If this was a database-benchmark, he would have compared different databses running on same system. But this wasn't a database-benchmark. He benchmarked different OS'es running MySQL. No-one is trying to spin this in to a databse-benchmark, since this is not a database-benchmark. Hell, everyhting I have seen indicates that these articles are about the performance of the OS, and not performance of the database!
I remember that, and I agree it was the straw that broke the camel's back, but I also recall that there had been long-standing, wide-spread dissatisfaction with the pace of development and the access to the process.
I have said it before, and I'll say it again: I became convinced that Xfree needs to die slow and horrible death when they kicked out Keith Packard. Now, KP is THE guy who keeps on driving X (Xfree and then X.org) forward. He was the one who came up with the RENDER-extension and hos of other goodies. Then Xfree kicked him out. David Wexelblat (one of the founders of Xfree and back then still a member of the core-team) was flaming Keith. And while he was flaming, he mentioned that "I don't hack Xfree anymore. I don't even use it, I use Windows these days. What I do is that I lurk in the mailinglist".
My jaw dropped when I read that. They were kicking Keith Packard, the greatest thing to happen to X/Xfree, out, while useless deadbeat like David Wexelblat was member of the core team. Keith had done ALOT for Xfree, David had done nothing in years (apart from lurking in the mailinglist). After I read that, I became convinced that sooner Xfree dies, the better.
I'm not shedding any tears for Xfree. It could have been great, really great. But it turned in to ivory-tower organisation that wasn't REALLY interested in driving things forward. The ones that did want to shake things up, were kicked out. So long Xfree, and thanks for all the fish!
Do you think Sadaam didn't have them? Seriously, he did in the 80's (we gave them to him). The question is...where did they go? I'm sure he didn't use them all on the Kurds and the Iranians.
Destroyed by the weapons-inspectors? The did destroy quite large amounts of WMD's.
Say what you will about her policies, Fiorina was still one of only a handful of significant female CEO's in the world today. In fact, I can't think of another one off the top of my head, and certainly no other woman heads a company as powerful and important as HP.
While that might be true, but the fact is that she sucked as a CEO and she made lots of crappy decisions. And, because of that, she deserves to be kicked out, breasts or no breasts.
Although the article (which is quite clear) indicates that the AltiVec architecture is closer to G4 than G5, won't the speed increase of having 8 fully-parallel processors (9 if you count the main CPU) more than make up for the issues associated with the loss of the G5's advanced features?
Well, AFAIK, G4 has better Altivec-unit than the G5 does.
Well, we already have a good idea how PowerPC performs (although the PPC in the Cell might not run as fast as rest of the chip does). As to the SPE's... Ars Techinca says this:
The SPE's very simple front end can take in two instructions at a time, check to see if they can operate in parallel, and then issue them either in parallel or in program order. These two instructions then travel down one of two pipes, "even" or "odd," to be executed. After execution, they're put back in sequence (if necessary) by the very simple commit unit and their results are written back to local memory. The individual SPUs can throw a lot overboard, because they rely on a regular, general-purpose POWERPC processor core to do all the normal kinds of computation that it takes to run regular code. The Cell system features eight of these SPUs all hanging off a central bus, with one 64-bit POWERPC core handling all of the regular computational chores. Thus all of the Cell 's "smarts" can reside either on the PPC core, while the SPUs just do the work that's assigned to them....
Once the instructions are in the SPE, the SPE's control unit can issue up to two instructions per cycle, in-order. The SPE has a 128-entry register file (128-bytes per entry) that stores both floating-point and integer vectors. As stated above, there are no rename registers. All loop unrolling is done by the programmer/compiler using this very large register file.
AFAIK, the x86-ISA takes just few percentages of the die-size. Hardly a "massive part". Modern x86-CPU's decode the x86 ISA in to micro-ops that are then handled by the CPU. Hell, G5 also runs hot, how can that be, since it doesn't have "massive amounts" of x86-legacy to carry around?
Also, most of the games you've listed in this thread were released in 2001 or earlier
Well, I bought Flashpoint Germany just few days ago, and it was published week or two ago. just because my favourite games happen to be ones that were released a while ago, does not mean that no new games are being published.
