"The rest of us???". As we Irish say, speak for your fucking self, dickhead.
Personally, I don't care about anyone's "IP" "rights", including my own:
Information does not exist independent of its impression on a substrate. Your "intellectual property rights" amount to a demand for control over my PHYSICAL property of the substrate. I take my physical property rights to be much more important than your "intellectual property rights", which amount to government interference with my physical control of my physical property - I would not presume to tell you what to do with your substrate and any associated information.
As to your straw-men about drug manufacture: Don't be absurd. First off, you have no idea what would happen without IP, as you don't have a parallel earth on which to experiment. I reckon drugs would still be developed, since there'd still be a market for them. The business might become a bit more cutthroat, and industrial espionage a little more "fun", but people would still want drugs, would still be willing to pay for drugs, and I would bet drugs would still be manufactured.
Likewise, software would still be developed. The vast majority of software is written to serve a purpose inside some organisation, the commercial boxed-product software world is a tiny fraction of the real market, and wouldn't really be missed. If anything, programmers would be richer, since we can actually write new code, and would be free to reuse any and all old code as we saw fit, as opposed to the current situation where asshole "businessmen" who, thanks to "IP" laws they paid to be passed, just sit around getting richer and exploiting naive and socially unaware geeks (I've copped on to their little game, and am quitting my job - I might go get a business degree and use their suit-fu against them...)
This pisses me off too, I've ranted about it for years, there's now quite a few well-written X11 applications that respect DPI settings sufficiently to be pleasant at high DPI, including most KDE/QT applications, thanks to XRENDER - but there's no displays to be had!
I just wish I could get a 15"-17" 1600x1200 or above LCD monitor that didn't have a non-upgradeable graphics card and PC hanging out of it (laptop) instead of a useful input port. But you just can't buy them as standalone desktop units, at any price (at least from anywhere I've called in Ireland, UK and Germany).
I'm pretty close to just buying a bigger (and hence lower DPI) LCD screen, and just sitting further away from it, but it's a waste of space.
BTW, you can manually set your physical display size with DisplaySize x-millimetres y-millimetres in the "Monitor" section of your XF86Config file
Of course there couldn't be a GPL, but that's got nothing to do with an author receiving credit for their work: Don't confuse copyrights and what lawyers call author's "moral rights" just because hollywood propaganda or the law of the country you live in does.
For example, Irish or French law makes the distinction and recognises both as separate legal concepts. Copyright is a restriction on copying, author's moral rights include things like a right to be recognised as the author of a work.
Compensation would still be forthcoming - anyone who needs new and original code written, and can't write code, would be a source.
C128: Was definitely best as a development platform for the C64. You're right, the "asembler" was just a monitor, on a par with MSDOS "debug", I guess. Was enough for me, though, and the fact it therefore preserved complete symmetry between assembly and disassembly certainly helped me, as I never kept a "source" copy of my code, just blatted the binary to #8. Looking back on it, not necessarily the most sane way ever to code - doubt I could do it now.
BASIC: The C64 BASIC 2.0 really sucked, even in comparison to its contemporaries. Simon's BASIC and C128 BASIC 7.0 were much nicer, but the BBC micro's basic was head-and-shoulders above the lot. I was always fascinated by the FORTH Jupiter Ace, though.
I did migrate to an Amiga 2000 - just a bit of a step up from the C128:-)
Well, the main problems would probably be that for full C64 emulation, you need a display bigger than the nominal 320x200 resolution, since one of the earliest "hacks" games programmers used was sprites-in-the-borders. So you'd need a biggish lcd screen.
Alkso, a lot of programs relied on the precise timing of various system components - if you don't emulate the VIC and SID chips very carefully, a lot of games barf. This means you need a much more powerful computer to emulate the C64 accurately than you might first think - my zaurus handheld struggles with the C64, but has no problem with the zx-spectrum.
If you want VICE, an excellent, essentially perfect, C64 (and C128, and some other CBM-machines) emulator, then it's here.
I still use it about once a week when I feel nostalgic - while the graphics of C64 games totally suck, some of them still have better gameplay in my opinion than many of today's.
