Sometimes, I wonder if market economy can success in a totalitarian country. It would be a huge blow in face of economist's theories if this is the case.
Display histogram of this picture (I used Gimp but any program should work). Then, have a look at the unified histogram values of the picture and the red one: they are almost identical !
Another thing to do is to decompose the image in order to see the strength of each component. You will see that the red is very very very strong compared to other (look at the [to be supposed] white and green leafs).
A desaturation make the image flat and ugly because there are too much red. It is like if the image had have been badly normalized because normalization do nothing.
There is no doubt that the color components are badly balanced. At least in this picture.
Do you notice that more and more of the review spent their time on installation process ? I have even the feeling that review are just for the installation process.
I am a 3 years Debian user (Redhat and Mdk before). Recently, I wanted to have a look on other distro in order to see the global improvement and how they perform in daily desktop usage.
To save time, I started to have a look at all this review on RedHat and Mdk (I use debian unstable everyday so no need for a review:) ). I was frustated: none have a clue on daily usage. The install process is well described but... just few words to almost no word on desktop/usage experience... Problem of reviewer skill or lack of time ? Does users really spend their time reinstalling their distro (Windows habit too hard to drop:) )?
A french newspaper (La Tribune) had a article (also in the paper edition of the 26 April) with a title "L'américain Linux vient narguer Microsoft en Europe" (The american Linux is scoffing at Microsoft in Europe). It was about VALinux opening subsidiaries in Europe.
The article said in introduction that VA Linux is specialist of free (as freedom) OS. The article spoke about RedHat, MandrakeSoft and Suse as editor of Linux without mentionning that two of them are from Europe. And the conclusion, mentionning "Andover.net, portail de la communauté des développeurs Linux" (Andover.net, portail for Linux developper community) is to really make you feel Linux as the only free OS on earth, that is Americain. And you have also a picture of Linus Torvald in the paper edition without mentionning that he was born in Finland.
Hummm... NVidia makes drivers for 3D, all other parts are really scrappy. I own a TV card in my box and I had to use the 2.08 driver (a very old one) because further releases are broken in the overlay layer.
Finally, we have a TRUE benchmark for Linux, the first one !!! I was tired of stupid people saying that GeForce is the best card in/. reply without mentionning that they spoke about Winblows. We can send the number in front of them (almost... because the NVidia card weren't benchmarked because 3D implementation is so far from stable).
Now, what we must have is an update of this benchmark with evolution of drivers implementation. Why ? Because Linux (or other Unix OS like FreeBSD) is not Windows and the code haven't reached is best. But the author understand it: read "Future Work" at the end of the article.
I think it would be a good idea to have a site for benckmarking. People will do benchmark and send results to the site with full desription of their configuration. So, we can have good informations on well programming 3D games and knowing the graphic cards with good drivers (3D AND 2D). The site of course will have to precise how to do the benchmark in order to use data.
GOOD WORK LINUXGAMES and GLX-UTAH ! SHAME ON YOU NVIDIA !
One thing very nice in this news is that they understand what made the Amiga so lovely: easyness, the price and the community.
Refered as my own experience, what made me love Amiga was that I could pay myself without breaking my mother's purse, that you have lot of informations for programming at the price of floppy disks and that for only $100, I bought a C compiler and could run the whole thing with only two floppy disk drives on my A500 (it's true!), and nevertheless have fun with beautiful games. I started with a A500, continued with an A1200 two years later, and boost it with a 68030 processor card a year after without breaking my whole (and old !) software and cut budget's familly for food and clothes. I could work with LaTeX for editing, play funny and beautiful games, discover programming in GFABasic, Assembly language and C language. In 1996, the hard disk crashed just after I bought a expensive PC (at least for me, a poor student) for working at my school because everybody used to work on PC with windows (may be evil waves from the PC ?:-). So without money, I have to drop my Amiga (and started with linux few months later after the discover of the sad and flat Windows world)
Oups, I almost forgot to say that Amiga was a she computer;-) The only female computer in the world.
