I'm not sure I agree, the GNU in the name commands seriousness, and dedication of the project. From it people immediately understand, that there are some technical hard-hitters behind it, and that it won't suddenly turn into a free (but you need to pay) kind of thing, that happens to most of these so called "free" things. Without it, what's to differentiate the project from all the googles, voddlers, moogles, twitters, flickrs and all other stupid names that one can't even remember the difference of?
SIP doesn't even traverse NAT firewalls without help from outside, and even then, barely. SIP is also too verbose, and therefore it's hard to tweak the network to avoid jitter. (This is a huge problem currently)
A large reason why Skype became so popular is, that it didn't have the same problems as SIP.
IAX2 has none of these problems, supports multiple line trunking, and, it's already supported by lots of software and hardware.
IAX2 was developed out of a need for an efficient call trunking protocol for the free PBX called Asterisk. In the beginning, the author clearly stated IAX shouldn't be used by others (moving target), but since it's clearly being used already, it's become a sort of de-facto standard since nothing else works as well.
I was looking forward to new memory that might be more expensive, but has the best of all worlds. (simple hardware interface, durability and faster than dram write and read speed, ie. like sram but cheaper and only uses energy while active) The embedded world seriously needs new parts that allows designs and software to become simpler, at the expense of hardware cost.
Don't be such a pessimist. Together, all of the things you talk about have improved battery life. And turned that luggable portable PC we call a laptop from "useless on the road" into useful. We now have netbooks that on average last 5-6h (with an 8-10h battery) Quite a difference to the average battery time of older laptops 0.5-1.5h with the same kind of battery.
LEDs instead of a HV fluorescent tube is natural progress, but why are they charging more for it, when it should be less?
SSDs will start shining in energy saved, only when we get rid of the energy wasted on FTL and stop treating them as block devices when they in fact aren't.
A typical SSD is hampered by it's HDD FTL that *cannot* know what you want to do, so all operations except reading are very slow. The only reason we use the HDD FTL is because of some operating systems don't support any good filesystems.
Since flash memory is different than a HDD, pretending it's not, is always going to be a headache, and cause unintended problems for the user.
It seems retarded that FTL coders are now trying to second-guess the operating systems by trying to understand what filesystem *may* be on it. This will obviously cause any amount of headache for users, if data written on the block device just happens to look like fat32 or ntfs...
There's a much cooler and older technology out there, which is connecting flash directly to any of your fast buses. And using a modern filesystem that works well on flash, such as ubifs.
Nokia n900 was a good device to test the pros and cons of using flash directly (via ubifs) or indirectly on an MMC. The performance on the direct flash memory totally overwhelms that of the indirect memory. in addition, you know things like bad blocks, can execute in place, append and proper compression support.
And most likely your flash memory will last a decade longer in normal use.
Most importantly, using flash directly makes this article pointless, since you *know* what has and hasn't been deleted.
I've worked in security for a long time, and have yet to subscribe to the idea: security = endless patching There is a lot of software which is inherently secure, and a lot of software which can _never_ be secure. It also does not apply to all cases where software cannot be changed after deployment.
The most important metrics here seem to be: what the software is trying to do, and how many man hours are spent on each line. If the software is trying to implement an insecure protocol, then no amount of patching will ever make that software secure.
In general, if you're trying to add pre-emptive security, then there's a good chance the whole solution may be flawed by design. By pre-emptive security I mean blacklists of any kind. (antivirus, network addresses, memory diagnostics, certain types of input sanitizing) Also, if you see the need of severely crippling the functionality of your software, it may also be a sign of a design flaw.
The problem with pre-emptive security is that there is obviously no way to pre-empt an unknown threat. And when the threats are known, sooner or later your blacklists will begin to contain valid use-cases, therefore crippling the functionality of the whole solution, or even worse, your software keeps working as intended, but now contains famous security issues.
>What do you believe to be broken about nspluginwrapper?
As I already mentioned, it simply does not build on my system giving a lot of errors, this is a known bug and will probably be fixed soon. However, the fix is most likely relaxed security. Bottom line is, last time I checked there was no solution for me to use flash on my hardened 64bit systems.
> I assure you it is possible to run it and still "be secure", by whatever definition you're using.
And if my definition of secure includes not running untrusted code on my system? I do not have the source code for flash, therefore it is impossible to audit and compile in certain security features. Please don't make such broad claims using unfounded assumptions.