Plus there's some games I had in primary school that I've never completed (or looped, for those games that don't really end).
It's about 2 to 4 times faster than a real C64 on my now-ancient 400MHz PC.
I remember laboriously translating 6502 assembly into DATA statements, by hand, when I was learning to program in the 80s - the C64 BASIC was so unutterably pants (yes, it was made by MS), that people jumped to assembly to get anything non-trivial done. Then I got a C128 with a built-in assembler.
This is not actually good news, despite the spin. Software patents are absurd, and this still basically hands Big American Corporations (TM) the European software industry on a plate.
On the sorta-plus side, in the long term, the very concept of I.P. might be pushed closer to collapsing under its own weight. The USA and now the EU are deluding themselves if they think that China will continue to honour Western I.P. laws for ever. To echo a post on/. a while back - I find it scary that the West is busy building castles of I.P. in the sky, while its native manufacturing base is dissolved. When all the West "has" is information,less than pieces of paper and infinitely copyable, and the billions in India and China have all the factories, then we'll see how much real value I."P". has.
First:Remember that the best defence is a good offense..
Developer-specific:
Open Source should make sure to set de-facto standards - release early, release often.
Define your data formats in something well-known like csv, sexp or xml so other open source programs can make use of them. Better yet, use a relational database backend with a public schema of views. It'll make most development easier, and all MS's best products do that, anyway. It's great (very convenient) for business use, and easy given the existence of postgres,mysql, sapdb sqllite, etc, etc.
At the same time, don't get too hung up on data format standards - MS has shown that so long as your next version reads them, that's good enough, your next version doesn't have to use the same data format as its native format, so long as it can read the old format.
MS has shown that what matters is to get a product out there, capturing mindshare - once a user has psychologically committed to your product, they'll probably stick with it, even if your next version is a ground-up rewrite so that it actually works. And if you release for windows, code to libSDL+OpenGL for games, and use cygwin, qt or gtk for utilities. NEVER use the Win32/.net directly API for new applications, even via WINE or Mono - that's one of the "proprietary standards" the chapter excerpt talks about (don't beleive the ECMA-standardisation.net stuff - it's still m$ 0wned)
For general evangelism to non-technical audiences
Make sure that your desktop runs a window manager with a really snazzy theme and some flashy applications (xmms...) when anyone drops by. Current Linux WMs can outclass WinXP in flashiness stakes. Contrary to popular opinions, consistency doesn't seem to matter a great deal - if the program is flashy enough, it might be a consistency nightmare, but will impress the yokels (don't call them yokels). It doesn't hurt to have a speech synthesis program e.g. festival going to read the subject lines of incoming mails, or some other geek-gimmick. Appearance is everything to the non-geek (and geekiness is domain-specific, a DIY geek who sees straight through gimmicky power tools won't necessarily see through flashy computer GUI gimmicks)
Try not to get all philisophical on I.P. issues. Stick to "you have the right to change it or ask/pay someone other than the original manufacturer to change it for you. Like taking your car to a garage.". Anything more complex doesn't work for MS, it won't work for you. Yes, you may think I.P. is an absurdity. But most people are keyword-scanners. The message they'll get is that you're "anti-property". Yes, information is non-scarce and therefore you should't mindlessly apply scarcity-based property laws to it, yes, the very idea of information as property runs counter to the scientific method, but boring them by droning on about it won't help (I just droned on about it, and you damn-near switched-off, didn't you?)
Microsoft have been caught astroturfing before (particularly back in the OS/2 days).
Microsoft are good at psychology - they are great at steering the sheeple. If you're a computer geek, do yourself a favour and read a modern undergrad psychology textbook - Immunize yourself against propaganda techniques (and it'll help you with UI design, too!)
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Microsoft ARE out to get us, and they are certainly not above infiltrating our discussion forums.
I would argue that a Tablet PC would actually be quite nice for CLI duty, if it had good handwriting recognition and a good CLI (WinXP tablet edition handwriting recognition and cmd.exe do not necessarily fit the bill).
