If you think that's bad, you can still buy Radeon 7000 cards in lots of places, and they're fully a decade old. Look around a bit more, and you can find Rage128 Pro and - yes, your nightmares have come back to haunt you - 8 MB Rage Pro cards at your local CompUSA store. For the right market, old display technologies can still easily be good enough - mach64 support in X.org is good 'n' mature at this point, and if you're running a command-line server with framebuffer support it's easily good enough.
Married with Children is on syndication an awful lot... I'd expect most teenagers to be passingly familiar, but it was past its prime for years before it went off the air in 1997. The Simpsons spans the generations because it's been on the air for over a generation, and because its early and loyal fanbase have turned it into a nigh-immortal Great Wyrm of prime time television.
On the bright side, Ed O'Neill finally stopped being typecast.
I realized a few years ago that I was watching the show to see House specifically. Not coincidentally, that's around the time I stopped.:) As I said, he carried the entire thing on his shoulders - take away Hugh Laurie, and you have some well-sketched characters played by capable actors who aren't given anything to do that you haven't seen before.
He was streaked through with redeeming qualities, yeah, but the Simpsons horse is far past dead. I don't think there are bones left to be kicked - the dust has been blown far and wide, and all that's left is a crazed shell of a creative team that shows itself to be more out of touch with every passing year.
Of course, if you want a really great TV character, look at Dr. Gregory House - the entire show succeeds on his stooped shoulders, and from I've heard the past season or so coasts on his momentum. What about Tony Soprano? Deadwood's Al Swearengen? I don't even watch much TV and those drift to mind with ease because they have depth.
Along with high-frequency traders, include lawyers, people in the arts, and geologists. I've yet to encounter other career paths that result in so many high-functioning alcoholics.
The Voodoo3's limitations weren't trivial even for its time: 256x256 texture dimensions, forced 16-bit color, no real stencil buffer support, framebuffer size maxed out at 16 MB... A former 3dfx employee literally told me that it was a die-shrunk, bug-fixed Voodoo Banshee with an extra TMU popped onto its single lonely rendering pipeline. I owned one, and liked it tremendously, but it's based on technology first debuted 13 years ago.
As for Doom 3: yes, a MesaGL --> Glide wrapper exists that provides basic rendering functionality for Doom 3 and tricks the engine into sending its lighting straight to/dev/null/*. There are other wrappers that perform similar tricks for any vendor's GL drivers, and they will let you run on a GMA950 substantially better than the Voodoo3 could manage. And for whatever meager stakes we're playing for, a GMA950 can actually run Doom 3 with lighting when backed up by a dual-core CPU.++
VIA stopped designing motherboards for AMD and Intel CPUs about two years ago. Consequently, you can't find its GPUs in many places aside from embedded systems or ultra low-budget netbooks and the like. Weirdly they still sell a miniscule number of discrete cards, primarily overseas, but without divine intervention they'll never become a serious player again.
Matrox serves niche markets, mostly in the way of professional workstations, medical imaging equipment, and the odd sale of their TripleHead system to the ever-eroding hardcore PC gamer market.
In case anyone wonders what happened to the others: Oak Technologies' graphics division was acquired by ATI many moons ago; Rendition was eaten by Micron in 1998 and their name is now used to sell budget RAM; SiS bought Trident's graphics division, spun off their graphical company as XGI Technologies, had a series of disastrous product releases, and had their foundries bought by ATI, who let them continue to sell their unremarkable products to eager low-bidders; and 3dfx was mismanaged into oblivion a decade ago.
It's doubtful that Patrick would drop KDE. It's too widely used, the build system is (relatively) straightforward, and the horrors of Gnome were well-known before he made the decision that brought its issues into stark relief for the community. Dropline and company have worked very well in its absence.
Times and expectations change. Slackware is now capable of meeting the needs of a very wide range of people, and showcases lots of new functionality. However, nobody said you have to install everything, and if you're installing onto an old system it's still i486-compatible. The best bet is to pop a DVD-ROM drive into Ol' Bessy (or whatever you call the system liberated from storage) and install only those applications you're likely to use. It's a much safer bet than dealing with RedHat 6.
Adblock while web browsing. No TV service at the house. Netflix for media viewing. Paper magazines generally avoided. Sports events generally avoided. Short of gouging out my eyes so I can't see billboards while I drive home, I've cut a surpassingly large number of advertising vectors out of my life.
Yep! A few years ago I worked in a lab that was running an emission mass spectrometer from the late '80s. The software was all run off of a 5.25" floppy with some early version of MS-DOS. I don't recall whether they had a backup, but for their sake I certainly hope so...
