I saw the whining over at Linux Today when they ran the interview.
1) Opera should be open source
Opera is a software company. They make their money by selling their software. Not service, not documentation, not brand name, they sell the software. If you think they could switch to being a service oriented company, please get real. Any browser that needs a lot of customer support is not worth using.
2) Opera should be free (beer)
Yes, I'm afraid Opera is going to have a thin time of it with Linux users unless Mozilla is seriously delayed or dysfunctional, simply because it will be free. Add to this the number of us that would use an open source product -- even if slightly inferior -- and it looks like a hard road for them.
3) I don't want to buy a commercial browser
This doesn't mean it's wrong for you not to buy it because it's not free. If you feel that strongly about it, it's entirely your choice. Mozilla will be here one day.
4) I hope they lose the sucky MDI interface
MDI is a culture thing. Microsoft practically shovels developers into the MDI model, recommending it in their "design standards" and making it the default AppWizard in VC++ (last time I bought the damn thing anyway -- quite a while ago.) I don't like it either, but I expect thats what Opera will be at first anyway. Let them concentrate on the system issues of porting for now.
5) I already bought it for Windows, why should I have to pay for it again for Linux?
I really think this is fair, Opera needs to recover the development costs of the Linux version whether you have already bought it for another system or not. IIRC, they are at least offering a discount for those that have bought another OS version.
I think Opera makes a quality product, and I wish them well. I hope people will be kinder to them than I expect them to be. Open source is good != Commercial software is bad.
Probably because no one submitted it, or it didn't strike CmdrTaco's fancy. Why do *you* think?
I agree I would have liked to see the BeOs announcement, I didn't know about Opera on BeOs until I followed the link from this story to Opera's webpage. Hmmm, good thing this story was posted.
Besides, there is no really stable and powerful browser for Linux yet, this is as newsworthy as Mozilla announcements. A lot of people, including Burlington Coat Factory, want to see a good browser soon. It's important in terms of not letting IE dominate browser standards.
"This is one way in which programmers actually get paid for their work and can thus earn a living doing what they love. I just can't see a problem with that."
That's very interesting. I'm really glad to hear that L, Z, and W will be getting the money from the license. Silly me, I thought it was just going to the bottom line of a multinational corporation.
I have a friend at Intel with patents, and he gets zero dollars on those patents, its just an ego thing. Is it not true that nearly all patents are enforced by corporations, and all corporations require surrender of intellectual property that is work-related when you hire on?
So, explain to me how patents are keeping programmers fed, please. I already understand that they are crucial to keeping lawyers fed.
"If you use any of the types of images specified above on your Web site that you received from an unlicensed software developer or service, you should have a license from Unisys to use the LZW patent."
This seems to imply that the restrictions you name are what qualify you for the "cheap and easy" $5k license. Those that don't, like commercial sites, have to negotiate with Unisys for a license. Sounds like they want *more* money if you don't qualify.
Most Anonymous Cowards are not abusive, and often have interesting things to say. Sometimes counter to the grain here, but that can be good.
I've seen a few cases of people inside companies that had very interesting things to say about articles. They simply couldn't say it any other way than anonymously (should they selfishly wish to keep their jobs.) Yes, you have to seriously wonder if they are who they claim, and whether what they say is reasonable, but its more information with which to make judgements, therefore valuable if used properly.
The topics here are pretty free ranging. Sometimes illegal things like cracking or marijuana are being discussed. Even encryption could fall under this heading one day. It can only be considered brave or foolish to make statements about illegal acts in a public forum. These records are available for a long time, and people's words do come back to haunt them. Without anonymous posting the discussion is inhibited thru fear speaking of real world experiences.
My main gripe is that all Anonymous Cowards look alike. Its been my impression that sometimes a single person has tried to make it look like a lot of people are posting with similar opinions. It would be useful just to know it was the same Anonymous Coward. I don't have a means to suggest for doing this unfortunately.