Battlefront does well enough to keep six guys working, and keeps on putting out products. That's good enough for them, and evidently good enough to you. I'm happy to leave it at that.
Well, if you look at the situation from middle-management perspective, and stare at revenues or something you might be right. I look at it from a perspective of a gamer, and I see that the games that are being published are very very good and the community is vibrant and alive. You might think that Battlefront is not doing that well, since they keep "six guys working". But I say they are doing very well, since they keep on releasing kick-ass games. If they were somekind of huge EA-like corporation that kept on releasing mediocre games that sold by the millions, you might then think that the industry is doing well. But I wouldn't share that feeling. I would much rather have quality over quantity.
That's not really "forking", IMO, those are just old and current versions of same OS. There are really just two forks there: the old Win9X and the NT-based Windowses.
AFAIK what people usually mean by "forking" does not directly apply to Windows. Yes, we have Win98 (for example) and W2K. But W2K is a successor of Win98, and not a fork. But in Linux we have Red Hat, SUSE, Lindows, Lycoris, Debian, Gentoo etc. etc. And they are all current. It's not like SUSE is an successor of Red Hat. I do not consider Mandrake 10 to be a fork of Mandrake 9, and neither do I consider Win XP to be a fork of W2K.
Those three were the first ones to pop in my mind. And yes, I have seen their games available in retail. Some of them do sell their games online as well.
Of course, many games are published through bigger publishers (games like IL2 Sturmovik, Civilization 3, Europa Universalis and the like).
And could you explain why a turn-based, strategic wargame doesn't count, beyond the fact that it's on a console? I think you'll find that it's very much along the lines of hard-core strategy.
I must admit that I haven't played the game in question. But I must seriously doubt the AI on that game (given the lack of CPU-power), not to mention depth. Take for example games such as Combat Mission where each individual round is calculated and it's penetration-values are determined based on range, direction, caliber and number of other things. I think the Gameboy-game is significantly more simplified. While you could say that it's a "strategy--game" (in a same sense as chess might be), it's not in my 100% subjective definitio a "real" strategy-game.
It's irrelevant how much they "like" it, if publishers won't fund it.
And, luckily for us, there's quite a large number of small publishers that focus on strategy-games, and there re few bigger publishers who also focus on strategy. Whil EA (for example) might shun "real" strategy-games, those smaller publishers do not.
Please provide some numbers to back up these claims of "very well indeed".
I can't give you any hard numbers, I can only give you my subjective view on the industry. And I see that during the past 3-4 years, the number of excellent strategy-games has gone up. We have had several dedicated publishers that are focused on strategy-games, and we have had numerous kick-ass games.
My view as a gamer and as a consumer is that strategy-gaming is doing really well. The quality of the games is remarkable, even if they don't have backing from some big publisher.
I know you fail to see my point. My point was related to the article, which speaks of what is needed to get games onto linux. I was trying to make clear this is a losing battle, because developers will follow the money, and the sales are all happening on consoles.
Except strategy-games and simulators. And that was my point.
Regarding sales of 200:1, you're completely wrong. Advance Wars for the Gameboy sold more copies than any PC strategy game (excluding Warcraft 3) released in the last couple of years.
My apologies, but when I talk about strategy-games, I talk about games like Steel Panthers, Combat Mission and the like. Warcraft (or any other "real-time strategy") doesn't really apply to that category IMO. And neither does some game meant for a handheld-console.
And yes, a developer (even one of strategy games) will move to console development if that means they can make greater sales - even if that means not making strategy games anymore.
I just don't see that happening. They like to make strategy-games. That's where they are good at. What makes you think they would want to make other types of games? I just don't see Gary Grisby making Pokemon XVII for Gameboy DS.
Actually, I simply think publisher won't fund hard-core strategy games and simulations AT ALL, since their sales are so poor compared to sinking that money into another FPS.
Again, I don't see that happening. Sure, such strategy-behemoths like SSI might be gone, but instead of SSI we have such publishers like Matrix Games and Battlefront. And I have yet to see ANY indication that they are planning to move to consoles. Their userbase is on the PC. Seriously: strategy-gaming on the PC is doing very, very well indeed.
However, if you make games for a living, then you're much better off developing for consoles than PC's - and that is what's killing PC gaming.
