Well, there is a big difference. An EULA is based on the very fuzzy legal concept that buy buying something, you de facto agree to any conditions I set forth. The GPL is firmly based in copyright law -- you have a license to copy this source code or use it in your projects, as long as you adhere to the stipulations of the GPL.
On one hand, it is ok when a 14-year-old violates the copyright of a RIAA or MPAA-owned company. On the other hand, it is not OK when a company releases GPL under terms not compatible with the GPL. >>>>> First of all, there is the total inequity between the actions of a 14-year old boy, and the actions of a corporation. Besides that, there is a very fine line here. A lot of what the media companies are trying to prevent are limitations of fair use. I'm about to get an iPod. I have a whole bunch of CDs. Once they've sold me the CD, they can go fuck off. That music is getting on my iPod, whether or not I have to DL MP3s of the Internet because of copyprotected CDs. In fact, that music is also going on my brother's computer, because it's within my fair use rights to give him a copy. If I want to watch some media that's got region lockouts or some CSS shit in Linux, I don't care if I have to hack it to do so. Slashdotters (the majority of them) are complaining about egregious violations of the social contract, not trying to justify actual stealing. If Linus was implementing draconion policies about the distribution of the kernel, or was proposing that he should have the right to inspect every companies source code for GPL violations, or started doing electronic attacks against 'suspected' GPL violaters, or tried to get Congress to implement favorable laws for GPL-based business models, then I'm sure the backlash on/. would be extreme.
It's fine to adhere to one ideology or the other. >>>>>>>> Nobody needs to reinvent the wheel. The wheel isn't controlled by a giant soul-sucking monopoly. The wheel is free.
It's fine to adhere to one ideology or the other. >>>> My original quote. I'm not talking about you. If you genuinely believe in what you're doing, then great. I'm talking about the countless people who don't believe in what they're doing, but do it just because everyone else is.
Actually, 3D algorithms work much better on headphones than on anything else. I live at a college dorm, I should know. We play a lot of CounterStrike, and my cheap Sony headphones were much better at generating convincing "behind you" footsteps than my Klipsch 4.1s. This is probably partly due to the fact that dorms universally have lousy acoustics, but is also due to the fact that you've only got two ears, and when the sound sources are right on them, it becomes rather easy to use acoustic algorithms to generate a 3D effect.
I second that. I have a set of Klipsch 4.1 (more than two years old and still top of the line, good going Klipsch!) which is a great system, but nothing compared to the stuff audiophiles (well, rich audiophiles) hook up to their systems. Even still I can notice the audio degredation coming from the PC. It's not at all noticible in Quake 3, but listening to more demanding stuff (female vocals, Pink Floyd, etc) you can definately notice the hit in clarity. My SB Live! wasn't too bad, but I'm on a Dell laptop now, and there is nothing worse than integrated audio. Especially inside a tight, poorly shielded computer case. The bottleneck at this point is definately the PC. Anybody with an Extigy want to chime in on it's improvement in audio quality?
Right. Taking the path of least resistance, with no regard for ideology or ethics is the perfect thing to do. I use free software both because it meet my needs and as my personal "fuck off" to the Microsofts and Apples (yeah, you heard me you marketing-whores) of the world. I can understand people using Microsoft because they have to (because they have some business that requires it, for instance.) But using it just out of sheer desire to propogate the status quo? That's just lazy. It's fine to adhere to one ideology or the other. Not adhering to any ideology at all is just a bee-line to decadence. You sir represent everything that is wrong with this world.
Ever see a 20GB HD where 20GB was usable? Right off the bat, the difference between 10^3 and 2^30 addressing results in a 18.6GB capacity. Then there is formatting overhead. Then there is swap space. The OS paritition is probably less than 1GB.
