Good idea, bad timing.
I just read a post on dailytech about a new chip that's supposed to allow multi-gpu multi-vendor graphics with near linear performance scalling. The basic idea is to render different scene elements on each gpu and combine them. Draw a wall here a character there and so on. One of the problems mentioned in the article is that vista does not allow more than one graphics driver so you couldn't mix ati and nvidia cards even though the tech supports it. Another issue mentioned in the comments was that it's directx only, at least for now. What I'm wondering about is what happens when games start using there own renderers instead of the standard directx and opengl renderers? I'm pretty sure this won't work with such software.
On a related note what with all the opengl bashing? Seems a nmber of people want it to go away which doesn't make any since it's the only cross platform api that exists. It's used on all desktop OS platforms and most smaller devices including cell phones. Even Google's android will use it.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Firefox plug-in/extension docs
Some recent bug-mail reminded me that the FF devs long ago decided that the proper way to add support for new images formats was to write an extension. This keeps coming up regarding mng and jpeg2000. The problem is that there does not appear to be any documentation on how to do this. If you're going to recomend such a method you should put the information in one place. A simple page saying you need to implement these interfaces to add a new image format is all that's required yet no one has done this, or at least I haven't found it.
Another thing I was looking int earlier was how to create a plug-in for video playback. You know, something like the youtube player only native. The documentation for creating plug-ins is certainly better, but there is an ommition. I figure the most reliable way to do this is to use XEmbed and an out of process plug-in. Now, XEmbed is simply the newer way to get the window that the plug-in will use. One of the things this allows is for an external process to draw in the FF window. The problem is that there is again no documentation on what is needed to properly do this. From what I can figure the plug-in will need a normal shared library implementing the plug-in API and the executable that will do the real work. The library will have to start the exe for each instance, marshal data from the browser to the exe, inform the exe of changes to the window, and kill the exe when done. Not really something I would want to do (yet).
Another thing I was looking int earlier was how to create a plug-in for video playback. You know, something like the youtube player only native. The documentation for creating plug-ins is certainly better, but there is an ommition. I figure the most reliable way to do this is to use XEmbed and an out of process plug-in. Now, XEmbed is simply the newer way to get the window that the plug-in will use. One of the things this allows is for an external process to draw in the FF window. The problem is that there is again no documentation on what is needed to properly do this. From what I can figure the plug-in will need a normal shared library implementing the plug-in API and the executable that will do the real work. The library will have to start the exe for each instance, marshal data from the browser to the exe, inform the exe of changes to the window, and kill the exe when done. Not really something I would want to do (yet).
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Net Neutrality
This topic may be a bit old, but I was just thinking about it again for some reason.
On one side we have the large ISPs and network hardware companies like Cisco that oppose net neutrality. They say they should be allowed to prioritize traffic, giving voip, iptv and such higher priority over regular web traffic. This certainly makes sense. After all, we don't want hiccups in our phone calls, tv, internet radio, or whatever else might appear.
On the other side we have the content companies like google and yahoo that want net neutrality. Their argument is that the ISPs could (would) prioritize traffic based upon where it comes from and whether or not that site has paid for better service. They're worried about getting double charged, once for internet access and a second time to insure that access to their sites are not slowed down in favor of someone else's. Of course this would affect small startups even more since they could not afford to pay. This is obviously bad.
The solution currently currently going through committees is to treat all internet traffic the same. While I certainly prefer this to having no protection it will likely cause problems for real time and near real time traffic like voip. The best solution would be to allow traffic types to be prioritized but not on a site by site basis. All voip traffic is treated the same, all http traffic is treated the same. This would be the best of both worlds.
On one side we have the large ISPs and network hardware companies like Cisco that oppose net neutrality. They say they should be allowed to prioritize traffic, giving voip, iptv and such higher priority over regular web traffic. This certainly makes sense. After all, we don't want hiccups in our phone calls, tv, internet radio, or whatever else might appear.
On the other side we have the content companies like google and yahoo that want net neutrality. Their argument is that the ISPs could (would) prioritize traffic based upon where it comes from and whether or not that site has paid for better service. They're worried about getting double charged, once for internet access and a second time to insure that access to their sites are not slowed down in favor of someone else's. Of course this would affect small startups even more since they could not afford to pay. This is obviously bad.
The solution currently currently going through committees is to treat all internet traffic the same. While I certainly prefer this to having no protection it will likely cause problems for real time and near real time traffic like voip. The best solution would be to allow traffic types to be prioritized but not on a site by site basis. All voip traffic is treated the same, all http traffic is treated the same. This would be the best of both worlds.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Pan Update
It's certainly been a while since my last post. Anyone interested in pan should already be aware that official development astarted back up some time ago. Several betas have been released, and i expect to see several more before version 1. Since the new version solves most of the issues that prompted development of the database version I've stopped work on my branch.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Pan Update
It's been a while since I did any work on Pan so I thought I would toss out a new snapshot. This one fixes an issue with displaying the proper score. It also fixes the problem with filters such as "only cached" not being applied. There may also be some other minor fixes. I don't know how much more work I'll do on this version of Pan. I'm hoping that the rewrite Charles mentioned a while back will pick up some steam so I can work on it instead.
r312.
r312.
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