Given some of the code I get to deal with (19(7/8)0s vintage C, much of which is older than I am) it's probably easier to reverse engineer the binary and look at it there...
Err, actually, frame rates on the whole seem to be fractionaly faster under Linux/OpenGL than WinXP/DirectX on the same hardware:o) Not a lot in it, but some.
And the reason I run games under Linux is because I had no need for Windows, and being able to move my games to Linux recovered me 40gb of disk space to do something useful with.
There were some articles on Tom's Hardware a while back (can't find them now) which gave anything up to an 18% performance hit (frame rate wise) for onboard sound with EAX enabled.
Turning on EAX with my audigy or SB live platinum makes 1-2% difference.
Presumably the onboard sound chips are using the CPU for a lot more of the grunt work - not a great thing for a gamer, or indeed for a Linux user* unless they are _sure_ that there will be (good) drivers for that chip.
*Yes, yes, you can be a gamer _and_ a Linux user you know.
Why? In the great scheme of the internet Windows is an irrelevance. There needs to be support in serious server platforms _now_ to ensure that hardware deployed today will be able to talk IPv6 in 5-10 years time. The client platforms (windows etc) probably don't need to roll over to IP6 for another 2-3 years, as very little consumer equipment (or even Windows servers) will still be around in a recognisable configuration by then.
Not only is Microsoft not complying, they are in fact way in excess of the monopoly position that they were in when they started.
They have been busy leveraging their monopoly into new markets (cell phones and games consoles to name but two) and reverse-leveraging their new market share in these industries back into the PC market for greater lock in (Outlook integration that is closer than 3rd parties can obtain for example).
They have been investigating hardware lock in techniques (palladium style) and trialling them on consumers (Xbox) to prepare for the next wave of monoplising efforts. They are busy fundng other companies attacking their competators (SCO). They are proping up Bush econmic policy (share dividend at an advantageous moment) in return for special consideration (legal proglems decrease).
Lets hope to God this triggers another investigation - there is such a huge increase in their deliberatly destructive antics now that even a half blind judge would break them up.
If Microsoft Entertainment was a seperate company, they would probably be encouraging Linux on the XBox to increase the flexibility of their product and drive up sales - it's working for Sony, SCEE are even hiring staff to help with development of Linux for PS2!
However because they are tied to a company with no interest in seeing Linux get anywhere, they are forced to take every possible anticompetative measure to stop it suceeding.
It's the same with other MS products - the don't produce phone or PDA sync software for Linux... why exactly? Wouldn't it be nice to have access to those extra customers? Oh... but I forget... then they might not need to buy Windows. How about office? If it had been split off at the time of the antitrust trial, and given the level of interest of corps in the Linux desktop, don't you think that there would have been a Office-for-Linux by now? But then you might be able to avoid buying Windows desktops and Windows servers...
They leverage it the other way too, making it easier to use MS products on Windows than anything else - look at the level of integration they have with Outlook. I talked to a guy from Sharp about their Outlook connector for the Zaurus and they said they had a hell of a time getting it to work because Microsoft wouldn't release the lower level APIs to the developer of a Linux PDA.
It's hard to believe that a whole company could be evil, but MS seem to be trying hard.
Personally the demise (or semi-demise) of the desktop market will be a sad day for me - it'l mean cheaper laptops for sure, but it means that to do the following i'll have to pay a fortune for server hardware which no longer benefits from having commonalities with desktop parts. Laptop hardware (at least at present) can't meet these requirements:
Easy and cheap to replace one part only when it breaks. Cant run for days (currently at 48d 7h here) under high load without overheating. Means you have to buy _two_ screens to get a decent one on your desktop - the built in one and a good 21" one as well. Don't stack into a pile easily to make a cluster. Easy to pick out parts that have good drivers for Linux.
I used to work for a network install/maintainance firm, and being the youngest had to go out and fix any printer problems.
HPs pulled apart fine, so did Epsons. I can still stip a LJIII in under 3 minutes! Lexmarks however were all, without exception, cheap plasticy lumps of rubbish - fix them and they would break again in 10 minutes, even the business models.
Even if it were more expensive than XP I would probably rather pay my OS tax to an OSS supporting company that funds things like FrozenBubble rather than Microsoft who fund things like IP laws and SCO law suits...