Today even with linux for free, If you want to both play good and beautiful games, discover programming and work, you need an expensive PC. why ? because:
Playing games made with leasy programming on unfinished drivers for 3D card need big computer power on an ass-hole OS hust good for playing games. It's a end-less run for high geometry objects and huge textures, just for players to forget that it's the same game running since five years. Everybody think 3D is the only way for gaming. So now, you can't find a good shoot-them-up à la R-Type.
every modern OS today is difficult to learn at API level for a novice or a beginner : on linux side, you have to many librairies that you don't know where to start (GNOME/KDE/ncurses is one example). On Windows side you have one api but it's awful and you have to manage yourself difference and bug between OS releases and the prices for programming even for fun are insane !!!
for working, things are better because every PC with at least 150 Mhz for processor and 32M of memory can run LaTeX, Word, WordPerfect or whatever you want (but StarOffice maybe)
So, there are rooms for low cost and easy systems. Maybe we can call it Amiga in old days when computer was also for pleasure and not only for taking your money.
I just want to come back in happy days when just plug a card under the keyboard was enough to boost my computer, when nobody spoke about plug and play because it was already there, when having a Command Line Interface in the corner wasn't a shame.
Today when I speak with people, ever non-programmer, old enough to have worked on an Amiga, I never meet someone saying that it was a bad machine. Everyone remembers how easy of use it was, how easy it was to just put a card in it and use it without pain for lucky owner of A3000 and A4000. They also remember the low and affordable price of A500 and A1200 computers. It was the days of computers at purse scale.
1) -- Stop speaking of the power of GeForce, it's only true in the Window$ world. Try the 3D cards under XFree before speaking. I had a TNT2 and drop it for a G400 which have twice the speed of my old TNT2 with XFree 3 in 3D and is much faster for 2D. Does I need to say that Matrox released their specs and Nv not ?
2) -- Read the REALNOTES for XFree 4. Thay spoke about ATI, 3Dfx, Matrox, S3 and others BUT NOT OF NVIDIA for today and future releases of XFree. Why ? Have a look on recent news from Slashdot saying that NVidia dropped Mesa and want to develop their own implementation. Today, NVidia is the only one that don't want to help OpenSource Developpers. They don't understand what means OpenSource and are proud to release scrappy drivers. If someone successed in using NVidia GLX with moonlight or others 3D software without having a crash, tell me ! I wonder if someone still tries to go to their OpenCloseSource site in order to have informations or to try to develop something for their card.
3) --A proof of Nvidia doesn't want to release their specs: ATI annonced to help programmers for developping drivers for their cards 6 months later than Nvidia. Today ATI has better support than NVidia. No comments...
Usualy, I don't like to say that but... NVIDIA YOU SUCK ONCE MORE.
./ stop speaking about NVidia if is not about REAL OpenSource, boycoot NVidia from news.
To NVidia: your future is in the hands of consumers not in your cards' specications.
I've had a lengthy email chat with Dave Schmenk (who worked on this driver, for the most part).
Dave made a god job. It's not easy to write driver almost alone.
Nvidia can't release the work they are doing on the XFree driver, because it uses a licensed version of OpenGL (not Mesa), so their hands are tied. I don't see a problem with this...Mesa is still not completely compliant (it's close enough, but I guess nvidia wanted to use their already-licenesed opengl).
Sorry but NVidia release their work... so I don't think it's a problem with licensing. Have a look on other projects too.
The reason (that I got) that specs have not been released is that they are too complicated. Dave says that it takes new nvidia employees apporoximately three months of on-site training to get up to speed on the current register-level specs. They already have a kernel driver that is about as large and complex as the kernel itself (no wonder).
I almost sure that NVidia is not the only one to do three months training for the specs. But here we have a proof NVidia doesn't understand the OpenSource community and philosophy. There are very, very clever people around the world. And with opensource driver, this is hundred of eyes looking on the specs and code, more than any compagnies will be able to have. This guys are able to quickly build a good quality driver (I have guys of the Utah-glx project in mind). If one people is in trouble with specs or/and code, he can find help around the world. You have always someone better that yourself.
