Can Open Source Save Hardware? 327
Culexus writes "Tom's Hardware has a interesting story about Open Source saving the hardware industry. Pretty good read all in all. Hopefully chip makers and vendors won't have to bend to the iron might of Microsoft any longer." Some good comments on how early-adopters and enthusiasts are being marginalized by the industry, too.
One thing that upset enthusiasts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts (Score:3, Insightful)
And the same will (hopefully
I don't know about US, but here, in Europe, it is possible to buy cheaper PC without Windows and the price difference is noticable.
Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be the final step in copying MacOS after all: Microsoft LonghornOS: available on the new Microsoft LonghornPC.
Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts (Score:3, Interesting)
I still haven't installed XP even though I have a (legit) corporate licence because I know at some point (tinfoil hat time for some but I really believe it) no matter what version I use I'll need to "activate it." No thanks. After
Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts (Score:5, Insightful)
For all the nice stuff XP has, its not worth being so tied to a single company. Its not the technology itself, but its the "potential Big Brother" aspect of it.
No one with a clue (enthusiast) bought XP HOME (Score:2)
Re:No one with a clue (enthusiast) bought XP HOME (Score:2)
but xp pro is good on my desk
openbsd on my server
debian when i have machines that haven't been kept by a horrid backstabbing bitch of an ex-g/f
to each his own, nice troll though, i see why you posted anon
So, you are a criminal ! (Score:3, Insightful)
hey upgrade to the latest stuff right away, and regularly build whole new computers. It's no fun having to call Microsoft a few times a year to get their permission to run a piece of software that you bought and paid for.
If you read most of microsofts EULAs, you will find that you are only allowed to use the software on the computer is is *first* installed on. I.e. it is not allowed to transfer the OS to another machine..
With Microsoft you have no rights, either 'get over it' or do something about it
Re:You mislead (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You mislead (Score:3, Informative)
And the kernel comment is silly. Even if you're not using a distro's modular kernel (which would already have the necessary modules for you to use new hardware and most major distro
Re:You mislead (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming you don't have a piece of hardware installed into your kernel, you're almost certainly going to have to do a make [config || menuconfig || xconfig] unless you've got something automated like an nVidia kernel driver installation.
Have you navigated this thing? Yes, *I* know what most of the configuration items are for, and yes *you* may know what most of the configuration items are, but I'm willing to bet that grandma has no idea what a Realtek RTL-8139 PCI Fast Ethernet
Thats not the point. (Score:3, Interesting)
For Linux or Win98, its hunting down how to get something to work. I need new drivers/new code/new libraries. I might even need to get new drivers for WinXp. I can justify it.
For Windows Activation, I need to do something because MS doesn't trust me with something I bought from them? Yes its simple, but its the "unnesscary steps" which is the point.
How does needing to go to MS to get a new install code add to my functionality of my computer? Zero.
(
Re:You mislead (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You mislead (Score:5, Informative)
Same in Canada. You have to phone in. The best part, my friend changed his soundcard and the rep wouldn't believe him. She was like "No, I can't do that, you already activated it last month. You can only use it on one computer".
And yes, it did this with only ONE piece of hardware.
Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts (Score:2)
Maybe it depends on the number of differences between boards, but I replaced one AMD 760MPX-based board (an MSI K7D Master) with another (a Tyan Tiger MPX) and didn't have to reinstall WinXP. I went into the swap thinking that I'd need to reinstall, but for once WinXP surpr
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't own your software. Pretty soon you won't own your hardware, either. Where does it end?
Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts (Score:2)
Yeah, that seems to be Microsoft's attitude to. Anything they can do to encourage piracy is a good idea - raises BSA revenues.
If only... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If only... (Score:5, Informative)
See, for example, www.opencores.org [opencores.org].
Re:If only... (Score:5, Informative)
Enjoy. Most of it's still rather raw, and most of it's based off m68k, so don't expect to run "real" linux on it (uClinux is often the objective though).
Re:If only... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If only... (Score:2, Insightful)
It needs some requisites though:
* Open Source design tools for PCB's, IC's, etc.
* People willing to design hardware (or, more correctly, building blocks of it, like memory controllers and such) for free.
* A way to get chips and boards produced cheaply, without needing massive quantities.
Should this ever happen, it will be much like today's distributions, each different from the other, but all able to run the same software. It will be far harder to `roll your own' thou
Re:If only... (Score:2, Interesting)
People: There's lots of them, see my link to openhardware above, soemone linked to opencores, etc. There's a community for this.
Boards can be had fairly cheap (say $40 each) even in rather small quantity. Or for small projects you could always etch your own.
