Choices are getting slightly better with some free and/or inexpensive modeling tools.
The top of my list has to be Blender Creator which is a free (as in beer but not speech) and sports a very impressive features list.
OpenGL Renderer
Standard Polygon Primitive modeling (w/lattices etc)
Bez Curves
Nurbs
Multi texturing (up to 16 per object)
Texture UV Mapping
Environment Mapping
Bump Mapping
Spec Mapping
Catmull Clark Surfaces for nicely subdivding meshes
Bones and Armature system for character animation
Particle Effects
Global Illumination with radiosity capabilities
Super fast renderer
Very very low system requirements and compact size
Python Plugin Interface for extending Blender
Large and enthusiastic user base eager to answer questions
...and lots of other stuff I'm forgetting
speed bumps for Blender are as follows:
Absolutely bizarre (but incredibly efficient once you learn it) user interface
Limited import and export capabilities (import/export of DXF and VRML) although I hear that improving this area is their 'top priority' to fix
So if after trying a few of the tutorials you decide you like Blender do yourself a favor and pick up the Official Blender Guide. Chances are your local "mega mart type book store" has a copy and you'll save yourself tons of aggravation and time.
Course if you're just into mods for quake type games etc then you should try Milkshape ($20 last time I checked) but its windows only and I didn't particularly like the interface. One the bright side it can import/export just about any kind of format you can come up with.
Discreet has some freebie as well called Gmax which I've never tried mostly cos I despise 3DS' UI. Its supposedly a character designer / level editor for the mod community to play around with.
I've always wondered why Slackware decided to invent their own packaging system instead of using Ports from BSD. Ports is the most awesome package management tool I've used. You get autodep handling/download install etc and you get that just compiled home brewed smell that you don't get with binary releases like DEBs and RPMs which slack and BSD users tend to like so much.;) As I understand it Ports has already been ported to Linux so it would just be a matter of getting the specific ports together for slack. Slack and BSD are both very unixlike and appeal to largely the same type of crowd so it seems logical that they would feed off of one another's efforts when possible.
Why are we even talking about this guy anymore? Sure its nostalgic to talk about the good ole days but after playing Ultima 9 I was cured of any nostalgia I once had for the man's games. Has anyone heard any recent interviews with him recently? The guy is a SUIT! A fruity suit I grant you but a suit none the less. All the interviews I've seen or read from him lately make it seem like he cares less about the games he creates and more about the business aspect of creating games. Sure the guy needs to have some business accumen to run a company but the majority of the time LB just goes on and on about business matters. Maybe I'm just being too hard on the guy but I don't think so. I think it started somewhere around Ultima 6 but LB has somehow lost his touch for creating great games and wonderful stories. Please don't bring up UO in his defense either. While it was a good game to start inane hacks that were supposed to solve problems, tons of broken promises, and cheaters have all but ruined the game. Perhaps he will be revitalized with Tabula Rasa but listening to his latest interviews I'm not hopeful.
Perhaps the Mozilla UI users could be imported by a tool that translates them to a plaform-specific format. It doesn't even have to do a perfect job, it just has to do a good enough job so that a developer can tweak the final results to look native on the target platform.
I think the API you're looking for is wxWindows. If you don't know what wxWindows is here is an explanation from the web site.
"What is wxWindows? wxWindows gives you a single, easy-to-use API for writing GUI applications on multiple platforms. Link with the appropriate library for your platform (Windows/Unix/Mac)and compiler (almost any popular C++ compiler), and your application will adopt the look and feel appropriate to that platform. On top of great GUI functionality, wxWindows gives you: online help, network programming, streams, clipboard and drag and drop, multithreading, image loading and saving in a variety of popular formats, database support, HTML viewing and printing, and much much more."
A wxWindows version wrapping Gecko would kick some serious butt and make a slim standards compliant browser available for all platforms. I'm not sure how easy this would be since I don't know a lot about Moz's guts but it would still be ripping.
Let's be honest with ourselves here... NASA is not as costly as it is because of the innovations it comes up with but rather because at its heart NASA is a political beast. I give you the Space Shuttle as evidence. This 30 year old technology costs about $470 millon dollars to launch one shuttle, one time. That cost skyrockets to 1.7 BILLON dollars if you factor in R&D (although R&D costs are spread out over subsequent missions). There are _far_ more cost effective means of getting things into space so why doesn't NASA use them? Easy... The shuttle program is popular and very well known by the public.
