Unfortunately, a plague has been affecting the Internet for quite a while and it's becoming worse and worse, I'm sure you remember other BeOS/Zeta sites suffering from the same, and that plague is "spam commenting".
ICO has been hit by this for a while now, and I've spent quite some time on the site doing nothing more than deleting those comments and banning IPs, but I did fail to see the scope of the attack (that's what I consider it to be), as you can see from the "Top" page on the left, if you scroll down to the "Most Commented Stories"... you'll see just how bad it got. Because those were older stories, they slipped past me. So together with a couple of other, background measures, from this point forward I'm changing how comments work here at ICO.
From now on, only registered users can comment on the stories posted here at ICO, something I hope will help stop (or at least diminish) this flood. I apologize to all of those who prefer not to register at websites, believe me I know the feeling, and I've postponed this for as long as I could, but it's time to change. I hope you'll still come around, at least to read the news :)
Back to the regular programming now...
Update: Well that didn't last long. First, thanks to those who registered, it's good to see that kind of response from our readers. Second, thanks to our buddy Philipe from BitsOfNews for the mail and the link that allowed ICO to use the new commenting system (also thanks to _V_ for mentioning the system to me). Anonymous commenting is back on. To post your comments (this is for everyone), you must now type in a security code, simple and efective. If you mistype it, it just previews the comment, doesn't delete it. Go ahead and try it.
Unfortunately only available in German, Technoids is the only independent magazine reporting about BeOS and ZETA continuously since 2003. The new PDF is available for free download from our Technoids Download page.
"Though Jean Louis Gass?e may not be as well known a technology figure as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Steve Ballmer for example, he certainly is an icon amongst operating system aficionados. Thomas Hormby submitted the following editorial to osOpinion/osViews, which looks back at JLG's career at Apple, his decision to break away and create Be, the company's eventual demise and then later how he became affiliated with Palm and PalmSource."
Rudolf has again updated his blog with some great news for some of us! He had decided to be quiet the last few feeks, as he was trying do something he himself feared that he might fail in: Making the change to DMA (Direct Memory Access) mode! As he writes it: "Well, you guessed it: it's official! I have DMA mode up and running smoothly...".
Current status: working on all pre-geforce cards supported by the 2D driver, like TNT1, TNT2 and TNT2-M64 (more will hopefully follow very soon);
using a 1Mb DMA command buffer in main memory, with MTRR-WC and real AGP transfers(!) where supported. This BTW fixes trouble on TNT1 cards using DMA mode: the slow cmd-buffer workaround needed there has gone;
First benchmarks on a original TNT2 (quake2 running timedemo 1, system is P4 2.8Ghz/533Mc FSB, AGP mode):
Quake2, 640x480x16: 53.1fps
Quake2, 640x480x32: 37.9fps
Quake2, 800x600x16: 38.7fps
Quake2, 800x600x32: 25.5fps
Quake2, 1024x768x16: 25.8fps
Quake2, 1024x768x32: 15.6fps
GLteapot @ 16bit: 360fps
GLteapot @ 32bit: 300fps
"Note please that I mentioned 400fps for the teapot in 16-bit mode earlier: I had to slowdown the driver a bit to prevent the system to not be able to do anything else but rendering! More speed will probably come as soon as we switch to Mesa6.2..."
Rudolf will come with more information regarding his driver and DMA soon.
It's that time again, time for the latest Haiku newsletter, and it's a biggie this time. In it you'll find an article about the Attack of the Warriors written by Hartmut Reh (maybe he was inspired by Star Wars?), Dependency Hell by Jonathan Thompson and to end it, last but not least. To Serve Man by Haiku's leader Michael Phipps, in another (and I quote) "of those "not directly related to Haiku" editorials. Some people really like them, others hate them."
After the much voted "Home Button" survey, where, after a EXTREMELY close start, the House button came out on top, it's time for a new survey here at ICO. This time, and since it's quite hot here today, why not use that and talk about a season that most people enjoy: Summer.
So go ahead and vote and if you have any ideas you'd like to share with the rest of us, on how to spend your Summer, leave a comment.
Pavel Kanzelsberger recently announced full HDR (High Dynamic Range) support for his Pixel32 image editor. Not only few adjustments and conversion to RGB as in other programs, but full editing capabilities for 96-bit (32-bits/channel) HDR images.
We have gotten 3 screenshots from Pavel showing the latest Pixel32 running on Zeta:
You know... I always thought that teasing was fun, so it was with that in mind that I went and got myself some screenshots, screenshots of the upcoming ZETA R1, to show you all. And of course, to tease a bit. These will show you just a bit of what you can expect from R1, I'm sure you'll enjoy them.
The shots are in German, but for those of you who don't speak it, well, an image is worth a thousand words. Click below for your voyeuristic pleasure.
yellowTAB has just announced today that they will be showing ZETA a the Linux World Expo in Tokyo, come June 1, 2 and 3, as part of the Business & Technology Track conference program. The presentation will be help by yT's CEO Bernd Korz.
The ZETA presentation is scheduled for Thursday, June 2nd, from 12:40 through 13:20, and will take place in Conference Room A2-2 and if you register online before May 19th, it's free. After that, you have to pay 5000 yen, which comes to about 37EUR or 47USD.
For the full details and some words from Bernd Korz, click the link above and read on.