First of all, stuff the shrieking nerd rage. I've done nothing to deserve it, and I stand by my opinion. Having run games (Doom 3, Unreal Tournament 2004, FitzQuake, Left 4 Dead under Wine, innumerable others...) and other applications (Google Earth, xscreensaver, Compiz, Blender, Google SketchUp under Wine...) using the Nvidia proprietary drivers (which I specifically mentioned in my post) on cards ranging from a 5900XT to a 9600GT, I state once again that the Nvidia OpenGL drivers are not meaningfully different from their Windows counterpart.
Reading old Slashdot posts would point out that many people agree with me - most past bitching about Nvidia drivers has been rooted in erratic behavior with regard to power management and the non-GPL status of the driver, not the capabilities of the 3D driver. ATI does officially support their products according to their own capricious (and sometimes infuriating) whims, offering what amount to specification dumps for their graphics architectures as well as the fglrx driver, which slowly gropes its way toward quality.
I'm not sure why I bothered answering your incoherent, misspelled ranting. There are numerous sites where you can compare performance between Linux and Windows ports of games, or you could even give 3D a try on a modern distro and video card. And consider seeing a qualified neurologist - your meds need to be upped.
You start a conversation with that round of duckspeak so popular in America, the circular "Hi-how-are-you, oh-great-what-about-you" routine that constitutes a greeting, and talk with them one on one about something inoffensive - that episode of Family Guy, or the weather, or how the Saints/Manchester/$CITYNAMESPORTSTEAM are doing this season, and the responses are polite but kinda short and airy. Then you try to talk about something deeper, and... there's nothing going on behind the eyes. Maybe they weren't bright to begin with, or squandered their youthful potential before taking a soul-sucking job, or killed it with booze and drugs, or were just hatefully boring from the moment they left the womb, but that singular spark of mental liveliness just isn't there. You Friend them out of some sense of obligation - maybe they're an acquaintance of your SO's, or you run into them just often enough that ignoring their requests would risk offending them, but they're sucking voids trying to fill themselves with garbage, and they stop to regurgitate context-free shrapnel from their endless feasting just often enough to remind you of their profound and utter worthlessness.
It will not surprise you to know that I recommend avoiding these people.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'll be honest, that's a pretty mean thing to say about Penelope Cruz.
Actually, if they could use video to democratize the availability of information, you could really be on to something...
If you think that's bad, you can still buy Radeon 7000 cards in lots of places, and they're fully a decade old. Look around a bit more, and you can find Rage128 Pro and - yes, your nightmares have come back to haunt you - 8 MB Rage Pro cards at your local CompUSA store. For the right market, old display technologies can still easily be good enough - mach64 support in X.org is good 'n' mature at this point, and if you're running a command-line server with framebuffer support it's easily good enough.
Married with Children is on syndication an awful lot... I'd expect most teenagers to be passingly familiar, but it was past its prime for years before it went off the air in 1997. The Simpsons spans the generations because it's been on the air for over a generation, and because its early and loyal fanbase have turned it into a nigh-immortal Great Wyrm of prime time television.
On the bright side, Ed O'Neill finally stopped being typecast.
I realized a few years ago that I was watching the show to see House specifically. Not coincidentally, that's around the time I stopped. :) As I said, he carried the entire thing on his shoulders - take away Hugh Laurie, and you have some well-sketched characters played by capable actors who aren't given anything to do that you haven't seen before.
Just sayin'. Otherwise, you're spot-on.
He was streaked through with redeeming qualities, yeah, but the Simpsons horse is far past dead. I don't think there are bones left to be kicked - the dust has been blown far and wide, and all that's left is a crazed shell of a creative team that shows itself to be more out of touch with every passing year.
Of course, if you want a really great TV character, look at Dr. Gregory House - the entire show succeeds on his stooped shoulders, and from I've heard the past season or so coasts on his momentum. What about Tony Soprano? Deadwood's Al Swearengen? I don't even watch much TV and those drift to mind with ease because they have depth.
Along with high-frequency traders, include lawyers, people in the arts, and geologists. I've yet to encounter other career paths that result in so many high-functioning alcoholics.
Someone, please mod up this post. I haven't laughed that hard at a post here in ages.
Right you are; I forgot to mention that. Thanks!
Right you are; sorry I forgot to put that in.
*sigh* All right, I've got karma to burn.
The Voodoo3's limitations weren't trivial even for its time: 256x256 texture dimensions, forced 16-bit color, no real stencil buffer support, framebuffer size maxed out at 16 MB... A former 3dfx employee literally told me that it was a die-shrunk, bug-fixed Voodoo Banshee with an extra TMU popped onto its single lonely rendering pipeline. I owned one, and liked it tremendously, but it's based on technology first debuted 13 years ago.
As for Doom 3: yes, a MesaGL --> Glide wrapper exists that provides basic rendering functionality for Doom 3 and tricks the engine into sending its lighting straight to /dev/null/*. There are other wrappers that perform similar tricks for any vendor's GL drivers, and they will let you run on a GMA950 substantially better than the Voodoo3 could manage. And for whatever meager stakes we're playing for, a GMA950 can actually run Doom 3 with lighting when backed up by a dual-core CPU.++
* Metaphorically speaking.