Does anyone else remember all the savings that we were told were going to be realized because of the shuttle's ability to reuse it's solid rocket boosters and the orbiter? Unfortunately, quite the inverse occurred. Costs ballooned and NASA didn't even blink. In fact until relatively recently (the past 10 years or so) NASA hasn't even seriously tried to find a replacement for the aging shuttle fleet. In the eyes of congress NASA is just another special interest looking for their turn at the budgetary feeding trough and quite frankly that's how NASA acts. This makes NASA do things that doesn't make sense economically but make lots of sense politically. While this does explain their behaivor it does not change the fact that NASA is wasteful with the money that they are given. NASA does cool geeky stuff and has come up with a lot of innovations but given the amount of cash they're given one would think they could do more. Looking at where we are technologically and watching how NASA burns through cash I'd say there is a pretty compelling arguement for pushing efforts for privatized space flight even harder than we have until now.
...in an open source project with a task as broad as "make an MMORPG", how do you guys decide what KIND of MMORPG to devote your energies to? Fantasy? Sci-Fi? Historical? Western? Horror? Noir? There are so many options.
My question is, what is the decision-making process you folks go through to get all the development troops working on the same code, when some of them want to code in Elves and others want to code in Stormtroopers? And how is/was the Elves vs Stormtroopers decision reached?
Our eventual goal is that WorldForge will be easy enough to use that a person will be able to easily create their own games with only a modicum of technical expertise.
If you'd like to see some ideas for games that we're thinking about making then you should head over to:
The site is a little dated and the games we make could change but the games listed as planned will give you a good idea about the things we're looking at doing.
This is acually our new site so a lot of content hasn't been moved over yet but there is a newb guide there (its more recent than what's on worldforge.org).
I would point you to MUDs which have been around and open source for many many years yet cheating in the mature MUDs are quite low. Generally things are massively exploited at the beginning and then the holes are closed. I suspect WorldForge will be much the same way.
This way when MS is crushed under Tux's iron heel there can be no cries from the MS fanboy's that the reason MS fell is because of government intervention. MS will have fallen because Linux competed with them and cleaned their clock.
In the end this will make our victory all the more sweet.
"One thing that has been worth looking forward to is the addition of a thermal diode inside the core of the AXP CPU.This will for allow you to read the core temperature when the right hardware and software are present. You might have seen a famous hardware site make the statement on a video recently that even while their Palomino has a thermal diode in place, it burned up anyway when they removed the heatsink. Well, this was no fault of the AMD CPU, just the fault of the misinformed operator. You must have a board that has the ability to utilize the diode and also have the proper BIOS to facilitate a system shutdown in a high core temperature situation. Of course, making it work cooler now allows us to speed it up and make it work hotter later!"
Tom's is usually pretty accurate but he too has had some knocks on his credibility from time to time. I think the best thing we can take from this whole incident is never take any site's opinion as gospel. Always read several site reviews before making a decision about a product.
However, there are some areas I think the model works less well in. For instance, game development is hard under an open source model. Sure, there are some great games for Linux, but they tend to be simpler and shorter. Modern mainstream games are huge and involve a lot of effort by non-programmers. It's like the difference between small independant films and big studio productions.
Its very interesting that you mention games as that's one of the areas which I'm currently working on in the OS community. Getting good media for a project has always been the major sticking point for OS (and lone wolf) game developers. This is exactly why Worldforge is trying to put together a Free Media Repository. It's a place where artists can place their work and it can be used by game designers. Most of the content is under the GFDL and the GPL (although we do allow for 'less free' licenses). Worldforge has always had _tons_ of developers but artists are harder to come by. We have been lucky in having some really good artists in WorldForge so hopefully we can help some other projects bootstrap up with our artwork.:-)
As much as we don't like it, every time someone spends money on a Windows distro, some of that money is channelled back into developing a better windows. Linux quite simply does not have that advantage; and as much as we would like it to, the Open Source/Free software development system just isn't as effective as the closed source/marketed software approach.
