Let's face it: Being familiar with MS Windows is a much more useful skill for most school-leavers than being familiar with Linux is. This software and these computers are going to the schools with kids who are the least likely to have access to a computer at home, so learning this stuff at school is very important to them. If they want to dual-boot these computers with Linux, there's nothing stopping them from doing that, but the idea that these poor kids would end up being forced to learn something that for most intents and purposes is useless to them in the job marketplace simply because a load of computer programmers with lofty ideals would rather that they learn a free operating system instead of one by 'Old Bill' is abhorrent to me.
64Mb is a bit on the slim side for rendering nowadays. I work in the digital effects industry, and our render farm boxes all have at least a gig of RAM. Really, I think you'd be better off buying rack systems - they won't end up that more expensive, they'll do the job properly, and you won't have to mod them yourself. And of course, they'll actually have a warranty after you've set them up...;)
For the first half of the year, they made £146 million of sales (~= $211 million) and made a loss of £3million, much of which was due to costs in setting up their wine retailing business. They expect to make a profit by the end of the year.
That's not bad considering Tesco.com hasn't been going very long.
Tesco claim to be able to deliver to 90% of the UK population.
I use both Teso and Sainsburys online shopping, and they're very useful. It seems many other UK shoppers agree with me. However, I can see that it is the kind of thing that could work better in the UK than US... The UK is much more densely populated, making deliveries more economical (especially as 80% of the population is urban...), and because of the thinner roads (less space to make 'em in, and a lot town centres are many hundreds of years old) driving to the supermarket is considerably less attractive due to congestion...
I agree with many of your points, but FPS games can be *great* on consoles. Just check out Goldeneye. Check out Medal of Honour. Yes, coming from PC FPS games they feel a bit weird at first, but let me assure you that doesn't mean that you can't get hours of fun out of them. They're different. Not necesarily worse.
and have it give me slashdot in 'light' format, with comments in the stories as 5 & over only.
The reason for this is that I want to get Slashdot on Avantgo, but obviously I have different viewing requierments on my Palm than I have on my desktop.
Is there any way of doing this with Slash 2.2?
I know there wasn't in the old Slash 1.x...
But at the same time, can't you see that there probably isn't such a thing as a 'single queue'. There are several people who post the stories to slashdot. Your story was probably judged as not worth it by one slashdot bod, whereas this other guy's story got through to Mr. Malda and he felt it worth posting. Another factor might be the quality of the writeup.
Please just accept that it's THE LUCK OF THE DRAW. Slashdot gets loads of submissions per day. Really, just because you found a link on the web doesn't make you important. And whingeing like a child every time someone else's submission gets used instead of yours just smacks of sour grapes.
Of course they want to make a better product, and of course they want to make money. They do this by releasing a better product.
I see the main reason for XP as being the iteration of NT that finally replaces the 9x codebase, which is quite a big thing. Microsoft has been plagued for some time with a reputation for instability, due to the inadequate memory protection in 9x (Which was result of making things backwardly compatible with Win3.1...). I think those who are upgrading from 9x will be very pleasantly suprised by XP's increased stability.
That's all very well, but I've not seen any of these 'patchwork quilts' without the uncomfy seams,and I'm not convinced that I will in near future, either.
SDL just isn't as good as DirectX for most things. It's that simple. DirectX has been in development for longer, and has had more quality control.
OpenGL is good (and easier to program with than DirectX), but has been falling behind Direct3D a bit recently. Especially with the whole 'use a different extension for each card's T&L' thing.
Support is a very big issue. Linux distributions are so varied that support is very difficult thing to offer, especially when video drivers are so badly supported under Linux. On most modern PCs with Windows installed, 3D works straight outta the box. It can be like pulling teeth getting it to work under Linux.
Also, the idea that just using the SDL will just make your porting a breeze is misleading. Another platform equals a completely new set of testing, Q&A etc. All of this takes a lot of time. Most game engines can have things like the sound, graphics, network and input modules interchanged, so the effort in porting would not normally be that much increased over using something like the SDL from the start anyway.
Linux just doesn't have a big enough market to make it worth developer's time, and support is just too much of an issue.
Afghanistan is in the middle of a famine. It's bombing has severely impeded the efforts of aid agencies to get food in to the country. It is estimated that as a result 3-4 million people will starve this winter.
This is because two of the wealthiest, most powerful nations on earth are attacking one of the poorest, because they choose not to extradite someone from within their borders without proof. It should be noted that the west so far has not managed to come up with any definite proof that is was Osama that did it. But hell, go ahead anyway - kill a load of Afghans. They're only muslims after all.
It should be noted that the US doesn't exactly have a good record of extrafiting terrorsts itself, Haiti, for eaxmple has been trying to get the US to extradite a known terrorist for some time, and they have a great deal of proof of his guilt. By the way, he played a large part in the killing of 4-5000 people. That figure sound familiar?