The only issue is chips. ASICs and such, well, aren't cheap in small quan
Re:If only... (Score:2)
Locking down hardware especially motherboards by adding "Microsoft solutions" ment to provide features that makes it harder for people to switch to Open Source would have been an excellent solutions to save their bussiness.
Anh know I have an idea of what Microsoft can use their $46 billion on. /. acquisition nightmare; AMD.
1.Buy a large chipset maker (VIA) or motherboard maker (Gigabyte or Asus). Or the complete
2. Develop and add extra Micr
Re:If only... (Score:2)
Buying collectibles (Score:3, Funny)
Heck they could buy the Senate and entire House of Representatives for a whole lot less than that. Add them to their Administration and Justice figures and they would have nearly a complete set. Someday it could be worth a lot of money especially if they keep the original packaging.
Re:If only... (Score:2)
. . .
5. Insane profit margins.
While I agree with your point, I think Microsoft's current 80% profit margin is already insane. That's how they got $40 billion in the bank. The profit margin in many industries is in the low single-digits.
Remember... (Score:4, Insightful)
that's odd (Score:3, Insightful)
running Lotus 1-2-3 was *the* most important aspect not ms-dos compatibilty, that came later
Re:Remember... (Score:5, Insightful)
Have we gone full-circle?
Yes. What makes it more amazing is that MicroSoft itself has forgotten the strategy that made it so popular against the behemoth of the time, IBM. Now, just as IBM did, they want full control; probably, they will lose that control for just the same reasons IBM did.
Furthermore--MicroSoft has forgotten the lesson of "good-enough". Their software may have more capability than Linux--I think it does, especially for end users. However, one of the reasons that MicroSoft won against Apple was that MSFT's offerings were like enough, and good enough, compared to Apple's--but also were cheaper.
Good enough + cheaper=adoption.
Now, Linux is cheaper that MSFT--and it will become "good enough" very soon. Very very soon. And in a down market, people will count their pennies and decide that Linux is good enough for the price, and MSFT loses. So goes my fantasy.
Re:Remember... (Score:2)
DOS and a PC was just a way of running Lotus 123.
To understand the significance, take a fairly simple spreadsheet and program the input, output and computations in Pascal or C.
Linux helps hardware vendors? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say that for many of today's hardware vendors, supporting the Linux OS is more painful than supporting the traditional unix vendors which were difficult enough.
The problem is that there is zilch technical support for linux, outside of the open source community. Most of the boutique hardware vendors cant afford the huge support teams to handle calls on every version of linux and all distros out there. Plus, they have a good deal of their IP in the software and they are leary of giving that away to competitors.
Not to mention, there is no partner marketing bennifits with linux. At least Microsoft promotes its hardware vendors, and comarkets their products with Windows, including them in its collosal marketing machine.
To be fair, the computer world in general has bennifited tremendously from open source. Don't get me wrong: I love linux, gcc, bash, etc. NetBSD has been a huge win for appliance vendors looking for instant-OS.
However, to say generally that hardware vendors are being saved by open source is actually the opposite of what the hardware vendors are really feeling. My experience with every hardware vendor that I've worked with is that Linux and open source is their #1 pain in the butt.
Re:Linux helps hardware vendors? (Score:2, Troll)
Then of course, there is the problem of not supporting binary-only drivers. Not only does it make it almost impossible to protect a company's IP by closing the source, but it's extremely difficult to ship just a driver and have someone just install it on his system. If the user is using a lesser-know
Re:Linux helps hardware vendors? (Score:2)
- Linus will not integrate the kernel debugger into the main kernel tree, forcing SGI to keep updating the patches, and forcing everyone to re-apply them whenever they download a new kernel.
- Getting a
.o file and a source-code wrapper that needs to be recompiled does not make a driver easy to install!
Contrary to what you believe, you have only strengthend my argument, not weakened it.Open Specs + Good Hardware = Market Winner (Score:5, Informative)
If a significant number of them act as their customers would like, they will only be able to compete on hardware.
What hardware vendors *should* do is open up the specs to their hardware. If they are especially competitive, fund the development of open source drivers.
The fact is that hardware with well defined and open specs works brilliantly in linux and the BSDs. Thats because the drivers are generally better written, usually because the drivers can share infrastructure and code from drivers from similar hardware, and these drivers are often written by the same people.
Hardware vendors who do not open their specs or write drivers for Linux are writing themselves out of the future.
If a driver is accepted into the mainline kernel, and has an appreciable userbase, its very unlikely that there will be a lot of tech support issues - IF the hardware isn't flaky.