I think you're comparing apples to oranges here. You say that Linux doesn't have the advantage of money flowing to it like proprietary software vendors but money isn't the engine that drives OSS development. Money is nice in that it allows you more freedom and rewards people for their hard work but Linux has been proving for years that you don't need money to achieve "world domination.";-) What drives OS are users who have a need and they decide to contribute to an already established program or write a new app. Judging from Linux's progress I would say that in areas that can achieve a critical mass of developers (kernel, web browsers, GUIs etc) OS development outpaces what proprietary vendors can achieve over time.
Its hard to believe how fast our little penguin is growing up before our very eyes...:-)
I think you missed the main thrust of my arguement. Apple doesn't allow for consumer choice and has very little flexibility in their configurations. While this makes maintaining their OS and Apps a lot easier consumers are looking at PCs where they have _tons_ of choices.
Consumers are very fickle things... If two products are roughly equivilant and you don't provide very many choices and someone else does you're toast.
I assume you're quoting the iMac specs so let's look at that. I will get Firewire with my computer but I can't get something as basic as a floppy drive from the factory? What if I want a geForce 2 with my iMac? What if my computing needs demand tons of CPU but very little RAM? What if the inverse is true? Is that something that I can change? No... If one of the major automobile co.'s only offered two lines of cars they would be screwed. Hence we see Apple's position...
Apple provides nice vanilla setups that would suit a number of people but they refuse to even try to compete the loads of options that exist in the x86 world. This is one reason why Apple has basically been banished from the overwhelming majority of corp. America desktops and also why they're only a niche desktop player.
Netscape implemented this long before MS. MS simply bought the code (Mosaic IIRC) upon which IE is based. As a matter of fact MS fought NS tooth and nail to _keep_ browsers from becoming a platform as MS saw this as a threat to their OS dominance.
the business collaboration platform (Office+Outlook+Exchange Server)
Lotus has been there and basically defined this idea in the late eighties/very early nineties.
When you are looking to get all that stuff included and have a complete system that can do a lot of things out of the box, you will pay less in the end and do more with a Mac. If you are looking for a bare-bones system to run Linux, then yes, Macs look expensive.
Herein lies my objections to buying a Mac. Apple forces you to buy the kitchen sink in addition to their very limited set of hardware offerings. Perhaps I don't want a bare bones system but I don't want want the kitchen sink either. Why does Apple force me to buy all these additional peices? Most people want to buy the system that meets their needs and are unwilling to pay for what they think are extraneous features. Cos that's how Apple pads their bottom line of course! Tacking on all those extras that most people don't use adds to Apples bottom line and takes money needlessly out of my pocket. No thanks.
Saying that "Macs are expensive", though... it doesn't take into account "value" as opposed to just "sticker price".
You say that Macs are a good value but for most people they are not. In order for a computer to be a good value it must provide me with precisely the correct amount of utility. Apple adds lots of gadgets that while they may have a certain coolness factor the also add a lot to the price tag. It would be fair to say that Macs charge a reasonable price for the number of features that their computers have but to say that they're a good value isn't quite true in my eyes. As I stated earlier most people don't want or need all the extra features that Apple won't allow you to strip off. Until Apple opens their hardware offerings and making their machines much more configurable they are and most likely will remain be a niche player.
microsoft is continuing to develop it's products - it's not standing still, so oss will always play catchup.
This is untrue for a couple of reasons...
1) Up until now a great deal of the work that OSS has been doing has been mostly catch up and implementing features that have been around in other OSes for quite some time. This is far easier (and faster) than implementing things which aren't well understood.
2) Look at the Linux desktop situation 3 years ago. Look at the desktop situation now (KDE for example).
Look at Windows 98... Look at Windows 2000 SP2...
In 1995 there was no unified Linux desktop. Look at us now.
Look at Windows 95. Look at Windows 2000 sp2. Some very nice enhancements? yes.. but by no means revolutionary...
Tell me again how we'll never catch MS?
free != free: there's still support. who do you call when you can't get staroffice to stop crashing? microsoft will always have much better (and more expenseive, but that's their game) support than some oss alternative. the support business model is causing small oss vendors to crater left and right.
