Matrox has a few cards that do multiple monitors on one card. There are 2-monitor and 4-monitor G100 cards, and the G400 will have really nice built-in dual-head support.
I think it's open to anyone, but only NT admins show, for the most part.
They make a statement at the beginning of their survey that this will almost surely skew the results.
That quote you gave about "as one would expect" - I think they're basically saying that such results can be expected from a survey of NT admins. If anything else shows, it means NT is losing their current admins.
I believe the DVD encryption is only a "security through obscurity" scheme. It allows for regionalization of DVDs. (i.e. a player marketed in a given region will only play DVDs for that region.) The "key" is essentially a 1,2,3,4, or 5. (I think there are 5 defined regions.)
I'm sure it's a basic algorithm similar to Cable TV scrambling.
IMHO, other than hardware support, XFree is better. (And XFree has pretty good h/w support.)
Reasons you might want a commercial X server:
OpenGL with anything other than an NVidia or Matrox chipset. (And right now, 3D for the G200 is limited by incomplete specs.) So basically, h/w support...
Multihead support. I'm not sure if XFree supports multihead yet. According to the announcement, 4.0 will.
Umm... Other than multihead support and hardware support, I can't think of any other advantages... I think AccelX has been known to be faster for some cards, OTOH, I've heard many bad things about the quality of the server. (i.e. bugs) I'll take a performance hit for the stability of XFree.
If you look many months back, I think Nick Petreley (sp?) wrote a series of articles analyzing the architectural failures of NT for the grand finale of NC World. (Someone wrote such articles, but I could be wrong who did. Too lazy to search back.:)
Without a complete rewrite and restructuring, NT will NEVER be able to adopt many of Linux's best features, especially in the multiuser arena.
You seem to think that bad spelling/grammar in a message is a guaranteed sign of some deep-down personality problem. Why don't you think a little about the situation before insulting Raster based on one email.
Note: In his former announcement, and this one, Raster indicated that he was on the road. This indicates that he is likely using a slow and/or unreliable connection. Ever tried checking email over a telnet session that would die occasionally, or simply freeze up for 5-15 seconds at a time? I have, and I guarantee you that I didn't give a damn about grammar or spelling in those situations, only about finishing important messages.
I'm not sure, but I think Snes9x had troubles sometime in the past, and I think this is a reference to those troubles and not the most recent ones.
Still, it's good to see that they're back from these most recent problems.
Bad comparisons in the article...
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VA on Upside
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Honestly, I think the article has a few flaws in that analogy...
To be successful in the Open Source community means you have to be a team player, IMHO. These people are probably as much superstars because they're great team players as they are because they're *damn good* at what they do. I'm sure MS has some really smart people - It just seems that no one there is very much of a team player, which is probably partly a function of their corporate environment, which seems to be driven by $$$ not only on a corporate level, but on and individual employee level, too.
Gotta agree... x86 sucks, but I have to use it... Quake 1,2,3, WordPerfect, the list goes on...
3dfx actively discouraged Darryl Strauss from releasing Glide on x86, citing some legal !#@$!@$. Despite the fact that Darryl said a port would take a day or two at most. (In fact, I think there's a working Alpha port that only he posessess due to 3dfx's anality.)
x11amp sets its volume by changing the system (/dev/dsp) master instead of using esd_set_stream_pan(). Unfortunately I don't know enough about x11amp internals to change this. In addition, there's no simple esd_get_stream_pan().:(
I've always been interested in speaker design in general, do you know where I might be able to find information on design and construction of electrostats? (Or speaker systems in general, for that matter.)
An open-source speaker design program would make for an interesting project...
The 3Com BigPicture card is a Bt848-based card. Bt848 cards happen to be one of the best-supported video capture systems under Linux, due to the fact that Brooktree/Rockwell release full specs for all their video capture chipsets. (Hmm... Maybe the video output card manufacturers should take a hint from the dominant video input chipset supplier.)
NT is inferior because it is full of bugs yet has claims to be a release-quality product. We release stuff that is buggy, but we CLEARLY mark it as "development", i.e. the linux 2.1 series of kernels. Ones which numerous people used to be on the cutting edge, but which it was acceptable for bugs to be in. Plus, if a bug is encountered in open-source software, you can fix it.
