Kevin and Alex drink what Alex declares as the new Tsing Tao - Vietnam's Hue Beer. All the while, they discuss the following Digg.com stories: 25 Signs You Have Grown Up, Rogers Ruins iPhone Dreams, Steve Carell Signs For Three More Years of The Office, Nvidia says no to free drivers.
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I came here to leave a comment because Kevin proved to be painfully ignorant of anything that has to do with FLOSS (not that he is the only one) or the underlying concepts of openness but Ike and Klipsch did an exceptional job making the right points. (Ike, you write better english than the majority of anglophone users on the net. Its not even close.)
Listening to Kevin talk about open source is like seeing this beautiful girl and then when you start talking to her you realize she's a dumb as a doorknob. You'll most likely squeeze out a couple humps because youre a guy and she's hot but you know deep down that you would never introduce her to your friends (met one a few years ago who didnt know which ocean Hawaii is in, I knew the writing was on the wall.)
Intel and AMD as well as their ATI branch among others have opened
their documentation and VIA just announced this week that they were opening their documentation as well and a company like ASUS is now shipping embedded Linux on all their motherboards. I could go on a tedious list but let's just say that by the end of 2008, 20 computer manufacturers will be carrying Linux. So we will get to a point in the very near future where Nvidia will be the only binary blob in regards to video drivers.
Calling them out because they are among the only holdovers is the correct thing to do and similar companies have been called out on the show before for not doing the wrong thing. Kevin made it sound as if its a few random kids whining that they cant get access.
I dont expect Joe User to know or care about the backroom dealings to open specs but I do expect people who call themselves tech geeks to have at least a cursory understanding of what is happening and why. If they dont, I think their professional curiosity would at least get them to find someone to explain it to them.
Problem is computer geeks are less and less prevalent in tech media and what we are left with is gadget junkies. Let's face it, it doesnt matter if you know your tech like Lloyd Case because if you look like Lloyd, they usually dont want you in front of a camera.
I disagree with Kevin and Alex on this one and i think they have it mostly wrong. I like nVidia...I like the company, i like the hardware, all that...but why do they refuse to open-source their shit or care at all about linux?
1. AMD/ATI has open-sourced the specs for their cards and awesome, open-source drivers are being written based on that. Why can't nVidia?
2. The nVidia binary (non-open-source) drivers suck, but they're the only drivers where you have even a few features.
My opinion is that nVidia has 2 options, 1. Make the binary driver better which is probably not going to happen cuz it's always been in the same state as it's in now. OR 2. Open-Source some of the specs so the community can make a awesome driver and not only that, but nVidia has to do less work. My opinion is that if nVidia doesn't get their act together soon, i'm going to go back to AMD/ATI, their cards suck, but at least they care about their users.
I'm not saying we have a right to Open-Source drivers, but they should care about a growing market (Linux users) similarly to how their only real competitor does."
I think it make it easier to understand the concern of Linux users if you apply the nVidia philosophy to cars. As a matter of fact a couple of years ago we had this problem in the auto industry that the companies were claiming that the error codes coming from the engine computers were proprietary. Moreover Toyota (I think, don't shoot me if I'm wrong and it was Honda) was claiming that they had a legal right to restrict the right of OWNERS to put aftermarket products on THEIR vehicle. Imagine telling the tuner market that they are out of business. What business is it of Toyota or Ford or GM or whoever to tell me that I can't tweak the settings of MY car? How can anyone tell me what throttle body I add to my intake system? Who has the right besides the State Highway Safety Administration to tell me whether or not I put a turbo or a supercharger in my car? If you take this out to the extreme like the DMCA does in the auto aftermarket we would not even be allowed to put custom wheels on our cars. After all, who owns the car them or me?
I firmly believe that nVidia would have a competitive advantage if they gave the specs of the card to the open source community and let them hack away at the cards.
It may be a couple of decades or more by now that the sand dunes were dominated by VW, but then the racers wanted a better flow of information from the company. VW in a historic failure to stand up in principle to the company name "People's Car" drug their feet no doubt hampered by lawyers. The Baja racers turned to (ironically) Toyota who were all too happy to get a good flow of information back from racers about failure points in their engineering. We got better street cars/trucks and better racers.
"I've been watching since around ep 100, got into it cause of Kevin, then followed Alex to TRS.
I don't sense it from Alex at all, but ever since Kevin started talking about his new lady friend (2 or 3 eps back) he's been... well, no fun. What it boils down to for me is that I don't buy these 2 guys as friends at all lately, i picture them finishing an ep. and then going their separate ways. It almost seems like Kevin talks to Prager or Glenn more than Alex.
Now on TRS, you see 3 guys that, even if you told me were NOT friends, I wouldnt believe you. They consistently have to stop their own sidetracked conversations to not go over their time limit. However on Diggnation, lately, it seems like they use the stories cause the 2 guys have nothing to talk to each other about. (but it seems like Alex is trying and his bullets just bounce off of Kevin)
Thats the way i see it, correct me if anyone thinks i'm totally off base. But lately TRS has taken king of the hill for my weekly Rev3 podcast.
PS: And yeah, it seems to be coming from Kevin."