I understand you're trying to be helpful, but saying "it works for me" is only helpful when the question is "does it work at all?" I think we can safely say that flash does work on some systems.
a) And it was designed as such b) But it was designed for much more c) Irrelevant, but you're right d) Thank you
You are forgetting the design issues. Just because you can use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail doesn't mean it's the right tool. And it definitely doesn't mean that the screwdriver is faulty if you fail achieve the wanted result. For *any* given task that is done on the web, there are other more efficient ways of doing it.
A lot of people, (me included) are using the same desktop as at home and existing applications, over the internet, and over low-bandwidth links. links which are too slow to support web applications.
In your last paragraph you are just plain wrong, I use my desktop on my mobile, or using any other PC. The web is simply not a requirement for mobility.
Architectures such as arm, ppc, sparc64 to name a few?
And when nspluginwrapper itself is broken?
Most people experience random browser crashes when using it on amd64, for me it doesn't build at all since I'm using a hardened system.
In fact, it *CANNOT* work in a secure environment, you have to give it special privileges for the exact reason why the privileges are denied.
Your "it works for me" attitude isn't going to get you anywhere, this topic has been raised for a reason. If you don't understand the security implications of running untrusted bytecode with untrusted binaries, then there is no point in further discussion.
If by Linux, you mean a GNU/Linux system built and used on a single specific architecture, using a stock kernel with no options such as 4k stacks, no hardening patches, using current stock system libraries, and with utter disregard of security, then you're right!
The web was never meant for applications.
Applications are per definition not part of the web, and recognising this, there are much better tools available for the purpose.
I believe in the coming years OLED (and other LED techs) will become the dominant types of display.
Black is when there is no light, and this is where displays have most to gain when saving energy. There's no point in lighting up a pixel and then (attempting to) hide it.;P
If and when we all use a good quality *LED, the power usage will typically be around 95% less with a black background than white.
A bare OS with no software and that has been used for less than 6 months is hardly what I call "testing that it is working"
One should install Firefox, Thunderbird, MSOffice, antivirus, antispyware and all the other billion programs that are needed since software designed for windows are usually single purpose. Having a couple of office docs open while scanning for viruses, looking at e-mail and browsing the web simultaneously is a typical constant work-load that "normal" (non-real) people have.
160gb of hard drive space is good if you're a warez hoarder, and 2gb of ram is good if you're compiling software. I think you're missing the point, Vista will barely even _work_ without at least 2G ram and a 160G drive whereas just about any computer device created after 1991 and running Linux is still useful (for real men;)
Dropping DVD-DL is not an issue since the technology doesn't even work, recording single-layer DVDs is error-prone enough.
S-Video is useful since the gfx chips already include support for it, and a lot of people use it to hook up to a TV-set or video projector for movie playback or presentations, many people watch XviDs etc. not DVD.
It is unfortunate that FW800 is dropped, probably due to bus/chipset problems, since most x86 hardware can't sustain such high datarates. They should have put more R&D in to this, since it was the only avenue for connecting high bandwidth storage arrays to the laptop for video editing.
USB2 is useful as a replacement for the serial port, but sorry, it's nowhere near replacing FW400. - System requirements are still too high, latency needs to be improved, overall stability as well (too many disconnects, too often)
Seems I'll be keeping my 15" powerbook for some time to come, due to these deficiencies.
Socialism usually works out quite well actually, compared to econo-anarchistic systems like capitalism, leaving 25% of the population in extreme poverty.
Now if we're done with the stereotypes, we can talk about the reasons of profit and failures of proprietary software.
With proprietary software, it usually boils down to two things, marketing and packaging. Skype is experiencing immense popularity due to marketing, a slick user interface and ease of usage, however, compared to the more mature, technically superior (and open) protocols such as SIP or IAX2 it is clearly not the way to go. Reasons: calling landlines is expensive, the sound quality is extremely bad, it cannot traverse many firewall setups, cannot be customised, nor is there _any_ hardware available for it. (we set up an asterisk pbx system with 10 sip lines, ordinary/sip phones within one day)
There are a lot of examples where technically/economically superior solutions "lose" when they are filtered out as static, due to marketing, OS/2 anyone?
People want open source, because it is the only development model that can ensure software quality, "free" interchange, security and, that it really does what it says it does.
