Yes and no. If they open up the drivers, some of that R&D cost is lessened by community contributions. For instance, the Noveau project could probably write the driver fully if NVidia opened up their current binary driver and gave them full data specs.
Then NVidia no longer spends any money on Linux driver development.
The Linux community has a free-standing offer to write Linux drivers for free lest you forget.
And as far as protecting secrets, both Intel and ATI are fully open-sourcing their Linux drivers.
Other hardware manufacturers have released data specs, and opened up drivers.
What secrets is NVidia really trying to protect?
The lack of solid, stable 3D drives in Linux is a major stumbling point for Linux gaming, and the main reason I dual-boot.
I've been buying NVidia cards because I prefer their Linux drivers, but the second AMD/ATI releases an open-source 3D drive, my 7600GT is going in the trash, and I'm buying ATI cards.
Most of the fan-made Final Fantasy games don't directly recreate or get in the way of Square's games.
They exist in a fan continuity, or offer up something new.
Those two projects seemed to recreate CT. The problem with that, is that Square makes money be remaking/rereleasing their old games. They technically still sell Anthologies, which has CT remade for the PS1.
They don't go out of their way to advertise their contributions to open source software or hardware. They don't go about putting press releases into newspapers or magazines tooting their own horn.
I pointed you directly to their privacy policies.
They are the only major player in the market not to release software that "phones home" without telling you.
They are the only major player in the market to fight China on their censorship policies while everyone else willingly volunteered private data to China.
They not only release their code and APIs for free, but they do projects like Summer of Code to help a variety of other FOSS projects.
Your statements contradicted themselves and had no substance, rather contained only vague blanket statements condemning them for being evil with no justification.
You've made what four or five posts on this subject now, and not once have you given a single example for how they are evil.
Point 1 - Summer of Code is a secret marketing ploy that they don't advertise. Nope, still just doesn't make sense. And while the Slashdot crowd is large, we're still very much a minority. AOL proved by mailing millions of disks that blanketing a large market is more effective than targetting a small one. Furthermore, if Google did practice viral marketing to the/. crowd, it would easier just to submit stories and make posts on/. I think you forgot how often people post anti-Google stories here, and rarely are there any pro-Google stories here. So no, I doubt they are throwing money to these projects and new programmers just to make the/. crowd love them. It just doesn't add up.
Google opens up many of their software programs, their API's, supports multiple OSes, and even releases open hardware standards (note their suggestion for power supplies to save the world on energy costs).
Clearly this is all merely a marketing ploy in your world. The fact that the internal operations and practices within their company involve spending great deals of money to cater to their employees having a pleasant lifestyle seems completely contrary to most corporations.
Is it possible that Google isn't like most major corporations?
Point 2 - They are not a monopoly. Microsoft is. Microsoft in many areas, primarily in the OS market, operate basically without any competition because they unfairly destroyed competition.
Google offers a wide variety of services in many different markets, but in none of those markets do they have complete control, nor operate without competition.
Since there is healthy competition in each of those markets, and the fact that Google hasn't even done (or been caught) doing anything underhanded to stymie competition, it is simply not factual to refer to them as a monopoly.
Large corporations are not inherently monopolies. Conversely, a very small company could have a monopoly on a given market.
Hyperbole without any actual facts or examples, and again you rely on absolute statements. Corporations can't possibly be good because they lack human traits, but certainly they are all evil.
Do you understand how your attempt at logic contradicts itself?
Humans control corporations, and certainly some are better or worse than others.
The world does not operate in simplistic and absolute black and white as you paint it.
I'm also not interested in the opinion of one who was personally apparently crossed by a corporation, and somehow in your mind that completely defines them. It shows you have a lack of perspective and objectivity.
I gave you the opportunity to offer up facts, and you provided none.
Your logic that every for-profit company is evil is weak. Absolute statements don't hold up very well.
You assume the only reason they would do anything "good" is for marketing purposes to make the company look better. Do you know that when I bring up things like Google's Summer of Code program to the non-slashdot crowd, not a soul has heard about it?
They don't sit around tooting their own horn.
Has it ever occurred to you that they are a very wealthy company that has the ability to do good things with their wealth and position, and opts to do so based on principle rather than their image?
