The reason is simple, marketing. Advertising and promoting a product costs alot. If products were released in NA and Japan at the same time, that would mean twice the marketing budget for a product that hasn't proven itself yet. By doing a release in Japan first, they can do to things: 1) They make sure the product is cost feasable enough to market in the US, and 2) They can use the revenues coming in off of the Japanese sales to drive the US marketing effort, which is guarenteed to be much more expensive.
Another reason alot of stuff isn't released in the US is because marketing studies (and common logic) dictate alot of stuff thats succesfull in the techno-gadget culture of Japan isn't as successfull this side of the Pacific. Don't forget, the/. , gadget buying crowd is in a vast majority over here, but not so over there. Everyone and their dog has a cell-phone-PDA-GPS-wearable-pc-doohicky!
This is totally wrong. Just because something's style is set to "display:none" does NOT mean it is not downloaded, it just means it isn't rendered. What this does is effectivly eliminate the beneficial uses for one pixel images, while at the same time allowing the horrible uses for them (tracking).
Its because of the way windows works. It wo't let you overwrite a.exe or.dll that is in use, and since IE is so tied into the OS itself, most of the IE components are in use all the time. Therefore you have to reboot in otder for the update to take effect. When rebooted, it copies the file sover while in protected mode, before IE loads.
US laws don't usually reach outside their borders? Perhaps you've heard of this little skirmish going on in Afganistan recently... Or perhaps a little law called the DMCA...
May I suggest to you, and all you AOL CD haters, to save up your CD's and ship them to nomoreaolcds.com? They have over 7,000 already, but need alot more to reach their goal of one million!
Up until the last paragraph, this was a very intelligent comment. Then all of a sudden you start promoting virii and DDOS attacks??? This makes you sound like an immature teenager.
How about instead of breaking the law, and making Open Source hackers look like thugs in the process, we design our own micropayment system, BSD license it, and offer it up as a vastly more secure and powerful solution that passport? Or would that me to "non-31337" for you?
The parent to this is NOT a troll, but his comments, though valid, are useless. I am thoughouly convinced that not only do none of the slashdot editors read any of the comments posted to the stories (otherwise they woluld have to take notice to the many duplicate story postings we point out), but they don't even frequent their own site. The story duplication is getting insanely ridiculous. For every duplicate story, a good one gets rejected. How can we get THROUGH to these guys? PAY ATTENTION TO THE SITE YOU WORK FOR! God, and people want me to pay for a subscription for this???
It is far more likely that over the next century, the vast majority of the world will share a common view of what is deemed "acceptable". Look realisticly at the trends in globalization, and look at how amazingly homogenous the worls has become in only a VERY short time of world trade (since say, the 50's). I believe we are progressing to a global society much faster than most people realize, and the laws of any one particular nation (with the exception of the United States, whose laws apply everywhere in the world, merely because of its military and economic might) have become increasingly irrelivant as distances and time zones mean nothing in terms of technology. I believe that we are rapidly approaching the need for a true world govenment. Now, weather this means that in the end the US will dictate world policy, or weather the UN will gain alot more power, I am unsure of.
CLickthroughs are a perverse form of measuring an adds effecity, and adopting this is why Internet advertising revenues have dropped so sharply. Ads are about increasing mindshare, getting word of your product out, and convincing people to try it. They're not suppose dto be "Hey look! Ford sells cars! I'm going to go buy one right NOW!". When was the last time you saw an ad on TV, to immediatly hop in your car and drive to the mall to purshase the item? CHances are, next to never. But maybe later, when you want something in that area, you will remember the ad. This is how advertising is supposed to work. All this clickthrough nonsense as a measure of how effective an ad is is retarded.
There is anothe rlarge aspect of NVidia you are also totally dismissing, the UDM. The UDM means I can use the original NVdiia X drivers, which were released before the Geforce3 even existed, on me GeForce3. As such, any future card that follows the UDM (and all NV cards do, and most likely will continue to do) will be supported under current linux drivers. Therefore, even if NVidia "drops linux like a hot potato", any card they make will continue to function until the end of time. Unlike future ATI cards, which one can only hope someone may possibly be able to reverse engineer.
Wrong. Here's the counterpoint: The VGA code in the kernel is the same on every card. Yet it has undergone updates. VGA is supported by many more cards yet it made no difference. Therefore points 4 and 5 stand as regards to Nvidia cards.
This paragraph makes no sense, grammatical or otherwise, so I don't know how to respond.