And thats what they hate. A huge amount of vendors make *really* bad hardware. If it becomes known that a bit of hardware works well in linux, more people buy it. As Linux market share increases, *this* PR ( the hardware is actually *good* and *works*) will take over from the MS crap ( the hardware company has some agreement with MS that says *nothing* about the quality of the hardware).
I know which kind of PR I take more seriously.
Re:Open Specs + Good Hardware = Market Winner (Score:4, Informative)
They have proprietary (and licensed) technology in the form of software which they can't release; this isn't fundamentally different from having chip designs they can't or won't release, except that it is tied to a particular operating system.
The solution, probably, is to move to less functionality in the driver and more in the chipset, so that no proprietary technology remains in the driver, and the driver simply passes all the API calls off to the hardware.
On the other hand, it would be interesting for somebody to write an API for proprietary drivers, such that they can run on a virtual machine on any platform. (This is actually not all that different from some aspects of ACPI, in that you end up running a bit of code sent from the hardware); then manufacturers could provide a driver which works on different platforms, is coded to a standard, and the system would be protected against bugs in the drivers (except for them locking the system bus or such).
Re:Linux helps hardware vendors? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet people are lining up outside of your house to support your Windows installations for free? Pay people to support linux, and they'll support linux. Pay them to support Windows, and they'll support Windows. You can hardly complain about lack of Linux support when you've hired a support team of trained monkeys who know only Windows.
If you're anywhere remotely technical, then half the people in your office are part of that 'open-source community'. Zilch support indeed!
"Most of the boutique hardware vendors cant afford the huge support teams to handle calls on every version of linux and all distros out there."
Yet they can somehow get enough people to support a vastly less stable, less predictable operating system which changes more between versions than linux does between distributions?
GNU has tools called automake and autoconf. They allow the same software to be installed correctly on machines so varied that microsoft hasn't even heard of them, yet your linux software will compile without a problem on them all. Even if you're only designing for Intel-compatible computers, it's nice to know that
Please don't reply pointing out that your software won't install on a linux firewall or other specialised machine: the Windows install CDs don't work on palmtops either.
"Plus, they have a good deal of their IP in the software"
There's no such thing. You're deliberately trying to cause confusion by using the word IP to describe trade secrets.
"Not to mention, there is no partner marketing bennifits with linux"
Putting a "works with linux" penguin sticker on a product costs a lot less than getting microsoft certification, and will be a lot more use when people are wandering around the stores looking for hardware which works with their linux home PC. When my family are wandering around PC_world, and every single modem has a "minimum spec: Windows 95" on it, imagine how much safer they'd feel if they found a modem which actually claimed to work with their computer. (since all these devices work 100% on linux, it's not exactly a difficult claim to make)
Support costs? Bullshit. Tell me the last time you phoned a modem manufacturer in taiwan hoping for technical support on windows dial-up? My modem manufacturer doesn't even have an english website, and the store sure as hell won't do technical support, MS-Windows or no.
"Designed for Mandrake 9.1 or later. Compatible with Linux" -- 10 seconds to write on the packaging, and you've suddenly got sales to everyone who runs linux and wants to buy hardware.
Do the manufacturers of keyboards and mice really understand that Windows is not actually required for their product?
Shops are there to make things easy to buy. I shouldn't have to consult enthusiasts' websites to find out if I can even use something that the shop is selling.
Re:Linux helps hardware vendors? (Score:2)
Re:Linux helps hardware vendors? (Score:2, Informative)
I think part of the problem vendors face is that the Linux device driver API/ABI is constantly changing, between major releases and even with "stable" kernel series. I know Linus does not want to bloat his kernel with backwards compatibility support, but why can't the kernel developers define a stable, well-defined device driver API/ABI? If a vendor wants super-performance, they could side step the standard device driver API and directly access other kernel functions. Linus seems to favor all out performanc
Re:Linux helps hardware vendors? (Score:2)
Why do you consider this philosophy to be a Bad Thing (tm)?
Abstraction breeds inefficiency. It (abstraction) also breeds ignorant programmers. The very last thing we need in a Linux kernel is inefficiency.