I agree 100%. You took the words out of my head :cool:
It's the way it's going to be though. Alex doesn't really give two sh*ts about diggnation, IMO. He's all about TRS of course. Oh well... guess that's the way it is
Dudes a little spoiler frame (as seen on TRS) would have been nice, when you were talking about Lost. I was blocking my ears and whistling like a crazy man trying to avoid any spoilers :).
Hell yes. I don't understand why people who are so passionate about open-software aren't heavily supporting the handful of vendors out there that are selling open-hardware and want Linux, etc. guys coding or engineering with them."
It's a long time I'm following diggnation, but I never write comments here because English isn't my first language and I don't know how much clear is what I write.
However I'll try to give some answers.
Ok I agree there are around many freetards that write annoying pro Free/Open source comments on blogs and forums. Also I know many Gnome/KDE/Linux developers that spend hours saying how cool is open source software and then they use OSX and a bunch of proprietary programs.
But about the Nvidia problem:
1) Now many Linux desktops are using compiz to have 3d effects on the desktop and the open-hardware vendors don't sell cards that let your computer to run that stuff. So it's really hard to buy a thing that doesn't do what you need even if it's "open" (actually I don't believe in open hardware business at all).
If for "open hardware vendors" you meant hardware vendors that give open source drivers I tell you that Linux users support them as soon the drivers are released. Indeed when the new ATI drivers that Novell is making will be ready people(Linux people) will start to buy ATI instead of Nvidia.
2) The "kernel developers" from Linux Foundation asked to open source the drivers, not some kids that wanted to hack them for fun. That's because the kernel developers aren't looking for a cool video card to play with, but they want that Linux works with the majority of the hardware out there. Since a lot of people now are using compiz they receive a lot of bugs reports about crashes that come from nvidia drivers and they can't do too much about it because those are drivers that can be debugged and modified only by Nvidia.
Nvidia isn't bad in giving support, but things would be better and simpler with open source drivers, that's it.
3) Linux kernel is under GPL license and some parts are under LGPL license. That license says that if you derivate a product from their kernel you have to release it under the same conditions. So that makes sure that everything that goes in the kernel is open source. The importance of being open source isn't just such some sort of mental masturbation, but it's a development metaphor that made it possible to have a stable and solid Operating System.
Nvidia bypassed the license using a technical/legal trick: they open sourced under LGPL only a layer that connects their binaries modules to the kernel. If those modules were written by the Nvidia guys looking at kernel source code they would be illegal because that would be considered a derived product. But since Nvidia says they were developed in a independent way, and probably it is true, they are perfectly legitimate from a legal point of view. But they are quite unethical because they compromise the open source development nature of the OS in a very deep side.
4) There isn't any real IP problem. Do you know how many times hardware vendors said the same thing and then they opened their source code? That's the typical answer from managers and not from the technical people that works in the company. They don't see advantages in opening so they say "no" by default. They also fear that competitors can steal ideas. But drivers made for different GPU can't be copied! It's not like seeing the source code of Photoshop. Intel and ATI have a completely different architecture and they require completely different drivers. The main intellectual property would be risky to open their chips technology but not the drivers.
5) You don't want to give the source code of your drivers? Fine! Give the kernel developers the specs of your hardware and they will write the drivers for you.
You don't want to give public open specs of your hardware? Fine! Linux foundations developers (people that work at companies like: IBM, Novell, RedHat etc.. not some unknown guys) said they will sign a "Non disclosure agreement", they will not tell anything to anybody and then they will write the drivers for Linux.
You don't want to do so?: People using Linux will probably switch to AMD/ATI that published the specs and now Novell are writing the drivers for them.
Some people say that Linux users base is very little. But it's a little percentage growing, just look in the bestsellers list at Amazon how much Ubuntu (that is a free product) is selling. 1%-3% users worldwide are millions of users. Nvidia aren't making drivers for Linux because they are nice guys, it's because it's convenient: $$$.
It's not a problem of hate or love, people want what's the best for them. I don't know why Kevin should piss off about it. Nvidia isn't a human being. People that are saying they don't like Nvidia aren't hurting a little boy. It's a big company, I don't think they will cry reading those comments. If some people aren't satisfied about something they have all the rights to say it loudly. They are customers or possible customers and if they bitch about open source drivers, maybe Nvidia one day will change idea. If everybody don't say a word things will always stay the same.
I think I might agree with this "burnout theory" people are discussing. At first I brushed it off because I'm a really big fan of Digg, what it's supposed to represent and even what Diggnation is supposed to represent. Alex is as vibrant as ever but Kevin really seems bored with it all.
I've been a fan of these guys forever, so it really worries me that the show seems to be dropping off. It was our only constant, always great show! Now that seems to have become The Totally Rad Show...
Everyone gets burnt out or over-worked from time to time. Also, I believe the guys fly back and forth between L.A. and SF weekly, which also takes it's toll."
I really think these guys could use a vacation/break. Kevin just seems really tired and not very enthusiastic over the last few episodes. And from all of our posts here, we (the audience) have noticed this too.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if they took a few weeks off of shooting Diggnation, but then came back fresh and revived. Thoughts?