Again: depends on what type of games you are making. If you make strategy-games, targetting the consoles would be stupid thing to do, since PC is where the action is. There ARE lots of developers out there that make games that they are interested in, instead of making games that are designed to reach as high sales as possible. If everyone did that, we would only get sports-games and FPS-shooters. But the fact is that there are plenty of "niche" games being made.
You're in the minority. I'm not talking about who has some sort of mythical "advantage" - I'm talking about SALES, which is the only important thing in convincing developers to actually develop games for a platform.
Well, strategy-games and simulators SELL alot better on PC than they do on consoles. Hell, they propably outsell their console-brothers 200:1! So I fail to see your point. Or do you think that since soccer-games on consoles sell better than soccer-games on PC, developers of strategy-games will port their games to consoles?
As a whole, console-games might outsell PC-games. But that doesn't mean that gaming belongs to consoles. Like I said, PC is superior in several types of games, when compared to consoles. And those games will be released on the PC, even though Colin McRay Rally 4 might sell millions on some console.
And yes, there are strategy games for consoles.
Such as?
And despite your supposed "advantage : PC" for FPS's, Halo 2 sold many, many, more copies than Doom 3. Advantage : Console.
I was talking about controls, not sales. I simply prefer to play FPS-games on a PC. Even if FPS-games on consoles outsold their PC-cousins by 200:1, that fact would not change.
Seriously: I don't understand this "oh, if you play games, you should get a console"-mentality.
Windows gaming is going strong - it's a dying market, and with good reason. People are turning to the consoles for their gaming, and console games sell many, many more copies.
depends on the type of games you play. I'm a gamer, yet I haven't even thought about buying a console. And that's because consoles absolutely suck for the types of games I like to play. My favourite games include such games as Europa Universalis, Civilization 3, Combat Mission, Steel Panthers: World at War and so forth. And consoles are crappy at games like those! Are there ANY strategy-games for consoles? And I mean something with a bit more depth than Pokemon.
Consoles might be good for such games which you can play for a short while and then do something else. But I like games that require more attention (strategy-games, simulators etc.). And in those games, PC reigns supreme.
And I do like to plays some FPS every now and then. And I have noticed that keyboard/mouse-combo is the best UI in those games. Gamepads simply do not work as well. Advantage: PC.
Well, consoles are not the end-all solutiuon to gaming. They might excel in some types of games, but not all. Ever seen strategy or simulation-games on consoles?
And I do have one occasion where gaming has been better on Linux than on W2K. I have some old DOS-games that I like to play, like Steel Panthers 2. It wont work in W2K so, I installed Dosbox on it, and ran the game there. It worked, but it was unbearably slow. I then tried installing Dosbox on my Gentoo (running on the same machine), and it was ALOT faster! The game was actually playable (it wasn't on Windows)!
That said, I do still keep W2K around. Mainly just to play games:)
IMO the problem with HURD is pretty simple: They didn't have anything working. I mean, look at Linux. Linus offered version 0.01 to everyone. People got interested and started giving Linus patches that made the system better. Linux started improving at a faster and faster pace, until it became something really great. Linux was crap in the beginning, but at least it was out there and people could use it and imprve it.
Contrast to HURD: handful of developers worked on it. It seems that the never really released anything, since the system was not "perfect" yet. If they had something, ANYTHING that the user could have used, their userbase would have increased quite fast, as would the rate of progress. But no. They just kept on trying to achieve perfection, and the result was stagnating developement. When they thought they had something "perfect", they noticed that it was in fact sucky, so they scrapped it and moved to a new technology. By this rate, when they have their "perfect" system ready, it will resemble Linux 1.0. in features and performance. But hey, at least it's "perfect"!
How the hell it took them 22 years, whereas Linux only needed to 14 years to move from cobbled-together wannabe-OS in to a world-class OS that powers anything from PDA's to supercomputers? By this rate, it will take HURD another 20 years to be where Linux is TODAY!
I don't think so. You say that instead of wasting time to save a "mediocre TV-show", that time, energy and money should be spent elsewhere (like in SE-Asia). I disagree with that. What's on TV affects me personally, Tsunami didn't affect me at all. And I fail to see how I could make an substantial impact on the relief-effort in any shape or form.