For similar reasons, NT is inferior because it is a "release quality" product that contains more bugs than development-release free software. Yes, many kernels in the 2.1 series were more reliable than NT. Do you realize what that says about the quality of NT?
I've used open-source software that was marked as alpha quality that was far more reliable than anything Microsoft publishes.
I bought a G200 because Matrox promised to release their specs. (I unfortunately gave in and bought a Riva TNT three days before the spec release, thinking that Matrox had made a hollow promise.) I now regret that... Turns out the Windows OpenGL problems I was having that caused me to finally ditch the G200 were non-card-specific.
I bought a Voodoo because it was supported under Linux.
And it's been proven that giving out specs won't hurt a company.
Note that the Voodoo/Voodoo2 were nearly identical in software, yet the V2 had 3-4 times the performance. All that was required to allow the V2 to function under Linux with the V1 drivers was the alteration of 2 bytes in the chipset-detection codes.
Later, someone discovered that an ancient GLX module for the Matrox Millenium worked quite well on a G200. Talk about a generation gap!
Now, it's pretty much public that the TNT2 is a huge increase in performance with NO CHANGES TO THE INTERFACE WHATSOEVER!
This is why the GPL was created. As long as RedHat keeps on with their policy of releasing everything under the GPL, they can do NOTHING as far as "hijacking" Linux. Period.
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Just after I read this article, I emailed Sigma Designs (Makers of the Hollywood Plus decoders, which seem to be one of the most popular decoders.)
Here's their reply:
"The Linux support is under study. We don't have any further information about it at this time."
I'd say that's promising. Still, I think I'll wait a while before purchasing a decoder.
Matrox has a few cards that do multiple monitors on one card. There are 2-monitor and 4-monitor G100 cards, and the G400 will have really nice built-in dual-head support.
I think it's open to anyone, but only NT admins show, for the most part.
They make a statement at the beginning of their survey that this will almost surely skew the results.
That quote you gave about "as one would expect" - I think they're basically saying that such results can be expected from a survey of NT admins. If anything else shows, it means NT is losing their current admins.
Check out http://mpeg.openprojects.net/
Supposedly it already allows you to play decrypted DVDs. All that needs to be done is for someone to reverse-engineer the encryption algorithm.
I believe the DVD encryption is only a "security through obscurity" scheme. It allows for regionalization of DVDs. (i.e. a player marketed in a given region will only play DVDs for that region.) The "key" is essentially a 1,2,3,4, or 5. (I think there are 5 defined regions.)
I'm sure it's a basic algorithm similar to Cable TV scrambling.
IMHO, other than hardware support, XFree is better. (And XFree has pretty good h/w support.)
Reasons you might want a commercial X server:
OpenGL with anything other than an NVidia or Matrox chipset. (And right now, 3D for the G200 is limited by incomplete specs.) So basically, h/w support...
Multihead support. I'm not sure if XFree supports multihead yet. According to the announcement, 4.0 will.
Umm... Other than multihead support and hardware support, I can't think of any other advantages... I think AccelX has been known to be faster for some cards, OTOH, I've heard many bad things about the quality of the server. (i.e. bugs) I'll take a performance hit for the stability of XFree.
If you look many months back, I think Nick Petreley (sp?) wrote a series of articles analyzing the architectural failures of NT for the grand finale of NC World. (Someone wrote such articles, but I could be wrong who did. Too lazy to search back. :)
Without a complete rewrite and restructuring, NT will NEVER be able to adopt many of Linux's best features, especially in the multiuser arena.
I interned at Lucent doing competitive analysis.
Everything I wrote or did became Lucent proprietary information. I'm sure this will be the same - We'll only see it if someone leaks it illegally.
You seem to think that bad spelling/grammar in a message is a guaranteed sign of some deep-down personality problem. Why don't you think a little about the situation before insulting Raster based on one email.
Note: In his former announcement, and this one, Raster indicated that he was on the road. This indicates that he is likely using a slow and/or unreliable connection. Ever tried checking email over a telnet session that would die occasionally, or simply freeze up for 5-15 seconds at a time? I have, and I guarantee you that I didn't give a damn about grammar or spelling in those situations, only about finishing important messages.
I'm not sure, but I think Snes9x had troubles sometime in the past, and I think this is a reference to those troubles and not the most recent ones.
Still, it's good to see that they're back from these most recent problems.
Honestly, I think the article has a few flaws in that analogy...