That's some old FUD you have there. You might want to surf the web a bit and find some new FUD!:D Have you ever called MS support? Its pure hell... Its like calling my grandmother for tech support. Not a good idea... Based on my experiences between the two (and I've had a good bit from each) I'd sat Red Hat's support is many orders of magnitude better.
most importantly: microsoft office stuff will
not be unthroned simply because too many people rely on it. people at my office have been dumbed down to the point where they send email with.doc attachments, but _everybody_ does it. given that, unless the open alternative is 100% compatible, no chance of them crushing microsoft office.
This is your only point that carries any weight. It is true that MS' proprietary file formats are a barrier to entry. It is however not an insurmountable one. Making good.doc coversion programs is difficult but it isn't impossible. I've been _very_ impressed with Star Office's.doc filters. I've loaded some very complex word documents and they've all loaded flawlessly. I'd say we're well on our way to dethroning MS Office.
I wonder if they even realize that they're slitting their own throats? They can either climb aboard with everyone else on the train or they can shake their fist from the station. Either way this train is leaving the station and music sharing over the internet will continue unabated.
The most interesting thing about this whole "We'll DoS'em to the stone age!" statement is not so much what they said but what is implied. The RIAA is basically admitting that they can't sue _everyone_ that they need to in order to shut down file sharing services. They can't shut down the services in a litigious manner so they're going to try another route (DoS attacks). The RIAA may have bucket loads of money but their cash reserves are not without end and lawyers don't come cheap. The RIAA must see this and is exploring other avenues.
The only way for the RIAA to benefit from the internet music sharing phenomenon is if they stop trying to be the phone company and monopolize the market. If they just charged everyone a nominal fee for downloading the music that they _don't_ own then they'd be raking in the cash. Instead they spend all of their time, money and resources suing anyone who _dares_ oppose them.
The RIAA is becoming more desperate with their latest actions. It's about time people said no to thugs like the RIAA and the Harry Fox agency who attack our fair use rights at every corner. Now, if we could only come up with a file sharing system to share OLGA tablature then we'd really be on to something!
I wonder if everyone would be yucking it up and joking so much if this letter was sent to the FSF? I dislike MS as much as the next geek but making wise cracks about this is pretty low and tasteless. I wonder if you would mind telling that joke in front of the affected people's familes? If the thought of that makes you uncomfortable then you know you shouldn't say it in the first place. If it doesn't bother you then any words would be air better used elsewhere than talking to you...
-Pato
Re:Q: Why should an IE user switch?
on
Mozilla 0.9.5
·
· Score: 1
I can only speak about Mozilla so here's my case...
How about tabbed windows and configurable gesture control (thanks Opera!) none of which IE has! Gesture control just rocks so much! After using gesture controls it becomes so natural that I get frustrated when I subconsciously try using gestures in other apps where it's not supported.;-) Add in better adherence to standards (esp compared to IE6), a better security model, far greater flexibility/configurability, identical (to this user on my boxen) browsing speeds/start up times (if you use quicklaunch) and you have a combination that wipes the floor with IE. Really about the only reason I can see to keep using IE6 are crappy webmasters who code pages IE only.
All too often 2d hardware acceleration doesn't buy you speed compensatory to the level of effort that is required to maintain it in your program. Maintaining something like this would be a nightmare to put it mildly. Don't look for it anytime soon... =)
"The Afghan Mujahedin are the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers of America." Ronald Reagan, March 2000.
I would have hoped you'd have better sense that to pick random quotes from a guy who's been in the advanced stages of Alzheimers for some time now. Apparently your petty political pot shots take precedence over your sense of good taste (or lack thereof). The guy is dying isn't that enough for you... Very classy Roger... Veeerrry classy...
Slashdot Mirror
Just an additonal note that Blender is also available for OS X now! :-)
Choices are getting slightly better with some free and/or inexpensive modeling tools.
The top of my list has to be Blender Creator which is a free (as in beer but not speech) and sports a very impressive features list.