Of course I don't want people to suffer. But there are horrible things going on in the world ALL THE TIME. If I started to hyperventilate and run around screaming every time something horrible happens, I couldn't really live my live. Thousands upon thousands die every day due to malnutrition. Thousands die in traffic-accidents. Thousands died in Iran's earthquake last year (funny, no-one started a huge relief-effort to help them). I simply decided that I will not try to buy myself a clean consicence by donating to charity.
I do occasionally donate to some causes. But I didn't do so this time. But I have donated to local charities that deal with local issues. I find this whole ordeal hypocritical. Everyone must scramble to help SE-asia. No-one gave a damn when close to million people were killed with machetes in Rwanda. No-one gave a damn when 50.000 people died in an earthquake in Iran. But now that some tourist-trap got hit by a tsunami, the world goes in to a collective shock. Sorry, but I don't drink that kool-aid.
My point is merely why are people organizing and launching a campaign for a cause that, in the long run is trivial
And the tsunami is trivial in the long run. It hardly made a dent in the number of people living there, the infrastructure will be rebuilt in just few years. Few years from now, things are completely back to normal. And before you say "But there a repeople who have lost family-members and friends! Think of the personal suffering!". Well, people die all the time around the world. Why aren't there humungous relief-efforts to help those who lost family-members to cancer, or traffic-accidents? Why should I spend my time helping out people of SE-asia, instead of helping out someone who lost his father to brain-hemorrage? Maybe Star Trek would bring some joy to his life (and joy to others as well. Is bringing joy to peoples lives a "selfish" thing?)?
Forgive my insensativity, but I didn't mean to step on the toes of a cult.
You accuse me of being in a "cult". So, anyone who think that they should pay their attention to things that affect them personally, is a member of a "cult"? What makes you think that you are not a member of "all good things to all people all the time"-cult?
Call me selfish if you will. I simply refuse to wrap my life around the lives of some people on the opposite side of the globe. If doing something that I'm personally interests me (FYI: I'm not involved in the Star Trek-peffort in any shape or form), instead of spending my time and energy helping others, I'm being "selfish"?
FSB and memory-bus are two different things. 2.5Ghz G5 has a 1.25Ghz FSB, but it's memory-bus is 128bits wide and runs at 400Mhz (or rather, the RAM runs at 400Mhz).
Yes they could. Or as the original KDE-announcement (from 1996) says: "Since a few weeks a really great new widget library is available free in source and price for free software development.".
Obviously Qt could be freely used for free software even back then. And KDE did just that, and TT had ZERO problems with it. Hell, they endorsed it! TT changed their license because some people started whining about it. But KDE (which was GPL-licensed) had been using it for quite some time already, and TT had zero problems with that fact, quite the contrary!
So do tell me: how is it that KDE "couldn't" use Qt, when in fact they used it, and TT supported them in doing so?
Funny, KDE used it, and they were using the (L)GPL. How could KDE use Qt (with TT's endorsement in fact) if Qt was not compatible with KDE's license? And numerous other distros shipped KDE without any problems. And how was _KDE's_ licensing consfuisng? It was (L)GPL. What's so confusing about that?
Like I said: Debian's problems are Debian's problems.
I could get in a pissing match and tell the world how much time and money I have donated to humanitarian projects over the last year. I could tell you about how I gave over two years bettering the lives of my fellow man. But I won't.
Um, you just did. "Of course I could tell you that I discovered a cure for cancer. But I won't."
People with organization skills to raise money for the purpouse saving a TV show are the people that should be raising money for humanitarian aide.
Why? Because you say so? Why can't they use their skills for things that are important to them? Or do you think that $14,700 is absolutely, positively needed in SE-Asia? That without their contribution, the whole relief-effort will crumble like a house of cards?
I bought a candy-bar yesterday. Obviously, I should have donated that money to charity instead, right? Well, I didn't. In fact, I haven't given one damn dime to the relief-effort.
Why are you wasting your time in/.? Shouldn't you be feeding the homeless or something?
If Debian had problems with KDE, it really is Debian's problem. I don't think that KDE's licensing has ever been "confusing". Don't try to blame Debian's problems on KDE.