Why do you think they will keep updating their closed-source drivers because their cards are the same? You are making no sense. If they drop linux, they will drop it. Plonk! No support for any cards, old or new
This would totally not be in NVidia's best intrest, and they are not idiots. It only makes sound financial sense to continue selling and supporting a product that costs a minimal amount to support.
Give it a couple of years. Tell me if kernel 3.0 will compile against the first revision of the closed source drivers Nvidia released, using whatever hacking you need in the open source section
See previous statement. NVidia has no reason to discontinue support for their cards.
To condense the rest of your argument, and most of the previous, you are basiclly saying that "We can't trust NVidia to maintain the drivers, therefore they are bad. The only way we know for sure the drivers will be updated is to have open source ones." Well, let me put his to you: The only reason accellerated 3D works on Raedon at all is because ATI has been providing specs to the open source community. Don't believe me? Check it out. Therefore, apply all your big, bad NVidia comments to ATI, and see whee you stand. What if in the future, the Raedon 12500 XP Pro specs aren't released? Good bye ATI 3D.
No thanks, I'd rather have a product that works fully NOW, including FSAA and hardware T&L (yeah, ATI drivers don't have that), rather than rant on about some damn licensing problemwhich isn't even an issue.
This is NOT a feature. Have you even _read_ the articles in question? What they did was up the threshhold to do mip-mapping so that it basiclly encopassed th entire playing area, only if you were running "Quake.exe". THis has the effect of giving you MUCh poorer quality than if you rename the xecutable to "Quack.exE" and run it again. So this is not an "optimization", it is a deliberate attempt to get higher framerates through lower quality.
You obviously have no idea how NVidia's cards work. Every NVidia chipset, on every platform, uses the same driver code. This totally negates points 4 and 5, and effectively negates point 1 and 6, since as long as they make windows dirvers, the cost to port them to linux is almost zero for them, so they'll probably continue to do it. Point 4 makes no sense, since the kernel loader is open source, and compiles on any kernel. As for point 2, the drivers support the full range of features on the card (including TV out with no gay macrovision *ahem ATI lovers*), so what more could I add? As for point 3 and 5, it is up to the XFree86 team to make sure that binary XFree drivers work with new XFree versions, not NVidia.
So that pretty much destryos your whol arguement. Any more FUD?
You are stuck with what linux kernel that nVidia deems ok
Bzzt. Wrong. The kernel module is open source, and thus is compilable with any kernel. The only binary only part is the X module, which will work with any version of X4. In fact, I'm using the driver on kernel 2.5.1-pre1 right now, and that sure as hell isn't listed on the NVidia site.
For those who don't know, ATI was basiclly hacking their drivers, so that when someone ran Quake3, it turned down the quality of the rendering, so that you could get better framerates. They did this becaus emany 3D sites use Quake as a benchmark. More details, and a better description of what they did, can be found here.
Now, I know, "well in Linux, this wouldn't be an issue since the drivers are open source". Well guess what, WHO CARES? If a company is going to be this underhanded with its users, I sure as hell am not going to support them.
Umm, you are totally wrong under almost all assumptions.
The NVidia drivers have been totally unwavering stable for me, and I have been using them for over 8 months. This I CANNOT say for previous XFree drivers I have used.
THe NVidia drivers are totally fully featured, and support alot of things the raedons don't (Twinview, FullScreen Anti Aliasing to name a few).
Because of NVidias Unified Driver Model, the same code core is used in both the windows and Linux drivers (this is why new linux drivers come out at the same time as new detenators). This assures you of as good, or better preformance as what you would get on windows.
Also remember that the closed source NVidia drivers are far more advanced than the Open Source Raedon ones, and include options like Full Screen Anti-aliasing, Twinview with TVout or a second Monitor, etc etc. THe NVidia linux drivers use the same core as the windows NVidia drivers (the benefit of theur Unified Driver Model), so the latest linux drivers are usually as fast or faster than the latest windows detenators.
Why in god's name would I use google's cache, when all the documentaion in question is from www.linuxdoc.org, and is going to stay there, regardless if all the Debian maintainers burn in hell or not.
And this is a problem why? It's not software, ITS DOCUMENTATION FOR EXISTING SOFTWARE. I fyou think that something could be explained in an easier way, why can't everyone benefit?
Slashdot Mirror
Helloooooooo brain..... FF the movie was a huge bomb, and lost 115 million dollars. Dropping the whole shebang only makes financial sense.
Any self-respecting geek would have bought his/her LOTR tickets long ago, and thus would not have to wait in line.