Normal first posters don't bother me, this article being the first that has caused me any real irritation with the species.
The garbage poster(s?) on the other hand seems to delight in simply wasting bandwidth for no discernible reason at all, not even some warped idea of fun.
I have to admit, considering the increasing abuse it's an idea worth considering. But even if logins are required, the real abusers will still be able to create new accounts with random lusernames and throwaway hotmail accounts.
I agree with you that proportional licensing is not practical, I was just trying to suggest that *some* modification might be able to preserve the interests of both those who deserve protection for their ideas, and those who feel threatened by patents.
Nor did I mean "genius" literally, just that there should be a larger component of inspiration than perspiration in a patent. I think we actually agree that the bar should be much higher than it is now.
Some food for thought: what will be the patentability of genetic algorithms? If one genetic algorithm to factor large composites is patented does that make an independently evolved genetic algorithm subject to patent fees? Where is the inventor who has a right to their hard won ideas in this picture? Just suggesting that patent laws need to change in the light of new develoments in how we accomplish and organize our work.
Why should we only talk about this statute? I see a broad spectrum of privacy invasions being proposed by our government of which this is just the latest example. Do we need to defeat each law in detail, or can't we look at the implications of the entire set of proposals?
You seem to believe that if the President wants a wiretap on an enemy of his, it will be impossible to find a judge to sign the warrant. Granted, most judges are honorable, but all it takes is one bad apple to make warrants too easy to obtain. The Executive appoints federal judges, so how hard is it to create some friendly judges? You think the FBI and cops don't keep lists of warrant "friendly" judges?
Yes, it is difficult to wiretap your enemies covertly, Watergate was a real screwup that proves that point. How many didn't get caught is the only question in my mind. It also shows that some politicians are interested in collecting political intelligence even when it *IS* illegal. I don't want to make it possible for corrupt politicians to increase their power without even going outside the law.
Maybe it's terrorists and criminals that screw up your daily life. The government does a far better job of it for me.
"The total number of digital messages is expanding at such a rate that it is not even remotely possible for law enforcement, as we know it in America, to perform wiretaps on anyone but the most serious criminals."
How about their most serious political enemies? Does it bother you that politicians could perform wiretaps on them? This gives corrupt politicians great power, while honest ones wouldn't use it.
"Well, this is what a patent is: a legalized monopolly. A monopoly does make things more expensive for non-monopoly holders; but this is a worthwhile tradeoff in return for greater technological innovation."
I agree they used to provide a worthwhile tradeoff, but I think it needs reevaluation in the light of new business practices such as open source. The way the law is now, its basically a requirement that software using the innovation pass the license price on to the buyer. For obvious reasons, this is difficult when the software is free. If the law somehow required licensing rates proportional to revenues obtained from the invention's use the playing field would be more even. IANAL, and I don't have a solution. But it seems to me the software patent laws are indeed biased against technological innovation by the free software community.
Another way they are biased is that independent volunteer coders rarely have the means, knowledge, or inclination to apply for patents for their ideas. These ideas are no less worthy than many being patented. Unfortunately, its usually organizations with legal departments that patent things.
I can't speak about the nature of your invention of course. But I've seen patents for algorithms most anyone with a spare year could have created. This is paid labor, not genius. Frequently the invention is a lot less noteworthy than the software infrastructure the inventor used to develop it. I'd want the bar set very high on software patents - they should represent the kind of unique insight that only happens a few times a decade.
A political animal's primary motivation is survival -- remaining in office. They will explain that only they know how to save the country (and the children!), so re-election is a matter of national security.
Have you heard of political dirty-tricks squads? They're really not too uncommon, many political candidates have tolerated them as deniably over-enthusiastic supporters. Some, like Nixon, actively helped them in illegal ways.
If that's too much of a stretch for you, you do know that nearly ALL political candidates hire investigators to dig up dirt on their opponents, don't you? Think how valuable government surveillance would be for those efforts.