Why is it impossible to believe that they would support something financially simply because they support the ideal?
You then follow with another absolute statement that advertising companies are all evil. Again, blanket statements aren't helping your cause.
You also have suggested that Google does from time to time violate your privacy. In what way? Do you have details or examples?
They paved the way for giving away tons of free products and services. They've paved the way for respecting privacy and establishing trust with their user base. They've paved the way to catering the geek crowd, and attempting to offer the best services as opposed to the most mass-marketed services.
Most of the anti-Google talk lacks substance and if I had to guess, stems from the hatred of large corporations in general, as opposed to anything that Google has done specifically to deserve it.
What does this purchase change other than a new source of information? They do targeted advertising. Google's income relies on giving away free services in exchange for you giving information to Google. I believe their ads while targeted, often come across as less intrusive and less annoying than anyone else's.
Given their competitors, I think Google is the least evil kid on the block.
While guys like AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo were volunteering private information to China in a massive witch-hunt, Google was the only one that even tried to fight for your right to privacy.
Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo have all in the past put out software that doesn't fully disclose how it spies on you.
Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo have all fought against open standards, open communication and open source software. Google embraces and supports all of these things.
When someone has evidence to demonstrate that Google is in fact evil, and specifically worse than their competitors, I'll be concerned. Everything until then is alarmist propaganda.
Both Sony and Microsoft not only are pushing to sell music downloads, but TV and movie downloads.
If your console is a media center, a larger HDD really makes sense.
Microsoft says, take ages to download a movie to your 360, delete it to make room on your HDD, and download it again later if you need it later.
Sony could trim some hardware fat to make room for eventual price cuts and that is fine. Or they can look for a cheap product that creates artificial value.
Microsoft already set the stage with the Elite unit, where they want to charge $200 for a cheap, run of the mill HDD. Now Sony can do the same.
Ditch the wifi, and card reader. Now you have a system basically like the $500 core model which is pretty reasonable. Start selling the $600 unit at the $500 price and market it against the $470 elite $360. Meanwhile, the new larger HDD ships in a new SKU at $600 so Sony can recoup some financial losses.
If the HDD is even larger than what Microsoft is selling in the elite, some people many even buy it for Linux use, and for media center use.
Both have 512 megs of memory. The PS3's memory is split ahead of time into system memory and GPU memory. The memory on the 360 must be used for both system and GPU purposes, but isn't split ahead of time. Microsoft claims this is an advantage, while Sony claims their method is better.
I'm glad I support nice friendly companies like Microsoft!
Whatever. If you like the games on Console Y, more power to you. But if you try to tell me that one of these companies is a better company than the others, I'm here to tell you that all three companies have less than stellar records. All three companies are fucked up. And if you pretend otherwise, you're being a fanboy.
Small postscript I should have put in my initial post.
I will NEVER understand why people trying to sell high-end TVs usually just hook in a vanilla cable feed, or a DVD player.
If you want to convince me to drop down a couple grand on a TV, perhaps hook up HD content and show people what they're missing with their conventional TV.
I'd invest in a way to split component or HDMI output, and have a BluRay player (or something like that) pumping output to all my TV sets. Component switches aren't horribly expensive, and neither are VGA switches.
We have an old house that wasn't designed around a huge entertainment center. We currently have a 32" widescreen CRT in our living room diagonally in a corner. It barely fits. If we ditch the whole entertainment center/cabinet, we could probably go with a larger TV. Or we get a huge TV and show it in the basement.
I'd love a huge 52" TV myself, but because of the room layout, I could be persuaded to stick with the smaller one.
And for what it is worth, I think 52" is the sweet-spot price wise right now. I'm shocked how cheap they are.
My buddy just bought a 52" DLP Rear Projection unit that supports 1080p for under $1500. DLP is much cheaper, and I don't need a slim TV. If it weren't for concerns about the longevity of DLP, I'd buy one myself.
My wife and I were looking at TVs, and we walked past some gorgeous 52" LCDs that support 1080p, and I told her this is what I wanted.
Then she walked past a smalled 32" LCD that only supported 720p/1080i and she said, "this picture looks so much better, and the TV is $1000 less! Why?"