OpenGL Renderer
Standard Polygon Primitive modeling (w/lattices etc)
Bez Curves
Nurbs
Multi texturing (up to 16 per object)
Texture UV Mapping
Environment Mapping
Bump Mapping
Spec Mapping
Catmull Clark Surfaces for nicely subdivding meshes
Bones and Armature system for character animation
Particle Effects
Global Illumination with radiosity capabilities
Super fast renderer
Very very low system requirements and compact size
Python Plugin Interface for extending Blender
Large and enthusiastic user base eager to answer questions
...and lots of other stuff I'm forgetting
speed bumps for Blender are as follows:
Absolutely bizarre (but incredibly efficient once you learn it) user interface
Limited import and export capabilities (import/export of DXF and VRML) although I hear that improving this area is their 'top priority' to fix
So if after trying a few of the tutorials you decide you like Blender do yourself a favor and pick up the Official Blender Guide. Chances are your local "mega mart type book store" has a copy and you'll save yourself tons of aggravation and time.
Course if you're just into mods for quake type games etc then you should try Milkshape ($20 last time I checked) but its windows only and I didn't particularly like the interface. One the bright side it can import/export just about any kind of format you can come up with.
Discreet has some freebie as well called Gmax which I've never tried mostly cos I despise 3DS' UI. Its supposedly a character designer / level editor for the mod community to play around with.
I've always wondered why Slackware decided to invent their own packaging system instead of using Ports from BSD. Ports is the most awesome package management tool I've used. You get autodep handling/download install etc and you get that just compiled home brewed smell that you don't get with binary releases like DEBs and RPMs which slack and BSD users tend to like so much. ;) As I understand it Ports has already been ported to Linux so it would just be a matter of getting the specific ports together for slack. Slack and BSD are both very unixlike and appeal to largely the same type of crowd so it seems logical that they would feed off of one another's efforts when possible.
Why are we even talking about this guy anymore? Sure its nostalgic to talk about the good ole days but after playing Ultima 9 I was cured of any nostalgia I once had for the man's games. Has anyone heard any recent interviews with him recently? The guy is a SUIT! A fruity suit I grant you but a suit none the less. All the interviews I've seen or read from him lately make it seem like he cares less about the games he creates and more about the business aspect of creating games. Sure the guy needs to have some business accumen to run a company but the majority of the time LB just goes on and on about business matters. Maybe I'm just being too hard on the guy but I don't think so. I think it started somewhere around Ultima 6 but LB has somehow lost his touch for creating great games and wonderful stories. Please don't bring up UO in his defense either. While it was a good game to start inane hacks that were supposed to solve problems, tons of broken promises, and cheaters have all but ruined the game. Perhaps he will be revitalized with Tabula Rasa but listening to his latest interviews I'm not hopeful.
Perhaps the Mozilla UI users could be imported by a tool that translates them to a plaform-specific format. It doesn't even have to do a perfect job, it just has to do a good enough job so that a developer can tweak the final results to look native on the target platform.
I think the API you're looking for is wxWindows. If you don't know what wxWindows is here is an explanation from the web site.
"What is wxWindows? wxWindows gives you a single, easy-to-use API for writing GUI applications on multiple platforms. Link with the appropriate library for your platform (Windows/Unix/Mac)and compiler (almost any popular C++ compiler), and your application will adopt the look and feel appropriate to that platform. On top of great GUI functionality, wxWindows gives you: online help, network programming, streams, clipboard and drag and drop, multithreading, image loading and saving in a variety of popular formats, database support, HTML viewing and printing, and much much more."
A wxWindows version wrapping Gecko would kick some serious butt and make a slim standards compliant browser available for all platforms. I'm not sure how easy this would be since I don't know a lot about Moz's guts but it would still be ripping.
heh, if i could run konqueror or galeon on my OSX or 2K/XP boxes i would never run/miss IE.
I don't know about the OSX world but for your Win32 needs there is always k-meleon which is basically a Win32 Galeon type browser based on Gecko.
Let's be honest with ourselves here... NASA is not as costly as it is because of the innovations it comes up with but rather because at its heart NASA is a political beast. I give you the Space Shuttle as evidence. This 30 year old technology costs about $470 millon dollars to launch one shuttle, one time. That cost skyrockets to 1.7 BILLON dollars if you factor in R&D (although R&D costs are spread out over subsequent missions). There are _far_ more cost effective means of getting things into space so why doesn't NASA use them? Easy... The shuttle program is popular and very well known by the public.