I'm not advocating a hard-line "all your programs are belong to assembler" stance, but I'm a victim of "point-click-compile" programmers and I curse their software every day because their programs SUCK
Because of one specific thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Linux helps hardware vendors? (Score:2)
You are flat wrong on both counts. #1.) Hardware vendors don't need to worry about support teams for Linux. The fact is, fully documented hardware typically ends up 'just working' in Linux. If users do have trouble, that's where distributions and the comm
Re:Linux helps hardware vendors? (Score:3, Interesting)
You want to know what's really funny? Without Microsoft, and their "bloated" applications there wouldn't have been a mass market for the 80386, with its features such as protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking. Sure, you can do those on a 286 if you really have to, but it's not easy. Without the 386, there would be no Linux, since Linus could never have afforded a "professional" workst
Re:Linux helps hardware vendors? (Score:4, Informative)
Let's see... MS all but killed three RISC platforms -- MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC -- whose vendors had spent huge amounts of money promoting. MS stole wind from their own flavors of Unix, they promoted specific models for MS WNT which never sold well for there was no version of MS Office Pro and VS Basic for it.
No, PnP was always a pain. What would have benefitted hardware vendors was wider adoption of EISA, earlier adoption of PCI and its fastest flavours, and a stable OS. MS had nothing to do with the first two and prevents the third to this day.
I fail to see why. Old Unix had each its own hardware platform with different interfaces, while GNU/Linux runs in only a few platforms -- Alpha's dying as is PA-RISC, Clipper died, there is no more DEC TurboBus or Sun SBus, everything is IDE, SCSI, PCI, AGP, USB and FireWire. Creating drivers for GNU/Linux makes them portable, and it is easy in the first place, while old Unix had a different driver model for each platform and none were easy. The Haloween documents proved that even all MS effort to facilitate drivers develpment GNU/Linux drivers are still easier, and they cover nearly all the market instead of bein confined to one platform only as MS WNT currently is.
First, this is wrong. IBM, HP, Red Hat, SuSE and other do give support. Technical documentation and source code are much cheaper and better than what is available for any other platform, with the possible exception of BSD, incidentally another free software OS. Second, why the community isn't enough? The rules are clear: submit your driver to Linus, if it is good enough it will get all the criticising it needs to get finished. I wonder what more is needed in support for hardware vendors...
You obviously haven't the foggiest about GNU/Linux. There is precisely one stable, up-to-date version of the kernel available at each time. At this moment it is 2.4; all the variants of it are exactly equal AFA drivers are concerned. There is no reason whatsoever for a hardware vendor to support 2.5; 2.2 is still used but its drivers are much more similar to 2.4's than are those of MS WXP, WME and WCE.
You mean trade secrets, because IP has no meaning apart from the aggregation of trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights and patents; obviously the last three are protected no matter what is published. As for trade secrets, I wonder why one would want its feeble protection instead of the much more substantial protections afforded by copyrights and patents. And even then your argument is bogus, because both the Linux kernel and the X Window System accept binary drivers, evil as they are.
Obviously you ignore the evilness of binary drivers: without source code it is impossible to audit and debug them thoroughtfully, and this is one of the causes for MS W32 unstability.
No it doesn't. In
Re:Linux helps hardware vendors? (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with much of your statement. In fact there is enourmous demand for Linux in the market. Basically, all of these F500 places that want to ditch HP-UX, AIX, True64 and Solaris are all moving to Linux. Plus, huge potential in the university market and overseas.
The problem is not a lack of demand, but the cost associated with the support for these projects. If you are a
Re:Linux helps hardware vendors? (Score:2)
Isn't all customer support that way? It's classic. The company feels hit up for free unrelated tech support, while the consumer feels they're being bounced around between companies who all point the finger at each other. That is by no means specific to linux, or
In Theory (Score:3, Interesting)
Dell, HP, and Gateway all are in pretty deep with Microsoft, to produce Windows PCs. So if the hardware companies don't have to contract with Microsoft anymore, theoretically, the prices should go down, if not the price of Windows XP Professional ($143).
Is this wrong? Or will the big guys continue to rip-off the consumer?
(Note situation in Europe after changing to the euro)
Re:In Theory (Score:2)
Boo (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a big shock: the hardware industry doesn't need saving. They need to make and market products useful to consumers, and to corporate clients. And thats what they do. Because consumers decided that GigE and PCI-x really don't do anything for them doesn't mean the industry is going to burn to the ground.
Re:Boo (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Boo (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. I kept flipping through those annoying THW pages waiting for some kind of logical link to the conclusion. I was waiting for him to at least say: "If Linux catches on big time, XFree86 takes so much memory that we will all need huge machines." That might be wrong, but it would have been some kind of point to the whole thing.
As hardware becomes a commodity, places like THW become less and less relevant. Maybe this article is just a sign o' the times.
Re:Boo (Score:5, Insightful)
It's possible that there's a thesis in there somewhere, but the author never actually says what it is. It shows no depth of thought, fails to articulate an argument, and and provides no coherent evidence for any of the points it actually makes. If I were grading this, it'd get a C minus. Maybe a D plus if I was feeling uncharitable.