I casually explained that the expensive TV was tuned to a normal TV broadcast, while the cheaper TV was being tuned to ESPNHD. She looked and realized that the most expensive TV getting a crappy signal isn't going to look all the great.
I still want a nice LCD that supports 1080p, but I'm not pushing for it immediately until I can afford a PS3 and a nice staple of BluRay movies to go along with it.
720p looks IMMENSELY better than 480i, or any crappy upscaled images my fancy DVD player and digital cable box can put out. I have yet to see a nice, natural 1080p image myself, but I'm willing to bet I will be able to tell the difference.
If anyone recalls, there were people who insisted that you couldn't really tell the difference between a progressive and interlaced picture.
Someone other than TI makes high end calculators that people buy?
Wow, I must be really ignorant, but because every school across the country seemingly pushes TI use in school, I didn't think people used anything else.
Chat and IM are two different beasts. IRC requires specific servers and rooms for one, and has little to no real means for you to have any permanent sense of address or identity for people to reach you.
The universal standard should govern an address/identity for each user that anyone on the planet can reach. The standard should cover a basis for an XML profile, that individual clients can add to or further tailor. The standard should cover how a basic message, voice, or video transmission is governed. Beyond that people can add Yahoo Avatars, or backgrounds, or talking dogs and such as they see fit.
Slashdot Mirror
kde-edu seems incomplete without a remake of this, Number Munchers, etc.
Small correction:
void voodoo()
{
user_soul* soul = get_soul_from_user();
det_list_add(soul->determinations, create_determination(det_buy, NVidia->graphics_card, _always));
???
profit++
}
Yes and no. If they open up the drivers, some of that R&D cost is lessened by community contributions. For instance, the Noveau project could probably write the driver fully if NVidia opened up their current binary driver and gave them full data specs.
Then NVidia no longer spends any money on Linux driver development.
The Linux community has a free-standing offer to write Linux drivers for free lest you forget.
And as far as protecting secrets, both Intel and ATI are fully open-sourcing their Linux drivers.
ATI is opening up their drivers.
Intel has already open-sourced their drivers.
Other hardware manufacturers have released data specs, and opened up drivers.
What secrets is NVidia really trying to protect?
The lack of solid, stable 3D drives in Linux is a major stumbling point for Linux gaming, and the main reason I dual-boot.
I've been buying NVidia cards because I prefer their Linux drivers, but the second AMD/ATI releases an open-source 3D drive, my 7600GT is going in the trash, and I'm buying ATI cards.
Most of the fan-made Final Fantasy games don't directly recreate or get in the way of Square's games.
They exist in a fan continuity, or offer up something new.
Those two projects seemed to recreate CT. The problem with that, is that Square makes money be remaking/rereleasing their old games. They technically still sell Anthologies, which has CT remade for the PS1.
There are a great deal of Final Fantasy fan-made games that carry the Final Fantasy name.
Square has never once thrown a fit about these things, because they are no threat to them.
Kudos to Square.
I'm shocked no one has said it.
While everyone grips about Novell-MS, let me instead say thank you.
Thank you for all your contributions, paid for or otherwise, we all benefit from them, often at no cost to ourselves.
I wish you the best in future endeavors.
Haven for piracy?
Did that mean they didn't volunteer to hand over private data of their students to the RIAA when asked?
If that is the definition of a haven for piracy, then I want to attend those schools.
You're a very poor troll.
I brought facts.
They don't go out of their way to advertise their contributions to open source software or hardware. They don't go about putting press releases into newspapers or magazines tooting their own horn.
I pointed you directly to their privacy policies.
They are the only major player in the market not to release software that "phones home" without telling you.
They are the only major player in the market to fight China on their censorship policies while everyone else willingly volunteered private data to China.
They not only release their code and APIs for free, but they do projects like Summer of Code to help a variety of other FOSS projects.
Your statements contradicted themselves and had no substance, rather contained only vague blanket statements condemning them for being evil with no justification.
You've made what four or five posts on this subject now, and not once have you given a single example for how they are evil.
I'm done being polite.
Shut the fuck up, troll.
Kudos to you. I usually say there are no absolute statements and wait for people to catch it.
