However, it's from a less-distant past than imake, so it's still a step forward.
(You would not believe how difficult it would have been to convince the laggards in the X community to adopt Scons instead of automake. Thankfully, other big projects like KDE aren't quite so difficult to drag kicking and screaming into the current century.)
The set of dependencies for X is pretty well-known at this point and not likely to change anytime soon.
And there's already a script which will build the entire set of apps, libs, drivers, and the server for you with one command, not to mention jhbuild support; I don't see X being difficult to build in the future.
It'll certainly be no more difficult than hacking out a host.def for imake and setting a whole bunch of poorly-documented keyword variables. And in most cases, it'll be a *lot* less painful. Plus, now apps can depend on the proper versions of libraries, which has been problematic before; it's historically been very difficult to query (in the build system) exactly *what* version of X is installed, and which libraries are included, and what extensions are supported. That's all in the past now.
Not to mention the decoupling of the driver release cycle. Hooray for being able to get new cards working properly sooner, rather than months later!
When a vulnerability is found in libXpm, you won't have to download 15MB of fonts for the update to the library.
Also, drivers will now be released completely independently of the server. So you won't have to wait months for a new driver for your card; maybe a couple of weeks at most.
The iPods may work with the remote, but the question is why can't they act as the remote?
It's a good question. The iPods are already pretty close to a good remote interface. Add a new main menu item for 'Front Row' and let it control the iMac from there, or something.
Have you seen Battlestar Galactica? Either the mini-series or the show? Because that's the best sci-fi I've seen, period. Firefly is good, don't get me wrong - I like it, a lot, but Battlestar Galactica completely destroys it.
If you think we're in a dry spell, maybe you should look a little harder.
One of the unsung (so far) benefits is that it's one of the biggest monitors you can drive with a reasonably-priced consumer video card.
1680x1050 - the native resolution on the 2005FPW - is around the upper range that a single-link DVI card can do (and trust me, you don't want to run your sweet new wide-screen LCD over VGA) so unless you have a $400+ video card that can do dual-link DVI output... the 2005FPW is your best bet. Also, the actual LCD panel in the 2005FPW is the same exact one that Apple uses in their 20" widescreen monitor. There's a comparison on Anandtech's site that has a lot more information about the two displays.
I've got two - I bought one for home, and I loved it so much that I bought another one to use at work. The first one I bought was $562 shipped; the second one was $359, due to some absolutely insane coupons going on at the time. Definitely worth the money.
I also highly recommend the Ikea Jerker desk and the IBM Model M keyboard. A pretty eclectic collection, but that's my current setup and I am *really* digging it. I have another LCD, a 15" NEC model that does 1024x768, on a swinging arm attached to the desk - it's my Mac mini display.
I need to find a DVI KVM that doesn't cost as much as a new monitor, though... I have a few systems that are DVI-capable now, and swapping cables is a bitch.
By the time the PlayStation came out in North America 4 months later, a lot had changed during the year. RAM had gone from $50US a megabyte to $20. The Yen had gone from 80 yen per US dollar to 110. And Sega had dropped the price of the Saturn to $299. At this point the PlayStation was indeed profitable, and the Saturn was a minor money pit for Sega.
and:
In the end, before the first PS2 rolled off the production line for consumers, Sony had spent $2 billion! TWO BILLION!
Then we look at Sony's stock report for Oct-Dec 2000, and there is an interesting little blurb. It said that had Sony been able to meet demand with another 1 million PS2 units, they would have pocketed $175 million in profits. $175 million divided by one million consoles equals $175 per console profit.
Sony hasn't yet sold a console at a loss. Nintendo did not sell the N64 at a loss (although it appears that the Gamecube was sold at a loss for a while). Sega was the first major videogame system manufacturer to do it and they went out of business. Microsoft also did it but they have too much money for such a small loss as a billion dollars to bankrupt them.
Well, that's what you get for not researching properly before buying things.:)
So, there are three socket types for AMD64 CPUs. The low-end stuff is Socket 754 - Sempron and Athlon64 and such. S754 is basically a dead end.
Socket 939 is a much more promising long-term socket for Athlon64 upgrades. Most new S939 boards these days are being made with PCIe, which dovetails nicely with the fact that the high-end graphics card vendors are all moving PCIe as well.