The reason is simple, marketing. Advertising and promoting a product costs alot. If products were released in NA and Japan at the same time, that would mean twice the marketing budget for a product that hasn't proven itself yet. By doing a release in Japan first, they can do to things: 1) They make sure the product is cost feasable enough to market in the US, and 2) They can use the revenues coming in off of the Japanese sales to drive the US marketing effort, which is guarenteed to be much more expensive.
Another reason alot of stuff isn't released in the US is because marketing studies (and common logic) dictate alot of stuff thats succesfull in the techno-gadget culture of Japan isn't as successfull this side of the Pacific. Don't forget, the /. , gadget buying crowd is in a vast majority over here, but not so over there. Everyone and their dog has a cell-phone-PDA-GPS-wearable-pc-doohicky!
This is totally wrong. Just because something's style is set to "display:none" does NOT mean it is not downloaded, it just means it isn't rendered. What this does is effectivly eliminate the beneficial uses for one pixel images, while at the same time allowing the horrible uses for them (tracking).
This is really bad advice.
Er, AA works fine in Gnome right now. Why are you waiting until 2.0? Do a little research on the subject before you start asking pointless questions.
Its because of the way windows works. It wo't let you overwrite a .exe or .dll that is in use, and since IE is so tied into the OS itself, most of the IE components are in use all the time. Therefore you have to reboot in otder for the update to take effect. When rebooted, it copies the file sover while in protected mode, before IE loads.
US laws don't usually reach outside their borders? Perhaps you've heard of this little skirmish going on in Afganistan recently... Or perhaps a little law called the DMCA...
2 120 GB drives, AND a 30 hour direcTivo??? Sign me up!
I think you're totally negating the cost of the HD's there, bucko.
See my reply to your parent for what to do with your AOL CD's to help end the waste.
May I suggest to you, and all you AOL CD haters, to save up your CD's and ship them to nomoreaolcds.com? They have over 7,000 already, but need alot more to reach their goal of one million!
Up until the last paragraph, this was a very intelligent comment. Then all of a sudden you start promoting virii and DDOS attacks??? This makes you sound like an immature teenager.
How about instead of breaking the law, and making Open Source hackers look like thugs in the process, we design our own micropayment system, BSD license it, and offer it up as a vastly more secure and powerful solution that passport? Or would that me to "non-31337" for you?
The parent to this is NOT a troll, but his comments, though valid, are useless. I am thoughouly convinced that not only do none of the slashdot editors read any of the comments posted to the stories (otherwise they woluld have to take notice to the many duplicate story postings we point out), but they don't even frequent their own site. The story duplication is getting insanely ridiculous. For every duplicate story, a good one gets rejected. How can we get THROUGH to these guys? PAY ATTENTION TO THE SITE YOU WORK FOR! God, and people want me to pay for a subscription for this???
It is far more likely that over the next century, the vast majority of the world will share a common view of what is deemed "acceptable". Look realisticly at the trends in globalization, and look at how amazingly homogenous the worls has become in only a VERY short time of world trade (since say, the 50's). I believe we are progressing to a global society much faster than most people realize, and the laws of any one particular nation (with the exception of the United States, whose laws apply everywhere in the world, merely because of its military and economic might) have become increasingly irrelivant as distances and time zones mean nothing in terms of technology. I believe that we are rapidly approaching the need for a true world govenment. Now, weather this means that in the end the US will dictate world policy, or weather the UN will gain alot more power, I am unsure of.
CLickthroughs are a perverse form of measuring an adds effecity, and adopting this is why Internet advertising revenues have dropped so sharply. Ads are about increasing mindshare, getting word of your product out, and convincing people to try it. They're not suppose dto be "Hey look! Ford sells cars! I'm going to go buy one right NOW!". When was the last time you saw an ad on TV, to immediatly hop in your car and drive to the mall to purshase the item? CHances are, next to never. But maybe later, when you want something in that area, you will remember the ad. This is how advertising is supposed to work. All this clickthrough nonsense as a measure of how effective an ad is is retarded.
There is anothe rlarge aspect of NVidia you are also totally dismissing, the UDM. The UDM means I can use the original NVdiia X drivers, which were released before the Geforce3 even existed, on me GeForce3. As such, any future card that follows the UDM (and all NV cards do, and most likely will continue to do) will be supported under current linux drivers. Therefore, even if NVidia "drops linux like a hot potato", any card they make will continue to function until the end of time. Unlike future ATI cards, which one can only hope someone may possibly be able to reverse engineer.
Wrong. Here's the counterpoint: The VGA code in the kernel is the same on every card. Yet it has undergone updates. VGA is supported by many more cards yet it made no difference. Therefore points 4 and 5 stand as regards to Nvidia cards.