Does anyone else remember all the savings that we were told were going to be realized because of the shuttle's ability to reuse it's solid rocket boosters and the orbiter? Unfortunately, quite the inverse occurred. Costs ballooned and NASA didn't even blink. In fact until relatively recently (the past 10 years or so) NASA hasn't even seriously tried to find a replacement for the aging shuttle fleet. In the eyes of congress NASA is just another special interest looking for their turn at the budgetary feeding trough and quite frankly that's how NASA acts. This makes NASA do things that doesn't make sense economically but make lots of sense politically. While this does explain their behaivor it does not change the fact that NASA is wasteful with the money that they are given. NASA does cool geeky stuff and has come up with a lot of innovations but given the amount of cash they're given one would think they could do more. Looking at where we are technologically and watching how NASA burns through cash I'd say there is a pretty compelling arguement for pushing efforts for privatized space flight even harder than we have until now.
...in an open source project with a task as broad as "make an MMORPG", how do you guys decide what KIND of MMORPG to devote your energies to? Fantasy? Sci-Fi? Historical? Western? Horror? Noir? There are so many options.
:-)
. cg i/18
My question is, what is the decision-making process you folks go through to get all the development troops working on the same code, when some of them want to code in Elves and others want to code in Stormtroopers? And how is/was the Elves vs Stormtroopers decision reached?
Generally this sort of thing is decided in a similar way that it happens in commercial games. A document (an example for Acorn is here) is written which contains all of the basic elements which are to be included in a game. This document is submitted for peer review and the details are hashed out then. Of course there is flexibility in this document and if a person can convince the project head to include it then the idea is adopted and implemented. If the person can't convince the project head then they're free to implement their own version of the game with the feature that they desire. Therein lies the beauty of Open Source/Free Software. If you don't like something then you're free to change it!
Our eventual goal is that WorldForge will be easy enough to use that a person will be able to easily create their own games with only a modicum of technical expertise.
If you'd like to see some ideas for games that we're thinking about making then you should head over to:
http://www.neptune.net/~bryce/Wiki/wf_plan/main
The site is a little dated and the games we make could change but the games listed as planned will give you a good idea about the things we're looking at doing.
This is acually our new site so a lot of content hasn't been moved over yet but there is a newb guide there (its more recent than what's on worldforge.org).
d e/
http://moria.mit.edu:8080/wf/project/newbie_gui
I would point you to MUDs which have been around and open source for many many years yet cheating in the mature MUDs are quite low. Generally things are massively exploited at the beginning and then the holes are closed. I suspect WorldForge will be much the same way.
-Pato
This way when MS is crushed under Tux's iron heel there can be no cries from the MS fanboy's that the reason MS fell is because of government intervention. MS will have fallen because Linux competed with them and cleaned their clock.
In the end this will make our victory all the more sweet.
From an earlier HardOCP article...
"One thing that has been worth looking forward to is the addition of a thermal diode inside the core of the AXP CPU.This will for allow you to read the core temperature when the right hardware and software are present. You might have seen a famous hardware site make the statement on a video recently that even while their Palomino has a thermal diode in place, it burned up anyway when they removed the heatsink. Well, this was no fault of the AMD CPU, just the fault of the misinformed operator. You must have a board that has the ability to utilize the diode and also have the proper BIOS to facilitate a system shutdown in a high core temperature situation. Of course, making it work cooler now allows us to speed it up and make it work hotter later!"
Tom's is usually pretty accurate but he too has had some knocks on his credibility from time to time. I think the best thing we can take from this whole incident is never take any site's opinion as gospel. Always read several site reviews before making a decision about a product.
However, there are some areas I think the model works less well in. For instance, game development is hard under an open source model. Sure, there are some great games for Linux, but they tend to be simpler and shorter. Modern mainstream games are huge and involve a lot of effort by non-programmers. It's like the difference between small independant films and big studio productions.