I really fail to see how C++ is an "arcane" language. And I really fail to see what was so "confusing" about KDE's license. It was mostly GPL and LGPL, with Qt being licensed first under the QPL and commercial-licence and a bit later under QPL, GPL and commercial license. Seriously, how is that "confusing"?
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If this was a database-benchmark, he would have compared different databses running on same system. But this wasn't a database-benchmark. He benchmarked different OS'es running MySQL. No-one is trying to spin this in to a databse-benchmark, since this is not a database-benchmark. Hell, everyhting I have seen indicates that these articles are about the performance of the OS, and not performance of the database!
I have said it before, and I'll say it again: I became convinced that Xfree needs to die slow and horrible death when they kicked out Keith Packard. Now, KP is THE guy who keeps on driving X (Xfree and then X.org) forward. He was the one who came up with the RENDER-extension and hos of other goodies. Then Xfree kicked him out. David Wexelblat (one of the founders of Xfree and back then still a member of the core-team) was flaming Keith. And while he was flaming, he mentioned that "I don't hack Xfree anymore. I don't even use it, I use Windows these days. What I do is that I lurk in the mailinglist".
My jaw dropped when I read that. They were kicking Keith Packard, the greatest thing to happen to X/Xfree, out, while useless deadbeat like David Wexelblat was member of the core team. Keith had done ALOT for Xfree, David had done nothing in years (apart from lurking in the mailinglist). After I read that, I became convinced that sooner Xfree dies, the better.
I'm not shedding any tears for Xfree. It could have been great, really great. But it turned in to ivory-tower organisation that wasn't REALLY interested in driving things forward. The ones that did want to shake things up, were kicked out. So long Xfree, and thanks for all the fish!
Destroyed by the weapons-inspectors? The did destroy quite large amounts of WMD's.
While that might be true, but the fact is that she sucked as a CEO and she made lots of crappy decisions. And, because of that, she deserves to be kicked out, breasts or no breasts.
Well, AFAIK, G4 has better Altivec-unit than the G5 does.
AFAIK, the x86-ISA takes just few percentages of the die-size. Hardly a "massive part". Modern x86-CPU's decode the x86 ISA in to micro-ops that are then handled by the CPU. Hell, G5 also runs hot, how can that be, since it doesn't have "massive amounts" of x86-legacy to carry around?
Well, I bought Flashpoint Germany just few days ago, and it was published week or two ago. just because my favourite games happen to be ones that were released a while ago, does not mean that no new games are being published.
Well, if you look at the situation from middle-management perspective, and stare at revenues or something you might be right. I look at it from a perspective of a gamer, and I see that the games that are being published are very very good and the community is vibrant and alive. You might think that Battlefront is not doing that well, since they keep "six guys working". But I say they are doing very well, since they keep on releasing kick-ass games. If they were somekind of huge EA-like corporation that kept on releasing mediocre games that sold by the millions, you might then think that the industry is doing well. But I wouldn't share that feeling. I would much rather have quality over quantity.
CE is not meant for PC's, so it's irrelevant in this context. It's meant for embedded systems and the like.
That's not really "forking", IMO, those are just old and current versions of same OS. There are really just two forks there: the old Win9X and the NT-based Windowses.
AFAIK what people usually mean by "forking" does not directly apply to Windows. Yes, we have Win98 (for example) and W2K. But W2K is a successor of Win98, and not a fork. But in Linux we have Red Hat, SUSE, Lindows, Lycoris, Debian, Gentoo etc. etc. And they are all current. It's not like SUSE is an successor of Red Hat. I do not consider Mandrake 10 to be a fork of Mandrake 9, and neither do I consider Win XP to be a fork of W2K.
Matrix Games
Battlefront
eSim Games
Those three were the first ones to pop in my mind. And yes, I have seen their games available in retail. Some of them do sell their games online as well.
Of course, many games are published through bigger publishers (games like IL2 Sturmovik, Civilization 3, Europa Universalis and the like).
I must admit that I haven't played the game in question. But I must seriously doubt the AI on that game (given the lack of CPU-power), not to mention depth. Take for example games such as Combat Mission where each individual round is calculated and it's penetration-values are determined based on range, direction, caliber and number of other things. I think the Gameboy-game is significantly more simplified. While you could say that it's a "strategy--game" (in a same sense as chess might be), it's not in my 100% subjective definitio a "real" strategy-game.
