The collected works of hamei - Page 2

colin wrote: I'm amazed at how much "mindshare" Adobe Premeire has. It seems like the average semi-pro computer user assumes that Premeire is the gold standard of video apps... despite better products for the same price range (Final Cut, Sony Vegas, Avid DV, etc).


I'm amazed at how much "mindshare" Adobe has in general.

Premiere is nothing special

Framemaker was good but it wasn't theirs to begin with and hasn't been updated in ten years

Photoshop is no better than GIMP, the interface is straggly and a mess to use and it also hasn't really been updated in ten years. It also crashes frequently. On a Windows peecee, their main emphasis.

Illustrator has the same klugey interface that was fine in 1987 but really, c'mon now, all they did in the latest version was replace the old background graphics with some slightly nicer ones then called it a new version. Otherwise I can't see any differences and it STILL takes about a half hour to load. So does P-Shop, btw.

Acrobat and pdf were supposed to be THE cross-platform PORTABLE document format answers, but all that Acrobat has received in the past ten years is a bunch of NON-PORTABLE "enhancements' to the Windows and maybe Mac versions. Unix and OS/2 and anything else even slightly non-mainstream are stuck at version 4 which would be fine except lots of PORTABLE document format files are not backwards-compatible.

So all in all, imo Adobe is a pile of shit.
jdboyd wrote:
The Gimp doesn't really do CMYK, which is important to some people.


agreed, which is why we got stuck using P-shop and Illustrator both. The work is going to the printer so it's gotta color match. Then, who has time to learn six different programs ? so there ya have it, Pshop and Illustrator keep their monopolies.

Personally, I'm not so thrilled with recent Gimp developments (nor with photoshop these past few years). I tend to use Gimp 1.2, but am generally moving to cinepaint.


No, sadly most of what used to be interesting different open source stuff has become Yet Another Crappy Windows Clone. I mean, what's the fricking point if all they're going to do is *copy* Windows ? Sheesh. What you say about Cinepaint sounds interesting tho.

I have Illustrator. Freehand was much better. And Coral Draw was at least easier. I think the whole field has been stagnating though.


You ain't just whistlin' Dixie. At one time there were tons of interesting graphics programs, both vector and bitmap. CorelDraw was okay (at about v 3), True>Spectra, Embellish, Eclipse, stuff for NeXTStep, all kinds of different graphics apps. Now we have a monoculture.. Ptui.

Though, I note that you didn't mention anything about AE.


After Effects ? Never used it. I'm just bitching about the stuff I know and dislike :-)
Cory5412 wrote: Even so, people still keep a copy of word kicking around because it's what 90% of the computing world uses :P


if we wanted to be like 90% of the computing world, we could go out and buy a crappy all-in-one mommyboard with a 2 ghz celeron, cheap flaky memory, a 60 gig ide hard drive, realtek 8139 ethershit nic, AC97 onboard audio, a jaton 'video' card, cram the entire unsavory mess into a cheap plastic box, add a water pump, several holes and flashing neon lights then proclaim the entire ghastly mess "k00l for the l33t hackerz."

Many of us came here to get away from that sewage.
squeen wrote: The IRIX OpenOffice 1.0.3 gets part of the word/power point documents sent to me in the office screwy (fonts & figures usually) about 50%.


I also have a problem with fonts in O-O. Version 1.1 is supposed to be a lot better. I wish we could get that running :-(
donny wrote: Now we are talking! What kind of shipping do you usually use for xinjiang wives?? :wink:


traditionally they go by container but in your position, you might want to consider air freight to save on the wear-and-tear ... should arrive a lot fresher :-)

Image
Satoru wrote: Too bad, but I couldn't resist to the dark side of Unix.
After owning 3 Indy, an I2 (gone), an O2 (gone) and an Octane...
I got an HP-UX machine.
For 200 euros including shipping I got a 400MHz PA8500, 1/2 GB of memory and graphics with texture. Dual graphics actually. Both with texture!
Not as cool as an SGI, but way more affordable :?
Going to power up soon...

Marco/Sat


You're not kidding, the price/performance on those seems much better. And you can get faster cpu's without breaking the bank .... I'd be interested in what you think of it, Satoru. If you want to run some benchmarks .....
nvukovlj wrote: Shame it runs HPUX. That and AIX, are my two least favourite Unix implementations. I'm not talking just about the default install, but can't say I liked programming on them either.


But it appears that a lot of people like it better than the alternatives :

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/18 ... ers_react/

hey, SGI ! WAKE UP !! Notice where half of HP's customers don't plan to move AT ALL. And the other half look like moving to Sun or IBM .....
Satoru wrote: For the benckmark what may I run that's pseudo-crossplatform?