Now, the question is, who gets an advantage in political intelligence for dirty political campaigns if the government has widespread surveillance? The honest grass-roots challenger, or the corrupt incumbent?
Still think you don't have an interest in keeping the playing field between citizens watching government and government watching citizens level?
"Biological organisms do work on a digital system - what do you call DNA? Sure, it's base four not binary, but it's still a discrete combinatorial system."
I'm not a biologist, but isn't that a tad oversimplified? Sure the encoding is digital, but the interaction with proteins is highly analog. This a little like the FPGA, which is designed with digital states in mind, but can be evolved to utilize analog interactions between cells.
"What's to stop them from optimizing across a wide range of (previously destabilizing) ambient conditions?"
Nothing. But these algorithms might possibly be more prone to failure under exceptional conditions. The article does explain that changes in environment that wouldn't be expected to perturb digital circuitry (temperature, stray capacitance) caused his chip problems.
The problem with software reliability is that you can't run thru all situations it will encounter in the field, there are too many. A similar problem occurs in trying to imagine all environmental ranges that are required for evolution of this chip. If there are 10 environmental variables with 10 states each thats 10**10 different trials per generation. Not likely.
It's probably the case that sensitivity to the environment can be handled in some way. But I think it's fair to say that its a concern for genetic algorithms, and it's exacerbated by depending on analog characteristics of circuits designed for digital use.
"Of course, with this technique one is never assured he will find the absolute lowest valley"
True, and nice visualization for the problem.
Practically speaking though, you can ensure pretty close to a best solution by starting your search from many random initial positions. The more, the better your chances of hitting the deepest hole.
One reason is that Microsoft has a paid marketing department, I'd be very surprised if they didn't have a budget that looked like RedHat's market cap.
Wisely or not, many people here feel they are the unpaid Linux marketing department. To some degree I think this is true and a good thing. Like you though, I'd like to see more comments from people who have real world examples and deep experience in both systems, rather than people who are just cheerleading or bashing. To be fair, Microsoft is fairly repetitive and content-free too:).
The other thing you have to realize is that there really is a lot of anger at Microsoft. Being a user of their software since 1982 (DOS 1.0), I think it's fair for me to say that a lot of this anger is justified. If people feel calmer after a little venting, it may even be worth the bandwidth lost to noise.
I think this article is a good example of what I'd like to see more of. Even if its biased, its a real example, and it brings up something well worth thinking about -- the reliability of life critical software.
Jim
Re:Why it's sooo hard for this stuff to happen....
on
911 Calls Linux
·
· Score: 1
I think you have to distinguish between accidents and negligence. You also have to concentrate on validation beforehand, not blame afterwards.
I don't think anyone in the software field would suggest that it is possible to fully test complex software. Sometimes it won't fail until it's actually under load and an unusual set of conditions applies.
Note that the officer showed diligence and tested the switch to Linux before making it. If that hadn't been done, someone might have a reason to claim negligence if damaged by an ensuing problem. I assume the operators received training in the new system before the switchover as well. You don't want someone trying to figure out how to exit from vi for the first time in the middle of an emergency call.
There is probably an unfair burden on the 911 departments, in that whatever they choose, someone is likely to get upset and sue if a problem occurs. If there isn't an approvals process for qualifying critical software like 911 support, I'd suggest it might be wise, just to relieve the departments of the possible liability. Being reliable should of course rank extremely high in any rational selection process.
So focus on where people just didn't do their job, or maliciously installed a backdoor or easter-egg, not where they made honest mistakes. Many developers don't really consider their programs in the light of life critical use, I'm quite sure Microsoft doesn't. Software should be validated for suitability before use in life critical situations. It's an unfair burden to expect software developers to forsee all contexts their software may be used in.