Now, people who don't know how to use computers argue that a "not windows interface" is a price too high to pay for ensuring quality software. However, the question is really; should we be listening to them, or shouldn't we demand users comprehend a device they intend to use?
If this government initiative is going to trumpet up more open standard users, then I'm all for it.
Hopefully we will be able to trade our thoughts soon, without breaking any laws.
When I was little, I believed that I was this kind of child wonder.
The reason was probably because of my experiences with many cultures, and that it took me less than one year to learn a new language fluently.
I also used to know the contents of a couple of encyclopedias by heart, and worked on many electronic/programming projects while the other kids crawled in the mud.
Obviously, time came to teach me that I wasn't really special...
A lot of kids are at least as capable as long as their mind gets put into the correct use, they just did *other* things.
Later, when I was 7, my parents put me in school with other children who didn't know how to read and write even in one language, nor did they know physics, maths or programming.
It only annoyed me for a very brief time, as soon as I got used to it, it didn't really matter.
Those years in school taught me an entirely different facet of the world, social behaviour.
In my books, social competence is the only thing that has brought me this far in life.
I firmly believe that; if it wasn't for the social life and good friends I've had throughout the years, I would have committed suicide during one of the more depressive episodes in my life.
My point is, if you believe that knowledge in one area is more important than another, then it is probable that your understanding of that area is insufficient. Thus, I don't know if skipping him up to higher education is such a good idea, entirely based on the fact that he may miss the opportunity of developing a healthy social life.
Us long time Slackware users are interested in hearing another side of the story too sometimes.
You don't hear much about it in the media normally
It's one of the first distros, and as such, will always have a place in our hearts.
Join us in #Slackware @ EFnet if you like it
How about a 12" laptop with the same resolution?
Now that would be a breakthrough...
I honestly don't care about screen size, since it's the resolution that matters.
The CRT days, when you couldn't sit too close to a screen are over since the size of the LCD only dictates how far it has to be.
How about not forcing your opinion on others? Most people don't care about aspect ratio since this is a _software_ issue.
Personally, I want the video player to stretch the image to use 100% of available image area, independent of the original aspect ratio/screen ratio.
The human brain is such a wonderful thing, it adapts to different images very quickly and the added resolution gives you a better viewing experience regardless.
Well.. It's "new" to come from microsoft.
But horizontal scrollwheels have been on mice for like 6 yrs already.. and to me it sounds stupid having 2 scroll wheels
A much better solution has already been made by someone..
it's called the "Star Logic 8D Optical Mouse" available from: 8d mouse at Amazon
On the contrary, I hate pages which are a certain "width", they should have a dynamic width.
if a page opens up at a measly 1024px width on a 3200w screen, it would be extremely annoying.
point is, most users need a vertical and horzontal scrolling capability in a trackball style, they just don't know it yet.
And NO, none of these "software-solutions" can replace it, since the whole point is to be able to move your cursor at the same time as you scroll and maybe hold a mouse button.
The "clicks" in a scrollwheel come from trying to make a cheap solution for the wheel, (when rotating, switches get hit each click) and also use less cpu..
There's no question about a stepless scroller being better (but more expensive)
Well.. It's "new" to come from microsoft.
But horizontal scrollwheels have been on mice for like 6 yrs already.. and to me it sounds stupid having 2 scroll wheels
A much better solution has already been made by someone.. it's called the "Star Logic 8D Optical Mouse" available from:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00006BXBQ/ summitpost-20/104-5196218-4945532
On the contrary, I hate pages which are a certain "width", they should have a dynamic width.
if a page opens up at a measly 1024px width on a 3200w screen, it would be extremely annoying.
point is, most users need a vertical and horzontal scrolling capability in a trackball style, they just don't know it yet.
And NO, none of these "software-solutions" can replace it.
since the whole point is to be able to move your cursor at the same time as you scroll and maybe hold a mouse button.
The "clicks" in a scrollwheel come from trying to make a cheap solution for the wheel, (when rotating, switches get hit each click) and also use less cpu..
There's no question about a stepless scroller being better (but more expensive)
I'm not gonna BS, I've owned loads of different brand gfx cards, and if one understands the standpoints of the different companies you will also KNOW what you are getting for your money.
Matrox stands for quality analogue image and is usually the only budget choice for people working with art (thus they stay away from selling chips to anyone else)
NVidia stands for cheap 3d graphics, and the larger part of their vendors would be considered "budget".
ATI is somewhere in between, offering good 3d graphics and relatively good quality too.