Think of that Harry Potter book, where he's writing in a diary to an entity contained in the diary, and the entity is replying as lines of text in the diary...
I was watching a (scarily dumbed-down) documentary on some satellite channel the other day about the possibility of an impending end of the current interglacial period and the dawn of a new ice age - it kept using phrases like "scientists and people too" and "both people and scientists now think...".
Very annoying, if you're one of those crazy loons that happen to believe it's possible to be both a person and a scientist...
Personally, I'm not particularly against massive databases, provided they're real-time public access, and the maintainers of the database are also represented in them like everyone else...
Given that the databases will exist - large corporations and government agencies will just not tell you they exist and keep using them if they're made "illegal" - and can only get more powerful and far-reaching, I think that the best choice is to make the database read-accessible to everyone rather than limit access to a powerful and unaccountable elite.
Note that I am NOT asserting that it's particularly nice that the databases exist in the first place - just that the genie's out of the bottle, and that the best way to minimise abuses of power would be to minimise secrecy. Otherwise we'll probably end up with 1984.
It's amusing that personal privacy advocates are often the same ones screaming for government or corporate openness - while privacy (== secrecy) exists, anyone handed power will have a screen to hide behind to hide abuses of said power. Yes, humans like privacy. But privacy, whether for the government or the citizen, may prove fundamentally in opposition to the maximisation of the freedoms a civilised society can provide, while still remaining a civilised society.
This is explored further in David Brin's excellent book: "The Transparent Society: Will Technology force us to choose between Privacy and Freemdom?" As he points out, "people generally seem to want privacy for themselves and accountability for everyone else...".
Many car radio systems already use "magic" directional phased array receiving antennae to keep your radio signal of choice consistent.
But the really shiny stuff is with the usual military-industrial-complex crowd - For example, Roke's Agile Phased Array Antennae, designed for 7-8 GHz satellite communications to and from moving vehicles. On your own head be it if you choose to visit that link. Roke can be... scary... and might study their http access logs a little more closely than most...
You can also google for similar terms for similar Japanese projects.
gtk+ bindings that I haven't ever used are mentioned on cliki
JACOL apparently allows java / cl interop, but again, I've never used it.
I haven't seen Qt bindings.
McCLIM is the most fun, though - a project for an open-source implementation of the CLIM spec. Just reading the CLIM specification is worthwhile, if you're academically interested in graphics toolkits.
It does worry me. But what if you have to trade privacy for freedom?
In my opinion, given the existence of surveillance networks the networks must be public access, to ensure a free society.
ANY surveillance network which gives the watchers more information about the watched than the watched about the watchers leads to an imbalance of power. Thus, the watched must become the watchers, and have equal right of access to any surveillance network. Check out David Brin's book, "The Transparent Society: Will Technology force us to choose between Privacy and Freedom?" for more on this. The first chapter is online here
But: The very fact that contextual menus keep changing is what makes them crappy. I'd much rather ALL actions were on the right-click, and irrelevant ones GREYED OUT, rather than moving stuff around in a context-sensitive menu and preventing me muscle-memory-learning where they are.
Amiga MagicMenu worked the way I like.
Also, amiga menus allowed you to multiple-select by holding the right button down while clicking with the left on the menus - much handier - meant that most "preference dialog" style interactions could be done instead with toggle items in the menu.
Actually, one of the "subtleties" in the article I kinda-sorta dislike sometimes is the diagonal-submenu thing, since Amiga-pattern multiselecting preferences-menu usage is to scan large numbers of submenus - so the "quickly flashing up and disappearing" submenu behaviour is one that I sometimes prefer.
I also hate the way the top-of-screen menus mean your mouse pointer ends up away from what it was - but I also hate the way right-button menus do that! That's why I experimented with pointer-relative hierarchical right-button menus. You can give them a try by running a.jar file that fakes them by hiding the real mouse pointer - see here. Note that the jar will just display a grey window - you'll have to click on it.