If you look at articles like the recent one on evolution that split the readers into factions, something kind of different appears. I would bet that people trusted different "experts" in their evaluation of the comments following the article, depending on their own predisposition on the matter.
Slashdot sometimes provides a multi-valued filter on stories. There are well written conflicting comments that are highly rated. I find this more interesting and yes, entertaining, than a traditional news source promoting just one view.
I'm currently coding for the TIC6211 DSP processor, which is VLIW, 8 instructions per packet.
Everything you say is pretty much true, the C compiler has a hard time filling up the packets in general. However, a process of software pipelining can often be used to fairly automatically schedule inner loops so they perform iterations in parallel. Since usually most time is spent in inner loops you can often get fairly effective results like 75% of maximum speed with minimal hand optimization.
Some things, like my current project, require hand scheduling to achieve good performance because it is mostly sequential. Its a very small program fortunately, around 1K instructions.
Absolutely. Thats why I said "fairly open", not "fairly open source". It was ambiguous in this context, mea culpa.
I asked John Carmack about GPL'ing the doom source, and he said he'd talk to his business partners at id. Apparently, they're not ready for the idea.
Id makes significant money from source licenses. You have to explain to them how to replace that revenue if you want them to open their sources in general.
A year before the source release, id was still quoting ~$250k for a Doom license. I think it was a nice gesture by id to release them. They have real educational value, which was id's stated purpose in their release.
Slashdot Mirror
I saw the whining over at Linux Today when they ran the interview.
1) Opera should be open source
Opera is a software company. They make their money by selling their software. Not service, not documentation, not brand name, they sell the software. If you think they could switch to being a service oriented company, please get real. Any browser that needs a lot of customer support is not worth using.
2) Opera should be free (beer)
Yes, I'm afraid Opera is going to have a thin time of it with Linux users unless Mozilla is seriously delayed or dysfunctional, simply because it will be free. Add to this the number of us that would use an open source product -- even if slightly inferior -- and it looks like a hard road for them.
3) I don't want to buy a commercial browser
This doesn't mean it's wrong for you not to buy it because it's not free. If you feel that strongly about it, it's entirely your choice. Mozilla will be here one day.
4) I hope they lose the sucky MDI interface
MDI is a culture thing. Microsoft practically shovels developers into the MDI model, recommending it in their "design standards" and making it the default AppWizard in VC++ (last time I bought the damn thing anyway -- quite a while ago.) I don't like it either, but I expect thats what Opera will be at first anyway. Let them concentrate on the system issues of porting for now.
5) I already bought it for Windows, why should I have to pay for it again for Linux?
I really think this is fair, Opera needs to recover the development costs of the Linux version whether you have already bought it for another system or not. IIRC, they are at least offering a discount for those that have bought another OS version.
I think Opera makes a quality product, and I wish them well. I hope people will be kinder to them than I expect them to be. Open source is good != Commercial software is bad.
Jim
Probably because no one submitted it, or it didn't strike CmdrTaco's fancy. Why do *you* think?
I agree I would have liked to see the BeOs announcement, I didn't know about Opera on BeOs until I followed the link from this story to Opera's webpage. Hmmm, good thing this story was posted.
Besides, there is no really stable and powerful browser for Linux yet, this is as newsworthy as Mozilla announcements. A lot of people, including Burlington Coat Factory, want to see a good browser soon. It's important in terms of not letting IE dominate browser standards.
Jim
"This is one way in which programmers actually get paid for their work and can thus earn a living doing what they love. I just can't see a problem with that."
That's very interesting. I'm really glad to hear that L, Z, and W will be getting the money from the license. Silly me, I thought it was just going to the bottom line of a multinational corporation.
I have a friend at Intel with patents, and he gets zero dollars on those patents, its just an ego thing. Is it not true that nearly all patents are enforced by corporations, and all corporations require surrender of intellectual property that is work-related when you hire on?
So, explain to me how patents are keeping programmers fed, please. I already understand that they are crucial to keeping lawyers fed.