This paragraph makes no sense, grammatical or otherwise, so I don't know how to respond.
Why do you think they will keep updating their closed-source drivers because their cards are the same? You are making no sense. If they drop linux, they will drop it. Plonk! No support for any cards, old or new
This would totally not be in NVidia's best intrest, and they are not idiots. It only makes sound financial sense to continue selling and supporting a product that costs a minimal amount to support.
Give it a couple of years. Tell me if kernel 3.0 will compile against the first revision of the closed source drivers Nvidia released, using whatever hacking you need in the open source section
See previous statement. NVidia has no reason to discontinue support for their cards.
To condense the rest of your argument, and most of the previous, you are basiclly saying that "We can't trust NVidia to maintain the drivers, therefore they are bad. The only way we know for sure the drivers will be updated is to have open source ones." Well, let me put his to you: The only reason accellerated 3D works on Raedon at all is because ATI has been providing specs to the open source community. Don't believe me? Check it out. Therefore, apply all your big, bad NVidia comments to ATI, and see whee you stand. What if in the future, the Raedon 12500 XP Pro specs aren't released? Good bye ATI 3D.
No thanks, I'd rather have a product that works fully NOW, including FSAA and hardware T&L (yeah, ATI drivers don't have that), rather than rant on about some damn licensing problemwhich isn't even an issue.
This is NOT a feature. Have you even _read_ the articles in question? What they did was up the threshhold to do mip-mapping so that it basiclly encopassed th entire playing area, only if you were running "Quake.exe". THis has the effect of giving you MUCh poorer quality than if you rename the xecutable to "Quack.exE" and run it again. So this is not an "optimization", it is a deliberate attempt to get higher framerates through lower quality.
Who cares, they never should have done it in the first place. They've already lost all credibility, it's too late now.
You obviously have no idea how NVidia's cards work. Every NVidia chipset, on every platform, uses the same driver code. This totally negates points 4 and 5, and effectively negates point 1 and 6, since as long as they make windows dirvers, the cost to port them to linux is almost zero for them, so they'll probably continue to do it. Point 4 makes no sense, since the kernel loader is open source, and compiles on any kernel. As for point 2, the drivers support the full range of features on the card (including TV out with no gay macrovision *ahem ATI lovers*), so what more could I add? As for point 3 and 5, it is up to the XFree86 team to make sure that binary XFree drivers work with new XFree versions, not NVidia.
So that pretty much destryos your whol arguement. Any more FUD?
You are stuck with what linux kernel that nVidia deems ok
Bzzt. Wrong. The kernel module is open source, and thus is compilable with any kernel. The only binary only part is the X module, which will work with any version of X4. In fact, I'm using the driver on kernel 2.5.1-pre1 right now, and that sure as hell isn't listed on the NVidia site.
.... after this fiasco.
For those who don't know, ATI was basiclly hacking their drivers, so that when someone ran Quake3, it turned down the quality of the rendering, so that you could get better framerates. They did this becaus emany 3D sites use Quake as a benchmark. More details, and a better description of what they did, can be found here.
Now, I know, "well in Linux, this wouldn't be an issue since the drivers are open source". Well guess what, WHO CARES? If a company is going to be this underhanded with its users, I sure as hell am not going to support them.
Umm, you are totally wrong under almost all assumptions.
The NVidia drivers have been totally unwavering stable for me, and I have been using them for over 8 months. This I CANNOT say for previous XFree drivers I have used.
THe NVidia drivers are totally fully featured, and support alot of things the raedons don't (Twinview, FullScreen Anti Aliasing to name a few).
Because of NVidias Unified Driver Model, the same code core is used in both the windows and Linux drivers (this is why new linux drivers come out at the same time as new detenators). This assures you of as good, or better preformance as what you would get on windows.
Next time, spread your FUD elsewhere.
Also remember that the closed source NVidia drivers are far more advanced than the Open Source Raedon ones, and include options like Full Screen Anti-aliasing, Twinview with TVout or a second Monitor, etc etc. THe NVidia linux drivers use the same core as the windows NVidia drivers (the benefit of theur Unified Driver Model), so the latest linux drivers are usually as fast or faster than the latest windows detenators.
Why in god's name would I use google's cache, when all the documentaion in question is from www.linuxdoc.org, and is going to stay there, regardless if all the Debian maintainers burn in hell or not.
And this is a problem why? It's not software, ITS DOCUMENTATION FOR EXISTING SOFTWARE. I fyou think that something could be explained in an easier way, why can't everyone benefit?