Marco/Sat


If you'd like, there's a VR program that takes quite a while to convert a model ... about an hour. Not too short, not too long for a good cpu test. Real-world, too. When you get comfortable with the new box give me a whistle and we'll figger something out, if you like. I'd be interested to see how the HP stacks up. I'm almost afraid to find out, actually ....
Hakimoto wrote: Sat, I meant to take pictures of the inside of the machine. ;-) Maybe on the web or you can ftp them to me, and i'll host them... :-) Want a look inside!


There's lots of HP workstation photos around ... the inside is nothing special. They're like all the older HP stuff used to be - unimaginative but sturdy as hell. Nowhere near as nicely-designed as SGI's.

However, they're cheaper and they have bunches more cpu power .... damn sgi anyway. R18k. Damn them damn them damn them.

This is funny, and so much like what SGI did :

Borrowed from http://www.sparcproductdirectory.com/view44.html

In the mid 1990s Sun Microsystems was a cool band. They played sweet songs like "Open Systems". They drove fast SPARC accelerated systems. And they made money for their investors. It looked like they could do no wrong.

How Did Sun Microsystems Fall from Grace?

It wasn't just that the songs got less sweet, or the hubris or the (Java) drugs. Fashions are fickle. The times changed, and the fans changed but the old rockers didn't notice or didn't seem to care.

Sun's decline was charted in many articles in the SPARC Product Directory as it happened. Here are some of the highlights.

In 1996 Sun stopped actively promoting its "SPARC" brand and instead Sun and Java became the new brands. Later when most other SPARC server companies had been driven out of business, this was taken as a sign that Sun may be playing the open systems tunes, but its real tastes were proprietary.

In 1999 Sun's star shone brightly enough that it could have killed off the fledgeling Linux market by launching its own range of Solaris x86 servers, and promoting its OS as an open source standard. But Sun clearly gave the impression that it didn't want to soil its hands with that fithy Intel hardware. Four years later, when Sun tried to go down that route. It was already well worn by others who had been there before.

In 2000 the trendy tunes in the computer market were all about network storage. Sun tried to get into that. But it had too much of a loner image to fit in with all those Intel server users. And it was too fat to squeeze in as a low cost supplier. We said it wouldn't work at the time. Sun spent hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire a new image. But what the market saw was mutton dressed as lamb. It wasn't buying.


[ ring any bells ? "SGI" logo, to the tune of fifty million $$ ? ]

In 2001 Sun got hit by a treble whammy. The dotcom generation, its biggest fans, were getting old or had passed on. And reliability problems dented the cool image of its SPARC servers. And actually when you took a closer look at those SPARC processors they didn't seem so fast any more. Sun had lost its edge.

In the next few years Sun's revenue continued to decline. Its profits disappeared. It tried to make a lame comeback by playing some newer Intel/Linux tunes. But if you looked closely at their videos you could see the group wasn't really singing at all. They had been dubbed. Sun had become a follower of fashion, and was no longer a leader. But can Sun still make a comeback?


possible answers :

Future #2 - Get the Business Consultants in and Make Sun More Profitable

This strategy would cut investment in technology and dispose of business units which were non-core. It's easy to imagine what the hatchet men would do in the case of Sun...

Exit the unprofitable Intel/Linux business. Sell off Java as a medium sized software company. Chop away at the unprofitable entry level SPARC server range. Sack 50% of the VARs and take more business directly in the mid to high end SPARC server market. Stop piddling around making the world's most expensive me-too network storage, and buy all of it in from outside.

That would work fine for about a year, and Sun could get good profits that way on 30% lower revenue and being a $5 Billion company. But what would happen after that? Cutting back on technology would mean that the company could continue being profitable for maybe another two year as the revenue trickled south to $1 Billion. In three years the company would have lost its edge, the SPARC processor line would be regarded as a joke, and the company would have a slow lingering death as a small services organization living off a customer base which was just too lazy to unplug its legacy systems.

Whatever other criticisms you may level against Sun's CEO, Scott McNealy - being parsimonious with development budgets isn't one of them. Fortunately Sun hasn't started down this route yet. But if the top management changes, it could still happen. So watch out.
Involution wrote: i have a sparc laptop (tadpole 3gx) ...


ooh ooh ! Gunther ! I see sparcbooks sometimes, are they usable or just toooooo slow ?
Intel-OUTSIDE wrote: it is going to be a lot more common in europe because our rectified mains is around 380vdc whereas in america and japan it's only around 180-200.