Re:Boo (Score:2)
That has got to be one of the worst articles I've read. Certainly that I've read, posted to Slashdot. The auther said abosultely nothing at all.
hmmm... assuming that you also suffered through the last Tom's hardware post to slashdot (the one on home networking [slashdot.org]), that's a pretty serious charge...
Re:Boo (Score:3, Interesting)
In 2003, if they aren't experts in Linux, they aren't experts in computing.
Prices (Score:2)
THG Insightful? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:THG Insightful? (Score:3, Insightful)
THG is pretty scummy in my books.
Ever since that Nvidia deal way back.
read the damn article (Score:2)
This article doesn't pat anyone on the back. It doesn't even say anything at all. It's a terribly written piece of crap with no point and no logic. Immagine... assuming that any of us give a shit about how we all have to "save the hardware industry".
Re:THG Insightful? (Score:3, Interesting)
AFAIC, they've mostly been fairly clueless. I quit reading their site more than a year ago.
SB
missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Open Source (Score:5, Interesting)
I've just read the article 3 times and I have to ask; what part of it deals with open source? It's a TH article for christ sakes....are you slashdot editors just reading tag lines now?
Look guys, not everything MS does is an attack on open source. OS might be a threat, but it's hardly their only threat.
-Chris
Decline of new tech could be a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the decline in new tech development will continue, now that most people in North America have a computer, or can afford a cheap one easily. Perhaps hardware manufacturers will concentrate more on useful features and cross-platform compatibility in the future, instead of making stuff faster just for the sake of making it faster.
Re:Decline of new tech could be a good thing. (Score:2)
In the kernel, perhaps...
But give Mozilla a try for bloat. Or launch a gnome-terminal and time how long the first one takes to come up... or worse yet type "ls -l /usr/bin" and see how slowly all those pretty anti-aliased fonts take to scroll.
There's plenty of bloat to go around.
Re:Decline of new tech could be a good thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not aware of a good, fast alternative to Mozilla, unfortunately. Dillo is blazingly fast, but chokes on a lot of pages. Hopefully it will be ready for prime time soon. Does anyone know of a better alternative
"Can Open Source save Tom's Hardware" (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, what really bugs Tom's Hardware is that nobody cares about Tom's Hardware any more.
Consider "overclocking". Overclocking in the 486 era was marginally useful. Overclocking today belongs in the same category as car stereo loudness competitions.
Open source can, and has, done a lot for server-side hardware. But it just doesn't sell enough iron on the desktop to matter. Look what happened to VA Linux.
The next "must buy" computer thing for consumers will probably be DRM-equipped hardware. They'll need it to run popular games and play popular music. All across America, kids will be screaming at their parents to buy the new "entertainment-ready" computers. Open source will be locked out of that world completely. (Yes, you can write DRM code for Linux. But Vivendi, Universal, and the RIAA aren't going to let the decrypt keys out into the open source world. So all you'll be able to play is off-brand protected content nobody will pay for.)
Re:"Can Open Source save Tom's Hardware" (Score:2)
Re:"Can Open Source save Tom's Hardware" (Score:2)
You can buy an 2.4Ghz P4 (800Mhz FSB) processor for ~$170 (pricewatch) right now.
These things have been reported to do 800 to 1000Mhz overclocks without water/pelitier/anything extreme cooling. Never mind that the 3.4Ghz doesn't even exist yet, but note that the 3.2Ghz costs $700 (pricewatch).
You do the math.
Re:"Can Open Source save Tom's Hardware" (Score:2)
The benifits for me would be so marginal I would just keep it clocked at 2.4Ghz and use a quieter cooler and not worry about potential unstability due to overclocking. And I bet most
Tom(and VA) sunk themselves (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, what really bugs Tom's Hardware is that nobody cares about Tom's Hardware any more.
Yeah, and guess why- every time you went and looked at Tom's Hardware, the information and reviews were months old, or worse. I was continually frustrated, while shopping for PC components, at how out-of-date THG was- so I simply stopped bothering to look at their site.
THG should have stuck to what they were most useful for- a place to learn about PC technology. Not a lets-run-some-benchmark-scripts-with-different-vid eo-cards. THG has turned into what I call "two guys in a dorm room who have a hardware review site". Unfortunately, that market is a dime-a-dozen; every stupid moron who knows how to use Front Page has one.
Open source can, and has, done a lot for server-side hardware. But it just doesn't sell enough iron on the desktop to matter. Look what happened to VA Linux.