***"Many larger LightWave® facilities already have substantial Linux rendering resources, and they are eager to add this power to their LightWave® rendering arsenal," said Arnie Cachelin, NewTek's 3D development manager. Cachelin went on to say, "There are also facilities that require Linux rendering to consider using a package in their pipeline. Adding a Linux render engine to our Windows and Mac engines is just one more way we meet the needs of our customer." Cachelin concluded, "In the current economy, studios are increasingly cost conscious, so the opportunity to get an affordable state-of-the-art renderer into their pipelines is very appealing." ***
And if you yearn for new versions of your favorite Amiga raytracers, then Real 3D is available for Linux.
Oen thing to note: the "less staff required" can often count against things in "managerial empire-building with lots of petty political power struggles" environments, which are unfortunately very common. Telling a manager "you'll need less staff" is not necessarily the best route to his heart, they might even take it as a threat.
No, that's not a healthy corporate culture. But in big companies and semi-states (a mainly european phenomenon where state-owned companies kinda-sorta privatise), it is a common one.
Well, I'm pro GPL - but I remember back in the Amiga P.D. days, where closed-source binaries were often released into the true public domain - in those days, one could take a disassembler, and modify them legally, and have a hope of that sort of thing working (helped that the amiga had no memory protection and the SetFunction() call for replacing functions in shared libraries on the fly) - i.e. reverse engineering was easy. Helps that m68k assembler is/was about 1000x prettier that x86 asm yuckiness.
So, closed-source-public-domain did once give some freedoms.
Clsoed-source-proprietary is another matter, since nowadays, thanks to successful lobbying, proprietary software makers have managed to retain legally-enforceable copyrights and patents and legally-enforceable prohibition of reverse engineering!
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks, I know and have been ghosting (I'm the same David Golden who occasionally posts to ILUG.)
"The rest of us???". As we Irish say, speak for your fucking self, dickhead.
Personally, I don't care about anyone's "IP" "rights", including my own:
Information does not exist independent of its impression on a substrate. Your "intellectual property rights" amount to a demand for control over my PHYSICAL property of the substrate. I take my physical property rights to be much more important than your "intellectual property rights", which amount to government interference with my physical control of my physical property - I would not presume to tell you what to do with your substrate and any associated information.
As to your straw-men about drug manufacture: Don't be absurd. First off, you have no idea what would happen without IP, as you don't have a parallel earth on which to experiment. I reckon drugs would still be developed, since there'd still be a market for them. The business might become a bit more cutthroat, and industrial espionage a little more "fun", but people would still want drugs, would still be willing to pay for drugs, and I would bet drugs would still be manufactured.
Likewise, software would still be developed. The vast majority of software is written to serve a purpose inside some organisation, the commercial boxed-product software world is a tiny fraction of the real market, and wouldn't really be missed. If anything, programmers would be richer, since we can actually write new code, and would be free to reuse any and all old code as we saw fit, as opposed to the current situation where asshole "businessmen" who, thanks to "IP" laws they paid to be passed, just sit around getting richer and exploiting naive and socially unaware geeks (I've copped on to their little game, and am quitting my job - I might go get a business degree and use their suit-fu against them...)
This pisses me off too, I've ranted about it for years, there's now quite a few well-written X11 applications that respect DPI settings sufficiently to be pleasant at high DPI, including most KDE/QT applications, thanks to XRENDER - but there's no displays to be had!
I just wish I could get a 15"-17" 1600x1200 or above LCD monitor that didn't have a non-upgradeable graphics card and PC hanging out of it (laptop) instead of a useful input port. But you just can't buy them as standalone desktop units, at any price (at least from anywhere I've called in Ireland, UK and Germany).
I'm pretty close to just buying a bigger (and hence lower DPI) LCD screen, and just sitting further away from it, but it's a waste of space.
BTW, you can manually set your physical display size with DisplaySize x-millimetres y-millimetres in the "Monitor" section of your XF86Config file
Of course there couldn't be a GPL, but that's got nothing to do with an author receiving credit for their work: Don't confuse copyrights and what lawyers call author's "moral rights" just because hollywood propaganda or the law of the country you live in does.