:-)
Its very interesting that you mention games as that's one of the areas which I'm currently working on in the OS community. Getting good media for a project has always been the major sticking point for OS (and lone wolf) game developers. This is exactly why Worldforge is trying to put together a Free Media Repository. It's a place where artists can place their work and it can be used by game designers. Most of the content is under the GFDL and the GPL (although we do allow for 'less free' licenses). Worldforge has always had _tons_ of developers but artists are harder to come by. We have been lucky in having some really good artists in WorldForge so hopefully we can help some other projects bootstrap up with our artwork.
As much as we don't like it, every time someone spends money on a Windows distro, some of that money is channelled back into developing a better windows. Linux quite simply does not have that advantage; and as much as we would like it to, the Open Source/Free software development system just isn't as effective as the closed source/marketed software approach.
;-) What drives OS are users who have a need and they decide to contribute to an already established program or write a new app. Judging from Linux's progress I would say that in areas that can achieve a critical mass of developers (kernel, web browsers, GUIs etc) OS development outpaces what proprietary vendors can achieve over time.
:-)
I think you're comparing apples to oranges here. You say that Linux doesn't have the advantage of money flowing to it like proprietary software vendors but money isn't the engine that drives OSS development. Money is nice in that it allows you more freedom and rewards people for their hard work but Linux has been proving for years that you don't need money to achieve "world domination."
Its hard to believe how fast our little penguin is growing up before our very eyes...
I think you missed the main thrust of my arguement. Apple doesn't allow for consumer choice and has very little flexibility in their configurations. While this makes maintaining their OS and Apps a lot easier consumers are looking at PCs where they have _tons_ of choices.
Consumers are very fickle things... If two products are roughly equivilant and you don't provide very many choices and someone else does you're toast.
I assume you're quoting the iMac specs so let's look at that. I will get Firewire with my computer but I can't get something as basic as a floppy drive from the factory? What if I want a geForce 2 with my iMac? What if my computing needs demand tons of CPU but very little RAM? What if the inverse is true? Is that something that I can change? No... If one of the major automobile co.'s only offered two lines of cars they would be screwed. Hence we see Apple's position...
Apple provides nice vanilla setups that would suit a number of people but they refuse to even try to compete the loads of options that exist in the x86 world. This is one reason why Apple has basically been banished from the overwhelming majority of corp. America desktops and also why they're only a niche desktop player.
SOAP.
True enough...
the Internet browser platform
Netscape implemented this long before MS. MS simply bought the code (Mosaic IIRC) upon which IE is based. As a matter of fact MS fought NS tooth and nail to _keep_ browsers from becoming a platform as MS saw this as a threat to their OS dominance.
the business collaboration platform (Office+Outlook+Exchange Server)
Lotus has been there and basically defined this idea in the late eighties/very early nineties.
When you are looking to get all that stuff included and have a complete system that can do a lot of things out of the box, you will pay less in the end and do more with a Mac. If you are looking for a bare-bones system to run Linux, then yes, Macs look expensive.
... it doesn't take into account "value" as opposed to just "sticker price".
Herein lies my objections to buying a Mac. Apple forces you to buy the kitchen sink in addition to their very limited set of hardware offerings. Perhaps I don't want a bare bones system but I don't want want the kitchen sink either. Why does Apple force me to buy all these additional peices? Most people want to buy the system that meets their needs and are unwilling to pay for what they think are extraneous features. Cos that's how Apple pads their bottom line of course! Tacking on all those extras that most people don't use adds to Apples bottom line and takes money needlessly out of my pocket. No thanks.
Saying that "Macs are expensive", though
You say that Macs are a good value but for most people they are not. In order for a computer to be a good value it must provide me with precisely the correct amount of utility. Apple adds lots of gadgets that while they may have a certain coolness factor the also add a lot to the price tag. It would be fair to say that Macs charge a reasonable price for the number of features that their computers have but to say that they're a good value isn't quite true in my eyes. As I stated earlier most people don't want or need all the extra features that Apple won't allow you to strip off. Until Apple opens their hardware offerings and making their machines much more configurable they are and most likely will remain be a niche player.
microsoft is continuing to develop it's products - it's not standing still, so oss will always play catchup.
:D Have you ever called MS support? Its pure hell... Its like calling my grandmother for tech support. Not a good idea... Based on my experiences between the two (and I've had a good bit from each) I'd sat Red Hat's support is many orders of magnitude better.