Jim
Also from that page:
"If you use any of the types of images specified above on your Web site that you received from an unlicensed software developer or service, you should have a license from Unisys to use the LZW patent."
This seems to imply that the restrictions you name are what qualify you for the "cheap and easy" $5k license. Those that don't, like commercial sites, have to negotiate with Unisys for a license. Sounds like they want *more* money if you don't qualify.
Jim
The PNG web site linked to by ESR contains a statement that a format MNG supporting animation is under development.
http://www.cdrom.com/pub/mng/
Jim
I think a good argument could be made they are selling packaging, documentation, and support, not software. Whether a court would agree...
Jim
Tempting, isn't it?
Most Anonymous Cowards are not abusive, and often have interesting things to say. Sometimes counter to the grain here, but that can be good.
I've seen a few cases of people inside companies that had very interesting things to say about articles. They simply couldn't say it any other way than anonymously (should they selfishly wish to keep their jobs.) Yes, you have to seriously wonder if they are who they claim, and whether what they say is reasonable, but its more information with which to make judgements, therefore valuable if used properly.
The topics here are pretty free ranging. Sometimes illegal things like cracking or marijuana are being discussed. Even encryption could fall under this heading one day. It can only be considered brave or foolish to make statements about illegal acts in a public forum. These records are available for a long time, and people's words do come back to haunt them. Without anonymous posting the discussion is inhibited thru fear speaking of real world experiences.
My main gripe is that all Anonymous Cowards look alike. Its been my impression that sometimes a single person has tried to make it look like a lot of people are posting with similar opinions. It would be useful just to know it was the same Anonymous Coward. I don't have a means to suggest for doing this unfortunately.
Normal first posters don't bother me, this article being the first that has caused me any real irritation with the species.
The garbage poster(s?) on the other hand seems to delight in simply wasting bandwidth for no discernible reason at all, not even some warped idea of fun.
I have to admit, considering the increasing abuse it's an idea worth considering. But even if logins are required, the real abusers will still be able to create new accounts with random lusernames and throwaway hotmail accounts.
Jim
Twinkle
I agree with you that proportional licensing is not practical, I was just trying to suggest that *some* modification might be able to preserve the interests of both those who deserve protection for their ideas, and those who feel threatened by patents.
Nor did I mean "genius" literally, just that there should be a larger component of inspiration than perspiration in a patent. I think we actually agree that the bar should be much higher than it is now.
Some food for thought: what will be the patentability of genetic algorithms? If one genetic algorithm to factor large composites is patented does that make an independently evolved genetic algorithm subject to patent fees? Where is the inventor who has a right to their hard won ideas in this picture? Just suggesting that patent laws need to change in the light of new develoments in how we accomplish and organize our work.
Jim
Why should we only talk about this statute? I see a broad spectrum of privacy invasions being proposed by our government of which this is just the latest example. Do we need to defeat each law in detail, or can't we look at the implications of the entire set of proposals?
You seem to believe that if the President wants a wiretap on an enemy of his, it will be impossible to find a judge to sign the warrant. Granted, most judges are honorable, but all it takes is one bad apple to make warrants too easy to obtain. The Executive appoints federal judges, so how hard is it to create some friendly judges? You think the FBI and cops don't keep lists of warrant "friendly" judges?
Yes, it is difficult to wiretap your enemies covertly, Watergate was a real screwup that proves that point. How many didn't get caught is the only question in my mind. It also shows that some politicians are interested in collecting political intelligence even when it *IS* illegal. I don't want to make it possible for corrupt politicians to increase their power without even going outside the law.
Maybe it's terrorists and criminals that screw up your daily life. The government does a far better job of it for me.
Jim
"The total number of digital messages is expanding at such a rate that it is not even remotely possible for law enforcement, as we know it in America, to perform wiretaps on anyone but the most serious criminals."