All consoles have a central processor, a graphics chip, some sound hardware and memory. Just because it's 80x86 rather than PowerPC/MIPS/SH4 doesn't make any difference.
The big difference is that it's the only one using a stripped-down version of a PC operating system. Oh, and it has a hard drive.
The main thing that makes PCs so vulnerable to crashes is the huge variation in hardware. XBox doesn't have this problem as all XBoxes (at the moment) are all the same.
The Palm V is.4 inches as well, and it's been out for ages...
ObMetric: 0.41 inches = 10.4 mm. It never seems right to me to split inches into 100ths. It just doesn't seem to fit into the whole Imperial system. Shouldn't it be split into 24ths, or something similarly incomprehensible?
You can do this sort of thing - a friend of mine took the guts from a portable TV and put it in an old slide projector - viola! Projection TV. It worked really well... for about a minute. Unfortunately many LCDs degrade when they get hot. However, solve the cooling problem, and you're golden!
He used to have a.mpg of how to put one together, but I can't find the URL any more...:(
Win 9x/ME *does* have pre-emptive multitasking. However, it doesn't have very effective memory protection which is why it's rather prone to being crashed by errant programs. I believe this was to ensure compatibility with 16bit apps left over from Win 3.1
The main problem with extending most windowed environments to use two mice is the fact that they're only designed with the idea of a single window being in focus.
There are several programs out there that make use of graphical pipes - Maya, Eddie, Shake, grphedit (DirectShow graph editor) to name but a few.
The nice thing about graphical pipes is the ability to easily and transparently connect several forms of data to one node. With command line pipes, you've effectively only got one input and output.
What would be needed would be graphical terminal programs (built into the OS, or at least window manager) for connecting these things together, Oh, and a standardized way of defining input and output types - I dunno - would MIME work there?
I expect somebody can point us at a project that has already done this?
Slashdot Mirror
Let's face it: Being familiar with MS Windows is a much more useful skill for most school-leavers than being familiar with Linux is. This software and these computers are going to the schools with kids who are the least likely to have access to a computer at home, so learning this stuff at school is very important to them. If they want to dual-boot these computers with Linux, there's nothing stopping them from doing that, but the idea that these poor kids would end up being forced to learn something that for most intents and purposes is useless to them in the job marketplace simply because a load of computer programmers with lofty ideals would rather that they learn a free operating system instead of one by 'Old Bill' is abhorrent to me.
64Mb is a bit on the slim side for rendering nowadays. I work in the digital effects industry, and our render farm boxes all have at least a gig of RAM. Really, I think you'd be better off buying rack systems - they won't end up that more expensive, they'll do the job properly, and you won't have to mod them yourself. And of course, they'll actually have a warranty after you've set them up... ;)
Remember that most parents wouldn't let their children wait outside a game store at 5am with 300 odd bucks in their pocket...
Tesco is doing pretty well at the moment: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/21713 .html...
For the first half of the year, they made £146 million of sales (~= $211 million) and made a loss of £3million, much of which was due to costs in setting up their wine retailing business. They expect to make a profit by the end of the year.
That's not bad considering Tesco.com hasn't been going very long.
Tesco claim to be able to deliver to 90% of the UK population.
I use both Teso and Sainsburys online shopping, and they're very useful. It seems many other UK shoppers agree with me. However, I can see that it is the kind of thing that could work better in the UK than US... The UK is much more densely populated, making deliveries more economical (especially as 80% of the population is urban...), and because of the thinner roads (less space to make 'em in, and a lot town centres are many hundreds of years old) driving to the supermarket is considerably less attractive due to congestion...
I thought if you had a patent for something you were obligated to license it to anyone for a reasonable price...?
I agree with many of your points, but FPS games can be *great* on consoles. Just check out Goldeneye. Check out Medal of Honour. Yes, coming from PC FPS games they feel a bit weird at first, but let me assure you that doesn't mean that you can't get hours of fun out of them. They're different. Not necesarily worse.
... Just what I was looking for!
Thanks, Michael.
I'd like to be able to put in an URL something like
5 &s tyle=light
...
http://slashdot.org/frontpage.pl?commentthresh=
and have it give me slashdot in 'light' format, with comments in the stories as 5 & over only.
The reason for this is that I want to get Slashdot on Avantgo, but obviously I have different viewing requierments on my Palm than I have on my desktop.
Is there any way of doing this with Slash 2.2?
I know there wasn't in the old Slash 1.x
It's got a 200Mhz processor with 32Mb RAM, for feck's sake!
Physically small, yes - but it's got about the same power as a good PC did 5 years ago...
But at the same time, can't you see that there probably isn't such a thing as a 'single queue'. There are several people who post the stories to slashdot. Your story was probably judged as not worth it by one slashdot bod, whereas this other guy's story got through to Mr. Malda and he felt it worth posting. Another factor might be the quality of the writeup.
Please just accept that it's THE LUCK OF THE DRAW. Slashdot gets loads of submissions per day. Really, just because you found a link on the web doesn't make you important. And whingeing like a child every time someone else's submission gets used instead of yours just smacks of sour grapes.