.doc attachments, but _everybody_ does it. given that, unless the open alternative is 100% compatible, no chance of them crushing microsoft office.
.doc coversion programs is difficult but it isn't impossible. I've been _very_ impressed with Star Office's .doc filters. I've loaded some very complex word documents and they've all loaded flawlessly. I'd say we're well on our way to dethroning MS Office.
This is untrue for a couple of reasons...
1) Up until now a great deal of the work that OSS has been doing has been mostly catch up and implementing features that have been around in other OSes for quite some time. This is far easier (and faster) than implementing things which aren't well understood.
2) Look at the Linux desktop situation 3 years ago. Look at the desktop situation now (KDE for example).
Look at Windows 98... Look at Windows 2000 SP2...
In 1995 there was no unified Linux desktop. Look at us now.
Look at Windows 95. Look at Windows 2000 sp2. Some very nice enhancements? yes.. but by no means revolutionary...
Tell me again how we'll never catch MS?
free != free: there's still support. who do you call when you can't get staroffice to stop crashing? microsoft will always have much better (and more expenseive, but that's their game) support than some oss alternative. the support business model is causing small oss vendors to crater left and right.
That's some old FUD you have there. You might want to surf the web a bit and find some new FUD!
most importantly: microsoft office stuff will
not be unthroned simply because too many people rely on it. people at my office have been dumbed down to the point where they send email with
This is your only point that carries any weight. It is true that MS' proprietary file formats are a barrier to entry. It is however not an insurmountable one. Making good
This is a very exciting time for *nix desktops!
... the prosecution rests your honor ...
I wonder if they even realize that they're slitting their own throats? They can either climb aboard with everyone else on the train or they can shake their fist from the station. Either way this train is leaving the station and music sharing over the internet will continue unabated.
The most interesting thing about this whole "We'll DoS'em to the stone age!" statement is not so much what they said but what is implied. The RIAA is basically admitting that they can't sue _everyone_ that they need to in order to shut down file sharing services. They can't shut down the services in a litigious manner so they're going to try another route (DoS attacks). The RIAA may have bucket loads of money but their cash reserves are not without end and lawyers don't come cheap. The RIAA must see this and is exploring other avenues.
The only way for the RIAA to benefit from the internet music sharing phenomenon is if they stop trying to be the phone company and monopolize the market. If they just charged everyone a nominal fee for downloading the music that they _don't_ own then they'd be raking in the cash. Instead they spend all of their time, money and resources suing anyone who _dares_ oppose them.
The RIAA is becoming more desperate with their latest actions. It's about time people said no to thugs like the RIAA and the Harry Fox agency who attack our fair use rights at every corner. Now, if we could only come up with a file sharing system to share OLGA tablature then we'd really be on to something!
I wonder if everyone would be yucking it up and joking so much if this letter was sent to the FSF? I dislike MS as much as the next geek but making wise cracks about this is pretty low and tasteless. I wonder if you would mind telling that joke in front of the affected people's familes? If the thought of that makes you uncomfortable then you know you shouldn't say it in the first place. If it doesn't bother you then any words would be air better used elsewhere than talking to you...
-Pato
I can only speak about Mozilla so here's my case...
;-) Add in better adherence to standards (esp compared to IE6), a better security model, far greater flexibility/configurability, identical (to this user on my boxen) browsing speeds/start up times (if you use quicklaunch) and you have a combination that wipes the floor with IE. Really about the only reason I can see to keep using IE6 are crappy webmasters who code pages IE only.
How about tabbed windows and configurable gesture control (thanks Opera!) none of which IE has! Gesture control just rocks so much! After using gesture controls it becomes so natural that I get frustrated when I subconsciously try using gestures in other apps where it's not supported.
All too often 2d hardware acceleration doesn't buy you speed compensatory to the level of effort that is required to maintain it in your program. Maintaining something like this would be a nightmare to put it mildly. Don't look for it anytime soon... =)
I would have hoped you'd have better sense that to pick random quotes from a guy who's been in the advanced stages of Alzheimers for some time now. Apparently your petty political pot shots take precedence over your sense of good taste (or lack thereof). The guy is dying isn't that enough for you... Very classy Roger... Veeerrry classy...