Not quite. TTF fonts on Linux look identical to TTF fonts on any OS, if you've got the bytecode hinter enabled. *However* font hints are optimized for monochrome display (non-AA) and for low resolutions (70-100dpi). On high res screens or with good anti-aliasing/sub-pixel renderers, font hints actually make things look worse. This is why Apple pretty much ignores all of the TT hints and Microsoft's Cleartype ignores some of the TT hints. Cleartype in particular achieves good results by treating the TT hints as real "hints" (in the standard TrueType mechanism, they're not so much hints as explicit directions). In Postscript fonts, the hints have been high level "hints" and new autohinters (like those in the latest version of FreeType2) have been able to achieve very high quality results on a much wider range of display media.
Obviously, you didn't read my post very carefully. Standardization is great when it doesn't affect the user experience. However, having a standard font or UI look can lead to app developers who don't take into account users that have different settings, and hard-code values. This is a major problem in Windows. I have a 1600x1200 15" LCD, and Windows looks just plain weird with a 133-dpi font setting. KDE looks more or less completely normal. It would be great if it was just a matter of a default that could be changed without consequence, but standardizing on fonts is just a bit too dangerous for something so personal.
First, we're not talking about printing, we're talking about a screen font. This is a thread about HIGs, remember? When was the last time you printed out your KDevelop window?
Second, TT fonts suck for screen fonts because the hinting process is so complex, that the resultant fonts are only good at a certain range of DPIs (on my 133-dpi LCD, bytecode hinted TT fonts look really bad) and good fonts can only be made by a small set of typography companies. High quality postscript fonts, on the other hand, are much more widely available, and with new AA-optimized hinters, look much better at a wide range of resolutions.
Yuck. TT fonts suck. There is no point standardizing something that really should be a user option. There is actually a danger in doing that. Wheras before the app designer had no clue what font the user was going to use, and designed accordingly, if you standardize it (like on Windows) then app developers get lazy and people who have much nicer looking fonts (me) get screwed over.
The data and address buses aren't the same size in any current processor. Data bus is 64-bits in all x86 chips, address bus is 32-bits. It's unusual for a CPU to have a larger address bus than its natural word size. That means that pointer variables become a special case (because how do you add an offset to a 64-bit pointer if you can't do 64-bit integer math?) The current Pentiums have a 36-bit *physical* address bus, and both Linux and Windows support it. But pointers are still 32-bit, and all you get is a 4GB virtual address space that maps to a 64GB physical address space. This allows you to have memory-window type operations, but that's hardly a clean design.
Actually, it does include the caches, and cache takes up inordinate amounts of transistors. Madison has very large caches, which explain the 440 million transistors (and the 660 million in the Power4 chip).
The problem is that you need some address space for the PCI/AGP bus and other memory mapped devices. 3GB is kind of an odd memory capacity, so 2GB tends to be the max.
Well, the current data buses in all x86 chips are 64-bits anyway, and the FPU and vector units are 80-128 bits, so any theoretical increase in error rate will be negligable in real life.
32 bits are enough to handle a couple terabytes' worth. >>>>>> 4 gigabytes.
In fact, 64-bit is actually slightly more error-prone then 32-bit processing (but the other improvements should offset this.) >>>>>>>>> Never heard this before. I doubt it, though. Currently, most parts of the CPU are bigger than 64-bits anyway.
64-bit processing is entirely uneventful. My N64 was 64-bits, my PocketPC is 64-bits. Why *not* move to 64-bits?
1) Cool stuff at the kernel level. No more high-mem (to address memory beyond the 1-2GB that can be mapped into the kernel. Single address space OSs. Persistant object model OSs (which go well with the new database FSs coming out). Finally making mmap() useful again for 2GB+ files.
2) 2GB (pretty much the max for a 32-bit machine) of PC2700 is $300. How long before desktop machines are coming equiped with that much, feeling the hurt for more memory?
Actually, the previous 2.5 scheduler handled hyperthreading just fine. The real draw is that this new patch makes hyperthreading just a subset of NUMA, which makes things much cleaner.
Slashdot Mirror
You just wanted to tell everyone that you dated a girl from a hot sorority, didn't you! That can be the only reason for this post...
Well, there is a big difference. An EULA is based on the very fuzzy legal concept that buy buying something, you de facto agree to any conditions I set forth. The GPL is firmly based in copyright law -- you have a license to copy this source code or use it in your projects, as long as you adhere to the stipulations of the GPL.
