Canopy has about a 5% stake in TrollTech. That's nothing. Sun exerts a large amount of influence on the GNOME project, and they aren't exactly big supporters of Linux. The point is that both projects are L/GPL'ed. They're free forever. No company can change that.
Hm, I started gaming in the early-NES era, but I still thing that the best period in gaming was late SNES (some early PSX). There just don't make games like Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, FF2/3, etc, today. Saturn also had some really fun stuff.
Of course, I still think there are a lot of pretty good console games these days. PC games suck, but PC games have always sucked, with the exception of some first-person shooters (BF1942, HalfLife, Call of Duty).
Actually, you can't. It wins for games, yes, but its development tools are trash. I have to maintain cross platform software, and my Windows configuration is my biggest headache. For example, path handling sucks. If you install something to "Program Files/OmniORB" you have to add that add that to your path. Same thing for library and binary paths. In Linux, it installs to/usr, and you don't have to fuss at all. Don't even get me started on the NT shell. Cygwin is okay, but there is a very perceptible delay launching simple commands like 'ls' and 'cd'. Also, the inability to resize the Cygwin window however you want drives me *insane*.
That's not a console, its a terminal emulator. A console is like a pure DOS prompt. You have those in Linux, but not in Window NT. You can copy&paste between an xterm and a GUI app (hell, in KDE, you can drag&drop images into a terminal window) just as you can between cmd.exe and the GUI. But you can't copy&paste between the console and the GUI, just as you can't between the DOS prompt and the GUI.
PS> How does copy&paste in cmd.exe work? Just tried it on a Windows machine, and you can't highlight text with the mouse.
Can you cut/copy from a command line and paste back into a GUI app? >>>>>>>> Yes? At least in an xterm. Probably not between the console and X, but in Windows, there is no console so its not the same comparison.
How about between two different X apps? Probably, but people keep finding little quirks in it. >>>>>>>>> I have yet to see this be a problem in practice. The real problem is that the clipboard's rules are different from in Windows. The X clipboard is more of a drag & drop mechanism than a clipboard.
- Gentoo: Lots of compiling, needs lots of RAM. - G++: Eats CPUs alive. - XSI : Ha ha --- Unlike Maya PLE, its available on Linux! - SolidEdge : in Winders:(
Mine? I live in a college dorm, so space is an issue, and I need to take my computer to various rooms. At the same time, I need to use it as a desktop replacement. So a powerful laptop (Inspiron 8200) is ideal. Even at home, I'm tons more productive when I'm not stuck in one place at my desk.
I'm quite paranoid about data loss. I have a version-control server running 650 miles from where I go to school, where I backup all my documents and code. This buys me safety from hardware failure, and personal stupidity.
Actually, this isn't terribly surprising if you look at the specs. Its a vector processor with 64 processing elements. Each PE has an FPU. The 25 gigaflop theoretical rating probably comes from FPUs * Clock_Speed, so the thing probably runs about 400 MHz. You have to understand that this isn't a general purpose processor --- you just send it some numbers to crunch, and it sends numbers back to you.
Oh I shopped around plenty. The iPod hardly feels cheap --- its heafty without being heavy, and the materials feel high quality. Overall the device feels very sturdy (the new ones, anyway, where the only external moving part is the hold switch), while some of the controls on the Zen feel a little cheap. Of course, the Zen looks and feels very nice as well, but in the end I preferred the iPod because of the unique design (stainless steel + lucite, while delicate, is much more striking to me than brushed aluminum), the much more pocketable size, and the fact that the firewire Zen (my Dell comes with Firewire but no USB 2.0, go figure) wasn't appreciably cheaper than the iPod.
Well, the flash based players aren't really in the same catagory. I was really talking about other MP3 jukeboxes, like the Nomad Zen. Also, the Rio is an inch shorter than the iPod, but 0.6 inches wider and 0.3 inches thicker. Unless you wear cargo pants, the rectangular shape of the iPod is much easier on your pockets than the square shape of the Rio. Besides, the iPod is still smaller overall, at 6.1 cubic inches vs 7.3 cubic inches for the Rio.
There is a difference, in that audio terms often refer to subjective quantities while computer terms refer to bojective quantities, but the audio terms are no less real. All the terms used in the article had very clearly defined meanings.
I can appreciate my music over the tremendously crappy speakers on my Inspiron 8200. I appreciate it even more through my Eggo headphones, and even more than that through my Klipsch 4.1s. Given the option of listening to my music through the crappy, noisy, audio circuitry on my laptop, or through the relatively clean circuitry of my iPod, why should I choose the inferior one?
"Dynamics were impressive" - The device was able to handle outputing a wide range of frequencies naturally. Think back to Carmack's.plan file about floating point color and the necessity to have a high dynamic range in pictures with lots of shadow and bright lights.
"Imaging was nuanced and detaild" - Refers to the soundstage, and is a measure of how well the device reproduces the stereo effect of placing seperate instruments at spatial locations. With something that has good imaging, you should be able to clearly distinguish a drummer standing on your left from the guitarist standing on your right. If the device has poor imaging, then they kind of blend together.
