We had a similiar problem. (some users traveling both here in Europe and in the US and not being able to use their cell phones over there) To solve it we got them the Ericsson I888 World which is dual-band and uses both the 900 (Europe) and 1900 (US) frequency bands. (It also has an IR interface and a built in modem which both come in handy for making data calls) I think Motorola released a Tri-Band cell phone that works all over the world (depending on the roaming agreements your GSM provider has, of course) but I don't know about its data capabilities. Greetings
void my_two_cents(void) { It depends on the cases/system you have. We have several IBM Netfinity 5000s in a 19" rack here and they come with a cabling fixture on the rear. (ie you attach your cables in there, make sure they are long enough and then you're off.)
Fiddling around with them is no problem either. The mounted cases are sitting on rails so you can slide them in and out of the rack and the server case can be opened at the top. (Just slide out the server, remove the top and you got the innards of your machine right in front of you;)
As I said, it all depends on the system you're using. With a little keyboard/mouse/screen switching system and lots of looooong cables you can easily put multiple servers in there and still be able to use them normally. (Of course the prices for such solutions can rise sky-high;) }
Yeah, or even better: Rent the disk, pirate it with DeCSS (according to the MPAA this is what everybody does all the time) and then throw it away.;)
Just joking. But you've got a point there. The idea is pretty nice. Saves both the rental stores and the customers a lot of hassle. Just rent the disk and throw it away. No worrying about getting it back on the customer side. No worrying about people keeping disks on the store side.
Just my 121 bytes of wasted storage space on slashdot's servers;)
I own a Matrox G400 Dual Head (32MB). A friend of mine has an Elsa Erazor III TNT2 (also 32MB) and here's what I have found:
The G400s OpenGL ICD seems to be way more beta than the TNT2s. The scene with the tubes in 3DMark2000 is bumpy on my P II 400 and fluent on his K6-2 366. The 'dozen' demo (available here) also has performance problems in the first scene (the one with the glows) which runs perfectly on his TNT2. But, as I said the G400 ICD is under development and still being worked on.
As for TV-Out, the one of the Erazor is more configurable (Elsa has always been very good with TV-Out) but the Matrox TV-Out is of a very good quality too. When it comes to outputting DVDs Matrox's DVD-Max feature really kicks ass and you get a full screen HQ image as if you were playing it on a 'real' DVD Player!
As far as drivers are considered, I do not see much difference. They both have the basic configuration options and are both under heavy development. (When I discovered the bug with the ground texture in 3DMark's helicopter scene I went to download the latest driver and, after installing it, saw that the problem was fixed.)
Apart from these little driver difference they compare pretty similarly in the benchmarks (can't really check that because my PC is slightly more powerful than my friends')
As for Q3, UT and so on, Matrox have developed a special TurboGL driver which only works for those games but is supposed to be faster. Unfortunately I couldn't test that one yet because my PC's mainboard has given up working recently.
All in all they're pretty similar. The G400 wins out on the features like Environtally Mapped Bump Mapping, (which you REALLY notice unlike Vibrant Color Quality2 ) the DVD TV-output, the Dual-Head feature (allows for TV-OUT, multi-screen usage etc) and a little in performance. (according to reviews I read)
On the other side the Erazor has slightly better Direct3D and OpenGL support.
As far as I am concerned, I am a proud owner of a G400 and the latest moves Matrox made towards Linux only confirm me in my choice and I will continue to support them by buying their products in the future.
Phew, guess I wrote a little too much but I'm too lazy to start reviewing all that now.
I checked back that invalid certificate thingy which makes some users hesiate from donating. The cert is invalid because it was issued to the domain: www.labyrinth.net.au
Authoritative answers can be found from: rip.psg.COM internet address = 147.28.0.39 warrane.connect.COM.AU internet address = 192.189.54.33 yarrina.connect.COM.AU internet address = 192.189.54.17 minotaur.labyrinth.NET.AU internet address = 203.9.148.2
dig -t any penguins.org.au ; > DiG 8.2 > @munnari.oz.au penguins.org.au -t ; (2 servers found) ;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch ;; got answer: ;; ->>HEADER- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 6 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 4, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 4 ;; QUERY SECTION: ;; penguins.org.au, type = ANY, class = IN
;; ANSWER SECTION: penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS rip.psg.COM. penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS warrane.connect.COM.AU. penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS yarrina.connect.COM.AU. penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS minotaur.labyrinth.NET.AU.
