Slashback: SGI, Exploding Dell, Gizmo

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories including: the possibility of selling OpenGL to save SGI, a denial from Dell that it knew of the overheating battery problem, an update on the Skype competitor Gizmo, and a response from the Chinese folks that reverse-engineered the Skype protocol. Read on for details.

SGI's McKenna Considers sale of OpenGL. delire writes "The Computer Business Review has an article on McKenna's strategies to salvage the flailing SGI from bankruptcy ... one of which may include selling assets like OpenGL. As Gnome developer Christian Schaller aptly put it, 'I hope this gets picked up by a friendly entity, especially if there are some patents still attached to OpenGL.'"

Dell Denies It Knew of Overheating Battery Problem. Billosaur writes "A report from ConsumerAffairs.com staties that according to inside information, Dell knew about the overheating problem in its laptop batteries for years. According to the report, an un-named insider 'leaked scores of documents to CRN, a computer industry publication, that indicated Dell knew of a dangerous battery malfunction for two years before a shocking video of an exploding laptop forced the company to recall batteries for about 22,000 laptops.' This on top of Dell's warning about lower than expected second quarter profits may cause the company some problems on Wall Street."

Gizmo: free VoIP to landlines in 60 countries. KrispyGlider writes "The more-standards-compliant Skype competitor Gizmo has launched a promotion in a bid to rapidly grow its userbase: free VoIP-to-landline calls to 60 countries, and even to mobiles in many countries. There aren't too many onerous catches to the deal Gizmo was previously covered in a Slashdot article from 2005 where it was noted that the Gizmo network has interoperability with other SIP networks, unlike Skype. However, the new version, 2.0 also has the ability to directly log in to open-source Asterisk VoIP servers, so you don't even have to use Gizmo's VoIP network any more."

When is it Okay to Reverse Engineer? Charlie Paglee writes "Last week Slashdot covered a story about a team of engineers in China reverse engineering Skype. Reaction on Slashdot was largely negative and raised many questions: Just when is it okay to reverse engineer and then innovate? The Chinese team issued a statement clarifying their actions: 'The domain of P2P innovation is limitless. We are very honored to work side by side Skype to promote P2P technologies in the VOIP industry. Our team is composed of the most talented P2P engineers in the world. We are working day and night to build a superior quality P2P network.'"

Eek!

[RyanFenton]

I hope an entity like Microsoft doesn't end up buying rights to too much of OpenGL, and thus lock it up for years. It's a superb cross-platform language for development... pretty much all there is for high-end games or similar real-time rendering when you want to develop something open source. It would pretty much suck if no further standards could safely rely on a base of OpenGL/GLSL/GL* to attract an audience and technology base in the future. DirectX isn't bad on windows... but I'd hate for that to be all there is for upcoming years.

Still... perhaps a something new from the ashes could form a more lasting standard that's better than going through major-company approval process of the OpenGL ARB. Even if DirectX continues to be the basis of future graphics card development, new open-source standards can use the same hardware hooks for better ends. I can't imagine that the graphics card manufacturers wouldn't be interested in helping a new standard form if enough of the developer community had a hunger for newer cross-platform 3d graphics library. GLSL is very nice - but perhaps a better set of standard could be developed in conjunction with future hardware in mind.

Ryan Fenton (Who has been reading through the GLSL Orange book for the past few weeks)

Dell and exploding laptops

[56ker]

Reading about Dell and the exploding batteries reminds me of the story about Ford and its Firestone tyres (oh and Cadbury's and its recall of chocolates because of salmonella). In the latter two cases both companies knew about the problem yet nothing was done (or things were just glossed over by management) until the bad PR forced them to do something. However I'm sure it's bad PR to have to do a product recall at all as it starts making people wonder as to whether your other products have major faults too.

Re:Is Gizmo peer to peer?

[mikeisme77]

I just started using Gizmo because I was looking for a VoIP service and they had one of the cheapest Call-In numbers (free if you use 775 otherwise as low as $3 a day for select area codes). It also helps that they have builds for all my operating systems (OS X, Windows, and Linux). Anyway... Gizmo supports multi-user chat with audio, but so far I haven't seen anything about video chat so I'm assuming that's not part of the deal. I don't really know about the answers to your other questions but I don't know about the decentralization issue. Voice quality is pretty good though and the interface is nice and that with the low prices are what made me choose it (at least for now) over the competitors.

Even if it's decentralized though, it's not like the packets can't be intercepted... I don't think they encrypt the packets (but I could be wrong--and even if they did the NSA would be able to encrypt it). So if you're looking at general secured communication then I recommend meeting face to face.

Re:Is Gizmo peer to peer?

[lethalp1mpslapper]

...$3 a day for select area codes.

You mean $3 a month.

Re:Is Gizmo peer to peer?

[lethalp1mpslapper]

Looks like Gizmo is now doing RTP encryption in the latest versions. Check your preferences, under "Advanced".

The catch to Gizmo

[Anonymous Coward]

If you go to Gizmo's website and read the fine print, it's not really all it seems to be. In order to make free calls, the other person has to be registered and active on Gizmo as well. It should read "free calls to other Gizmo user's numbers."

Kind of pointless if you have to make everyone you want to call register and use Gizmo.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Eek!

[MasterVidBoi]

SGI already sold most of the important OpenGL patents to Microsoft years ago, and it basically had no impact on OpenGL's development. The ARB has already announced that it is merging with the Khronos Group (which standardized OpenGL ES), and have taken the name and trademark with them. Basically, the OpenGL ARB have cut themselves loose from SGI, and SGI's future actions won't have any real impact on the development of the standard.

About the only part of OpenGL that SGI can sell at this point is perhaps their implementations (which would be specific to SGI hardware). And just about everyone who wants one of those already has one.

there is also ...

[dominic.laporte]

another open source client [openwengo.com] out there that is way better for me. it also based on mozilla .. yay !

OpenGL - what is there to sell?

[Animats]

SGI doesn't have any valuable rights in OpenGL. The specification is a public document. The reference implementation is open source. You can't copyright an API (SCO and Microsoft have both tried and failed). There's a charge to use the OpenGL trademark in a closed-source implementation [sgi.com], and that's it.

SGI's higher level APIs, like Inventor and Performer, have little if any resale value.