"Frequency extremes sounded extended and natural" - Refers to the fact that the device did not distort the audio badly at the ends of the spectrum. This measures how well the device holds up at the low end (crappy circuits will give up well before you hit 20Hz) and at the high end (crappy circuits will exhibit lots of distortions as you get closer to 20Khz).
While I agree that there are some fringe lunatics in the audiophile camp, I think the logical/mathematicals here on/. are being unfair.
Audio quality is something he can't measure yet. The process of how the human ear interprets sound is not yet understood well enough for us to make quantitative measurements of audio quality. I remember reading an interview with an important technical guy at EMU. He said that when Creative bought them, he was shocked to see that Creative engineers were happily designing circuits that measured well, but sounded terrible.
In the abscence of quantitative measurements, audio people have built up a jargon to describe the subjective elements of audio. There are clearly some subjective elements. For example, I ripped some Sheryl Crow CDs to 128kbps MP3. When I played them over my speakers (Klipsch 4.1, nowhere near audiophile quality) they sounded flat, as if I was listening to them through some thick fabric. I don't know what else to call it, but its clearly there, and so using one random jargon term is as good as another.
People here are bringing up wine tasters, and I think that serves as a perfect example. The wine tasters have their own jargon, but all the terms have clearly defined meanings. Just because you don't know the meanings doesn't mean that the jargon is stupid. People complain that we nerds talk about CPUs and GPUs and FSBs instead of using "plain language." Now, would you rather call the thing a GPU or a "drawing thingie?" Would any other computer person have the foggiest idea what the hell you were talking about if you said that you were trying to find the API to send vertex-shaders (gotta come up with a plain-language term for those too!) to the "drawing thingie?" A standardized jargon is important to any field. It might sound stupid to people outside that field, but I think that computer people should know better than most that the jargon really is necessary.
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Canopy has about a 5% stake in TrollTech. That's nothing. Sun exerts a large amount of influence on the GNOME project, and they aren't exactly big supporters of Linux. The point is that both projects are L/GPL'ed. They're free forever. No company can change that.
Hm, I started gaming in the early-NES era, but I still thing that the best period in gaming was late SNES (some early PSX). There just don't make games like Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, FF2/3, etc, today. Saturn also had some really fun stuff.
Of course, I still think there are a lot of pretty good console games these days. PC games suck, but PC games have always sucked, with the exception of some first-person shooters (BF1942, HalfLife, Call of Duty).
Actually, you can't. It wins for games, yes, but its development tools are trash. I have to maintain cross platform software, and my Windows configuration is my biggest headache. For example, path handling sucks. If you install something to "Program Files/OmniORB" you have to add that add that to your path. Same thing for library and binary paths. In Linux, it installs to /usr, and you don't have to fuss at all. Don't even get me started on the NT shell. Cygwin is okay, but there is a very perceptible delay launching simple commands like 'ls' and 'cd'. Also, the inability to resize the Cygwin window however you want drives me *insane*.
w00t!
That's not a console, its a terminal emulator. A console is like a pure DOS prompt. You have those in Linux, but not in Window NT. You can copy&paste between an xterm and a GUI app (hell, in KDE, you can drag&drop images into a terminal window) just as you can between cmd.exe and the GUI. But you can't copy&paste between the console and the GUI, just as you can't between the DOS prompt and the GUI.
PS> How does copy&paste in cmd.exe work? Just tried it on a Windows machine, and you can't highlight text with the mouse.
They are behind an Akamai network to protect themselves from DDOS attacks.
Can you cut/copy from a command line and paste back into a GUI app?
>>>>>>>>
Yes? At least in an xterm. Probably not between the console and X, but in Windows, there is no console so its not the same comparison.
How about between two different X apps? Probably, but people keep finding little quirks in it.
>>>>>>>>>
I have yet to see this be a problem in practice. The real problem is that the clipboard's rules are different from in Windows. The X clipboard is more of a drag & drop mechanism than a clipboard.
Lots of RAM helps immensely to improve compile time. Things will emerge on limited RAM, but they'll compile a lot faster if you have more RAM.
On my laptop I run:
:(
- Gentoo: Lots of compiling, needs lots of RAM.
- G++: Eats CPUs alive.
- XSI : Ha ha --- Unlike Maya PLE, its available on Linux!
- SolidEdge : in Winders
Mine? I live in a college dorm, so space is an issue, and I need to take my computer to various rooms. At the same time, I need to use it as a desktop replacement. So a powerful laptop (Inspiron 8200) is ideal. Even at home, I'm tons more productive when I'm not stuck in one place at my desk.
I'm quite paranoid about data loss. I have a version-control server running 650 miles from where I go to school, where I backup all my documents and code. This buys me safety from hardware failure, and personal stupidity.
Virgin Tech :)
>>>>>>>>>>>
That's a pretty accurate description of the school, based on the people I know that go there
Now I know why I stopped reading ZDNet rags so long ago. They're truely trash.