;; AUTHORITY SECTION: penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS rip.psg.COM. penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS warrane.connect.COM.AU. penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS yarrina.connect.COM.AU. penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS minotaur.labyrinth.NET.AU.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: rip.psg.COM. 1d21h55m26s IN A 147.28.0.39 warrane.connect.COM.AU. 1D IN A 192.189.54.33 yarrina.connect.COM.AU. 1D IN A 192.189.54.17 minotaur.labyrinth.NET.AU. 1D IN A 203.9.148.2
;; Total query time: 271 msec ;; FROM: vserve4.netregistry.au.com to SERVER: munnari.oz.au 128.250.22.2 ;; WHEN: Fri Jan 7 20:33:39 2000 ;; MSG SIZE sent: 33 rcvd: 273
Well, even if they weren't as vulerable (I of course have no idea whether they are ore not) they can't be used because they haven't been tested. (They're just too new to be used yet) Given the reliability required for these operations the NASA has to make sure that it will work, otherwise it'll get expensive;)
I just wonder when developers will finally realize that if THEY do not support Linux SOMEBODY WILL! (Even if the latter has to reverse engineer the software to port it)
As DeCSS and now Napster have shown, the Linux community simply is one of do-it-yourself people and if somebody locks them out, (by not supplying a client or whatever) they will hack they way in.
Anyway, I've read that the author of gnap and Napster are discussing the problem and I'm pretty confident that they'll find a solution.
Just wanted to excuse myself for making you lose a moderation point but when I read this: 'pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.' I just had to reply and my 'interesting' moderation point got undone
Ah! Good old Second Reality, I watched it till every frame was burnt into my screen, I ripped the S3Ms out and burnt them on CD-DA to listen in the car, I downloaded the 14ndreal.zip (SQRT(2) reality) parody and the C64 version (real great one!) If there's one demo I really love, then it's Second Reality!
Amnesia was something different: I worked for hours fiddling with my memory config, rebooting, starting Amnesia, crash, reboot, change memory config,... Never got it to run:(
But now for the real thing: the demo scene is just way cool, too bad it seems to be disappearing these days. Now I can't really say that I'm oldschool (my first computer was only a 286 and I never had a non-emulated C64) nor can I say that I belong to the demo scene (I'm way too dumb to code in ASM) but I can say that I'm a real fan of those guys who are. You have made these machines do things even their creators never imagined.
Anyway, I really hope that demos will live on because if they won't I'm gonna miss them.
Enough whining now, leave this message and go read something interesting;)
They don't really stop me but they do not make it easy either! With paper mags I can just stick a post-it in there and toss it on a heap of other mags and voila, the acticle can be found when I need it. Websites however are incredibly awful to archive: you have to download the HTML file plus the images and of course all the sub-pages (HTML + images) and put that into a correct directory structure if you want to keep in somehow in the original form.
Have you ever tried to find an article you read once in a mag? I sure have done so numerous times (the tip on how to remove the HIMEM.SYS bug in the German MS-DOS, the 'how to exchange the komma with a dot on the numeric keypad' trick, the joke about SimAmiga in PC Player 4/96,...)
Now try doing that in an online mag which expires it's articles after 2 weeks!
Unless they provide us with an option to archive the articles on our disks, paper will always live on, even if it's just to print them out;)
That's exactly my point! I approve of schemes that help prevent piracy but this DVD encryption is just there to milk users and establish a closed web of producers/manufacturers who control the market.
Who doesn't remember the old Nintendo (and other consoles) coming in different versions (US, Japan, Europe) and having region codes so that you couldn't use the cartridges from another region. Of course there were numerous people making money with rigging your console to circumvent this.
And what does the DVD Forum do? They put a region code into DVDs and even add encryption to make cracking DVDs harder. The result of these chicanes are of course that people just won't buy DVDs because:
a) They just hate the idea of region codes. (When I first read that I wished that DVD would be a complete failure at the expense of the industry responsible for it.) b) They don't get the support for it that they would like. (I love my Linux box. Why would I buy a DVD drive that I can't use on it?)