I always wonder why Europe goes with 220v. It's so much more dangerous than 110 for household use. I *know* why we do it in China - people are cheap ! And they're also cheap to replace ... but Europe should know better.
Intel-OUTSIDE wrote: brownouts are almost unheard of in europe also, because a smalll (20-30v) dropout is less noticed.

if you look at country's with 100/110v they have transformers *everywhere*, we dont.
thats because you have to keep the cables short at 110v to avoid ecessive voltage-drop.


Yeah, sure ... but when you're lying there dead on the floor all these cost-saving measures aren't that kewl, ya know what I mean ? The bunny used to chew the cords around here so that I've zapped myself really good a few times (china is 220v 50hz also but we do have brownouts) ... with 110 it's just a mild tingle. Or even if it's a good shock, it's not normal to die from it. Which brings up something I've been wondering about - are bunnies impervious to electricity ? that little doe must have chewed through most of the extension cords in the house without showing any obvious damage. Not that you could tell much, with a bunny, but still ....

btw, it's 220 to the drop at the house, so the "long 110v lines" part doesn't hold water. We could discuss the same safety question with the 50hz - 60hz variation, too. You guys just like to live dangerously, I think :-)
87Porsche wrote:
That CEI EnSight video has a quick shot of a RedHat taskbar. Does that mean one could run Maya on it? :)


There's Maya Linux ? Pro/E has a Linux version ......
donny wrote: Just an update on this.... Thx for all the hardware offers on these systems, after giving it more thought tho, I'm really looking for a faster Octane2 or deskside Origin to augment my systems, so cash might get me closer to my goal than a trade would.


Does that mean the xinjiang wife is out of the running ? I could probably round you up a shanghai wife-for-the-night if that'd be more appealing. Local pickup only tho.
jan-jaap wrote:
As we all know, the x86 code execution speed of the Itanic is best described as "pathetic" . :twisted:


From what I understand the Itanic is a lot like RISC in some ways - execution speed is very dependent on smart compilers. So what do they have on Linux ? Gcc ? hmmm.
Brombear wrote:
hamei wrote:
From what I understand the Itanic is a lot like RISC in some ways - execution speed is very dependent on smart compilers. So what do they have on Linux ? Gcc ? hmmm.


I believe the intel compiler (icc) is used on these machines. Hard to guess its performance without real tests though


I just know what I've read about developers in the HP camp screaming bloody murder about "no tools ! no tools ! where the hell are all the optimized tools you promised us ?" Meanwhile Carly bibble-babbles on about how wonderful everything is ... if you can believe the Register, HP users are not happy campers about Itanic.

How long did it take MIPSPro to become really effective ?
squeen wrote:
skywriter wrote:
i like the cabinet style...

:D :lol:

me too (damn!)


the nice part about it is that when people start wanting to do case conversions for their peecees, it'll already be done !
zafunk wrote:
Differentiated architecture delivers unrivaled performance and grate-ability. All for less than $500-.


Hey ! No fair ! You've been taking classes in SGI Corpspeak !

Does it bother anyone else that there's like no content in any of these promo blurbs ? It's all just hot air about reducing roi or enabling magisterial variants of the fantacious grubelicant system to bring a new era to pontacious erudiment-sourcing fantalicants ?

I mean, nothing whatsoever about what's really under the hood.

Oh, Linux and ATi ... no wonder.

btw, do you think they're even aware that people who spent $7,000 to $50,000 less than a couple years ago to buy SGI desktops can't even watch their god-damned Flash presentations ?
ruckusman wrote:
Just a FYI there's some 1 GHz CPU's ...


Just out of curiosity, what controls the multipliers on these cpu's ? My HP uses the same cpu but the momboard only has DIP settings for up to 550 mhz. Is the cpu smart enough to run at twice 500 all by itself, say ?
ruckusman wrote:
Which begs the question, what the hell are DIP switches for in the first place??


Kinda what I was wondering ... you *know* I had to try to kick them 500's up to 550 with the DIP switches, but it didn't do anything :-(

Quote:
One guess is that these machines were made before Intel started locking the multiplier ratios on their chips.

Sound reasonable??


must be .... I was pretty sure you couldn't run a slower chip faster because of that but not sure if a faster chip would still kick up to speed. Expected a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose thing from Intel .... I should try something a little quicker in here. Maybe someone who upgrades from 700 or so would like to amortize part off his gig-cpu purchase. Thanks for the encouragement, ruckus.

Old HP's might be a place to look for upgrade P-III's, too. This one is an Lpr and it uses the 100 mhz fsb in dually mode. It's been an okay box, for an Intel. It's not a Wintel tho :razz:
Hakimoto wrote:
IIRC the dip switches are only effective for Pentium II CPUs, starting from Pentium III in a 320 MoBo, the only thing you need to have to run fine in higher dual configs is a 8.2 / 8.3 or even 8.4 VRM.