Point 1 - Summer of Code is a secret marketing ploy that they don't advertise. Nope, still just doesn't make sense. And while the Slashdot crowd is large, we're still very much a minority. AOL proved by mailing millions of disks that blanketing a large market is more effective than targetting a small one. Furthermore, if Google did practice viral marketing to the /. crowd, it would easier just to submit stories and make posts on /. I think you forgot how often people post anti-Google stories here, and rarely are there any pro-Google stories here. So no, I doubt they are throwing money to these projects and new programmers just to make the /. crowd love them. It just doesn't add up.
Google opens up many of their software programs, their API's, supports multiple OSes, and even releases open hardware standards (note their suggestion for power supplies to save the world on energy costs).
Clearly this is all merely a marketing ploy in your world. The fact that the internal operations and practices within their company involve spending great deals of money to cater to their employees having a pleasant lifestyle seems completely contrary to most corporations.
Is it possible that Google isn't like most major corporations?
Point 2 - They are not a monopoly. Microsoft is. Microsoft in many areas, primarily in the OS market, operate basically without any competition because they unfairly destroyed competition.
Google offers a wide variety of services in many different markets, but in none of those markets do they have complete control, nor operate without competition.
Since there is healthy competition in each of those markets, and the fact that Google hasn't even done (or been caught) doing anything underhanded to stymie competition, it is simply not factual to refer to them as a monopoly.
Large corporations are not inherently monopolies. Conversely, a very small company could have a monopoly on a given market.
Hyperbole without any actual facts or examples, and again you rely on absolute statements. Corporations can't possibly be good because they lack human traits, but certainly they are all evil.
Do you understand how your attempt at logic contradicts itself?
Humans control corporations, and certainly some are better or worse than others.
The world does not operate in simplistic and absolute black and white as you paint it.
I'm also not interested in the opinion of one who was personally apparently crossed by a corporation, and somehow in your mind that completely defines them. It shows you have a lack of perspective and objectivity.
I gave you the opportunity to offer up facts, and you provided none.
Really, I'm done here.
Your logic that every for-profit company is evil is weak. Absolute statements don't hold up very well.
You assume the only reason they would do anything "good" is for marketing purposes to make the company look better. Do you know that when I bring up things like Google's Summer of Code program to the non-slashdot crowd, not a soul has heard about it?
They don't sit around tooting their own horn.
Has it ever occurred to you that they are a very wealthy company that has the ability to do good things with their wealth and position, and opts to do so based on principle rather than their image?
Why is it impossible to believe that they would support something financially simply because they support the ideal?
You then follow with another absolute statement that advertising companies are all evil. Again, blanket statements aren't helping your cause.
You also have suggested that Google does from time to time violate your privacy. In what way? Do you have details or examples?
They paved the way for giving away tons of free products and services. They've paved the way for respecting privacy and establishing trust with their user base. They've paved the way to catering the geek crowd, and attempting to offer the best services as opposed to the most mass-marketed services.
Most of the anti-Google talk lacks substance and if I had to guess, stems from the hatred of large corporations in general, as opposed to anything that Google has done specifically to deserve it.
Feel free to try again.
I agree. There is this growing trend of people up in arms about how large Google is, and how evil they are.
Google already holds a good deal of private information about me. And their privacy policies are readily available and clearly outlined.
http://www.google.com/privacy.html
What does this purchase change other than a new source of information? They do targeted advertising. Google's income relies on giving away free services in exchange for you giving information to Google. I believe their ads while targeted, often come across as less intrusive and less annoying than anyone else's.
Given their competitors, I think Google is the least evil kid on the block.
While guys like AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo were volunteering private information to China in a massive witch-hunt, Google was the only one that even tried to fight for your right to privacy.
Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo have all in the past put out software that doesn't fully disclose how it spies on you.
Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo have all fought against open standards, open communication and open source software. Google embraces and supports all of these things.
When someone has evidence to demonstrate that Google is in fact evil, and specifically worse than their competitors, I'll be concerned. Everything until then is alarmist propaganda.
No, you clearly stated you are proud not to own Sony products, but you have no qualms financially supporting Microsoft.
If you can't see the hypocrisy then I'm done trying to explain it to you.
Both Sony and Microsoft not only are pushing to sell music downloads, but TV and movie downloads.