Open source sells plenty of iron- it's just that there's no point in going with some boutique rackmount company with absurd sales policies(see below), when you've got better support, better hardware, better access to parts, etc from IBM, Gateway, HP, Compaq...all of whom have supported Linux on a lot of their hardware for years.
VA filled a niche that disappeared the second the Big Boys supported Linux; none of the big corporations really knew who VA was, and nobody cared; they just called their IBM/HP/Gateway/Compaq rep and ordered up systems from them. What made it worse was that VA didn't have stock on 'accessory' items, and you couldn't get parts. For example, this is an almost word-for-word phone conversation between VA and myself, trying to get carriers for adding new drives to our one VA Linux DB server(we needed the drives within 2 days.)
Operator:"Thank you for calling VA blah blah"
Me:"Sales please."
Sales:"VA sales, this is ____, how can I help you?"
Me: "I need two SCSI drive carriers for my VA ____."
Sales:"Ah, you'll need to talk to someone in our parts department, they handle those requests. Let me transfer you."
Parts:"VA Parts, how can I help you?"
Me: "Yes, Hi, I need two SCSI drive carriers for my VA ____."
Parts:"Okay, hmm, one sec..[click click click click]...I'm sorry sir, they're not available."
Me:"Oh, backordered? When will they be in?"
Parts:"We have them in stock. I'm not authorized to sell you this part."
(very long pause while I censor myself)
Me:"Okkkkaaaaaay. Do you have any 36GB 10,000 RPM drives?"
Parts:"Yes."
Me:"How much?"
Parts:"$800 each"
Me(I actually laughed):"I can get those drives from any of a dozen vendors for half that. Alright, fine. How soon can you have them shipped to me?"
Parts:"We don't have any in stock. Maybe two weeks."
So you know what we did? We swore never to buy another VA Linux system, ordered two drives from a vendor who had them there by 10am the next morning, and jury-rigged them in the drive slots. VA sunk themselves with stupid bullshit that kept customers from meeting critical deadlines. Many IT departments work on a "we needed this two days ago" schedule, not a "we might need this in two weeks" schedule. There are those that recognize this, and those that try to force you into buying product they don't even have in stock, by not selling you parts like empty drive carriers- and consequently go out of business when suddenly they're the dinky little hole-in-the-wall company nobody cares about in a market full of Big Boys. We bought over two dozen rackmount servers within a year of that incident, and they came from Gateway- not VA.
Re:"Can Open Source save Tom's Hardware" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Can Open Source save Tom's Hardware" (Score:2)
You're painfully correct. Overclocking used to be about maximizing one's performance/price ratio, to get the equivalent of better hardware for a lower price, the object being to have money left over for other things. It was a rational thing to do!
Now, overclocking is all about who can spend the most money to get the most performance, and the pri
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for some companies like Nvidia or ATI, I dont see any great moves towards non-Windows driver development
There was a point here? (Score:2, Interesting)
Apparently, the evil Open Source / Linux people aren't writing inefficient enough software! We really need to write another 1,000 useless effects into our window managers, so that £5,000 machine has something to do!
It would be nice if the article had a few ideas of what the power could be used for. Otherwise, it's as pointless as those "Desktop metaphor is dead!" articles that fail to sugges
What an absolutely shortsighted article (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's another thing that will save the hardware industry, the home server. But that won't be the open source community saving the hardware industry but the construction industry rolling in $10k servers into new construction home mortgages and making sure that the line stays current for the next couple of decades.
The real question (Score:4, Funny)
But the coup de grace for the "open source" world is the recent revalation that open-source developers have been copying SCO's patented source code directly into open-source products including Linux, without signing a proper widespread agreement. According to SCO's chief executive officer, Darl McBride, and every industry analyst who has actually viewed the code, the copying is so widespread and integral to Linux's operation that removing it may be impossible. Instead of trying to negotiate fair licensing agreements with SCO, Linux developers have gone into denial, and there is every reason to believe that companies such as IBM continue to copy protected code without restraint. No one has even suggested that Linux, or other possibly compromised projects such as the "Apache" web server or the "Perl" web scripting laguage, adopt tougher guidelines for the acceptance of code, that could lead to sniffing out copying. And this means that all open-source software could be illegal to use within a few short months, barring the liberal interventionist judiciary's refusal to enforce the relevant laws.
What can open-source do? Well, a good first step would be to enter into license agreements with intellectual property owners so that the software becomes less legally dubious. A second step would be to move away from such obviously anti-American licenses such as the 'BSD" and "GPL", to something which is more protective of the rights of property holders, and does not impede proprietary redistribution. I think Sun's Community Source License and Microsoft's Shared Source program are good examples of this. Finally, they need to stop accepting code from known IP pirates like IBM. With these steps, Linux can continue to be a popular low-cost platform for hobbyists, and the rights of intellectual property holders such as Microsoft and SCO won't be compromised.