It depends - this offers a way to get common certification available (ala Paladium) using a government as the trusted body and not Microsoft. That's a step up, but still not perfect considering the ammount of fraud (welfare, SS etc) that people still seem to get away with on the gov'ts watch.
If they combine it with a decent PGP style web-of-trust implimentation and let the user decide what weighting he wants to give to trusts he has assigned and those that the USPS has assigned then this could be a killer digital signature implimentation.
On my desk at work right now I have a SBA 100A 1553A/B bus analyser, with a solid steel keyboard. It has burn marks on it from where it was left too close to a jet engine on the afterburner test rig, yet still works. I think it's actually older than I am!
Now, should any kind slashdotter have a manual for the aforementioned bus analyser, that would be most handy...
Great plan! Let's put bombs on incredibly expensive manned platforms, instead of just sending them there on top of an ICBM.
These will probably end up going the way of the British V bombers (the best looking supersonic bombers ever) - obsoleted rather fast by extreme range stand off weapons and precision guided munitions on large stand off C2 aircraft like modified C130s.
...until ripping off MS product names was pioneered by Lindows.
Still I'm all for it, especially if it ends up with things like improved Real Time OS code being pushed back into the GPL arena and made available for desktop uses.
Anyone thing that Linux has gone from being a 'the main competetor' to 'another OS2' due to their confidece that the MS funded SCO FUD campaign seems to be doing pretty well at derailing Corporate Linux (TM)?
I suspect that he would love it if the same kind of breaks were applied to Linux that were applied to BSD after their legal troubles. </>
Not that I care, Free operating systems will live on even if Linux itself dies - it'll be a real loss for sure, but not a total from-square-0 (lots of the driver code for example is probably reusable). There might be some corporate disinterest, but it can survive even that - it only needs a core of developers to keep at it for it to grow and prosper.
In a democracy the public should have a right to determine what is publicly acceptable and legal and what is not. Certainly where somewhat in excess of 50% of internet users are trading copyright files (and yes, I do know that it's an unrepresentative sample of the population) and no person has a qualm about swapping some CDs with friends (Can I borrow that CD? no, it's copyrighted. Ha, as if.) the law is probably outdated and should be reconsidered.
If the EFF can mobilise popular support to legalise file sharing, at least on a limited level (so keep it illegal, say, for commercial pirates or profit making entities to copy music), then I would be all for it. You opinion might be different, which is why I hope that more voters agree with me;o)
Our work newsgroups went into a panic when the RIAA announced that they were going to be sueing people.
Amusingly it took them about 30 seconds to get around to Freenet and how it might be worth investigating it.
Evil contains the seeds of it's own destruction as they say - being over zelous with a bunch of basically honest people who like to share some music yet still buy lots has foced them onto a more efficient, totally untraceable (or rather plausibly deniable) network. It's certainly not pushed them towards legal services.
Well, the last card I brought was a GF2 MX 400 2 years ago at around £100 (IIRC), so £200 every 4 years for me compared to £300-£400 for a top end card.
It was starting to creak around the edges a bit by the end, but was playing UT2k3 perfectly well with some of the bells and whistles turned off.
But then I run Linux only, which seems to get some extra mileage out of video cards for the same games, and until recently therre hasn't been a lot to make it worthwhile upgrading. How things change;o)
Slashdot Mirror
Given some of the code I get to deal with (19(7/8)0s vintage C, much of which is older than I am) it's probably easier to reverse engineer the binary and look at it there...
Err, actually, frame rates on the whole seem to be fractionaly faster under Linux/OpenGL than WinXP/DirectX on the same hardware :o) Not a lot in it, but some.
And the reason I run games under Linux is because I had no need for Windows, and being able to move my games to Linux recovered me 40gb of disk space to do something useful with.
Finally a worthy application for my Radeon 9500 ASC.
There were some articles on Tom's Hardware a while back (can't find them now) which gave anything up to an 18% performance hit (frame rate wise) for onboard sound with EAX enabled.
Turning on EAX with my audigy or SB live platinum makes 1-2% difference.