I sincerely respect the guys who cracked the DVD encryption scheme in their achievement of making these harassements disappear. In the meantime I guess we can only hope that some day the industry will learn from this and stop trying to limit the consumers who pay for their products.
Sorry if this sounded flamebait. Rate it down if you feel it is inappropriate.
I have to agree. Win 95/98 are not really what I would define as applications (An application is supposed to have functions that let you do work, isn't it?;) but they're definitely no operating systems. To me they are just a GUI that sit on MS-DOS.
NT however is something different. The OS and GUI in NT are very closely attached to each other. You can only install them as one package and thus I consider NT an OS.
I think KDE and gnome go under the same category than Win95/98: Graphical User Interface
You can debate about why something is or is not an OS. This is just my opinion.
>I am a bit disappointed that they haven't opened the source to their drivers for other platforms. I suspect this is because they don't think there are enough open-source Win32 programmers. I think they are wrong on this. However, with the Linux source it should be possible (not easy, but possible) to write drivers for Windoze etc. if we want to.
I guess the reason for going open-source with their Linux drivers is simply that they are busy with other things and want to speed up development without adding more costs. (Their new SB Live isn't directly compatible to the old SB standard and therefore doesn't work with the existing SB drivers, so they had to develop a new one and probably answer thousands of requests)
Just like other soundcard developers (like Terratec) Creative have always been very reluctant to releasing specs and source code. As their Win32 drivers are already functionning very well, they do not need to put much work into them because apart from bug-fixing they're finished.
Now that's only a guess of mine. Does any insider have more info on why they made that step?
It's not really that impressive considering the PUMP (Parallel Universal MP3 Player) project has been out for some time. With it you can even play MP3s using an old crappy XT. (Their recommendation is a 286 at 10Mhz!)
Fact is that MP3s can be decoded easily by special integrated circuits. The reason why MP3 playing eats so much performance on Intels is that they do not have the appropriate functions. (Apparently you have to use X commands and complicated calculations to decode the stream)
PUMP however, you plug it onto the parallel port and off you go!
Exactly my point. He will either want to broadcast his productions in high quality and nobody will be able to see it because the bandwidth just doesn't allow, or he'll try to adapt to the capacities and distribute a stamp-sized grainy window with the sound quality of an old FM radio that has fallen down from the Empire State building.;)
Seriously though, is there anything that might be better than RealMedia? I've seen Vivo (even worse) and I've seen MS's ASF (looks just the same) but maybe I've missed something. Or is the Internet just way too slow and overloaded with spam, p0rn banners and XXX sites? It might be interesting to see the outcome of this: Maybe if we hyped it enough people would finally realise the need for more bandwidth?
I just tried searching for Lycos on both Infoseek and Yahoo and guess what I got? I got a page of results with the first link being www.lycos.com
Message to Infoseek and Yahoo responsibles: Please fix that. I do not want to go to Lycos so put a page there whining about why you're the best and try to convince me to stay!
I have developed a little different way to do an opt-out without relying on the company. All I do is delete all the cookies I do not want using a bat file (ie del C:\windows\cookies\username@doubleclick.* ) for IE and write a little QBASIC proggy that scans Netscapes cookies.txt and deletes all the lines that contain something I don't like.
OK, the unwanted cookies do not get removed when I'm online but everytime I reboot the unwanted ones get thrown out, forcing ad banner companies to set a new one every time.
I guess there is another reason they are not telling us is the cost issue. Half Life has been out on the PC for quite some time now and maybe they thought that they might never be able to cover the development costs necessary for porting it because people who really want Half Life already have played it on a PC and wouldn't buy it twice.
I finally found out what was wrong: The frequencies for the 'monitor' were causing problems with the LCD display that's hooked to the server. So I booted in NT, copied the freq's from the Info the On Screen Display gave me and used them to set up X and voila, it worked!