'multiple chip cores--the "brain" of the chip'
I thought the chip was the brain of the computer? So the brain has a brain?
Sigh...
I think you missed the joke. I'm pretty sure he was describing the fact that modern music is far too bass heavy, and blaming it on the RIAA :)
Actually, you can expect to pay about $17,000. Doesn't sound so unrealistic now, do it?
Actually, this isn't terribly surprising if you look at the specs. Its a vector processor with 64 processing elements. Each PE has an FPU. The 25 gigaflop theoretical rating probably comes from FPUs * Clock_Speed, so the thing probably runs about 400 MHz. You have to understand that this isn't a general purpose processor --- you just send it some numbers to crunch, and it sends numbers back to you.
Oh I shopped around plenty. The iPod hardly feels cheap --- its heafty without being heavy, and the materials feel high quality. Overall the device feels very sturdy (the new ones, anyway, where the only external moving part is the hold switch), while some of the controls on the Zen feel a little cheap. Of course, the Zen looks and feels very nice as well, but in the end I preferred the iPod because of the unique design (stainless steel + lucite, while delicate, is much more striking to me than brushed aluminum), the much more pocketable size, and the fact that the firewire Zen (my Dell comes with Firewire but no USB 2.0, go figure) wasn't appreciably cheaper than the iPod.
Yep. Not surprising, since the G5 is essentially a scaled-down Power4, so it should be good at this sort of thing.
Well, the flash based players aren't really in the same catagory. I was really talking about other MP3 jukeboxes, like the Nomad Zen. Also, the Rio is an inch shorter than the iPod, but 0.6 inches wider and 0.3 inches thicker. Unless you wear cargo pants, the rectangular shape of the iPod is much easier on your pockets than the square shape of the Rio. Besides, the iPod is still smaller overall, at 6.1 cubic inches vs 7.3 cubic inches for the Rio.
There is a difference, in that audio terms often refer to subjective quantities while computer terms refer to bojective quantities, but the audio terms are no less real. All the terms used in the article had very clearly defined meanings.
Well its sucks to be the guy who pays $10,000 for speaker wire, but is there any indication the people in this article were like that?
Some computer users spend thousands on plasma displays wth crappy resolution. You can't judge the many by the stupidity of the few.
I can appreciate my music over the tremendously crappy speakers on my Inspiron 8200. I appreciate it even more through my Eggo headphones, and even more than that through my Klipsch 4.1s. Given the option of listening to my music through the crappy, noisy, audio circuitry on my laptop, or through the relatively clean circuitry of my iPod, why should I choose the inferior one?
Translation:
.plan file about floating point color and the necessity to have a high dynamic range in pictures with lots of shadow and bright lights.
"Dynamics were impressive" - The device was able to handle outputing a wide range of frequencies naturally. Think back to Carmack's
"Imaging was nuanced and detaild" - Refers to the soundstage, and is a measure of how well the device reproduces the stereo effect of placing seperate instruments at spatial locations. With something that has good imaging, you should be able to clearly distinguish a drummer standing on your left from the guitarist standing on your right. If the device has poor imaging, then they kind of blend together.
"Frequency extremes sounded extended and natural" - Refers to the fact that the device did not distort the audio badly at the ends of the spectrum. This measures how well the device holds up at the low end (crappy circuits will give up well before you hit 20Hz) and at the high end (crappy circuits will exhibit lots of distortions as you get closer to 20Khz).
While I agree that there are some fringe lunatics in the audiophile camp, I think the logical/mathematicals here on /. are being unfair.
Audio quality is something he can't measure yet. The process of how the human ear interprets sound is not yet understood well enough for us to make quantitative measurements of audio quality. I remember reading an interview with an important technical guy at EMU. He said that when Creative bought them, he was shocked to see that Creative engineers were happily designing circuits that measured well, but sounded terrible.
In the abscence of quantitative measurements, audio people have built up a jargon to describe the subjective elements of audio. There are clearly some subjective elements. For example, I ripped some Sheryl Crow CDs to 128kbps MP3. When I played them over my speakers (Klipsch 4.1, nowhere near audiophile quality) they sounded flat, as if I was listening to them through some thick fabric. I don't know what else to call it, but its clearly there, and so using one random jargon term is as good as another.
People here are bringing up wine tasters, and I think that serves as a perfect example. The wine tasters have their own jargon, but all the terms have clearly defined meanings. Just because you don't know the meanings doesn't mean that the jargon is stupid. People complain that we nerds talk about CPUs and GPUs and FSBs instead of using "plain language." Now, would you rather call the thing a GPU or a "drawing thingie?" Would any other computer person have the foggiest idea what the hell you were talking about if you said that you were trying to find the API to send vertex-shaders (gotta come up with a plain-language term for those too!) to the "drawing thingie?" A standardized jargon is important to any field. It might sound stupid to people outside that field, but I think that computer people should know better than most that the jargon really is necessary.