' is a kristin_deangelis@idg.com, and IDG is the one handing out the money, it seems pretty positive....
I guess that depends on who Kristin actually is....
To be fair, AGP DMA transfers aren't supported by Linux, AFAIK, since Intel won't let go of the specs.
Also note that there are two (or more) AGP specifications that would have to be supported: Intel's, VIA's, and whoever else puts out an AGP chipset.
jf
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
http://www.alsa-project.org
Lots of stability, lots of cards, extremely open, limited MIDI yet, but designed and being implemented.
ALSA has definately come a long way...
Lots of stability, lots of cards, extremely open, limited MIDI yet, but designed and being implemented.
ALSA has definately come a long way...
If you haven't tried M12 or later... Mozilla will be very nice....
jf
It may be trendy, but the dang thing just makes so much sense, and not only in computer software terms.
Eric Raymond really pointed out the obvious, which is easy to see AFTERWARD.....
jf
Agreed! Nothing beats the grrrrreat scent of PINE!
jf
has helped a lot of newbies in his time, and never did use the extra large lart stick TOO often...
I nominate David Hinds for the sometimes thankless job of maintaining the pcmcia-cs driver package for the last several years.
For over 5 years (The first version in the CHANGES file with a date is 2.8.1, which was released 18-Dec-1995), pcmcia-cs has been one of the mainstays of Linux device drivers, providing lowlevel drivers for pcmcia and cardbus devices, and the card management tools, which I feel work as well or better than any other PCMCIA management system out there for any platform.
Anyone who has a laptop owes a great debt to David, who has never received much recognition for his work. Remember that Linux based laptops were one of the eary entries for Linux into the workplace (but I NEED a Unix system when I travel and a portable Sun is $30,000!), and this would not have been possible without David.
jf
PI's web site. Here's a rundown from one of their graphics It lists several different paths through the X system that can be programmed for.
:)
3D Direct Rendering
-Raw OpenGL compat Rendering Library -> Hardware
-GLX/DRI -> Kernel Module -> Hardware
-XLib -> X Transport -> X Server -> Hardware
X11 2D (Normal X)
-XLib -> X Transport -> X Server -> Hardware
3D Indirect Rendering
GXLib -> X Transport -> X server -> Hardware
XLib -> X Transport -> X Server -> Hardware
So while, yes 2D is done the same old way, There are many new 3D options available, including bare wire access to the hardware.
Two items on the NT video subsystem:
Note that one of NT's major sources of instabilities is in its video drivers. Any wrong call inside the driver can and does blue screen the box. With X's user-space model, this can't happen easily. There is a trade off on performance, but with X you get stability, multiple screens, and native network windowing, with the tradeoff being in having to use an asynchronous display instead of a synchronous display. (Displaying graphics synchronously gives faster graphics at the expense of CPU)
Also note that DRI is essentially an improved version of SGI's GLX implementation on Irix (SGI's version of Unix), which ABSOLUTELY SMOKES 3D rendering on NT, on neo-equivalent boxes. If you've never seen 3D done on a SGI O2 or better, you haven't seen good 3D. X isn't such a dog then...
jf
I think the big problem is that Jim Carrey got 'big' with "Ace Ventura" and "The Mask", and for awhile he was typcast in created "Jim Carrey zannyness" vehicles.
I think that I's only been since "Liar, Liar" that he's been able to show any more serious talent...
jf