That's exactly the problem you have in the US. There seems to be no specification for widescreen as we have it here in Europe. Our specification called PAL Plus, often referred to as 16:9 as well, was derived from the PAL system most countries use in Europe. (France are using SECAM but they seem to be switching slowly) In addition to this there is the EU program which was mentioned by somebody here, which has the goal of promoting 16:9 wide-screen. (It has been around for several years now I think but it still is far from being a standard)
In the US however I figure the standard system is NTSC so I guess somebody would have to come around and develop NTSC Plus;)
... but that was/is a driver problem. I'm currently working on installing SuSE 6.2 on an IBM Netfinity 3000 and when I select S3 Trio3D as card , which is what is supposed to sit in that machine, and then fire up X it hangs completely. (Neither CTRL+Backspace nor CTRL+ALT+DEL do anything)
But I guess that's more the driver than X itself. At least I hope so;)
Slashdot Mirror
We had a similiar problem. (some users traveling both here in Europe and in the US and not being able to use their cell phones over there) To solve it we got them the Ericsson I888 World which is dual-band and uses both the 900 (Europe) and 1900 (US) frequency bands. (It also has an IR interface and a built in modem which both come in handy for making data calls) I think Motorola released a Tri-Band cell phone that works all over the world (depending on the roaming agreements your GSM provider has, of course) but I don't know about its data capabilities. Greetings
void my_two_cents(void)
;)
;)
{
It depends on the cases/system you have. We have several IBM Netfinity 5000s in a 19" rack here and they come with a cabling fixture on the rear. (ie you attach your cables in there, make sure they are long enough and then you're off.)
Fiddling around with them is no problem either. The mounted cases are sitting on rails so you can slide them in and out of the rack and the server case can be opened at the top. (Just slide out the server, remove the top and you got the innards of your machine right in front of you
As I said, it all depends on the system you're using. With a little keyboard/mouse/screen switching system and lots of looooong cables you can easily put multiple servers in there and still be able to use them normally. (Of course the prices for such solutions can rise sky-high
}
Yeah, or even better: Rent the disk, pirate it with DeCSS (according to the MPAA this is what everybody does all the time) and then throw it away. ;)
;)
Just joking. But you've got a point there. The idea is pretty nice. Saves both the rental stores and the customers a lot of hassle. Just rent the disk and throw it away. No worrying about getting it back on the customer side. No worrying about people keeping disks on the store side.
Just my 121 bytes of wasted storage space on slashdot's servers
I own a Matrox G400 Dual Head (32MB). A friend of mine has an Elsa Erazor III TNT2 (also 32MB) and here's what I have found:
The G400s OpenGL ICD seems to be way more beta than the TNT2s. The scene with the tubes in 3DMark2000 is bumpy on my P II 400 and fluent on his K6-2 366. The 'dozen' demo (available here) also has performance problems in the first scene (the one with the glows) which runs perfectly on his TNT2. But, as I said the G400 ICD is under development and still being worked on.
As for TV-Out, the one of the Erazor is more configurable (Elsa has always been very good with TV-Out) but the Matrox TV-Out is of a very good quality too. When it comes to outputting DVDs Matrox's DVD-Max feature really kicks ass and you get a full screen HQ image as if you were playing it on a 'real' DVD Player!
As far as drivers are considered, I do not see much difference. They both have the basic configuration options and are both under heavy development. (When I discovered the bug with the ground texture in 3DMark's helicopter scene I went to download the latest driver and, after installing it, saw that the problem was fixed.)
Apart from these little driver difference they compare pretty similarly in the benchmarks (can't really check that because my PC is slightly more powerful than my friends')
As for Q3, UT and so on, Matrox have developed a special TurboGL driver which only works for those games but is supposed to be faster. Unfortunately I couldn't test that one yet because my PC's mainboard has given up working recently.
All in all they're pretty similar. The G400 wins out on the features like Environtally Mapped Bump Mapping, (which you REALLY notice unlike Vibrant Color Quality2 ) the DVD TV-output, the Dual-Head feature (allows for TV-OUT, multi-screen usage etc) and a little in performance. (according to reviews I read)
On the other side the Erazor has slightly better Direct3D and OpenGL support.
As far as I am concerned, I am a proud owner of a G400 and the latest moves Matrox made towards Linux only confirm me in my choice and I will continue to support them by buying their products in the future.
Phew, guess I wrote a little too much but I'm too lazy to start reviewing all that now.