Socket 940 is for Opterons and Athlon64-FX chips. The FX chips are really expensive and really fast, but more expensive than fast when compared to their S939 brethren. Socket 940 boards come in both AGP and PCIe variants (since S940 is relatively old and predates PCIe, many AGP S940 boards exist).
As far as I know, there aren't any plans for dual-core chips on the S754 chipsets. However, the Athlon64-x2 chips are S939, and the dual-core Opterons are all S940. If you have an S939 board, it's probably smarter to forget the FX chips and go straight for an A64-x2 once they become a bit more affordable.
It doesn't *have* to, although I agree that without any more explanation, you'd be right.
But what if we had some sort of instantaneous displacement field technology?
You put your arm into one side, it comes out the other instantaneously. Once we have instantaneous displacement of matter, it may actually be possible to displace objects across time as well as space. Of course, if this is how time travel has to work, it would explain why we haven't seen any travellers from the future yet; we simply haven't got the technology for them to arrive.
Basically, if time travel is actually possible, the instant that you travel back in time, you would create a fork in the past; you go back to 1978, and every single event prior to the time that you land in may be the same, but as soon as you land in 1978 you create a version of 1978 where you existed. Getting back to your own future would be really difficult, if not impossible.
The cool thing is, if you kill someone, in that timeline that person completely ceases existing. The problem with this, of course, is that it only affects *that* timeline and any future forks created from that point onwards; it doesn't change the fact that back here, in our timeline, W became the president and launched another Gulf War.
It *is* an option in KDE, but GNOME does not have MacOS-style menus. They *do* have a global 'menu' applet which is a few hardcoded items which will sit in the panel, and are completely independent of any application you happen to be running.
Which kind of gives you the worst of both worlds. A global menubar *and* a per-window menubar wastes more screen space than any other desktop known to man. But hey, at least it's not configurable!
All I can say is, there's a reason why some of us are religious about them. I type more than eight hours a day pretty frequently, so having a solid, reliable keyboard is an absolute must. I've never *ever* worn out a Model M, no matter how much I used it. I've made them grimy and gotten the keycaps greasy, and then soaked the keycaps in alcohol and used an air can to blow all the junk out from under the keys, and the damned keyboards look and feel like they're brand-new.
I know that we sound like ranting, raving lunatics, but I inherited a pretty strong appreciation for quality craftsmanship from my dad, and these keyboards are it as far as I'm concerned. I managed to talk a friend of mine into buying one on eBay (the lucky bastard got it for ridiculously cheap) and his reaction after it arrived was:
[ajax] clee: i was wrong, you were right [clee] ajax: ? [ajax] clee: the Model M is a superior product
Just give one a shot. If you hate it, hell, I'll buy it off of you for whatever you pay for it. (Get a 1391401, if you can. They have an awesome detachable cord, so in the event that you slice the cord or it somehow gets damaged, you don't have to replace the entire keyboard. Again, quality workmanship and engineering.)
You can find them on eBay for under $30 (although, since they weigh in at six pounds, the shipping is usually about $10) or you can buy them new.
The only negative thing about these keyboards is that they are definitely loud; I consider it a plus, but I don't have to worry about waking other people up in the middle of the night with my typing. But these things are pretty much impervious to the usual keyboard mishaps - beer, soda, candy, etc. Highly recommended. (I have a few - one for work, one for home, and a couple to experiment with and use for backup parts, like the keycaps and the detachable cables.)
The exact link that they included with the mail message that was sent to me, and I assume the rest of the members on the mailing list, was to this page which seems to be exactly the same link as was in the Slashdot posting.
I have no idea where Boing Boing got their link, but I'm telling you this is exactly what arrived in my inbox from Alienware, so I'm fairly confident it's not being used to track referrals for a single person.
Actually, the 'source=1446' parameter is the same as I got in my email (I'm on the Alienware mailing list). I believe that it's so that Alienware can track who finds things on their site vs. who clicks on the email links, but that's just my own conjecture.
In any case, it's *not* a referral link so that the submitter can make more money.
Slashdot Mirror
You're totally right, and we know that :)
However, it's from a less-distant past than imake, so it's still a step forward.