They don't want to have to deal with supporting people trying to figure out the specs, so they choose to just not release them.$
Matrox and ATI also don't want to waste time with people trying to figure out the specs. OpenSource drivers builder don't need help of compagnies for working.
Another word also on people LOVING to build driver. NVidia (as all compagnies) give money for having its employees working on drivers. It's quite different from OpenSource community where it's the love of programming that push people. And EVERYBODY KNOW THE POWER OF LOVE:-)
Message for Dave: Take time to see Utah-glx project and the quality of the work based on Open specs.
ok, fine. NVidia released a new version of X and GLX servers. but... WHERE ARE THE SPECS ?
Sorry nvidia but I want to drop my TNT2 for a G400 when I have enough money. I prefer to buy a more expensive video card having (almost) full Open specs even if on the paper the card has less power.
Have a look on ATI cards. Few months after saying that they help the OpenSource community, you can find a project for ATI on the Utah-Glx page. I found also a page on TV and Overlay for ATI [XFree team is planning overlay support for Matrox too].
I wanted to have a look on TNT spec to see how to use overlay for my TV card and.. I only found ugly software. I'm feed up of this open-closed specs you offer on your site.
Hey ! Friends ! Drop your nvidia card for a card of a compagny understanding the Open community.
Re:Memory Usage ?(or Memory more important than CP
on
Some KDE news
·
· Score: 1
(Be sure you use the most recent versions! KDE 1.1.1 is better than 1.1).
humm.... I am still with the 1.0 series, thx for the tips, I will try a recent distro.
With a 486/8MB computer, I'm absolutely sure you won't get a decent response with either of them, anything else is bullsh*t. This is mostly due to the fact that X itself is an enormous memory hog.
To be more precise, I have tried a Gnome + WindowMaker installation and a full Kde 1.0 installation.
Morality of these./ thread: use the latest version before slahdotting.:-)
Memory Usage ?(or Memory more important than CPU!)
on
Some KDE news
·
· Score: 1
A year ago I tried KDE and was dissapointed by the memory requirement (I had only 32 megabytes -- AMD K6 200 Mhz). I tried then Gnome and still continue to use it because it fits well in my system and not overload it.
Recently, I took the old computer of my father (486-DX 66Mhz + 8 Megs of memory) because I wanted to have a small installation for working when I am to his flat. Gnome worked with a good answer to my action while KDE really made my swap partition screamed and was terribly slow !!!
I agree that Kde is more advanced than Gnome for the end user and is it a reason to have it eating memory ?
I would like to have more information about the memory requirement for KDE
I think sad to have 128 Mb of memory for having the same speed than NT with 64 Mb or Windows 9x with 32 Mb!
Slashdot Mirror
I much prefer this one about Apollo-1 crew:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2160.html
Very nice shot. Reminds also how difficult and dangerous was the space race.
This one is nice too: http://vimeo.com/23205323
Since two weeks, I saw very good videos of this kind.
Thanks !! I just stopped on the "missing plugin" message. I wonder why they do not switch automatically on ogg or other when Flash is not present.
... that I need access to a computer with ADOBE Flash installed to watch this.
I remember that cracking PS3 got a huge soar when SONY killed Linux support with a firmware update.
I wonder if current motives are still Linux booting. If this is the case, SONY executives are truly dumb.
Does someone knows what are (practical) counter measures sony have against secret key leak ?
What You See Is Not What You Get ...
Sometimes, I wonder if market economy can success in a totalitarian country. It would be a huge blow in face of economist's theories if this is the case.
I am very curious about this.
Mister Raskin, thanks for what you have done, for changing the world of computing. The few who see how GUI computing started will remember you.
Display histogram of this picture (I used Gimp but any program should work).
Then, have a look at the unified histogram values of the picture and the red one: they are almost identical !
Another thing to do is to decompose the image in order to see the strength of each component. You will see that the red is very very very strong compared to other (look at the [to be supposed] white and green leafs).
A desaturation make the image flat and ugly because there are too much red. It is like if the image had have been badly normalized because normalization do nothing.