To be successful in the Open Source community means you have to be a team player, IMHO. These people are probably as much superstars because they're great team players as they are because they're *damn good* at what they do. I'm sure MS has some really smart people - It just seems that no one there is very much of a team player, which is probably partly a function of their corporate environment, which seems to be driven by $$$ not only on a corporate level, but on and individual employee level, too.
How can they do this without breaking the MP3 format? It's a standardized, well-defined format. Anything else is not really MP3.
CDParanoia + BladeEnc + x11amp (or mpg123 or freeamp or whatevere) = Goodbye RIAA.
Gotta agree... x86 sucks, but I have to use it... Quake 1,2,3, WordPerfect, the list goes on...
3dfx actively discouraged Darryl Strauss from releasing Glide on x86, citing some legal !#@$!@$. Despite the fact that Darryl said a port would take a day or two at most. (In fact, I think there's a working Alpha port that only he posessess due to 3dfx's anality.)
x11amp sets its volume by changing the system (/dev/dsp) master instead of using esd_set_stream_pan(). Unfortunately I don't know enough about x11amp internals to change this. In addition, there's no simple esd_get_stream_pan(). :(
A valid point, but I'm not complaining.
I am definately buying Q3A.
I hope that someday Carmack strong-arms NVidia into helping Linux out.
Yeah, but Mesa (OpenGL implementation) is layered on top of Glide in the case of the 3Dfx.
I've always been interested in speaker design in general, do you know where I might be able to find information on design and construction of electrostats? (Or speaker systems in general, for that matter.)
An open-source speaker design program would make for an interesting project...
Note that he said, "Put a crossover in front of it to make sure you don't break the window"
Still, even then, I wouldn't do it...
This seems like something really shitty for high frequencies but great for bass.
Um... Not sure what you're talking about here...
The 3Com BigPicture card is a Bt848-based card. Bt848 cards happen to be one of the best-supported video capture systems under Linux, due to the fact that Brooktree/Rockwell release full specs for all their video capture chipsets. (Hmm... Maybe the video output card manufacturers should take a hint from the dominant video input chipset supplier.)
I have a K6-2/300 and a Voodoo1. Runs jerky in "normal" mode, but pretty decent (visually and in terms of speed) in "fast".
The software doesn't support 3DNow!, unless you hunt down the Mesa patches. By Jeff Epler, that's all I can remember.
NT is inferior because it is full of bugs yet has claims to be a release-quality product. We release stuff that is buggy, but we CLEARLY mark it as "development", i.e. the linux 2.1 series of kernels. Ones which numerous people used to be on the cutting edge, but which it was acceptable for bugs to be in. Plus, if a bug is encountered in open-source software, you can fix it.
For similar reasons, NT is inferior because it is a "release quality" product that contains more bugs than development-release free software. Yes, many kernels in the 2.1 series were more reliable than NT. Do you realize what that says about the quality of NT?
I've used open-source software that was marked as alpha quality that was far more reliable than anything Microsoft publishes.
"An assertion made, but never proven."
I bought a G200 because Matrox promised to release their specs. (I unfortunately gave in and bought a Riva TNT three days before the spec release, thinking that Matrox had made a hollow promise.) I now regret that... Turns out the Windows OpenGL problems I was having that caused me to finally ditch the G200 were non-card-specific.
I bought a Voodoo because it was supported under Linux.
And it's been proven that giving out specs won't hurt a company.
Note that the Voodoo/Voodoo2 were nearly identical in software, yet the V2 had 3-4 times the performance. All that was required to allow the V2 to function under Linux with the V1 drivers was the alteration of 2 bytes in the chipset-detection codes.
Later, someone discovered that an ancient GLX module for the Matrox Millenium worked quite well on a G200. Talk about a generation gap!
Now, it's pretty much public that the TNT2 is a huge increase in performance with NO CHANGES TO THE INTERFACE WHATSOEVER!
I can't agree with you any more on this...
This is why the GPL was created. As long as RedHat keeps on with their policy of releasing everything under the GPL, they can do NOTHING as far as "hijacking" Linux. Period.
All of a sudden, Linux is only good for "word processing" and other similar applications.
Funny, I thought that office apps and games (especially games...) were where Linux had the most trouble competing with Windows...
If he was running a 386 at 266, just wait 'till he uses those same techniques for a quad Xeon/1500. :)