And, luckily for us, there's quite a large number of small publishers that focus on strategy-games, and there re few bigger publishers who also focus on strategy. Whil EA (for example) might shun "real" strategy-games, those smaller publishers do not.
I can't give you any hard numbers, I can only give you my subjective view on the industry. And I see that during the past 3-4 years, the number of excellent strategy-games has gone up. We have had several dedicated publishers that are focused on strategy-games, and we have had numerous kick-ass games.
My view as a gamer and as a consumer is that strategy-gaming is doing really well. The quality of the games is remarkable, even if they don't have backing from some big publisher.
Except strategy-games and simulators. And that was my point.
My apologies, but when I talk about strategy-games, I talk about games like Steel Panthers, Combat Mission and the like. Warcraft (or any other "real-time strategy") doesn't really apply to that category IMO. And neither does some game meant for a handheld-console.
I just don't see that happening. They like to make strategy-games. That's where they are good at. What makes you think they would want to make other types of games? I just don't see Gary Grisby making Pokemon XVII for Gameboy DS.
Again, I don't see that happening. Sure, such strategy-behemoths like SSI might be gone, but instead of SSI we have such publishers like Matrix Games and Battlefront. And I have yet to see ANY indication that they are planning to move to consoles. Their userbase is on the PC. Seriously: strategy-gaming on the PC is doing very, very well indeed.
Again: depends on what type of games you are making. If you make strategy-games, targetting the consoles would be stupid thing to do, since PC is where the action is. There ARE lots of developers out there that make games that they are interested in, instead of making games that are designed to reach as high sales as possible. If everyone did that, we would only get sports-games and FPS-shooters. But the fact is that there are plenty of "niche" games being made.
depends on the type of games you play. I'm a gamer, yet I haven't even thought about buying a console. And that's because consoles absolutely suck for the types of games I like to play. My favourite games include such games as Europa Universalis, Civilization 3, Combat Mission, Steel Panthers: World at War and so forth. And consoles are crappy at games like those! Are there ANY strategy-games for consoles? And I mean something with a bit more depth than Pokemon.
Consoles might be good for such games which you can play for a short while and then do something else. But I like games that require more attention (strategy-games, simulators etc.). And in those games, PC reigns supreme.
And I do like to plays some FPS every now and then. And I have noticed that keyboard/mouse-combo is the best UI in those games. Gamepads simply do not work as well. Advantage: PC.
Well, consoles are not the end-all solutiuon to gaming. They might excel in some types of games, but not all. Ever seen strategy or simulation-games on consoles?
:)
And I do have one occasion where gaming has been better on Linux than on W2K. I have some old DOS-games that I like to play, like Steel Panthers 2. It wont work in W2K so, I installed Dosbox on it, and ran the game there. It worked, but it was unbearably slow. I then tried installing Dosbox on my Gentoo (running on the same machine), and it was ALOT faster! The game was actually playable (it wasn't on Windows)!
That said, I do still keep W2K around. Mainly just to play games
IMO the problem with HURD is pretty simple: They didn't have anything working. I mean, look at Linux. Linus offered version 0.01 to everyone. People got interested and started giving Linus patches that made the system better. Linux started improving at a faster and faster pace, until it became something really great. Linux was crap in the beginning, but at least it was out there and people could use it and imprve it.
Contrast to HURD: handful of developers worked on it. It seems that the never really released anything, since the system was not "perfect" yet. If they had something, ANYTHING that the user could have used, their userbase would have increased quite fast, as would the rate of progress. But no. They just kept on trying to achieve perfection, and the result was stagnating developement. When they thought they had something "perfect", they noticed that it was in fact sucky, so they scrapped it and moved to a new technology. By this rate, when they have their "perfect" system ready, it will resemble Linux 1.0. in features and performance. But hey, at least it's "perfect"!
How the hell it took them 22 years, whereas Linux only needed to 14 years to move from cobbled-together wannabe-OS in to a world-class OS that powers anything from PDA's to supercomputers? By this rate, it will take HURD another 20 years to be where Linux is TODAY!