I remember using MS Windows 1.0 - it didn't support overlapping windows, only tiled ones.
Man, I *knew* I should have stuck with it...!
Of course they want to make a better product, and of course they want to make money. They do this by releasing a better product.
I see the main reason for XP as being the iteration of NT that finally replaces the 9x codebase, which is quite a big thing. Microsoft has been plagued for some time with a reputation for instability, due to the inadequate memory protection in 9x (Which was result of making things backwardly compatible with Win3.1...). I think those who are upgrading from 9x will be very pleasantly suprised by XP's increased stability.
I've hardly ever come across Windows Zealots. People use Windows because they need to get things done. Linux, now that's an OS with Zealots...
Can anyone explain to me why PEOPLE ALWAYS WHINGE AND WHINGE ABOUT NOT GETTING THEIR STORIES POSTED?
Sorry mate, we just DON'T CARE that you submitted it first.
Next thing, you'll be posting stories about Natalie Portman and hot grits...
That's all very well, but I've not seen any of these 'patchwork quilts' without the uncomfy seams,and I'm not convinced that I will in near future, either.
I'll stick with my nice warm blanket, thank you.
Sounds a bit Urban-Mythy...h tml
http://www.quns.cam.ac.uk/Queens/Images/WinBridg.
SDL just isn't as good as DirectX for most things. It's that simple. DirectX has been in development for longer, and has had more quality control.
OpenGL is good (and easier to program with than DirectX), but has been falling behind Direct3D a bit recently. Especially with the whole 'use a different extension for each card's T&L' thing.
Support is a very big issue. Linux distributions are so varied that support is very difficult thing to offer, especially when video drivers are so badly supported under Linux. On most modern PCs with Windows installed, 3D works straight outta the box. It can be like pulling teeth getting it to work under Linux.
Also, the idea that just using the SDL will just make your porting a breeze is misleading. Another platform equals a completely new set of testing, Q&A etc. All of this takes a lot of time. Most game engines can have things like the sound, graphics, network and input modules interchanged, so the effort in porting would not normally be that much increased over using something like the SDL from the start anyway.
Linux just doesn't have a big enough market to make it worth developer's time, and support is just too much of an issue.
Afghanistan is in the middle of a famine. It's bombing has severely impeded the efforts of aid agencies to get food in to the country. It is estimated that as a result 3-4 million people will starve this winter.
This is because two of the wealthiest, most powerful nations on earth are attacking one of the poorest, because they choose not to extradite someone from within their borders without proof. It should be noted that the west so far has not managed to come up with any definite proof that is was Osama that did it. But hell, go ahead anyway - kill a load of Afghans. They're only muslims after all.
It should be noted that the US doesn't exactly have a good record of extrafiting terrorsts itself, Haiti, for eaxmple has been trying to get the US to extradite a known terrorist for some time, and they have a great deal of proof of his guilt. By the way, he played a large part in the killing of 4-5000 people. That figure sound familiar?
Sorry, on this war, I'm with Chomsky.
All consoles have a central processor, a graphics chip, some sound hardware and memory. Just because it's 80x86 rather than PowerPC/MIPS/SH4 doesn't make any difference.
The big difference is that it's the only one using a stripped-down version of a PC operating system. Oh, and it has a hard drive.
The main thing that makes PCs so vulnerable to crashes is the huge variation in hardware. XBox doesn't have this problem as all XBoxes (at the moment) are all the same.
thinnest at .41 inches?
.4 inches as well, and it's been out for ages...
The Palm V is
ObMetric: 0.41 inches = 10.4 mm. It never seems right to me to split inches into 100ths. It just doesn't seem to fit into the whole Imperial system. Shouldn't it be split into 24ths, or something similarly incomprehensible?
You can do this sort of thing - a friend of mine took the guts from a portable TV and put it in an old slide projector - viola! Projection TV. It worked really well... for about a minute. Unfortunately many LCDs degrade when they get hot. However, solve the cooling problem, and you're golden!
.mpg of how to put one together, but I can't find the URL any more... :(
He used to have a
Win 9x/ME *does* have pre-emptive multitasking. However, it doesn't have very effective memory protection which is why it's rather prone to being crashed by errant programs. I believe this was to ensure compatibility with 16bit apps left over from Win 3.1
Fascinating. Someone mod this up!
The main problem with extending most windowed environments to use two mice is the fact that they're only designed with the idea of a single window being in focus.
There are several programs out there that make use of graphical pipes - Maya, Eddie, Shake, grphedit (DirectShow graph editor) to name but a few.
The nice thing about graphical pipes is the ability to easily and transparently connect several forms of data to one node. With command line pipes, you've effectively only got one input and output.
What would be needed would be graphical terminal programs (built into the OS, or at least window manager) for connecting these things together, Oh, and a standardized way of defining input and output types - I dunno - would MIME work there?
I expect somebody can point us at a project that has already done this?