Presumably the onboard sound chips are using the CPU for a lot more of the grunt work - not a great thing for a gamer, or indeed for a Linux user* unless they are _sure_ that there will be (good) drivers for that chip.
*Yes, yes, you can be a gamer _and_ a Linux user you know.
I thought that he was mostly famous for saying 'whatever' and then just doing things his own way?
Perhaps they are confusing him with RMS.
Why? In the great scheme of the internet Windows is an irrelevance. There needs to be support in serious server platforms _now_ to ensure that hardware deployed today will be able to talk IPv6 in 5-10 years time. The client platforms (windows etc) probably don't need to roll over to IP6 for another 2-3 years, as very little consumer equipment (or even Windows servers) will still be around in a recognisable configuration by then.
1) Buy SCO and read their evil plans before making them all walk the plank.
2) Put it all in a massive pool and swim in it.
3) Buy out every cell phone company in your state and turn them off *just to stop the stupid ringtones*.
4) Spend the rest on pr0n.
I wonder why none of the NASA boxes were running Windows? I mean, if it's an all sinigng all dancing solution to everything...
(It's ok, you can mod me -1 Troll now. I'm just bitter about an edict on a project I'm working on.)
Finally, 2.6 - and at last support for my Zaurus should make it into the systems at work where 'recompiling the kernel' is a dirty word.
As long as Red Hat build it in to their stock kernel that is.
Not only is Microsoft not complying, they are in fact way in excess of the monopoly position that they were in when they started.
They have been busy leveraging their monopoly into new markets (cell phones and games consoles to name but two) and reverse-leveraging their new market share in these industries back into the PC market for greater lock in (Outlook integration that is closer than 3rd parties can obtain for example).
They have been investigating hardware lock in techniques (palladium style) and trialling them on consumers (Xbox) to prepare for the next wave of monoplising efforts. They are busy fundng other companies attacking their competators (SCO). They are proping up Bush econmic policy (share dividend at an advantageous moment) in return for special consideration (legal proglems decrease).
Lets hope to God this triggers another investigation - there is such a huge increase in their deliberatly destructive antics now that even a half blind judge would break them up.
Except that they will prbably buy him off too.
If Microsoft Entertainment was a seperate company, they would probably be encouraging Linux on the XBox to increase the flexibility of their product and drive up sales - it's working for Sony, SCEE are even hiring staff to help with development of Linux for PS2!
However because they are tied to a company with no interest in seeing Linux get anywhere, they are forced to take every possible anticompetative measure to stop it suceeding.
It's the same with other MS products - the don't produce phone or PDA sync software for Linux... why exactly? Wouldn't it be nice to have access to those extra customers? Oh... but I forget... then they might not need to buy Windows. How about office? If it had been split off at the time of the antitrust trial, and given the level of interest of corps in the Linux desktop, don't you think that there would have been a Office-for-Linux by now? But then you might be able to avoid buying Windows desktops and Windows servers...
They leverage it the other way too, making it easier to use MS products on Windows than anything else - look at the level of integration they have with Outlook. I talked to a guy from Sharp about their Outlook connector for the Zaurus and they said they had a hell of a time getting it to work because Microsoft wouldn't release the lower level APIs to the developer of a Linux PDA.
It's hard to believe that a whole company could be evil, but MS seem to be trying hard.
Personally the demise (or semi-demise) of the desktop market will be a sad day for me - it'l mean cheaper laptops for sure, but it means that to do the following i'll have to pay a fortune for server hardware which no longer benefits from having commonalities with desktop parts. Laptop hardware (at least at present) can't meet these requirements:
Easy and cheap to replace one part only when it breaks.
Cant run for days (currently at 48d 7h here) under high load without overheating.
Means you have to buy _two_ screens to get a decent one on your desktop - the built in one and a good 21" one as well.
Don't stack into a pile easily to make a cluster.
Easy to pick out parts that have good drivers for Linux.
Don't ever buy a Lexmark full stop.
I used to work for a network install/maintainance firm, and being the youngest had to go out and fix any printer problems.
HPs pulled apart fine, so did Epsons. I can still stip a LJIII in under 3 minutes! Lexmarks however were all, without exception, cheap plasticy lumps of rubbish - fix them and they would break again in 10 minutes, even the business models.
