4.0 is a "feature-oriented" release. It is designed FOR people with newer hardware.
Why do you want to use 4.X at the first place? Stability? Nah. 3.3.X is a lot stabler. Bugfix? They'll come out for 3.3.X as well. What? You want DGI and hardware GLX? Too bad, your hardware sucks, and newer releases of XFree just isn't going to help.
If I had your video card I'd either be grateful with 3.3.X or get a cheap card supported by 4.X, which means anything newer than the Trio64.
When these become the law (it will), then people will start using words not in the list but suggest the meanings anyway. It's where all euphemisms come from - censorship.
When they become common enough they aren't euphemisms anymore, and the law will be revised to include them. Then a bunch of new euphemisms will pop up.
What a cycle. I'm expecting the size of slang dictionaries to double or triple in a few years.
You you could as I remember, but, it was just as easy to obtain the assembler source code from the Monitor program. I remember dumping ROM in order to fix a "compatibility" bug between a ][ and//e, but anyway. I guess I'm getting WAY off topic.
Let's see what's bull. If you look at the extensions carefully, you'll see NV in their names. There is a reason to it - the extensions are NVIDIA-specific. Only patent-free extensions have gone into the ARB extensions - and they are for all to implement.
OpenGL is a low-level API but not a touch-the-metal API. The NV extensions is so close to the chip it is almost not possible to port it to another chip.
Get the idea?
About your claim that "core OpenGL doesn't have to be changed in order to support new hardware features" - how about...vertex skinning? These usually requires *quite* some code if the extensions aren't there. Are you expecting the driver to recognize this and that sequence of calls as "ah, so the code is trying to do vertex skinning!!"?
Drivers aren't that smart yet. And if you want to develop your driver fast, you don't want to put AI code in it to have certain series of calls recognized. So, OpenGL -->**HAS**-- to be extended to support most new hardware features.
So, he's correct. If you want cool features, push the ARB a bit. Only if I know how to do this...
As much as I believe computers are simply tools, physics are just tools - almost everything is tool.
Look around your room - what is NOT tools? The can of Coke and the orange. Makes me wonder - does saying "[insert your noun] is just a tool" serve any practical purpose at all?
Transform and Lighting is nothing new - all 3D programs do transform - rotations, scales, translations, skews, projection, etc.
Take OpenGL as an example. The "T" (in "T&L") functions are glRotatef, glTranslatef, glScalef, and glMulMatrix. Before there was hardware T&L, people don't use these functions often - they write their own. And it was amazing that even a very simple unoptimized matrix transform code performs better than these gl functions most of the time.
What hardware T&L does (in terms of OpenGL) is to accelerate these functions in hardware - formerly, the OpenGL library does inefficient software transform. Now they'll just blast the arguments to some chip registers and let it do the rest. And it is fast, not only because it reduces bandwidth use (intra-chip communication is fast), but it also releases CPU cycles for other uses, which inevitably will have a positive impact on performance.
So, in short, if developers ditch their own matrix libraries and use the ones provided by the graphics API, they're already making use of hardware T&L. And, yes, unfortunately, hardware T&L only has things to do with frame rates - there's no other advantage than frame rate that hardware T&L provides.
Just remember - ALL effects are archeavable with software. The more you offload from the CPU to the GPU, the more CPU cycles you can save for physics, AI, and graphic effects that the hardware does not do yet. So, even hardware that "only" increases framerate sounds good enough for me.
I think it is the opposite...the more powerful your magnifying glass is, the less predictable world you'll see - for example, the "electrons" actually exist everywhere in the atom at the same time with a particular probability distribution which I cannot recall. The Uncertainty principle matters more to smaller particles, etc.
The only predictable level is the one we can touch and see and do stuffs to with our own hands. All other levels are far from being "predictable".
And, the provision that "everything in the universe is deterministic" may or may not be right - evidences on both sides exist.
I hope they wouldn't think you can complete the whole thing within 30 hours.
Make a demo out of it using the incomplete feature set. ASAP. Since it is impossible to just start from scratch and make it after you're told the client wants something like it.
If you wait for 30 days, or take a vacation, or whatever, they can say "oh you've started making this when you hear our client needs it!!" The idea and thus the whole thing IS BELONG TO US!! Then there'll be no hope you say anything at all;)
So, prove to them you have developed this at your spare time, long before you know the client needs it. The only mean I can think of is releasing it ASAP.
Yeah. Gods. I recall a number of kickass sidescrollers on the PC too. Magic Pocket. 7-Up. Megaman X.
(the best one tho, is the arcade game WILLOWS)
Well, actually a lot of other great sidescrollers came to the PC in the 80's, but the hardware was too shabby to run them. Golden Axe. Double Dragon.
I guess there's no point developing too many sidescrollers for today's hardware tho. Their scope is too limited - I was once bored to death playing too many sidescrollers on emulators. I'm not saying they're not fun. But it is difficult to make the style of gameplay standout from the other sidescrollers.