++ Flexibility aside, software vertex shaders suck.
True, but on the bright side you can now host a dedicated server on those systems without resorting to running Windows-in-a-box or rebooting.
VIA stopped designing motherboards for AMD and Intel CPUs about two years ago. Consequently, you can't find its GPUs in many places aside from embedded systems or ultra low-budget netbooks and the like. Weirdly they still sell a miniscule number of discrete cards, primarily overseas, but without divine intervention they'll never become a serious player again.
Matrox serves niche markets, mostly in the way of professional workstations, medical imaging equipment, and the odd sale of their TripleHead system to the ever-eroding hardcore PC gamer market.
In case anyone wonders what happened to the others: Oak Technologies' graphics division was acquired by ATI many moons ago; Rendition was eaten by Micron in 1998 and their name is now used to sell budget RAM; SiS bought Trident's graphics division, spun off their graphical company as XGI Technologies, had a series of disastrous product releases, and had their foundries bought by ATI, who let them continue to sell their unremarkable products to eager low-bidders; and 3dfx was mismanaged into oblivion a decade ago.
It's doubtful that Patrick would drop KDE. It's too widely used, the build system is (relatively) straightforward, and the horrors of Gnome were well-known before he made the decision that brought its issues into stark relief for the community. Dropline and company have worked very well in its absence.
Times and expectations change. Slackware is now capable of meeting the needs of a very wide range of people, and showcases lots of new functionality. However, nobody said you have to install everything, and if you're installing onto an old system it's still i486-compatible. The best bet is to pop a DVD-ROM drive into Ol' Bessy (or whatever you call the system liberated from storage) and install only those applications you're likely to use. It's a much safer bet than dealing with RedHat 6.
If you believe the fact that they included a browser with their OS was even the primary issue, you haven't been paying attention.
Adblock while web browsing. No TV service at the house. Netflix for media viewing. Paper magazines generally avoided. Sports events generally avoided. Short of gouging out my eyes so I can't see billboards while I drive home, I've cut a surpassingly large number of advertising vectors out of my life.
Or defenestrates. Eviscerates?
Yep! A few years ago I worked in a lab that was running an emission mass spectrometer from the late '80s. The software was all run off of a 5.25" floppy with some early version of MS-DOS. I don't recall whether they had a backup, but for their sake I certainly hope so...
Geeky? I think that just makes her a good capitalist...
I got carried away - apologies, all.
Aaaaand Slashdot 2.0 has failed me again, having associated your response with my original post. My opinion remains largely unchanged, however.
First of all, stuff the shrieking nerd rage. I've done nothing to deserve it, and I stand by my opinion. Having run games (Doom 3, Unreal Tournament 2004, FitzQuake, Left 4 Dead under Wine, innumerable others...) and other applications (Google Earth, xscreensaver, Compiz, Blender, Google SketchUp under Wine...) using the Nvidia proprietary drivers (which I specifically mentioned in my post) on cards ranging from a 5900XT to a 9600GT, I state once again that the Nvidia OpenGL drivers are not meaningfully different from their Windows counterpart.
Reading old Slashdot posts would point out that many people agree with me - most past bitching about Nvidia drivers has been rooted in erratic behavior with regard to power management and the non-GPL status of the driver, not the capabilities of the 3D driver. ATI does officially support their products according to their own capricious (and sometimes infuriating) whims, offering what amount to specification dumps for their graphics architectures as well as the fglrx driver, which slowly gropes its way toward quality.
I'm not sure why I bothered answering your incoherent, misspelled ranting. There are numerous sites where you can compare performance between Linux and Windows ports of games, or you could even give 3D a try on a modern distro and video card. And consider seeing a qualified neurologist - your meds need to be upped.
Hamster eyes, I call it.
You start a conversation with that round of duckspeak so popular in America, the circular "Hi-how-are-you, oh-great-what-about-you" routine that constitutes a greeting, and talk with them one on one about something inoffensive - that episode of Family Guy, or the weather, or how the Saints/Manchester/$CITYNAMESPORTSTEAM are doing this season, and the responses are polite but kinda short and airy. Then you try to talk about something deeper, and... there's nothing going on behind the eyes. Maybe they weren't bright to begin with, or squandered their youthful potential before taking a soul-sucking job, or killed it with booze and drugs, or were just hatefully boring from the moment they left the womb, but that singular spark of mental liveliness just isn't there. You Friend them out of some sense of obligation - maybe they're an acquaintance of your SO's, or you run into them just often enough that ignoring their requests would risk offending them, but they're sucking voids trying to fill themselves with garbage, and they stop to regurgitate context-free shrapnel from their endless feasting just often enough to remind you of their profound and utter worthlessness.
It will not surprise you to know that I recommend avoiding these people. :)