(You would not believe how difficult it would have been to convince the laggards in the X community to adopt Scons instead of automake. Thankfully, other big projects like KDE aren't quite so difficult to drag kicking and screaming into the current century.)
Now, c'mon, that was kinda cheap.
The set of dependencies for X is pretty well-known at this point and not likely to change anytime soon.
And there's already a script which will build the entire set of apps, libs, drivers, and the server for you with one command, not to mention jhbuild support; I don't see X being difficult to build in the future.
It'll certainly be no more difficult than hacking out a host.def for imake and setting a whole bunch of poorly-documented keyword variables. And in most cases, it'll be a *lot* less painful. Plus, now apps can depend on the proper versions of libraries, which has been problematic before; it's historically been very difficult to query (in the build system) exactly *what* version of X is installed, and which libraries are included, and what extensions are supported. That's all in the past now.
Not to mention the decoupling of the driver release cycle. Hooray for being able to get new cards working properly sooner, rather than months later!
X.org builds and runs on more than just Linux/UNIX; it works on MacOS X's display server as well as on Windows and (at least at one point) OS/2.
So no, we won't drop the 'X is cross-platform' claim anytime soon. Thanks though.
When a vulnerability is found in libXpm, you won't have to download 15MB of fonts for the update to the library.
Also, drivers will now be released completely independently of the server. So you won't have to wait months for a new driver for your card; maybe a couple of weeks at most.
+1, Battlestar Galactica
No, no, no.
That's not what he asked.
The iPods may work with the remote, but the question is why can't they act as the remote?
It's a good question. The iPods are already pretty close to a good remote interface. Add a new main menu item for 'Front Row' and let it control the iMac from there, or something.
It's definitely an interesting idea.
That's not even close to true.
Have you seen Battlestar Galactica? Either the mini-series or the show? Because that's the best sci-fi I've seen, period. Firefly is good, don't get me wrong - I like it, a lot, but Battlestar Galactica completely destroys it.
If you think we're in a dry spell, maybe you should look a little harder.
Another vote for the 2005FPW.
One of the unsung (so far) benefits is that it's one of the biggest monitors you can drive with a reasonably-priced consumer video card.
1680x1050 - the native resolution on the 2005FPW - is around the upper range that a single-link DVI card can do (and trust me, you don't want to run your sweet new wide-screen LCD over VGA) so unless you have a $400+ video card that can do dual-link DVI output... the 2005FPW is your best bet. Also, the actual LCD panel in the 2005FPW is the same exact one that Apple uses in their 20" widescreen monitor. There's a comparison on Anandtech's site that has a lot more information about the two displays.
I've got two - I bought one for home, and I loved it so much that I bought another one to use at work. The first one I bought was $562 shipped; the second one was $359, due to some absolutely insane coupons going on at the time. Definitely worth the money.
I also highly recommend the Ikea Jerker desk and the IBM Model M keyboard. A pretty eclectic collection, but that's my current setup and I am *really* digging it. I have another LCD, a 15" NEC model that does 1024x768, on a swinging arm attached to the desk - it's my Mac mini display.
I need to find a DVI KVM that doesn't cost as much as a new monitor, though... I have a few systems that are DVI-capable now, and swapping cables is a bitch.
An op-ed piece written by the owner of a video-game store holds a little bit of weight in my book.
(from the linked page)
and:
Sony hasn't yet sold a console at a loss. Nintendo did not sell the N64 at a loss (although it appears that the Gamecube was sold at a loss for a while). Sega was the first major videogame system manufacturer to do it and they went out of business. Microsoft also did it but they have too much money for such a small loss as a billion dollars to bankrupt them.
Oy.
::grin::
:)
Shows me what I get for remembering things wrong after having done *my* research a couple months ago.
Thanks for the correction. Although I still think it's kinda silly to drop a grand on a CPU, but hey, whatever works.
Well, that's what you get for not researching properly before buying things. :)
So, there are three socket types for AMD64 CPUs. The low-end stuff is Socket 754 - Sempron and Athlon64 and such. S754 is basically a dead end.