Galeon *feels* helluvalot faster. And, light on features does mean something - more codes lead to more bugs. Worse if nobody finds the code useful (e.g. XUL at this moment).
And to people who says "XUL will be a useful feature...and what if....do we have to reimplement it again?" - you must all be emacs fans. No thanks. I only want one OS on my computer at a time. By your philosophy, I guess you'll have to throw in a next-generation 3D terrain engine just for that extra "obsolecense-proof" security feel.
By the way, is there a way Galeon can be run without installing Mozilla at all? If there's a clear separation between Mozilla and Gecko then it'd be great.
If you intend to hang on to your old hardware, please don't expect all others to stay with you at the same spot.
The solution is simple. If you use old hardware, there are a bunch of *high quality* old programs for you to use. There's no reason to jump onto bleeding edge software with hardware that is on the bleeding edge of the opposite side.
If you insist, however, nobody stops you from compiling from source. It would always work (only on 32 bit CPUs!!).
Next time just think twice before you complain that some random new binary does not run on your machine.
>Come on, he's just a computer figure. Being a computer engineering student myself, >and holding several figures in the computer world in very high regard, >I have to say I will feel sad for the death of people who have advanced >humanity in a more social way, perhaps in charity or peace work
So you're saying his death shouldn't be a sad event because "he's just a computer figure". Maybe you're just jealous that your own death won't even be 1% as sad as his.
No. The trickle down effects aren't BS. Were it not for his theories the Nazis might have won the WWII. Figure that.
>BTW, they say keep calling this a "desktop war", but can't we refer to this as a sporting event? >So what if we both get a little bloody... this is FUN! And tell me we both don't realize >that the competition is just making us stronger.
It depends on what sports it is. For example, I'd rather think of it as a war than as NHL, or worse, XFL...
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4.0 is a "feature-oriented" release. It is designed FOR people with newer hardware.
Why do you want to use 4.X at the first place? Stability? Nah. 3.3.X is a lot stabler. Bugfix? They'll come out for 3.3.X as well. What? You want DGI and hardware GLX? Too bad, your hardware sucks, and newer releases of XFree just isn't going to help.
If I had your video card I'd either be grateful with 3.3.X or get a cheap card supported by 4.X, which means anything newer than the Trio64.
When these become the law (it will), then people will start using words not in the list but suggest the meanings anyway. It's where all euphemisms come from - censorship.
When they become common enough they aren't euphemisms anymore, and the law will be revised to include them. Then a bunch of new euphemisms will pop up.
What a cycle. I'm expecting the size of slang dictionaries to double or triple in a few years.
I think it can kiss its reputation goodbye he moment this story is on /.
Haven't heard about him lately. Is he still with MS?
Time for Requiem.
You you could as I remember, but, it was just as easy to obtain the assembler source code from the Monitor program. I remember dumping ROM in order to fix a "compatibility" bug between a ][ and //e, but anyway. I guess I'm getting WAY off topic.
When the market is flooded with some particular "desktop operating system" SO unstable, they'll call anything stabler a "server operating system"
HELL NO. The best part of WINE is that, it lets you run Win32 programs and entirely bypass MS revenue at the same time ;)
Let's see what's bull. If you look at the extensions carefully, you'll see NV in their names. There is a reason to it - the extensions are NVIDIA-specific. Only patent-free extensions have gone into the ARB extensions - and they are for all to implement.
OpenGL is a low-level API but not a touch-the-metal API. The NV extensions is so close to the chip it is almost not possible to port it to another chip.
Get the idea?
About your claim that "core OpenGL doesn't have to be changed in order to support new hardware features" - how about...vertex skinning? These usually requires *quite* some code if the extensions aren't there. Are you expecting the driver to recognize this and that sequence of calls as "ah, so the code is trying to do vertex skinning!!"?
Drivers aren't that smart yet. And if you want to develop your driver fast, you don't want to put AI code in it to have certain series of calls recognized. So, OpenGL -->**HAS**-- to be extended to support most new hardware features.
So, he's correct. If you want cool features, push the ARB a bit. Only if I know how to do this...
Interesting.
As much as I believe computers are simply tools, physics are just tools - almost everything is tool.
Look around your room - what is NOT tools? The can of Coke and the orange. Makes me wonder - does saying "[insert your noun] is just a tool" serve any practical purpose at all?
State laws maybe?
Different places has different "legally adult" ages. They're just lazy - choosing the oldest among them just to be on the safe side...
Transform and Lighting is nothing new - all 3D programs do transform - rotations, scales, translations, skews, projection, etc.
Take OpenGL as an example. The "T" (in "T&L") functions are glRotatef, glTranslatef, glScalef, and glMulMatrix. Before there was hardware T&L, people don't use these functions often - they write their own. And it was amazing that even a very simple unoptimized matrix transform code performs better than these gl functions most of the time.
