Reasoning for closed source

[deanjo]

Oh, I tought you were talking about Cup of America style of boats. Because I do work as ''metrology'' engineer, and in every industry I have seen, about as much time is spent on ''how to build the dam thing'' than on the actual conception. if not more

The boats I designed were actually "extensions" to personal water craft (seadoos as referred by some). Take a formula 1 boat or a deep V but use a PWC as a powerplant and you get the idea of the mass number of options available. Mounting brackets cost to produce about $20 to make and was installed with a rachet and a wrench but the R&D that went towards the proper mounting height, alignment, etc far exceeded the materials, mold and manpower it took to produce those.

[Nille]

are you saying that AMD finally released *ALL* the technical specs needed to create a ''perfect'' and ''complete'' driver for every card?

I cant promise this (Im not an dev) but in the past someone says that all needed Informations are out.

[MartjeB]

are you saying that AMD finally released *ALL* the technical specs needed to create a ''perfect'' and ''complete'' driver for every card?

No, not all specifications are available. Enough to create a great and very-close-to-almost-complete driver, though.

[Qaridarium]

are you saying that AMD finally released *ALL* the technical specs needed to create a ''perfect'' and ''complete'' driver for every card?

Yes because the last part UVD is not needed because you also can handle this in shader!

[Qaridarium]

small changed of subject... what about BIOS? thats old tech. Hardly anything of value

there are amd Guys working on Corebot opensource bios! ...

[Ex-Cyber]

To the business model of a hardware manufacturer, it is not a piece of hardware, it is a "product", and you as a consumer are only supposed to be interested in the "product", not the hardware. By locking up the firmware/driver code, companies can create different "products" by enabling/disabling different sets of features on what is essentially identical hardware, and then sell them at different prices to different market segments.

[howlingmadhowie]

To the business model of a hardware manufacturer, it is not a piece of hardware, it is a "product", and you as a consumer are only supposed to be interested in the "product", not the hardware. By locking up the firmware/driver code, companies can create different "products" by enabling/disabling different sets of features on what is essentially identical hardware, and then sell them at different prices to different market segments.

^^ this

and also stupid management.

and wrt bios, i find it amusing that sgi in the early 90s had a graphical bios which ran a windowing environment in 1280x1024 or higher with a point and click interface while sun has had openboot for ages with a built in programming language to allow scripting (and even debugging for the brave) which you can enter at any time (even while solaris is running) by pressing a key combination.

now it's 2010 and the average pc bios is still an ugly ncurses-style interface with extremely limited capabilities. i think a good bios would be like tinycore linux with a nice point'n'click interface for the simple things and a web browser and chat client (and emacs of course ). traditional bioses are ridiculously limited.

[Kano]

You need a gui bios? Try EFI with mouse support. Like for ASUS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvrXJ2fT_M

[curaga]

Browser and chat in bios? Yikes, I can see the headlines... "Bios flash failures up 450% from last year, users say they needed to update their Pidgin & FF"

[Blacksmith]

Browser in a bios try the ASUS P7P55-D-E_Deluxe it says it has something like that, I have (and are not likely to) tried it though.