(and even though they now supply chips to anyone, there's a few quality vendors like Hercules to their merit)
About drivers, I'd go as far as to say that none of the above mfg have had any real trouble with drivers. (only concerning windos)
The "problematic" ATI drivers is a rumour from pre 1995 (mach64 and earlier)
it would be better described as "confusing" drivers rather than a real problem
(supplying and allowing users to choose the wrong driver)
It was partly MS's fault too, (automatically installing their not-so compatible drivers)
In my opinion both Matrox and ATI drivers have recently been better from a usability point of view. Easy to use, easy to understand with less menus and settings and still getting away with it without causing harm.
I choose ATI of the simple reason that there are open source drivers available from DRI-project, and I prefer their style. (Especially as they are the last major vendor to stay somewhat VESA compliant)
Why don't we thank gamers for buying all that expensive HW and making development of GFX cards go faster?
Or why don't we thank them for budget GFX cards that cost 4x more than better quality cards used to, just because we have to buy that expensive 3d gpu forcibly placed on them, especially as most normal people don't need it?
They all seem to forget.. primitive 3d graphics aren't the most important technologies of desktop computer graphics, we will soon toss all of this nonsense for voxels and volume graphics which might even have scientific purposes. (just like we did vector (2d primitive) graphics for bitmaps)
Also, for some people a more important aspect is the visual quality of the TV-out (ATI wins, no question) or the quality and performance of video input, (Both Matrox and ATI offer good budget options for this)
No points to nvidia from me since my scale does not place any value for 4500fps in quake3 nor does it place it on having 250 options for setting different aspects of 3d graphic options and obscuring the (for me more important) TV-out settings.
Last but not least... binaries.. wtf? can I choose? no? don't those go into/bin ? might as well put that card in the bin while I'm at it.;)
There are laws against forcing people to buy X when buying Y in most countries.
I noticed that 3 laptops I bought recently, 2 of them included licenses for XP, and one for NT.
Obviously I must have ended up paying for these stupid pieces of dos-gui they dare call an OS.
First thing I did was nuke whatever was on those hdds and install linux.
I'm not gonna say which mfg, but their web ordering form did _not_ include the possibility to uncheck a pre-installed dos-gui.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure I agree, the GNU in the name commands seriousness, and dedication of the project.
From it people immediately understand, that there are some technical hard-hitters behind it, and that it won't suddenly turn into a free (but you need to pay) kind of thing, that happens to most of these so called "free" things.
Without it, what's to differentiate the project from all the googles, voddlers, moogles, twitters, flickrs and all other stupid names that one can't even remember the difference of?
SIP doesn't even traverse NAT firewalls without help from outside, and even then, barely.
SIP is also too verbose, and therefore it's hard to tweak the network to avoid jitter. (This is a huge problem currently)
A large reason why Skype became so popular is, that it didn't have the same problems as SIP.
IAX2 has none of these problems, supports multiple line trunking, and, it's already supported by lots of software and hardware.
IAX2 was developed out of a need for an efficient call trunking protocol for the free PBX called Asterisk.
In the beginning, the author clearly stated IAX shouldn't be used by others (moving target), but since it's clearly being used already, it's become a sort of de-facto standard since nothing else works as well.
I was looking forward to new memory that might be more expensive, but has the best of all worlds.
(simple hardware interface, durability and faster than dram write and read speed, ie. like sram but cheaper and only uses energy while active)
The embedded world seriously needs new parts that allows designs and software to become simpler, at the expense of hardware cost.
Don't be such a pessimist.
Together, all of the things you talk about have improved battery life. And turned that luggable portable PC we call a laptop from "useless on the road" into useful.
We now have netbooks that on average last 5-6h (with an 8-10h battery)
Quite a difference to the average battery time of older laptops 0.5-1.5h with the same kind of battery.
LEDs instead of a HV fluorescent tube is natural progress, but why are they charging more for it, when it should be less?
SSDs will start shining in energy saved, only when we get rid of the energy wasted on FTL and stop treating them as block devices when they in fact aren't.
A typical SSD is hampered by it's HDD FTL that *cannot* know what you want to do, so all operations except reading are very slow.
The only reason we use the HDD FTL is because of some operating systems don't support any good filesystems.
Since flash memory is different than a HDD, pretending it's not, is always going to be a headache, and cause unintended problems for the user.