How about their most serious political enemies? Does it bother you that politicians could perform wiretaps on them? This gives corrupt politicians great power, while honest ones wouldn't use it.
Jim
"Well, this is what a patent is: a legalized monopolly. A monopoly does make things more expensive for non-monopoly holders; but this is a worthwhile tradeoff in return for greater technological innovation."
I agree they used to provide a worthwhile tradeoff, but I think it needs reevaluation in the light of new business practices such as open source. The way the law is now, its basically a requirement that software using the innovation pass the license price on to the buyer. For obvious reasons, this is difficult when the software is free. If the law somehow required licensing rates proportional to revenues obtained from the invention's use the playing field would be more even. IANAL, and I don't have a solution. But it seems to me the software patent laws are indeed biased against technological innovation by the free software community.
Another way they are biased is that independent volunteer coders rarely have the means, knowledge, or inclination to apply for patents for their ideas. These ideas are no less worthy than many being patented. Unfortunately, its usually organizations with legal departments that patent things.
I can't speak about the nature of your invention of course. But I've seen patents for algorithms most anyone with a spare year could have created. This is paid labor, not genius. Frequently the invention is a lot less noteworthy than the software infrastructure the inventor used to develop it. I'd want the bar set very high on software patents - they should represent the kind of unique insight that only happens a few times a decade.
Jim
A political animal's primary motivation is survival -- remaining in office. They will explain that only they know how to save the country (and the children!), so re-election is a matter of national security.
Have you heard of political dirty-tricks squads? They're really not too uncommon, many political candidates have tolerated them as deniably over-enthusiastic supporters. Some, like Nixon, actively helped them in illegal ways.
If that's too much of a stretch for you, you do know that nearly ALL political candidates hire investigators to dig up dirt on their opponents, don't you? Think how valuable government surveillance would be for those efforts.
Now, the question is, who gets an advantage in political intelligence for dirty political campaigns if the government has widespread surveillance? The honest grass-roots challenger, or the corrupt incumbent?
Still think you don't have an interest in keeping the playing field between citizens watching government and government watching citizens level?
Jim
Yet another vote for continuation.
Once a week is fine, more is better -- but have a life and let them happen when they will, rather than forcing them out to deadlines.
More visibility on the front page, please. Anything from just showing which show number is available to an article post is fine for me.
Jim
"Biological organisms do work on a digital system - what do you call DNA? Sure, it's base four not binary, but it's still a discrete combinatorial system."
I'm not a biologist, but isn't that a tad oversimplified? Sure the encoding is digital, but the interaction with proteins is highly analog. This a little like the FPGA, which is designed with digital states in mind, but can be evolved to utilize analog interactions between cells.
Jim
Jim
"What's to stop them from optimizing across a wide range of (previously destabilizing) ambient conditions?"
Nothing. But these algorithms might possibly be more prone to failure under exceptional conditions. The article does explain that changes in environment that wouldn't be expected to perturb digital circuitry (temperature, stray capacitance) caused his chip problems.
The problem with software reliability is that you can't run thru all situations it will encounter in the field, there are too many. A similar problem occurs in trying to imagine all environmental ranges that are required for evolution of this chip. If there are 10 environmental variables with 10 states each thats 10**10 different trials per generation. Not likely.
It's probably the case that sensitivity to the environment can be handled in some way. But I think it's fair to say that its a concern for genetic algorithms, and it's exacerbated by depending on analog characteristics of circuits designed for digital use.
Jim
"Of course, with this technique one is never assured he will find the absolute lowest valley"
True, and nice visualization for the problem.
Practically speaking though, you can ensure pretty close to a best solution by starting your search from many random initial positions. The more, the better your chances of hitting the deepest hole.
Jim
Thanks for a chuckle :) But...
"Of course, the really smart computers would never believe something as absurd as that"
Really smart sentient beings don't believe -- they test.