Does a game really need 64 bits? (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest role I see for Linux helping out games from a technological point of view -- and even this is a stretch -- is if games need more RAM than Windows can provide and Microsoft has not released a 64-bit Windows. In that case, Linux would serve as a stop-gap measure much as DOS4GW did between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.
"Save hardware"?? (Score:2)
Um... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleI
Suuuure it can (Score:2)
that's not everything... (Score:4, Insightful)
That sentence opened a whole new perspective on the subject for me... OSS "saves" hardware but I would say the savings occur in the consumer's pockets (us, so, it's good
Either way they (hardware manufacturers) can lose along with the consumer. That for example explains why Apple had their campaign of "rip mix and burn": the mere possibility of those activities is an incentive that drives purchases of CD-R and DVD-R drives, new hardware, more powerful computers, etc. Of course some of these activities may be legal gray areas, but it's not a matter of doing them or not, but rather of knowing that they can be done, like having a sports car and still drive at 70mph. In other words the features may be useless or even misunderstood [for that particular person, not power users], but it makes people [joe sixpack] want to buy hardware.
If you take a paranoid point of view you could say we haven't lost all of our rights yet because another industry has something at stake... personally I think it's more of a side effect rather than a direct cause - since where there are liberties there's always somebody that can make a business out of them.
Software won't 'save hardware' (Score:5, Insightful)
What does 'save hardware' really indicate?
From the slant of the writeup, they're assuming that this means the creation of software that will spur revolutionary, fast-paced hardware development. In part, this is accurate, as these companies do need to release products on a fairly consistent basis if they want to stay in business..
How often do we hear about or experience first-hand hardware failure? Weird driver bugs on video cards, hard drives that have to be RMA'ed after 3 months to a year, heat dissipation issues, the list goes on. Undoubtedly, things have become much more advanced since the days of the 486, but on the same token, we're also being introduced to a different set of problems. The technology is largely the same; it's just a new set of boundaries and guidelines.
The manufacturers are pumping out products every goddamned month, mostly introducing only minimal changes from product to product. I'm sorry, but this just isn't realistic.. the average buyer doesn't shell out cash for a new video card or whatever every goddamned month. When the time comes to upgrade, we want it to be a worthwhile one.. not just a $300+ clock-speed increase or an even more ridiculously huge heatsink added.
I think if the hardware industry needs saving, it's going to take a change in how things are done. From a user standpoint, at least, i'd like to see a greater emphasis on *quality* for once. There are very few companies I have genuine, lasting faith in. Everyone's in such a mad rush to be first, to hit the best benchmarks on the goddamned review sites, that they're making quality a secondary focus to just releasing something. I see it in software, I see it in hardware, and it's simply ridiculous.
Take this, for example:
A quick search on Pricewatch for 'Nvidia 5800' gives the lowest price at $268.00. Not too bad for a decent video card; worth it if you need it. Then I check for Nvidia 5900, which has only recently been released.
The price suddenly shoots up to $401.99. I can almost guarantee that in a month or two, it'll be nearly the same price as the 5800. You're getting only a marginal performance increase for nearly twice the price. If you opt for the 5800, you're getting sub-par performance when you could've waited a couple months for the 5900, spent the same as the 5800 would've cost, and gotten better performance. In another year, or less, they'll release *yet another* product.
So here's my question..no, my challenge.
Knock this shit off. Instead of releasing 2 or 3 or 4 products of the same type in a year or two, why not release one or two? Focus on ultra-quality performance and product, don't compromise on parts and manufacturing, and let the market ride the wave for awhile. These guys are surprised that sales are down when they've helped instill a stigma of "save your cash. our current product will be obsolete in a week!" They're going for maximum price, crossing their fingers that they'll sell a bunch before they move onto the next release on their roadmap.
The other issue is where these guys are focusing their efforts. You can clock shit up as much as you like, but shitty build quality coupled with a lack of genuine innovation is getting us nowhere. 3D animators/compositors/etc, digital video editors, gamers, etc. all *want* high performance, no doubt. So does the home user, if only to avoid the dreaded click-and-lag demon. But how long can they keep cranking speeds before they realize that there are more important things to consider?
For instance, we've got DDR-II slowly trickling in, mostly on video cards. Why frickin' bother?