You think that's what kicks the faster cpu's into higher rpms ? They check the voltage ?

makes sense ....
Intel-OUTSIDE wrote: the result is as john-shaft would say: "one bad motherfucker" :twisted:


I just saw that again. The real one, with Richard Roundtree ... but it kinda loses some of it's punch dubbed into Chinese, ya know ? They have some odd stuff at the video rental store down the street :roll:
Dubhthach wrote: What's everyones favourite poison?


http://www.danks.org/mark/Random/SGIbug.html
cvisors wrote: I have to say, that absolut vanilla, is just amazing, drank neat on ice.


Days of Wine and Roses 8)
dexter1 wrote: And you can make me really happy with some genuine french Absinth like Francois Guy or Versinth La Blanche. Never tasted those, and you're closer to France than i am :)


Wasn't absinthe the inspiration for the original Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story ?

[ed:] Okay, youse guys piqued the interest glands :

http://www.gumbopages.com/food/beverages/absinthe.html
nekonoko wrote: ... "Neko Chan" (maybe assuming it's something akin to Jackie Chan).


Cheung Leung, you mean ? :P
unixmuseum wrote:
zafunk wrote: I'd like to know what the tag line says. I made a half hearted attempt to translate it a while back, but got nowhere. So I gave up! :D

"I think dirty thoughts are very bad"?


spoken provocatively in that whispery little Japanese girl-voice, perhaps ?

you be a bad man, U-d00d. 8)
maciac wrote: I ran upstairs and did that, and it goes fine. Now why didn't SGI put something about that in their documentation that I read ...


Irix is actually pretty easy to install, but the instructions suck.
unixmuseum wrote: On my list to Santa Claus, there is:
- Open Office 1.1.3


yup. By all reports, this is a big improvement over the one we have .... I hate office crap too, but .....
foetz wrote: n my folder. irix64 version is highly optimized. :P


nekonoko - I think we need a new category for this user class - "gods of porting" or something, maybe. People who do work like dexter1 and foetz and squeen and all the others need something a little extra by their usernames - a big gold star, red text, dunno what. Something, tho.

thanks, foetz.
dexter1 wrote:
Because IRIX is designed in such a way that old apps will still run on new OSses, your chances are pretty good that it will work. I've played with illustrator on a O2 with 6.5.19 and although it was a o32 app (i think) it ran fine


Runs on an Octane at 6.5.21, but kinda peculiar interface. Looks like an o-l-d Mac ... no, I take that back. It's pre-Mac. An Apple II maybe :-)

PhotoShop is a little newer in appearance. It runs on 6.5.21 also. I have heard of problems with the Display Postscript on the newer Irixes tho.
colin wrote: Dreaming:
FireFox 2.0 w/ SpecialSuper10xFast patches (fast enough for R4600 Indy!)


Nice thing about Open Source .... now that Firefox and Thunderbird are 'stable' maybe try this - choose one version, open up the code and throw out all the crap. If you type a wrong url into Firefox now it doesn't return a 404 page not found, oh no ! It kindly redirects you to google or netscape search or some other god-forsaken "helpful" place. That's only one example. There's a bazillion other Mommy's Little Helpers. Thanks so much. Maybe on a 2ghz Athlon w/3 gigs of RAM that only takes .000356 ms but on an O2, it's an eternity. "Oh that doesn't take ANY time or space at all, the code is just sitting there until it's needed." If it isn't doing anything, then why do we want it ? And why is each iteration of these programs more sluggish than the last if all these "helpers" don't slow things down ?

Formula 1 cars don't have electric windows.
Thaidog wrote:
So they don't just have serial number installers like the mac and pc versions?


Because Adobe doesn't WANT you to have it. They want to make you buy a new Windows peecee and buy their latest PhotoShop and Illustrator CS.

Since neither one is really much better than version 3, the only method they have to make you do that is force. Hence, no licenses.

Google is your friend. If they refuse to license or sell that product then it's pretty damned hard to prove any damages. And 'piracy' is a civil affair, not a criminal one. If they won't even accept your money then I fail to see how anyone has even a moral obligation to avoid using that particular software.
Thomas W. wrote: .


Could you do something about that avatar please ? Every time I see one of your posts I lose a half hour of productivity, just oogling and ... dreamin', I'm always dreamin' ...........
amigo wrote:
I'm wondering if you peeps have seen http://pixel32.box.sk ?

Actually I own a full license for Linux, but it got me thinking that it would be "cool" to have this in IRIX as well. And seeing that the author has made so many ports already, perhaps we can spark his interest to make an IRIX port, too. What the rest of you think?