For example, Irish or French law makes the distinction and recognises both as separate legal concepts. Copyright is a restriction on copying, author's moral rights include things like a right to be recognised as the author of a work.
Compensation would still be forthcoming - anyone who needs new and original code written, and can't write code, would be a source.
Of course, there wouldn't need to be a GPL license without it...
Having booted VICE's x128 with the run/stop key held down, I can verify I can't do it now :-(. Got about as far as "D C000" and stalled.
C128: Was definitely best as a development platform for the C64. You're right, the "asembler" was just a monitor, on a par with MSDOS "debug", I guess. Was enough for me, though, and the fact it therefore preserved complete symmetry between assembly and disassembly certainly helped me, as I never kept a "source" copy of my code, just blatted the binary to #8. Looking back on it, not necessarily the most sane way ever to code - doubt I could do it now.
:-)
BASIC: The C64 BASIC 2.0 really sucked, even in comparison to its contemporaries. Simon's BASIC and C128 BASIC 7.0 were much nicer, but the BBC micro's basic was head-and-shoulders above the lot. I was always fascinated by the FORTH Jupiter Ace, though.
I did migrate to an Amiga 2000 - just a bit of a step up from the C128
Well, the main problems would probably be that for full C64 emulation, you need a display bigger than the nominal 320x200 resolution, since one of the earliest "hacks" games programmers used was sprites-in-the-borders. So you'd need a biggish lcd screen.
Alkso, a lot of programs relied on the precise timing of various system components - if you don't emulate the VIC and SID chips very carefully, a lot of games barf. This means you need a much more powerful computer to emulate the C64 accurately than you might first think - my zaurus handheld struggles with the C64, but has no problem with the zx-spectrum.
If you want VICE, an excellent, essentially perfect, C64 (and C128, and some other CBM-machines) emulator, then it's here.
I still use it about once a week when I feel nostalgic - while the graphics of C64 games totally suck, some of them still have better gameplay in my opinion than many of today's.
Plus there's some games I had in primary school that I've never completed (or looped, for those games that don't really end).
It's about 2 to 4 times faster than a real C64 on my now-ancient 400MHz PC.
I remember laboriously translating 6502 assembly into DATA statements, by hand, when I was learning to program in the 80s - the C64 BASIC was so unutterably pants (yes, it was made by MS), that people jumped to assembly to get anything non-trivial done. Then I got a C128 with a built-in assembler.
This is not actually good news, despite the spin. Software patents are absurd, and this still basically hands Big American Corporations (TM) the European software industry on a plate.
/. a while back - I find it scary that the West is busy building castles of I.P. in the sky, while its native manufacturing base is dissolved. When all the West "has" is information,less than pieces of paper and infinitely copyable, and the billions in India and China have all the factories, then we'll see how much real value I."P". has.
On the sorta-plus side, in the long term, the very concept of I.P. might be pushed closer to collapsing under its own weight. The USA and now the EU are deluding themselves if they think that China will continue to honour Western I.P. laws for ever. To echo a post on
First: Remember that the best defence is a good offense..
.net stuff - it's still m$ 0wned)
Developer-specific:
Open Source should make sure to set de-facto standards - release early, release often.
Define your data formats in something well-known like csv, sexp or xml so other open source programs can make use of them. Better yet, use a relational database backend with a public schema of views. It'll make most development easier, and all MS's best products do that, anyway. It's great (very convenient) for business use, and easy given the existence of postgres,mysql, sapdb sqllite, etc, etc.
At the same time, don't get too hung up on data format standards - MS has shown that so long as your next version reads them, that's good enough, your next version doesn't have to use the same data format as its native format, so long as it can read the old format.