Where's the goddamned MRAM? Where's our truly solid state hard drives? Why aren't we developing cooling solutions that don't involve water or noisy fans
Pop quiz (Score:2)
A. Complaining that consumer technology is advancing too slowly:
For instance, we've got DDR-II slowly trickling in, mostly on video cards. Why frickin' bother?
Where's the goddamned MRAM? Where's our truly solid state hard drives?
B. Complaining that consumer technology is advancing too quickly:
It really sucks to spend $100 on a great CD-R or something, only to see that same company put out something nearly twice as fast less than a year later.
C. Doing both at
Re:Pop quiz (Score:2)
It's that technology is advancing incorrectly. We're being given products that do little beyond bridging a gap between the first and the last, so to speak. I'm talking about taking longer to release products, but releasing more innovative and necessary products when you *do* release something.
Maybe i'm not thinking realistically, but i'm fond of the idea of products that last, and products that truly deliver. Monitors with ghosting images and cd-r drives that fail after less than 2
Saving the hardware industry (Score:2)
Playing games, and making games, are the two things that really drive that stuff. I don't know how Open Source is supposed to affect much in that department (we're still trying to write drivers!). Unless you make Open Source games or someth
ms's big hand on hardware vendors (Score:3, Insightful)
The other heavy hand of microsoft is the little windows logo sticker. MS doesn't just give those out. They make vendors pay dearly for that by bowing down to MSs every demand. why? because normal idiot consumers apparently don't buy things without the sticker.
Open Source Enabling Gaming Talent? (Score:5, Interesting)
noble sentiment but, sadly, naive. open source will not help game designers. (to say nothing about leading the next hardware revolution!)
games are extraordinarily expensive to make, but the cost isn't driven up by software. modern games require a team of specialists to build or adapt the basic engine, a very talented team of artists to produce the graphic and sound assets, perhaps a team of level designers and scripters, and of course people responsible for high-level gameplay design - to say nothing of production, marketing, and other people on the business side of the fence. all these people bring their expertise into play, and that ends up being really expensive.
can open source help with this? no, not really.
suppose we live in the best possible world, where all of the software used in game production is open-sourced - all game engines, all physics and AI engines, all modeling tools, all graphics software, everything. even in that world, games would retain high production costs - because the cost of making games is not in the tools, but in using the tools to produce content. what's worse, our world isn't too far from that ideal world - many tools are already open-sourced or otherwise available (quake engine is free, torque is available for minimal costs, some modeling tools are free, etc). you could create a game today using only free tools. but revolutionary new games by garage designers are still nowhere to be found. again, this is not surprising. the cost of making new games is not in the tools, it's in the many man-years it takes to produce a polished game using those tools.
the days of shareware garage games aren't over - people will always enjoy simple games, as the success of snood and cell phone games demonstrates - but they have been permanently demoted to a secondary role in the industry. gamers want well-designed, highly-polished games, and are willing to pay for them. this is not a domain that open-source can assist or compete in.
Fundamental software has a long way to go... (Score:2)
Let's take his first statement first. Do you think that the PC is as fast as you'd like it? Is it as reliable? Are you really content to stay with the current generation of GUIs? Are you not interested in voice or gesture recognition, not interested in virtual reality, not interested in intelligent agents, not interested in vastly more intel
Yet another uninspired columnist... (Score:2)
You'd think after about 10 years of Macintosh enthusiast columnists pining for Apple's sucessor to "desktop publishing" this sort of uninspired writing would end..... but saddly this drivel is too easy to write, especially when 4th-of-july barbeque is what's really on his mind and something/anything needs to get knockout out quickly to meet a publish deadline.
Why do we want to save it? It's junk. (Score:2)
a reflection on the past? (Score:3, Insightful)
He seems to pining for the days when you HAD to pay top dollar to play a game. Quite frankly, I'm glad those days are gone. Sure they where fun, but I perfer to be able to use my hardare for longer then 3 months.
I thinkits a grewat thing when you can go years between ungardes. I used my 400 Mgz chip For about 4 years with no problems running the latests games. the on exception is one memory upgrade.
To me, having a OS that uses a system more efficiantly is far more beneficial because you can play the latest stuff on cheaper hardware.
I do not know why he thinks paying 5000 dllars for a computer is a good thing.
Re:Only one way to save open source... (Score:5, Funny)
Loser.
Re:Only one way to save open source... (Score:2)
Re:Misleading summary (Score:2, Interesting)
Back to user-friendlyness, I'd say that after installation and configuration KDE and probably GNOME too are ready for mom and dad.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:2)
Re:Misleading summary (Score:2)
That, or quit reacting to trolls
Re:PCI Express, 64-bit, Gigabit Ethernet (Score:2)