Jim
One reason is that Microsoft has a paid marketing department, I'd be very surprised if they didn't have a budget that looked like RedHat's market cap.
:).
Wisely or not, many people here feel they are the unpaid Linux marketing department. To some degree I think this is true and a good thing. Like you though, I'd like to see more comments from people who have real world examples and deep experience in both systems, rather than people who are just cheerleading or bashing. To be fair, Microsoft is fairly repetitive and content-free too
The other thing you have to realize is that there really is a lot of anger at Microsoft. Being a user of their software since 1982 (DOS 1.0), I think it's fair for me to say that a lot of this anger is justified. If people feel calmer after a little venting, it may even be worth the bandwidth lost to noise.
I think this article is a good example of what I'd like to see more of. Even if its biased, its a real example, and it brings up something well worth thinking about -- the reliability of life critical software.
Jim
I think you have to distinguish between accidents and negligence. You also have to concentrate on validation beforehand, not blame afterwards.
I don't think anyone in the software field would suggest that it is possible to fully test complex software. Sometimes it won't fail until it's actually under load and an unusual set of conditions applies.
Note that the officer showed diligence and tested the switch to Linux before making it. If that hadn't been done, someone might have a reason to claim negligence if damaged by an ensuing problem. I assume the operators received training in the new system before the switchover as well. You don't want someone trying to figure out how to exit from vi for the first time in the middle of an emergency call.
There is probably an unfair burden on the 911 departments, in that whatever they choose, someone is likely to get upset and sue if a problem occurs. If there isn't an approvals process for qualifying critical software like 911 support, I'd suggest it might be wise, just to relieve the departments of the possible liability. Being reliable should of course rank extremely high in any rational selection process.
So focus on where people just didn't do their job, or maliciously installed a backdoor or easter-egg, not where they made honest mistakes. Many developers don't really consider their programs in the light of life critical use, I'm quite sure Microsoft doesn't. Software should be validated for suitability before use in life critical situations. It's an unfair burden to expect software developers to forsee all contexts their software may be used in.
Jim
Won't work. You'd just start seeing "Phrst P0st" and every variation under the sun.
If you look at articles like the recent one on evolution that split the readers into factions, something kind of different appears. I would bet that people trusted different "experts" in their evaluation of the comments following the article, depending on their own predisposition on the matter.
Slashdot sometimes provides a multi-valued filter on stories. There are well written conflicting comments that are highly rated. I find this more interesting and yes, entertaining, than a traditional news source promoting just one view.
Jim
I'm currently coding for the TIC6211 DSP processor, which is VLIW, 8 instructions per packet.
Everything you say is pretty much true, the C compiler has a hard time filling up the packets in general. However, a process of software pipelining can often be used to fairly automatically schedule inner loops so they perform iterations in parallel. Since usually most time is spent in inner loops you can often get fairly effective results like 75% of maximum speed with minimal hand optimization.
Some things, like my current project, require hand scheduling to achieve good performance because it is mostly sequential. Its a very small program fortunately, around 1K instructions.
Jim
Absolutely. Thats why I said "fairly open", not "fairly open source". It was ambiguous in this context, mea culpa.
I asked John Carmack about GPL'ing the doom source, and he said he'd talk to his business partners at id. Apparently, they're not ready for the idea.
Id makes significant money from source licenses. You have to explain to them how to replace that revenue if you want them to open their sources in general.
A year before the source release, id was still quoting ~$250k for a Doom license. I think it was a nice gesture by id to release them. They have real educational value, which was id's stated purpose in their release.
Jim
Absolutely. The DOOM, HERETIC, and HEXEN sources have all been released under a fairly open license. Only commercial reuse is really forbidden.
Many enhanced engines have resulted, including many for Linux. If you like retrogaming at all, you might like to check out the page at
http://www.doomworld.com/ports/linux_unix.shtml
Please be gentle, I don't think this is a large server.
Jim