MS has shown that what matters is to get a product out there, capturing mindshare - once a user has psychologically committed to your product, they'll probably stick with it, even if your next version is a ground-up rewrite so that it actually works. And if you release for windows, code to libSDL+OpenGL for games, and use cygwin, qt or gtk for utilities. NEVER use the Win32/.net directly API for new applications, even via WINE or Mono - that's one of the "proprietary standards" the chapter excerpt talks about (don't beleive the ECMA-standardisation
For general evangelism to non-technical audiences
Make sure that your desktop runs a window manager with a really snazzy theme and some flashy applications (xmms...) when anyone drops by. Current Linux WMs can outclass WinXP in flashiness stakes. Contrary to popular opinions, consistency doesn't seem to matter a great deal - if the program is flashy enough, it might be a consistency nightmare, but will impress the yokels (don't call them yokels). It doesn't hurt to have a speech synthesis program e.g. festival going to read the subject lines of incoming mails, or some other geek-gimmick. Appearance is everything to the non-geek (and geekiness is domain-specific, a DIY geek who sees straight through gimmicky power tools won't necessarily see through flashy computer GUI gimmicks)
Try not to get all philisophical on I.P. issues. Stick to "you have the right to change it or ask/pay someone other than the original manufacturer to change it for you. Like taking your car to a garage.". Anything more complex doesn't work for MS, it won't work for you. Yes, you may think I.P. is an absurdity. But most people are keyword-scanners. The message they'll get is that you're "anti-property". Yes, information is non-scarce and therefore you should't mindlessly apply scarcity-based property laws to it, yes, the very idea of information as property runs counter to the scientific method, but boring them by droning on about it won't help (I just droned on about it, and you damn-near switched-off, didn't you?)
Microsoft have been caught astroturfing before (particularly back in the OS/2 days).
Microsoft are good at psychology - they are great at steering the sheeple. If you're a computer geek, do yourself a favour and read a modern undergrad psychology textbook - Immunize yourself against propaganda techniques (and it'll help you with UI design, too!)
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Microsoft ARE out to get us, and they are certainly not above infiltrating our discussion forums.
Erm... I live in Europe (Ireland)...
I would argue that a Tablet PC would actually be quite nice for CLI duty, if it had good handwriting recognition and a good CLI (WinXP tablet edition handwriting recognition and cmd.exe do not necessarily fit the bill).
Think of that Harry Potter book, where he's writing in a diary to an entity contained in the diary, and the entity is replying as lines of text in the diary...
I was watching a (scarily dumbed-down) documentary on some satellite channel the other day about the possibility of an impending end of the current interglacial period and the dawn of a new ice age - it kept using phrases like "scientists and people too" and "both people and scientists now think...".
Very annoying, if you're one of those crazy loons that happen to believe it's possible to be both a person and a scientist...
Personally, I'm not particularly against massive databases, provided they're real-time public access, and the maintainers of the database are also represented in them like everyone else...
Given that the databases will exist - large corporations and government agencies will just not tell you they exist and keep using them if they're made "illegal" - and can only get more powerful and far-reaching, I think that the best choice is to make the database read-accessible to everyone rather than limit access to a powerful and unaccountable elite.
Note that I am NOT asserting that it's particularly nice that the databases exist in the first place - just that the genie's out of the bottle, and that the best way to minimise abuses of power would be to minimise secrecy. Otherwise we'll probably end up with 1984.
It's amusing that personal privacy advocates are often the same ones screaming for government or corporate openness - while privacy (== secrecy) exists, anyone handed power will have a screen to hide behind to hide abuses of said power. Yes, humans like privacy. But privacy, whether for the government or the citizen, may prove fundamentally in opposition to the maximisation of the freedoms a civilised society can provide, while still remaining a civilised society.
This is explored further in David Brin's excellent book: "The Transparent Society: Will Technology force us to choose between Privacy and Freemdom?" As he points out, "people generally seem to want privacy for themselves and accountability for everyone else...".
Many car radio systems already use "magic" directional phased array receiving antennae to keep your radio signal of choice consistent.
But the really shiny stuff is with the usual military-industrial-complex crowd - For example, Roke's Agile Phased Array Antennae, designed for 7-8 GHz satellite communications to and from moving vehicles. On your own head be it if you choose to visit that link. Roke can be... scary... and might study their http access logs a little more closely than most...
You can also google for similar terms for similar Japanese projects.