If your console is a media center, a larger HDD really makes sense.
Microsoft says, take ages to download a movie to your 360, delete it to make room on your HDD, and download it again later if you need it later.
Sony could trim some hardware fat to make room for eventual price cuts and that is fine. Or they can look for a cheap product that creates artificial value.
Microsoft already set the stage with the Elite unit, where they want to charge $200 for a cheap, run of the mill HDD. Now Sony can do the same.
Ditch the wifi, and card reader. Now you have a system basically like the $500 core model which is pretty reasonable. Start selling the $600 unit at the $500 price and market it against the $470 elite $360. Meanwhile, the new larger HDD ships in a new SKU at $600 so Sony can recoup some financial losses.
If the HDD is even larger than what Microsoft is selling in the elite, some people many even buy it for Linux use, and for media center use.
Both have 512 megs of memory. The PS3's memory is split ahead of time into system memory and GPU memory. The memory on the 360 must be used for both system and GPU purposes, but isn't split ahead of time. Microsoft claims this is an advantage, while Sony claims their method is better.
Damn those evil Sony bastards!
I'm glad I support nice friendly companies like Microsoft!
Whatever. If you like the games on Console Y, more power to you. But if you try to tell me that one of these companies is a better company than the others, I'm here to tell you that all three companies have less than stellar records. All three companies are fucked up. And if you pretend otherwise, you're being a fanboy.
"But whoever did write it doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!"
God I'm going to miss that bastard. He wrote so little and yet gave us so much.
Small postscript I should have put in my initial post.
I will NEVER understand why people trying to sell high-end TVs usually just hook in a vanilla cable feed, or a DVD player.
If you want to convince me to drop down a couple grand on a TV, perhaps hook up HD content and show people what they're missing with their conventional TV.
I'd invest in a way to split component or HDMI output, and have a BluRay player (or something like that) pumping output to all my TV sets. Component switches aren't horribly expensive, and neither are VGA switches.
We have an old house that wasn't designed around a huge entertainment center. We currently have a 32" widescreen CRT in our living room diagonally in a corner. It barely fits. If we ditch the whole entertainment center/cabinet, we could probably go with a larger TV. Or we get a huge TV and show it in the basement.
I'd love a huge 52" TV myself, but because of the room layout, I could be persuaded to stick with the smaller one.
And for what it is worth, I think 52" is the sweet-spot price wise right now. I'm shocked how cheap they are.
My buddy just bought a 52" DLP Rear Projection unit that supports 1080p for under $1500. DLP is much cheaper, and I don't need a slim TV. If it weren't for concerns about the longevity of DLP, I'd buy one myself.
My wife and I were looking at TVs, and we walked past some gorgeous 52" LCDs that support 1080p, and I told her this is what I wanted.
Then she walked past a smalled 32" LCD that only supported 720p/1080i and she said, "this picture looks so much better, and the TV is $1000 less! Why?"
I casually explained that the expensive TV was tuned to a normal TV broadcast, while the cheaper TV was being tuned to ESPNHD. She looked and realized that the most expensive TV getting a crappy signal isn't going to look all the great.
I still want a nice LCD that supports 1080p, but I'm not pushing for it immediately until I can afford a PS3 and a nice staple of BluRay movies to go along with it.
720p looks IMMENSELY better than 480i, or any crappy upscaled images my fancy DVD player and digital cable box can put out. I have yet to see a nice, natural 1080p image myself, but I'm willing to bet I will be able to tell the difference.
If anyone recalls, there were people who insisted that you couldn't really tell the difference between a progressive and interlaced picture.
Someone other than TI makes high end calculators that people buy?
Wow, I must be really ignorant, but because every school across the country seemingly pushes TI use in school, I didn't think people used anything else.
Chat and IM are two different beasts. IRC requires specific servers and rooms for one, and has little to no real means for you to have any permanent sense of address or identity for people to reach you.
Specific client features.
The universal standard should govern an address/identity for each user that anyone on the planet can reach. The standard should cover a basis for an XML profile, that individual clients can add to or further tailor. The standard should cover how a basic message, voice, or video transmission is governed. Beyond that people can add Yahoo Avatars, or backgrounds, or talking dogs and such as they see fit.