It seems retarded that FTL coders are now trying to second-guess the operating systems by trying to understand what filesystem *may* be on it.
This will obviously cause any amount of headache for users, if data written on the block device just happens to look like fat32 or ntfs...
There's a much cooler and older technology out there, which is connecting flash directly to any of your fast buses. And using a modern filesystem that works well on flash, such as ubifs.
Nokia n900 was a good device to test the pros and cons of using flash directly (via ubifs) or indirectly on an MMC.
The performance on the direct flash memory totally overwhelms that of the indirect memory. in addition, you know things like bad blocks, can execute in place, append and proper compression support.
And most likely your flash memory will last a decade longer in normal use.
Most importantly, using flash directly makes this article pointless, since you *know* what has and hasn't been deleted.
I've worked in security for a long time, and have yet to subscribe to the idea: security = endless patching
There is a lot of software which is inherently secure, and a lot of software which can _never_ be secure.
It also does not apply to all cases where software cannot be changed after deployment.
The most important metrics here seem to be: what the software is trying to do, and how many man hours are spent on each line.
If the software is trying to implement an insecure protocol, then no amount of patching will ever make that software secure.
In general, if you're trying to add pre-emptive security, then there's a good chance the whole solution may be flawed by design.
By pre-emptive security I mean blacklists of any kind. (antivirus, network addresses, memory diagnostics, certain types of input sanitizing)
Also, if you see the need of severely crippling the functionality of your software, it may also be a sign of a design flaw.
The problem with pre-emptive security is that there is obviously no way to pre-empt an unknown threat.
And when the threats are known, sooner or later your blacklists will begin to contain valid use-cases, therefore crippling the functionality of the whole solution, or even worse, your software keeps working as intended, but now contains famous security issues.
And don't forget about the workers who read and post on slashdot all day ;P
By hardened I mean PaX/Grsec2.
>What do you believe to be broken about nspluginwrapper?
As I already mentioned, it simply does not build on my system giving a lot of errors, this is a known bug and will probably be fixed soon.
However, the fix is most likely relaxed security.
Bottom line is, last time I checked there was no solution for me to use flash on my hardened 64bit systems.
> I assure you it is possible to run it and still "be secure", by whatever definition you're using.
And if my definition of secure includes not running untrusted code on my system?
I do not have the source code for flash, therefore it is impossible to audit and compile in certain security features.
Please don't make such broad claims using unfounded assumptions.
I understand you're trying to be helpful, but saying "it works for me" is only helpful when the question is "does it work at all?"
I think we can safely say that flash does work on some systems.
a) And it was designed as such
b) But it was designed for much more
c) Irrelevant, but you're right
d) Thank you
You are forgetting the design issues.
Just because you can use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail doesn't mean it's the right tool.
And it definitely doesn't mean that the screwdriver is faulty if you fail achieve the wanted result.
For *any* given task that is done on the web, there are other more efficient ways of doing it.
A lot of people, (me included) are using the same desktop as at home and existing applications, over the internet, and over low-bandwidth links. links which are too slow to support web applications.
In your last paragraph you are just plain wrong, I use my desktop on my mobile, or using any other PC. The web is simply not a requirement for mobility.
Architectures such as arm, ppc, sparc64 to name a few?
And when nspluginwrapper itself is broken?
Most people experience random browser crashes when using it on amd64, for me it doesn't build at all since I'm using a hardened system.
In fact, it *CANNOT* work in a secure environment, you have to give it special privileges for the exact reason why the privileges are denied.
Your "it works for me" attitude isn't going to get you anywhere, this topic has been raised for a reason.
If you don't understand the security implications of running untrusted bytecode with untrusted binaries, then there is no point in further discussion.
If by Linux, you mean a GNU/Linux system built and used on a single specific architecture, using a stock kernel with no options such as 4k stacks, no hardening patches, using current stock system libraries, and with utter disregard of security, then you're right!
The web was never meant for applications. Applications are per definition not part of the web, and recognising this, there are much better tools available for the purpose.
I believe in the coming years OLED (and other LED techs) will become the dominant types of display. ;P
Black is when there is no light, and this is where displays have most to gain when saving energy. There's no point in lighting up a pixel and then (attempting to) hide it.
If and when we all use a good quality *LED, the power usage will typically be around 95% less with a black background than white.