Greetings
I checked back that invalid certificate thingy which makes some users hesiate from donating. The cert is invalid because it was issued to the domain: www.labyrinth.net.au
i ns&domain=.org.au&moreinfo=1)
.org.au
;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
;; got answer:
;; ->>HEADER- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 6
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 4, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 4
;; QUERY SECTION:
;; penguins.org.au, type = ANY, class = IN
;; ANSWER SECTION:
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
;; Total query time: 271 msec
;; FROM: vserve4.netregistry.au.com to SERVER: munnari.oz.au 128.250.22.2
;; WHEN: Fri Jan 7 20:33:39 2000
;; MSG SIZE sent: 33 rcvd: 273
When checking DNS entries a little you can find that they are the providers for penguins.org.au. (See the domain info taken from http://www.nic.au below or online at ht tp://www.nic.au/cgi-bin/multisearch.pl?name=pengu
--------- snip ----------
nslookup -type=NS penguins.org.au
Source: Authorative server for
Server: munnari.OZ.AU
Address: 128.250.1.21
Non-authoritative answer:
penguins.org.au nameserver = rip.psg.COM
penguins.org.au nameserver = warrane.connect.COM.AU
penguins.org.au nameserver = yarrina.connect.COM.AU
penguins.org.au nameserver = minotaur.labyrinth.NET.AU
Authoritative answers can be found from:
rip.psg.COM internet address = 147.28.0.39
warrane.connect.COM.AU internet address = 192.189.54.33
yarrina.connect.COM.AU internet address = 192.189.54.17
minotaur.labyrinth.NET.AU internet address = 203.9.148.2
dig -t any penguins.org.au
; > DiG 8.2 > @munnari.oz.au penguins.org.au -t
; (2 servers found)
penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS rip.psg.COM.
penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS warrane.connect.COM.AU.
penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS yarrina.connect.COM.AU.
penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS minotaur.labyrinth.NET.AU.
penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS rip.psg.COM.
penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS warrane.connect.COM.AU.
penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS yarrina.connect.COM.AU.
penguins.org.au. 1D IN NS minotaur.labyrinth.NET.AU.
rip.psg.COM. 1d21h55m26s IN A 147.28.0.39
warrane.connect.COM.AU. 1D IN A 192.189.54.33
yarrina.connect.COM.AU. 1D IN A 192.189.54.17
minotaur.labyrinth.NET.AU. 1D IN A 203.9.148.2
Actual Server Reply
[ns.aunic.net]
domain: penguins.org.au
descr: Phillip Island Penguin Reserve
descr: (ACN)
descr:
descr: ACT
admin-c: KD202-AU
tech-c: EH201-AU
zone-c: KD202-AU
remarks: Created 19960824
changed: register@aunic.net 19960918
source: AUNIC
person: kieran davies
address: 13/68 gould street
address: frankston
address: VIC 3197
phone: +61 9769 6966
fax-no: +61 9769 6472
e-mail: manmor@labyrinth.net.au
nic-hdl: KD202-AU
remarks: (Organisation) manmor
remarks: (position) manager
remarks: Created 19960918
changed: register@aunic.net 19960918
source: AUNIC
person: Elizabeth Hemphill
address: Level 10, 99 Queen St
address: Melbourne
address: VIC 3000
address: AU
phone: +61 3 9642 4222
fax-no: +61 3 9642 4955
e-mail: domainmaster@labyrinth.net.au
nic-hdl: EH201-AU
remarks: (Organisation) Labyrinth Connections Pty. Ltd.
remarks: Created 19960725
changed: register@aunic.net 19991014
source: AUNIC
--------- snip ----------
Greetz
Well, even if they weren't as vulerable (I of course have no idea whether they are ore not) they can't be used because they haven't been tested. (They're just too new to be used yet) Given the reliability required for these operations the NASA has to make sure that it will work, otherwise it'll get expensive ;)
I just wonder when developers will finally realize that if THEY do not support Linux SOMEBODY WILL! (Even if the latter has to reverse engineer the software to port it)
;)
As DeCSS and now Napster have shown, the Linux community simply is one of do-it-yourself people and if somebody locks them out, (by not supplying a client or whatever) they will hack they way in.