Socket 939 is a much more promising long-term socket for Athlon64 upgrades. Most new S939 boards these days are being made with PCIe, which dovetails nicely with the fact that the high-end graphics card vendors are all moving PCIe as well.
Socket 940 is for Opterons and Athlon64-FX chips. The FX chips are really expensive and really fast, but more expensive than fast when compared to their S939 brethren. Socket 940 boards come in both AGP and PCIe variants (since S940 is relatively old and predates PCIe, many AGP S940 boards exist).
As far as I know, there aren't any plans for dual-core chips on the S754 chipsets. However, the Athlon64-x2 chips are S939, and the dual-core Opterons are all S940. If you have an S939 board, it's probably smarter to forget the FX chips and go straight for an A64-x2 once they become a bit more affordable.
It doesn't *have* to, although I agree that without any more explanation, you'd be right.
But what if we had some sort of instantaneous displacement field technology?
You put your arm into one side, it comes out the other instantaneously. Once we have instantaneous displacement of matter, it may actually be possible to displace objects across time as well as space. Of course, if this is how time travel has to work, it would explain why we haven't seen any travellers from the future yet; we simply haven't got the technology for them to arrive.
Well, I was born in 1984. :)
It's actually slight more complicated than that.
Basically, if time travel is actually possible, the instant that you travel back in time, you would create a fork in the past; you go back to 1978, and every single event prior to the time that you land in may be the same, but as soon as you land in 1978 you create a version of 1978 where you existed. Getting back to your own future would be really difficult, if not impossible.
The cool thing is, if you kill someone, in that timeline that person completely ceases existing. The problem with this, of course, is that it only affects *that* timeline and any future forks created from that point onwards; it doesn't change the fact that back here, in our timeline, W became the president and launched another Gulf War.
Actually, no, it's not an option in GNOME.
It *is* an option in KDE, but GNOME does not have MacOS-style menus. They *do* have a global 'menu' applet which is a few hardcoded items which will sit in the panel, and are completely independent of any application you happen to be running.
Which kind of gives you the worst of both worlds. A global menubar *and* a per-window menubar wastes more screen space than any other desktop known to man. But hey, at least it's not configurable!
I know that we sound like ranting, raving lunatics, but I inherited a pretty strong appreciation for quality craftsmanship from my dad, and these keyboards are it as far as I'm concerned. I managed to talk a friend of mine into buying one on eBay (the lucky bastard got it for ridiculously cheap) and his reaction after it arrived was:Just give one a shot. If you hate it, hell, I'll buy it off of you for whatever you pay for it. (Get a 1391401, if you can. They have an awesome detachable cord, so in the event that you slice the cord or it somehow gets damaged, you don't have to replace the entire keyboard. Again, quality workmanship and engineering.)
See this comment. You can't *buy* a better keyboard than the IBM Model M, in my opinion.
Get an IBM Model M.
You can find them on eBay for under $30 (although, since they weigh in at six pounds, the shipping is usually about $10) or you can buy them new.
The only negative thing about these keyboards is that they are definitely loud; I consider it a plus, but I don't have to worry about waking other people up in the middle of the night with my typing. But these things are pretty much impervious to the usual keyboard mishaps - beer, soda, candy, etc. Highly recommended. (I have a few - one for work, one for home, and a couple to experiment with and use for backup parts, like the keycaps and the detachable cables.)
Actually, um, no.
Microsoft sold Xenix off to SCO (and others).
The exact link that they included with the mail message that was sent to me, and I assume the rest of the members on the mailing list, was to this page which seems to be exactly the same link as was in the Slashdot posting.
I have no idea where Boing Boing got their link, but I'm telling you this is exactly what arrived in my inbox from Alienware, so I'm fairly confident it's not being used to track referrals for a single person.
Hey, I never said it was smart. And I could be completely wrong about the intended purpose. :)
Actually, the 'source=1446' parameter is the same as I got in my email (I'm on the Alienware mailing list). I believe that it's so that Alienware can track who finds things on their site vs. who clicks on the email links, but that's just my own conjecture.
In any case, it's *not* a referral link so that the submitter can make more money.
Eh, kghostview kinda sucks.
KPDF on the other hand - man, I'm amazed at how well it works. It's pretty damned cool.
Dude, that was Wesley Snipes.