So the technology is advancing pretty fast.
When I have my own chip fab.
gtk+ bindings that I haven't ever used are mentioned on cliki
JACOL apparently allows java / cl interop, but again, I've never used it.
I haven't seen Qt bindings.
McCLIM is the most fun, though - a project for an open-source implementation of the CLIM spec. Just reading the CLIM specification is worthwhile, if you're academically interested in graphics toolkits.
It does worry me. But what if you have to trade privacy for freedom?
In my opinion, given the existence of surveillance networks the networks must be public access, to ensure a free society.
ANY surveillance network which gives the watchers more information about the watched than the watched about the watchers leads to an imbalance of power. Thus, the watched must become the watchers, and have equal right of access to any surveillance network. Check out David Brin's book, "The Transparent Society: Will Technology force us to choose between Privacy and Freedom?" for more on this. The first chapter is online here
I'm indifferent to pie menus, personally.
.jar file that fakes them by hiding the real mouse pointer - see
But: The very fact that contextual menus keep changing is what makes them crappy. I'd much rather ALL actions were on the right-click, and irrelevant ones GREYED OUT, rather than moving stuff around in a context-sensitive menu and preventing me muscle-memory-learning where they are.
Amiga MagicMenu worked the way I like.
Also, amiga menus allowed you to multiple-select by holding the right button down while clicking with the left on the menus - much handier - meant that most "preference dialog" style interactions could be done instead with toggle items in the menu.
Actually, one of the "subtleties" in the article I kinda-sorta dislike sometimes is the diagonal-submenu thing, since Amiga-pattern multiselecting preferences-menu usage is to scan large numbers of submenus - so the "quickly flashing up and disappearing" submenu behaviour is one that I sometimes prefer.
I also hate the way the top-of-screen menus mean your mouse pointer ends up away from what it was - but I also hate the way right-button menus do that! That's why I experimented with pointer-relative hierarchical right-button menus. You can give them a try by running a
here. Note that the jar will just display a grey window - you'll have to click on it.
ISTR RIM Blackberries actually use a low-power x86-compatible chip.
I may be wrong though - it's a while since I looked at them.
AFAIK, you can't use the Lightwave UI on Linux (yet) - but one can use a linux cluster as a ScreamerNet render farm for Lightwave.
So, Linux already has its foot in the door.
Here's what NewTek says:
***"Many larger LightWave® facilities already have substantial Linux rendering resources, and they are eager to add this power to their LightWave® rendering arsenal," said Arnie Cachelin, NewTek's 3D development manager. Cachelin went on to say, "There are also facilities that require Linux rendering to consider using a package in their pipeline. Adding a Linux render engine to our Windows and Mac engines is just one more way we meet the needs of our customer." Cachelin concluded, "In the current economy, studios are increasingly cost conscious, so the opportunity to get an affordable state-of-the-art renderer into their pipelines is very appealing."
***
And if you yearn for new versions of your favorite Amiga raytracers, then Real 3D is available for Linux.
Oen thing to note: the "less staff required" can often count against things in "managerial empire-building with lots of petty political power struggles" environments, which are unfortunately very common. Telling a manager "you'll need less staff" is not necessarily the best route to his heart, they might even take it as a threat.
No, that's not a healthy corporate culture. But in big companies and semi-states (a mainly european phenomenon where state-owned companies kinda-sorta privatise), it is a common one.
Well, I'm pro GPL - but I remember back in the Amiga P.D. days, where closed-source binaries were often released into the true public domain - in those days, one could take a disassembler, and modify them legally, and have a hope of that sort of thing working (helped that the amiga had no memory protection and the SetFunction() call for replacing functions in shared libraries on the fly) - i.e. reverse engineering was easy. Helps that m68k assembler is/was about 1000x prettier that x86 asm yuckiness.
So, closed-source-public-domain did once give some freedoms.
Clsoed-source-proprietary is another matter, since nowadays, thanks to successful lobbying, proprietary software makers have managed to retain legally-enforceable copyrights and patents and legally-enforceable prohibition of reverse engineering!