On one hand, it is ok when a 14-year-old violates the copyright of a RIAA or MPAA-owned company. On the other hand, it is not OK when a company releases GPL under terms not compatible with the GPL. /. would be extreme.
>>>>>
First of all, there is the total inequity between the actions of a 14-year old boy, and the actions of a corporation. Besides that, there is a very fine line here. A lot of what the media companies are trying to prevent are limitations of fair use. I'm about to get an iPod. I have a whole bunch of CDs. Once they've sold me the CD, they can go fuck off. That music is getting on my iPod, whether or not I have to DL MP3s of the Internet because of copyprotected CDs. In fact, that music is also going on my brother's computer, because it's within my fair use rights to give him a copy. If I want to watch some media that's got region lockouts or some CSS shit in Linux, I don't care if I have to hack it to do so. Slashdotters (the majority of them) are complaining about egregious violations of the social contract, not trying to justify actual stealing. If Linus was implementing draconion policies about the distribution of the kernel, or was proposing that he should have the right to inspect every companies source code for GPL violations, or started doing electronic attacks against 'suspected' GPL violaters, or tried to get Congress to implement favorable laws for GPL-based business models, then I'm sure the backlash on
It's fine to adhere to one ideology or the other.
>>>>>>>>
Nobody needs to reinvent the wheel. The wheel isn't controlled by a giant soul-sucking monopoly. The wheel is free.
It's fine to adhere to one ideology or the other.
>>>>
My original quote. I'm not talking about you. If you genuinely believe in what you're doing, then great. I'm talking about the countless people who don't believe in what they're doing, but do it just because everyone else is.
Actually, 3D algorithms work much better on headphones than on anything else. I live at a college dorm, I should know. We play a lot of CounterStrike, and my cheap Sony headphones were much better at generating convincing "behind you" footsteps than my Klipsch 4.1s. This is probably partly due to the fact that dorms universally have lousy acoustics, but is also due to the fact that you've only got two ears, and when the sound sources are right on them, it becomes rather easy to use acoustic algorithms to generate a 3D effect.
I second that. I have a set of Klipsch 4.1 (more than two years old and still top of the line, good going Klipsch!) which is a great system, but nothing compared to the stuff audiophiles (well, rich audiophiles) hook up to their systems. Even still I can notice the audio degredation coming from the PC.
It's not at all noticible in Quake 3, but listening to more demanding stuff (female vocals, Pink Floyd, etc) you can definately notice the hit in clarity. My SB Live! wasn't too bad, but I'm on a Dell laptop now, and there is nothing worse than integrated audio. Especially inside a tight, poorly shielded computer case. The bottleneck at this point is definately the PC. Anybody with an Extigy want to chime in on it's improvement in audio quality?
Right. Taking the path of least resistance, with no regard for ideology or ethics is the perfect thing to do. I use free software both because it meet my needs and as my personal "fuck off" to the Microsofts and Apples (yeah, you heard me you marketing-whores) of the world. I can understand people using Microsoft because they have to (because they have some business that requires it, for instance.) But using it just out of sheer desire to propogate the status quo? That's just lazy. It's fine to adhere to one ideology or the other. Not adhering to any ideology at all is just a bee-line to decadence. You sir represent everything that is wrong with this world.
Funniest thing ever. Just check out how it translates the "Why Users Hate IT Products and Developers" headline!
Well, lasagna bakes at 325, and apple pie (Mrs. Smith's) bakes at 350.
Ever see a 20GB HD where 20GB was usable? Right off the bat, the difference between 10^3 and 2^30 addressing results in a 18.6GB capacity. Then there is formatting overhead. Then there is swap space. The OS paritition is probably less than 1GB.
All my software is free software. Well, my Gamecube games aren't, but I don't think they do software audits...