There is no doubt that the color components are badly balanced. At least in this picture.
Do you notice that more and more of the review spent their time on installation process ? I have even the feeling that review are just for the installation process.
:) ). I was frustated: none have a clue on daily usage. The install process is well described but ... just few words to almost no word on desktop/usage experience ... Problem of reviewer skill or lack of time ? Does users really spend their time reinstalling their distro (Windows habit too hard to drop :) )?
I am a 3 years Debian user (Redhat and Mdk before). Recently, I wanted to have a look on other distro in order to see the global improvement and how they perform in daily desktop usage.
To save time, I started to have a look at all this review on RedHat and Mdk (I use debian unstable everyday so no need for a review
The article said in introduction that VA Linux is specialist of free (as freedom) OS. The article spoke about RedHat, MandrakeSoft and Suse as editor of Linux without mentionning that two of them are from Europe. And the conclusion, mentionning "Andover.net, portail de la communauté des développeurs Linux" (Andover.net, portail for Linux developper community) is to really make you feel Linux as the only free OS on earth, that is Americain. And you have also a picture of Linus Torvald in the paper edition without mentionning that he was born in Finland.
Hummm... NVidia makes drivers for 3D, all other parts are really scrappy. I own a TV card in my box and I had to use the 2.08 driver (a very old one) because further releases are broken in the overlay layer.
Now, what we must have is an update of this benchmark with evolution of drivers implementation. Why ?
Because Linux (or other Unix OS like FreeBSD) is not Windows and the code haven't reached is best. But the author understand it: read "Future Work" at the end of the article.
I think it would be a good idea to have a site for benckmarking. People will do benchmark and send results to the site with full desription of their configuration. So, we can have good informations on well programming 3D games and knowing the graphic cards with good drivers (3D AND 2D). The site of course will have to precise how to do the benchmark in order to use data.
GOOD WORK LINUXGAMES and GLX-UTAH ! SHAME ON YOU NVIDIA !
Wrong bet :-) I never gave her a name !
Refered as my own experience, what made me love Amiga was that I could pay myself without breaking my mother's purse, that you have lot of informations for programming at the price of floppy disks and that for only $100, I bought a C compiler and could run the whole thing with only two floppy disk drives on my A500 (it's true!), and nevertheless have fun with beautiful games. :-). So without money, I have to drop my Amiga (and started with linux few months later after the discover of the sad and flat Windows world)
I started with a A500, continued with an A1200 two years later, and boost it with a 68030 processor card a year after without breaking my whole (and old !) software and cut budget's familly for food and clothes. I could work with LaTeX for editing, play funny and beautiful games, discover programming in GFABasic, Assembly language and C language. In 1996, the hard disk crashed just after I bought a expensive PC (at least for me, a poor student) for working at my school because everybody used to work on PC with windows (may be evil waves from the PC ?
Oups, I almost forgot to say that Amiga was a she computer ;-) The only female computer in the world.
Today even with linux for free, If you want to both play good and beautiful games, discover programming and work, you need an expensive PC. why ? because:
So, there are rooms for low cost and easy systems. Maybe we can call it Amiga in old days when computer was also for pleasure and not only for taking your money.
I just want to come back in happy days when just plug a card under the keyboard was enough to boost my computer, when nobody spoke about plug and play because it was already there, when having a Command Line Interface in the corner wasn't a shame.
Today when I speak with people, ever non-programmer, old enough to have worked on an Amiga, I never meet someone saying that it was a bad machine. Everyone remembers how easy of use it was, how easy it was to just put a card in it and use it without pain for lucky owner of A3000 and A4000. They also remember the low and affordable price of A500 and A1200 computers. It was the days of computers at purse scale.
2) -- Read the REALNOTES for XFree 4. Thay spoke about ATI, 3Dfx, Matrox, S3 and others BUT NOT OF NVIDIA for today and future releases of XFree. Why ? Have a look on recent news from Slashdot saying that NVidia dropped Mesa and want to develop their own implementation.