A bare OS with no software and that has been used for less than 6 months is hardly what I call "testing that it is working"
One should install Firefox, Thunderbird, MSOffice, antivirus, antispyware and all the other billion programs that are needed since software designed for windows are usually single purpose.
Having a couple of office docs open while scanning for viruses, looking at e-mail and browsing the web simultaneously is a typical constant work-load that "normal" (non-real) people have.
Dropping DVD-DL is not an issue since the technology doesn't even work, recording single-layer DVDs is error-prone enough.
S-Video is useful since the gfx chips already include support for it, and a lot of people use it to hook up to a TV-set or video projector for movie playback or presentations, many people watch XviDs etc. not DVD.
It is unfortunate that FW800 is dropped, probably due to bus/chipset problems, since most x86 hardware can't sustain such high datarates.
They should have put more R&D in to this, since it was the only avenue for connecting high bandwidth storage arrays to the laptop for video editing.
USB2 is useful as a replacement for the serial port, but sorry, it's nowhere near replacing FW400.
- System requirements are still too high, latency needs to be improved, overall stability as well (too many disconnects, too often)
Seems I'll be keeping my 15" powerbook for some time to come, due to these deficiencies.
Socialism usually works out quite well actually, compared to econo-anarchistic systems like capitalism, leaving 25% of the population in extreme poverty.
Now if we're done with the stereotypes, we can talk about the reasons of profit and failures of proprietary software.
With proprietary software, it usually boils down to two things, marketing and packaging.
Skype is experiencing immense popularity due to marketing, a slick user interface and ease of usage, however, compared to the more mature, technically superior (and open) protocols such as SIP or IAX2 it is clearly not the way to go.
Reasons: calling landlines is expensive, the sound quality is extremely bad, it cannot traverse many firewall setups, cannot be customised, nor is there _any_ hardware available for it. (we set up an asterisk pbx system with 10 sip lines, ordinary/sip phones within one day)
There are a lot of examples where technically/economically superior solutions "lose" when they are filtered out as static, due to marketing, OS/2 anyone?
People want open source, because it is the only development model that can ensure software quality, "free" interchange, security and, that it really does what it says it does.
Now, people who don't know how to use computers argue that a "not windows interface" is a price too high to pay for ensuring quality software.
However, the question is really; should we be listening to them, or shouldn't we demand users comprehend a device they intend to use?
If this government initiative is going to trumpet up more open standard users, then I'm all for it.
Hopefully we will be able to trade our thoughts soon, without breaking any laws.
When I was little, I believed that I was this kind of child wonder.
The reason was probably because of my experiences with many cultures, and that it took me less than one year to learn a new language fluently.
I also used to know the contents of a couple of encyclopedias by heart, and worked on many electronic/programming projects while the other kids crawled in the mud.
Obviously, time came to teach me that I wasn't really special...
A lot of kids are at least as capable as long as their mind gets put into the correct use, they just did *other* things.
Later, when I was 7, my parents put me in school with other children who didn't know how to read and write even in one language, nor did they know physics, maths or programming.
It only annoyed me for a very brief time, as soon as I got used to it, it didn't really matter.
Those years in school taught me an entirely different facet of the world, social behaviour.
In my books, social competence is the only thing that has brought me this far in life.
I firmly believe that; if it wasn't for the social life and good friends I've had throughout the years, I would have committed suicide during one of the more depressive episodes in my life.
My point is, if you believe that knowledge in one area is more important than another, then it is probable that your understanding of that area is insufficient. Thus, I don't know if skipping him up to higher education is such a good idea, entirely based on the fact that he may miss the opportunity of developing a healthy social life.
Us long time Slackware users are interested in hearing another side of the story too sometimes. You don't hear much about it in the media normally It's one of the first distros, and as such, will always have a place in our hearts. Join us in #Slackware @ EFnet if you like it
How about a 12" laptop with the same resolution? Now that would be a breakthrough... I honestly don't care about screen size, since it's the resolution that matters. The CRT days, when you couldn't sit too close to a screen are over since the size of the LCD only dictates how far it has to be.
How about not forcing your opinion on others?
Most people don't care about aspect ratio since this is a _software_ issue.
Personally, I want the video player to stretch the image to use 100% of available image area, independent of the original aspect ratio/screen ratio.
The human brain is such a wonderful thing, it adapts to different images very quickly and the added resolution gives you a better viewing experience regardless.
Well.. It's "new" to come from microsoft.