Anyway, I've read that the author of gnap and Napster are discussing the problem and I'm pretty confident that they'll find a solution.
Just my 0.00245 LUF
Just wanted to excuse myself for making you lose a moderation point but when I read this: 'pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.' I just had to reply and my 'interesting' moderation point got undone
;)
Have a nice day nevertheless
Ah! Good old Second Reality, I watched it till every frame was burnt into my screen, I ripped the S3Ms out and burnt them on CD-DA to listen in the car, I downloaded the 14ndreal.zip (SQRT(2) reality) parody and the C64 version (real great one!) If there's one demo I really love, then it's Second Reality!
... Never got it to run :(
;)
Amnesia was something different: I worked for hours fiddling with my memory config, rebooting, starting Amnesia, crash, reboot, change memory config,
But now for the real thing: the demo scene is just way cool, too bad it seems to be disappearing these days. Now I can't really say that I'm oldschool (my first computer was only a 286 and I never had a non-emulated C64) nor can I say that I belong to the demo scene (I'm way too dumb to code in ASM) but I can say that I'm a real fan of those guys who are. You have made these machines do things even their creators never imagined.
Anyway, I really hope that demos will live on because if they won't I'm gonna miss them.
Enough whining now, leave this message and go read something interesting
I've read reports in the German mag c't about hobby radio people who complained that ADSL lines were interfering with their communications.
AFAIK the german T-DSL uses a slightly different standard than G.Lite to allow both ISDN and DSL on one line.
The main problem is that the user end of the line is not shielded and thereore both AM radio and the ADSL lines interfer.
They don't really stop me but they do not make it easy either! With paper mags I can just stick a post-it in there and toss it on a heap of other mags and voila, the acticle can be found when I need it. Websites however are incredibly awful to archive: you have to download the HTML file plus the images and of course all the sub-pages (HTML + images) and put that into a correct directory structure if you want to keep in somehow in the original form.
;)
In short, I'm just too lazy to do all that
Now THIS is something innovative. Will there be a networked multiplayer version before Microsoft can cripple the TCP/IP stack so that it won't work? ;)
Feel free to rate me down as usual [grin]
Have you ever tried to find an article you read once in a mag? I sure have done so numerous times (the tip on how to remove the HIMEM.SYS bug in the German MS-DOS, the 'how to exchange the komma with a dot on the numeric keypad' trick, the joke about SimAmiga in PC Player 4/96, ...)
;)
Now try doing that in an online mag which expires it's articles after 2 weeks!
Unless they provide us with an option to archive the articles on our disks, paper will always live on, even if it's just to print them out
Just IMHO
That's exactly my point! I approve of schemes that help prevent piracy but this DVD encryption is just there to milk users and establish a closed web of producers/manufacturers who control the market.
Who doesn't remember the old Nintendo (and other consoles) coming in different versions (US, Japan, Europe) and having region codes so that you couldn't use the cartridges from another region. Of course there were numerous people making money with rigging your console to circumvent this.
And what does the DVD Forum do? They put a region code into DVDs and even add encryption to make cracking DVDs harder. The result of these chicanes are of course that people just won't buy DVDs because:
a) They just hate the idea of region codes. (When I first read that I wished that DVD would be a complete failure at the expense of the industry responsible for it.)
b) They don't get the support for it that they would like. (I love my Linux box. Why would I buy a DVD drive that I can't use on it?)
I sincerely respect the guys who cracked the DVD encryption scheme in their achievement of making these harassements disappear. In the meantime I guess we can only hope that some day the industry will learn from this and stop trying to limit the consumers who pay for their products.
Sorry if this sounded flamebait. Rate it down if you feel it is inappropriate.
I have to agree. Win 95/98 are not really what I would define as applications (An application is supposed to have functions that let you do work, isn't it? ;) but they're definitely no operating systems. To me they are just a GUI that sit on MS-DOS.
NT however is something different. The OS and GUI in NT are very closely attached to each other. You can only install them as one package and thus I consider NT an OS.
I think KDE and gnome go under the same category than Win95/98: Graphical User Interface
You can debate about why something is or is not an OS. This is just my opinion.