There was something not entirely savory about this developer .... maybe that was in the past, maybe he got his finances under control, maybe maybe ... but ..... $35 isn't a lot to risk but at one time there was a lot more smoke than fire about this particular program.
squeen wrote: Thanks bcasavan for the clarifications. I'm curious as to you background on IRIX pthreads (current/former SGI programmer?).


Boy, squeen, would you make a rotten Sherlock Holmes ! Brent has been posting useful information in the sgi groups for years ! mighty fine day when SGI people of his calibre start to show up here :D
squeen wrote: I've never claimed to have a clue.
My SGI is Holmes, Mycroft---not I!


Look left. Have you see your avatar recently ? heh heh heh

sorry, couldn't resist :wink:
MattPayne wrote: ok... it looks as though i havent installed it properly on my O2 - when i click on the ......./bin/wings icon, nothing happens...


generally speaking - not always, mind you, just usually - if you're having a problem you'll get better results by using a terminal and typing the executable's name at the command line. Sometimes you'll need to enter < ./binary's-name > to get it to run. Usually this will give you some feedback on exactly what is failing. If it has to be run as root (cdrecord, for example) then don't forget to < su > first.
mefull wrote:
As for IBM, HP, Sun etc. I don't know maybe we should say "count the days." Their market seems to be going going gone. Even though CAD is a bigger market than 3D Fx I don't think its a big enough market to support new hardware development by itself.


Sun and HP, who knows ? (Itanic seems to be tanking tho :) ) but the PowerPC doesn't look like it's going away any time soon ... All this talk about "markets" and other salesman-speak - Gack ! Look at the figures unixmuseum posted a while back. For FEA work on largish models the whizz-bag peecee was four minutes faster than an antique Octane. Wow. There is so much hogwash in the computing world. I don't think you'll see the people with brains changing to peecees until the companies supplying Unix workstations quit making them due to believing other people's marketing hogwash more than their own marketing hogwash. (Although I've been known to overestimate the intelligence of the American public before.) Marketing is going to have a lot to answer for in the next life.

Then we'll have no choice - but until then no one with a brain wants to run a Windows operating system in a professional capacity.

Let's not even discuss the crappy quality of commodity peecee hardware and/or the never-ending driver upgrade treadmill or the fact that you can't find the drivers for two-year old hardware half the time or the way that the hardware changes without warning so that driver A doesn't work with hardware A unless you have rev 16.39678B-12971 but that's been removed from the website (or was never there) because we "don't support legacy hardware due to cost considerations altho we were plenty happy to take your hard-earned money just last week for this card which we touted as the best thing since sliced bread and the Operating System for the Nineties but that was when we believed we could sucker you all in - since that didn't work, tough luck" etc etc ad infinitem. And the OpenGL issues ! Look in the Pro/E newsgroups. At least once a week someone asks a question which gets the response "you need a professional-grade graphics card for $2,000." So where's the fricking cost advantage to peecees ? You've just stuck a $2,000 agp2 card into a $50 piece of crap ? An agp2 card that's gonna be "legacied" into oblivion by agp4 in three weeks ? Did y'all know that perfectly good AGP cards won't fit into newer motherboards already ? WTF ? this happened within just a couple years of the introduction of AGP ? Who wants to spend all their time buying and maintaining hardware ? And how cheap is it if you have to spend two months per year fiddling with it and replacing it? And who the hell wants to depend on what Microsoft has up its sleeve for the next Windows release ? "All your data are belong to us." Oh goody . The bad-drives-out-good syndrome is at work within the peecee world just as it is in the peecee-workstation conflict.

If there's no place in the future for quality Unix workstations we'll all be a lot poorer.
mikesapunk wrote: Thats like writing Photoshop in FORTRAN.


Oh goody. Language War ! :)

All the original 3D graphics apps were written in FORTRAN. There were computer-aided design programs long before anyone was playing with animation or graphics for movies. APT actually predates FORTRAN - it's a fully 3D language and program that both describes 3D objects in space then moves a tool in a controlled path within that space. APT was the very first ANSI standard computer language. Fortran was the next. APT was rewritten in FORTRAN in around 1970 .... Much of the early graphical stuff was done in Fortran. Ever hear of Unigraphics ? The one that started life as UniAPT ? Fortran is okay. PhotoSnot is a very late-comer to the graphics scene.

p.s. Much of your financial institutions are still running on COBOL. And the airline reservation systems are still using COBOL or even stranger, more orphaned languages. There's nothing wrong with an old language once you get past the first six columns on the punch cards 8)