Even if it were more expensive than XP I would probably rather pay my OS tax to an OSS supporting company that funds things like FrozenBubble rather than Microsoft who fund things like IP laws and SCO law suits...
It depends - this offers a way to get common certification available (ala Paladium) using a government as the trusted body and not Microsoft. That's a step up, but still not perfect considering the ammount of fraud (welfare, SS etc) that people still seem to get away with on the gov'ts watch.
If they combine it with a decent PGP style web-of-trust implimentation and let the user decide what weighting he wants to give to trusts he has assigned and those that the USPS has assigned then this could be a killer digital signature implimentation.
On my desk at work right now I have a SBA 100A 1553A/B bus analyser, with a solid steel keyboard. It has burn marks on it from where it was left too close to a jet engine on the afterburner test rig, yet still works. I think it's actually older than I am!
Now, should any kind slashdotter have a manual for the aforementioned bus analyser, that would be most handy...
I agree. Let's send all the boy bands into space.
A crew with the aptitude of monkeys that pay for themselves!
Great plan! Let's put bombs on incredibly expensive manned platforms, instead of just sending them there on top of an ICBM.
These will probably end up going the way of the British V bombers (the best looking supersonic bombers ever) - obsoleted rather fast by extreme range stand off weapons and precision guided munitions on large stand off C2 aircraft like modified C130s.
...until ripping off MS product names was pioneered by Lindows.
Still I'm all for it, especially if it ends up with things like improved Real Time OS code being pushed back into the GPL arena and made available for desktop uses.
Anyone thing that Linux has gone from being a 'the main competetor' to 'another OS2' due to their confidece that the MS funded SCO FUD campaign seems to be doing pretty well at derailing Corporate Linux (TM)?
I suspect that he would love it if the same kind of breaks were applied to Linux that were applied to BSD after their legal troubles.
</>
Not that I care, Free operating systems will live on even if Linux itself dies - it'll be a real loss for sure, but not a total from-square-0 (lots of the driver code for example is probably reusable). There might be some corporate disinterest, but it can survive even that - it only needs a core of developers to keep at it for it to grow and prosper.
In a democracy the public should have a right to determine what is publicly acceptable and legal and what is not. Certainly where somewhat in excess of 50% of internet users are trading copyright files (and yes, I do know that it's an unrepresentative sample of the population) and no person has a qualm about swapping some CDs with friends (Can I borrow that CD? no, it's copyrighted. Ha, as if.) the law is probably outdated and should be reconsidered.
;o)
If the EFF can mobilise popular support to legalise file sharing, at least on a limited level (so keep it illegal, say, for commercial pirates or profit making entities to copy music), then I would be all for it. You opinion might be different, which is why I hope that more voters agree with me
In fact, that's how our representative republic works. At least, millions of people doing activity X tends to make it legal.
As an example may I suggest prohibition - drinking was illegal, but that was soon changed when overwhelming public opinion became pro-drinking.
Our work newsgroups went into a panic when the RIAA announced that they were going to be sueing people.
Amusingly it took them about 30 seconds to get around to Freenet and how it might be worth investigating it.
Evil contains the seeds of it's own destruction as they say - being over zelous with a bunch of basically honest people who like to share some music yet still buy lots has foced them onto a more efficient, totally untraceable (or rather plausibly deniable) network. It's certainly not pushed them towards legal services.
Yeah baby! Let's get Netscape 7.1 instead of Mozilla for all of those proprietary features I want like... uhhh...
AIM? Yeah, right. Other than that Netscape 7.1 has _less_ features* than Mozilla 1.4, as well as having the wholesome open-source-goodiness impaired.
*Does it still not block pop up ads from AOL.com BTW? Nice trick there I must say.
Well, the last card I brought was a GF2 MX 400 2 years ago at around £100 (IIRC), so £200 every 4 years for me compared to £300-£400 for a top end card.
;o)
It was starting to creak around the edges a bit by the end, but was playing UT2k3 perfectly well with some of the bells and whistles turned off.
But then I run Linux only, which seems to get some extra mileage out of video cards for the same games, and until recently therre hasn't been a lot to make it worthwhile upgrading. How things change