I don't think so. You say that instead of wasting time to save a "mediocre TV-show", that time, energy and money should be spent elsewhere (like in SE-Asia). I disagree with that. What's on TV affects me personally, Tsunami didn't affect me at all. And I fail to see how I could make an substantial impact on the relief-effort in any shape or form.
Of course I don't want people to suffer. But there are horrible things going on in the world ALL THE TIME. If I started to hyperventilate and run around screaming every time something horrible happens, I couldn't really live my live. Thousands upon thousands die every day due to malnutrition. Thousands die in traffic-accidents. Thousands died in Iran's earthquake last year (funny, no-one started a huge relief-effort to help them). I simply decided that I will not try to buy myself a clean consicence by donating to charity.
I do occasionally donate to some causes. But I didn't do so this time. But I have donated to local charities that deal with local issues. I find this whole ordeal hypocritical. Everyone must scramble to help SE-asia. No-one gave a damn when close to million people were killed with machetes in Rwanda. No-one gave a damn when 50.000 people died in an earthquake in Iran. But now that some tourist-trap got hit by a tsunami, the world goes in to a collective shock. Sorry, but I don't drink that kool-aid.
And the tsunami is trivial in the long run. It hardly made a dent in the number of people living there, the infrastructure will be rebuilt in just few years. Few years from now, things are completely back to normal. And before you say "But there a repeople who have lost family-members and friends! Think of the personal suffering!". Well, people die all the time around the world. Why aren't there humungous relief-efforts to help those who lost family-members to cancer, or traffic-accidents? Why should I spend my time helping out people of SE-asia, instead of helping out someone who lost his father to brain-hemorrage? Maybe Star Trek would bring some joy to his life (and joy to others as well. Is bringing joy to peoples lives a "selfish" thing?)?
You accuse me of being in a "cult". So, anyone who think that they should pay their attention to things that affect them personally, is a member of a "cult"? What makes you think that you are not a member of "all good things to all people all the time"-cult?
Call me selfish if you will. I simply refuse to wrap my life around the lives of some people on the opposite side of the globe. If doing something that I'm personally interests me (FYI: I'm not involved in the Star Trek-peffort in any shape or form), instead of spending my time and energy helping others, I'm being "selfish"?
Current G4 was also meant for "embedded applications". It just happens to be a great CPU as well.
FSB and memory-bus are two different things. 2.5Ghz G5 has a 1.25Ghz FSB, but it's memory-bus is 128bits wide and runs at 400Mhz (or rather, the RAM runs at 400Mhz).
Yes they could. Or as the original KDE-announcement (from 1996) says: "Since a few weeks a really great new widget library is available free in source and price for free software development.".
Obviously Qt could be freely used for free software even back then. And KDE did just that, and TT had ZERO problems with it. Hell, they endorsed it! TT changed their license because some people started whining about it. But KDE (which was GPL-licensed) had been using it for quite some time already, and TT had zero problems with that fact, quite the contrary!
So do tell me: how is it that KDE "couldn't" use Qt, when in fact they used it, and TT supported them in doing so?
Funny, KDE used it, and they were using the (L)GPL. How could KDE use Qt (with TT's endorsement in fact) if Qt was not compatible with KDE's license? And numerous other distros shipped KDE without any problems. And how was _KDE's_ licensing consfuisng? It was (L)GPL. What's so confusing about that?
Like I said: Debian's problems are Debian's problems.
Um, you just did. "Of course I could tell you that I discovered a cure for cancer. But I won't."
Why? Because you say so? Why can't they use their skills for things that are important to them? Or do you think that $14,700 is absolutely, positively needed in SE-Asia? That without their contribution, the whole relief-effort will crumble like a house of cards?
I bought a candy-bar yesterday. Obviously, I should have donated that money to charity instead, right? Well, I didn't. In fact, I haven't given one damn dime to the relief-effort.
Why are you wasting your time in
If Debian had problems with KDE, it really is Debian's problem. I don't think that KDE's licensing has ever been "confusing". Don't try to blame Debian's problems on KDE.
I really fail to see how C++ is an "arcane" language. And I really fail to see what was so "confusing" about KDE's license. It was mostly GPL and LGPL, with Qt being licensed first under the QPL and commercial-licence and a bit later under QPL, GPL and commercial license. Seriously, how is that "confusing"?