Today, NVidia is the only one that don't want to help OpenSource Developpers. They don't understand what means OpenSource and are proud to release scrappy drivers. If someone successed in using NVidia GLX with moonlight or others 3D software without having a crash, tell me ! I wonder if someone still tries to go to their OpenCloseSource site in order to have informations or to try to develop something for their card.
3) --A proof of Nvidia doesn't want to release their specs: ATI annonced to help programmers for developping drivers for their cards 6 months later than Nvidia. Today ATI has better support than NVidia. No comments ...
Usualy, I don't like to say that but ... NVIDIA YOU SUCK ONCE MORE.
To NVidia: your future is in the hands of consumers not in your cards' specications.
Dave made a god job. It's not easy to write driver almost alone.
Nvidia can't release the work they are doing on the XFree driver, because it uses a licensed version of OpenGL (not Mesa), so their hands are tied. I don't see a problem with this...Mesa is still not completely compliant (it's close enough, but I guess nvidia wanted to use their already-licenesed opengl).
Sorry but NVidia release their work ... so I don't think it's a problem with licensing. Have a look on other projects too.
The reason (that I got) that specs have not been released is that they are too complicated. Dave says that it takes new nvidia employees apporoximately three months of on-site training to get up to speed on the current register-level specs. They already have a kernel driver that is about as large and complex as the kernel itself (no wonder).
I almost sure that NVidia is not the only one to do three months training for the specs. But here we have a proof NVidia doesn't understand the OpenSource community and philosophy.
There are very, very clever people around the world. And with opensource driver, this is hundred of eyes looking on the specs and code, more than any compagnies will be able to have. This guys are able to quickly build a good quality driver (I have guys of the Utah-glx project in mind). If one people is in trouble with specs or/and code, he can find help around the world. You have always someone better that yourself.
They don't want to have to deal with supporting people trying to figure out the specs, so they choose to just not release them.$
Matrox and ATI also don't want to waste time with people trying to figure out the specs. OpenSource drivers builder don't need help of compagnies for working.
Another word also on people LOVING to build driver. NVidia (as all compagnies) give money for having its employees working on drivers. It's quite different from OpenSource community where it's the love of programming that push people. And EVERYBODY KNOW THE POWER OF LOVE :-)
Message for Dave: Take time to see Utah-glx project and the quality of the work based on Open specs.
Sorry nvidia but I want to drop my TNT2 for a G400 when I have enough money. I prefer to buy a more expensive video card having (almost) full Open specs even if on the paper the card has less power.
Have a look on ATI cards. Few months after saying that they help the OpenSource community, you can find a project for ATI on the Utah-Glx page. I found also a page on TV and Overlay for ATI [XFree team is planning overlay support for Matrox too].
I wanted to have a look on TNT spec to see how to use overlay for my TV card and .. I only found ugly software. I'm feed up of this open-closed specs you offer on your site.
Hey ! Friends ! Drop your nvidia card for a card of a compagny understanding the Open community.
(Be sure you use the most recent versions! KDE 1.1.1 is better than 1.1).
humm.... I am still with the 1.0 series, thx for the tips, I will try a recent distro.
With a 486/8MB computer, I'm absolutely sure you won't get a decent response with either of them, anything else is bullsh*t. This is mostly due to the fact that X itself is an enormous memory hog.
To be more precise, I have tried a Gnome + WindowMaker installation and a full Kde 1.0 installation.
Morality of theseA year ago I tried KDE and was dissapointed by the memory requirement (I had only 32 megabytes -- AMD K6 200 Mhz). I tried then Gnome and still continue to use it because it fits well in my system and not overload it.
Recently, I took the old computer of my father (486-DX 66Mhz + 8 Megs of memory) because I wanted to have a small installation for working when I am to his flat. Gnome worked with a good answer to my action while KDE really made my swap partition screamed and was terribly slow !!!
I agree that Kde is more advanced than Gnome for the end user and is it a reason to have it eating memory ?
I would like to have more information about the memory requirement for KDEI think sad to have 128 Mb of memory for having the same speed than NT with 64 Mb or Windows 9x with 32 Mb!
La Schwarzasse.