Not quite. TTF fonts on Linux look identical to TTF fonts on any OS, if you've got the bytecode hinter enabled. *However* font hints are optimized for monochrome display (non-AA) and for low resolutions (70-100dpi). On high res screens or with good anti-aliasing/sub-pixel renderers, font hints actually make things look worse. This is why Apple pretty much ignores all of the TT hints and Microsoft's Cleartype ignores some of the TT hints. Cleartype in particular achieves good results by treating the TT hints as real "hints" (in the standard TrueType mechanism, they're not so much hints as explicit directions). In Postscript fonts, the hints have been high level "hints" and new autohinters (like those in the latest version of FreeType2) have been able to achieve very high quality results on a much wider range of display media.
Obviously, you didn't read my post very carefully. Standardization is great when it doesn't affect the user experience. However, having a standard font or UI look can lead to app developers who don't take into account users that have different settings, and hard-code values. This is a major problem in Windows. I have a 1600x1200 15" LCD, and Windows looks just plain weird with a 133-dpi font setting. KDE looks more or less completely normal. It would be great if it was just a matter of a default that could be changed without consequence, but standardizing on fonts is just a bit too dangerous for something so personal.
First, we're not talking about printing, we're talking about a screen font. This is a thread about HIGs, remember? When was the last time you printed out your KDevelop window?
Second, TT fonts suck for screen fonts because the hinting process is so complex, that the resultant fonts are only good at a certain range of DPIs (on my 133-dpi LCD, bytecode hinted TT fonts look really bad) and good fonts can only be made by a small set of typography companies. High quality postscript fonts, on the other hand, are much more widely available, and with new AA-optimized hinters, look much better at a wide range of resolutions.
Yuck. TT fonts suck. There is no point standardizing something that really should be a user option. There is actually a danger in doing that. Wheras before the app designer had no clue what font the user was going to use, and designed accordingly, if you standardize it (like on Windows) then app developers get lazy and people who have much nicer looking fonts (me) get screwed over.
The data and address buses aren't the same size in any current processor. Data bus is 64-bits in all x86 chips, address bus is 32-bits. It's unusual for a CPU to have a larger address bus than its natural word size. That means that pointer variables become a special case (because how do you add an offset to a 64-bit pointer if you can't do 64-bit integer math?) The current Pentiums have a 36-bit *physical* address bus, and both Linux and Windows support it. But pointers are still 32-bit, and all you get is a 4GB virtual address space that maps to a 64GB physical address space. This allows you to have memory-window type operations, but that's hardly a clean design.
Actually, it does include the caches, and cache takes up inordinate amounts of transistors. Madison has very large caches, which explain the 440 million transistors (and the 660 million in the Power4 chip).
Yes, 2.7GB/sec between main memory and the system controller. 1.3GB/sec between the system controller and the CPU bus.
The problem is that you need some address space for the PCI/AGP bus and other memory mapped devices. 3GB is kind of an odd memory capacity, so 2GB tends to be the max.
Well, the current data buses in all x86 chips are 64-bits anyway, and the FPU and vector units are 80-128 bits, so any theoretical increase in error rate will be negligable in real life.
32 bits are enough to handle a couple terabytes' worth.
>>>>>>
4 gigabytes.
In fact, 64-bit is actually slightly more error-prone then 32-bit processing (but the other improvements should offset this.)
>>>>>>>>>
Never heard this before. I doubt it, though. Currently, most parts of the CPU are bigger than 64-bits anyway.
64-bit processing is entirely uneventful. My N64 was 64-bits, my PocketPC is 64-bits. Why *not* move to 64-bits?
1) Cool stuff at the kernel level. No more high-mem (to address memory beyond the 1-2GB that can be mapped into the kernel. Single address space OSs. Persistant object model OSs (which go well with the new database FSs coming out). Finally making mmap() useful again for 2GB+ files.
2) 2GB (pretty much the max for a 32-bit machine) of PC2700 is $300. How long before desktop machines are coming equiped with that much, feeling the hurt for more memory?
I've done it on a 300MHz PII. Takes about an hour and a half. Now, have you ever tried compiling KDE on a 2GHz proc? Takes about 6 hours...
Actually, the previous 2.5 scheduler handled hyperthreading just fine. The real draw is that this new patch makes hyperthreading just a subset of NUMA, which makes things much cleaner.