But horizontal scrollwheels have been on mice for like 6 yrs already..
and to me it sounds stupid having 2 scroll wheels
A much better solution has already been made by someone..
it's called the "Star Logic 8D Optical Mouse" available from:
8d mouse at Amazon
On the contrary, I hate pages which are a certain "width", they should have a dynamic width.
if a page opens up at a measly 1024px width on a 3200w screen, it would be extremely annoying.
point is, most users need a vertical and horzontal scrolling capability in a trackball style, they just don't know it yet.
And NO, none of these "software-solutions" can replace it, since the whole point is to be able to move your cursor at the same time as you scroll and maybe hold a mouse button.
The "clicks" in a scrollwheel come from trying to make a cheap solution for the wheel, (when rotating, switches get hit each click) and also use less cpu..
There's no question about a stepless scroller being better (but more expensive)
Well.. It's "new" to come from microsoft. But horizontal scrollwheels have been on mice for like 6 yrs already.. and to me it sounds stupid having 2 scroll wheels A much better solution has already been made by someone.. it's called the "Star Logic 8D Optical Mouse" available from: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00006BXBQ/ summitpost-20/104-5196218-4945532
On the contrary, I hate pages which are a certain "width", they should have a dynamic width.
if a page opens up at a measly 1024px width on a 3200w screen, it would be extremely annoying.
point is, most users need a vertical and horzontal scrolling capability in a trackball style, they just don't know it yet.
And NO, none of these "software-solutions" can replace it.
since the whole point is to be able to move your cursor at the same time as you scroll and maybe hold a mouse button.
The "clicks" in a scrollwheel come from trying to make a cheap solution for the wheel, (when rotating, switches get hit each click) and also use less cpu..
There's no question about a stepless scroller being better (but more expensive)
I'm not gonna BS, I've owned loads of different brand gfx cards, and if one understands the standpoints of the different companies you will also KNOW what you are getting for your money.
/bin ? might as well put that card in the bin while I'm at it. ;)
Matrox stands for quality analogue image and is usually the only budget choice for people working with art (thus they stay away from selling chips to anyone else)
NVidia stands for cheap 3d graphics, and the larger part of their vendors would be considered "budget".
ATI is somewhere in between, offering good 3d graphics and relatively good quality too.
(and even though they now supply chips to anyone, there's a few quality vendors like Hercules to their merit)
About drivers, I'd go as far as to say that none of the above mfg have had any real trouble with drivers. (only concerning windos)
The "problematic" ATI drivers is a rumour from pre 1995 (mach64 and earlier) it would be better described as "confusing" drivers rather than a real problem (supplying and allowing users to choose the wrong driver)
It was partly MS's fault too, (automatically installing their not-so compatible drivers)
In my opinion both Matrox and ATI drivers have recently been better from a usability point of view. Easy to use, easy to understand with less menus and settings and still getting away with it without causing harm.
I choose ATI of the simple reason that there are open source drivers available from DRI-project, and I prefer their style. (Especially as they are the last major vendor to stay somewhat VESA compliant)
Why don't we thank gamers for buying all that expensive HW and making development of GFX cards go faster?
Or why don't we thank them for budget GFX cards that cost 4x more than better quality cards used to, just because we have to buy that expensive 3d gpu forcibly placed on them, especially as most normal people don't need it?
They all seem to forget.. primitive 3d graphics aren't the most important technologies of desktop computer graphics, we will soon toss all of this nonsense for voxels and volume graphics which might even have scientific purposes. (just like we did vector (2d primitive) graphics for bitmaps)
Also, for some people a more important aspect is the visual quality of the TV-out (ATI wins, no question) or the quality and performance of video input, (Both Matrox and ATI offer good budget options for this)
No points to nvidia from me since my scale does not place any value for 4500fps in quake3 nor does it place it on having 250 options for setting different aspects of 3d graphic options and obscuring the (for me more important) TV-out settings.
Last but not least... binaries.. wtf? can I choose? no? don't those go into
my 24 cents
There are laws against forcing people to buy X when buying Y in most countries. I noticed that 3 laptops I bought recently, 2 of them included licenses for XP, and one for NT. Obviously I must have ended up paying for these stupid pieces of dos-gui they dare call an OS. First thing I did was nuke whatever was on those hdds and install linux. I'm not gonna say which mfg, but their web ordering form did _not_ include the possibility to uncheck a pre-installed dos-gui.