>I am a bit disappointed that they haven't opened the source to their drivers for other platforms. I suspect this is because they don't think there are enough open-source Win32 programmers. I think they are wrong on this. However, with the Linux source it should be possible (not easy, but possible) to write drivers for Windoze etc. if we want to.
I guess the reason for going open-source with their Linux drivers is simply that they are busy with other things and want to speed up development without adding more costs. (Their new SB Live isn't directly compatible to the old SB standard and therefore doesn't work with the existing SB drivers, so they had to develop a new one and probably answer thousands of requests)
Just like other soundcard developers (like Terratec) Creative have always been very reluctant to releasing specs and source code. As their Win32 drivers are already functionning very well, they do not need to put much work into them because apart from bug-fixing they're finished.
Now that's only a guess of mine. Does any insider have more info on why they made that step?
How about vmware machines? I might install NT into a vmware test box on my old 386! It'll take ages to come up without even applying a service pack! ;)
It's not really that impressive considering the PUMP (Parallel Universal MP3 Player) project has been out for some time. With it you can even play MP3s using an old crappy XT. (Their recommendation is a 286 at 10Mhz!)
Fact is that MP3s can be decoded easily by special integrated circuits. The reason why MP3 playing eats so much performance on Intels is that they do not have the appropriate functions. (Apparently you have to use X commands and complicated calculations to decode the stream)
PUMP however, you plug it onto the parallel port and off you go!
Exactly my point. He will either want to broadcast his productions in high quality and nobody will be able to see it because the bandwidth just doesn't allow, or he'll try to adapt to the capacities and distribute a stamp-sized grainy window with the sound quality of an old FM radio that has fallen down from the Empire State building. ;)
Seriously though, is there anything that might be better than RealMedia? I've seen Vivo (even worse) and I've seen MS's ASF (looks just the same) but maybe I've missed something. Or is the Internet just way too slow and overloaded with spam, p0rn banners and XXX sites? It might be interesting to see the outcome of this: Maybe if we hyped it enough people would finally realise the need for more bandwidth?
Just my 2.- LUF
I just tried searching for Lycos on both Infoseek and Yahoo and guess what I got? I got a page of results with the first link being www.lycos.com
;)
Message to Infoseek and Yahoo responsibles: Please fix that. I do not want to go to Lycos so put a page there whining about why you're the best and try to convince me to stay!
Just my 2.- LUF
I have developed a little different way to do an opt-out without relying on the company. All I do is delete all the cookies I do not want using a bat file (ie del C:\windows\cookies\username@doubleclick.* ) for IE and write a little QBASIC proggy that scans Netscapes cookies.txt and deletes all the lines that contain something I don't like.
OK, the unwanted cookies do not get removed when I'm online but everytime I reboot the unwanted ones get thrown out, forcing ad banner companies to set a new one every time.
Just thought I'd share the idea.
I guess there is another reason they are not telling us is the cost issue. Half Life has been out on the PC for quite some time now and maybe they thought that they might never be able to cover the development costs necessary for porting it because people who really want Half Life already have played it on a PC and wouldn't buy it twice.
Just a thought of mine, not necessarily true.
I finally found out what was wrong: The frequencies for the 'monitor' were causing problems with the LCD display that's hooked to the server. So I booted in NT, copied the freq's from the Info the On Screen Display gave me and used them to set up X and voila, it worked!
That's exactly the problem you have in the US. There seems to be no specification for widescreen as we have it here in Europe. Our specification called PAL Plus, often referred to as 16:9 as well, was derived from the PAL system most countries use in Europe. (France are using SECAM but they seem to be switching slowly) In addition to this there is the EU program which was mentioned by somebody here, which has the goal of promoting 16:9 wide-screen. (It has been around for several years now I think but it still is far from being a standard)
;)
;)
In the US however I figure the standard system is NTSC so I guess somebody would have to come around and develop NTSC Plus
Only my 2 Luxembourgish Francs
... but that was/is a driver problem. I'm currently working on installing SuSE 6.2 on an IBM Netfinity 3000 and when I select S3 Trio3D as card , which is what is supposed to sit in that machine, and then fire up X it hangs completely. (Neither CTRL+Backspace nor CTRL+ALT+DEL do anything)
;)
But I guess that's more the driver than X itself. At least I hope so