What hardware T&L does (in terms of OpenGL) is to accelerate these functions in hardware - formerly, the OpenGL library does inefficient software transform. Now they'll just blast the arguments to some chip registers and let it do the rest. And it is fast, not only because it reduces bandwidth use (intra-chip communication is fast), but it also releases CPU cycles for other uses, which inevitably will have a positive impact on performance.
So, in short, if developers ditch their own matrix libraries and use the ones provided by the graphics API, they're already making use of hardware T&L. And, yes, unfortunately, hardware T&L only has things to do with frame rates - there's no other advantage than frame rate that hardware T&L provides.
Just remember - ALL effects are archeavable with software. The more you offload from the CPU to the GPU, the more CPU cycles you can save for physics, AI, and graphic effects that the hardware does not do yet. So, even hardware that "only" increases framerate sounds good enough for me.
Black holes evaporate.
I think it is the opposite...the more powerful your magnifying glass is, the less predictable world you'll see - for example, the "electrons" actually exist everywhere in the atom at the same time with a particular probability distribution which I cannot recall. The Uncertainty principle matters more to smaller particles, etc.
The only predictable level is the one we can touch and see and do stuffs to with our own hands. All other levels are far from being "predictable".
And, the provision that "everything in the universe is deterministic" may or may not be right - evidences on both sides exist.
Stop arguing among ourselves and set up a fund to help the poor guy pay the legal fees!!
Anyone?
Since the source of Linux is available and that of Windows isn't, LINE will surpass WINE. It is just a matter of when it will happen.
Then, I bet you'll be hearing people say "Hey, you can run all Linux apps on Windows but just sone Windows apps on Linux!! Why use Linux??"
I hope they wouldn't think you can complete the whole thing within 30 hours.
;)
Make a demo out of it using the incomplete feature set. ASAP. Since it is impossible to just start from scratch and make it after you're told the client wants something like it.
If you wait for 30 days, or take a vacation, or whatever, they can say "oh you've started making this when you hear our client needs it!!" The idea and thus the whole thing IS BELONG TO US!! Then there'll be no hope you say anything at all
So, prove to them you have developed this at your spare time, long before you know the client needs it. The only mean I can think of is releasing it ASAP.
THere is an economics term for "a few companies having monopolies" if they intend to duke it out. (true in this case?) It's called "oligopoly".
"GIMP is 8-bit only. The Hollywood is planning a 16-bit version".
OMG. MPAA FUD against the evil Linux hackers?
Yeah. Gods. I recall a number of kickass sidescrollers on the PC too. Magic Pocket. 7-Up. Megaman X.
(the best one tho, is the arcade game WILLOWS)
Well, actually a lot of other great sidescrollers came to the PC in the 80's, but the hardware was too shabby to run them. Golden Axe. Double Dragon.
I guess there's no point developing too many sidescrollers for today's hardware tho. Their scope is too limited - I was once bored to death playing too many sidescrollers on emulators. I'm not saying they're not fun. But it is difficult to make the style of gameplay standout from the other sidescrollers.
Hm...on second thought. There might already been something that you can hack it to be like your dream machine.
I heard this idea from a friend. The RIM Blackberry pager. It has a full keyboard, a nice screen and uses a 386. Modem is built in.
Anyone tried installing Linux on it?
Galeon *feels* helluvalot faster. And, light on features does mean something - more codes lead to more bugs. Worse if nobody finds the code useful (e.g. XUL at this moment).
And to people who says "XUL will be a useful feature...and what if....do we have to reimplement it again?" - you must all be emacs fans. No thanks. I only want one OS on my computer at a time. By your philosophy, I guess you'll have to throw in a next-generation 3D terrain engine just for that extra "obsolecense-proof" security feel.
By the way, is there a way Galeon can be run without installing Mozilla at all? If there's a clear separation between Mozilla and Gecko then it'd be great.
If you intend to hang on to your old hardware, please don't expect all others to stay with you at the same spot.
The solution is simple. If you use old hardware, there are a bunch of *high quality* old programs for you to use. There's no reason to jump onto bleeding edge software with hardware that is on the bleeding edge of the opposite side.
If you insist, however, nobody stops you from compiling from source. It would always work (only on 32 bit CPUs!!).
Next time just think twice before you complain that some random new binary does not run on your machine.
>Come on, he's just a computer figure. Being a computer engineering student myself,
>and holding several figures in the computer world in very high regard,
>I have to say I will feel sad for the death of people who have advanced
>humanity in a more social way, perhaps in charity or peace work
So you're saying his death shouldn't be a sad event because "he's just a computer figure". Maybe you're just jealous that your own death won't even be 1% as sad as his.
No. The trickle down effects aren't BS. Were it not for his theories the Nazis might have won the WWII. Figure that.
>BTW, they say keep calling this a "desktop war", but can't we refer to this as a sporting event?
>So what if we both get a little bloody... this is FUN! And tell me we both don't realize
>that the competition is just making us stronger.
It depends on what sports it is. For example, I'd rather think of it as a war than as NHL, or worse, XFL...