Interestingly, windows boots a lot faster inside of a vm running on linux than it does on the hative hardware (seriously, give it a try)... If going the other way round, linux runs somewhat slower inside of a vm running on windows... The performance penalty when running in a vm on linux is much smaller.
Actually, current versions of VMware require windows machines for the management infrastructure, it was only older versions (esx 2.x and earlier) which came with a linux client. This is the reason i stopped using vmware, and migrated all my machines to kvm.
When IE was new and competing with netscape, they worked to make it interoperable with netscape... Once netscape was gone, that flew out of the window and they tried to maintain lock-in. Now that firefox and chrome have become popular, ie is now trying to interoperate again.
The same can be said of msoffice, when they faced serious competition they supported opening wordperfect files and had a relatively open rtf spec, once the competition was overcome they turn the screws of lockin again.
I predict the same will happen with hyper-v if they get the chance... If vmware, xen and kvm fall by the wayside then it wont be long before hyper-v only runs windows, the linux support will stagnate and new versions of hyper-v will come out which aren't compatible with it.
Many reasons.. The binary driver cannot be redistributed with the linux distros.. The binary driver may drop support for older hardware at any point, and the older versions which still support your hardware are unlikely support current kernels or X11 versions. You cannot fix a binary blob driver yourself, you are beholden to the vendor to do so. Also that "100%" is relative to the binary driver itself, its possible that given time the open driver will surpass it.
Out of interest, does the open driver support OpenCL yet?
You split the banks up... Don't let any single entity become too big, if its too bit to fail then its simply too big.
Then ensure that any bank which fails won't be bailed out, if there is a fallback (bailout) then whatever you do isn't a risk as far as the bankers are concerned.
All of this highend kit also carries a highend price tag, it's often cheaper to buy hundreds of lowend x86 boxes...
As for scaling, technical scaling is one thing, financial scaling is another. Consider that facebook not only need enough capacity to handle the load, they need to be able to replicate to other locations and handle the load somewhere else if the primary site goes offline etc so you need multiple sets of expensive servers, not to mention test environments which replicate live as closely as possible.
Also as you point out, not wanting to be locked in... Being locked to MySQL is bad, but nowhere near as bad because they have all the sourcecode and specifications. They have already done a lot of work improving the performance of PHP, and will most likely look at doing the same for MySQL, options which simply wouldnt be available to them with closed source software.
What you fail to consider tho, is that while Oracle is perfectly capable of scaling technically... It does not scale very well financially, once you get to the size and scale of facebook the cost of oracle licenses would be absolutely crippling... It makes more sense for them to modify mysql to better suit their requirements.
Because the system is grossly corrupt... There are only a very small number of very large and highly bureaucratic consultancies who ever get picked to manage these projects, and they tend to have very little in the way of technical skills and a corporate culture that scares such people away. They massively over charge, deliver extremely poor quality work safe in the knowledge that there are very few competitors all of which are equally incompetent so there's no danger of losing out.
As you pointed out, the industry tries to abuse its paying customers...
Bought a movie in standard definition, pay again if you want high def. Bought a movie in high definition, pay again if you want a clearly inferior standard definition copy. Bought a movie in one country and want to watch it in another, pay again. Bought a movie on dvd and want to watch it on an alternative device (ipad etc), pay again. Want to copy a movie you bought to a media server, so you have convenient access to it without swapping media, not allowed. Want to copy your movie to a laptop so you can watch it on the go without the hassle of media, not allowed. Want to make copies of a movie so your kids can play it and not risk damaging the original, not allowed.
If movies were available legitimately without DRM, i would buy the highest quality version i could find and then convert it to whichever format suits me at the time. But as it stands, only the pirates are currently providing me the features that i want.
The problem with that, is that the torrent version is still a superior product... You are not constrained by physical media, you can download instantly without waiting for shipping, and there is no DRM or region restrictions on the torrents (tho the DRM on DVDs is thoroughly cracked, the user-hostile intent is there).
Just because a company has lots of money, doesn't mean their games will stand up to any arbitrary definition of "quality"... There have been countless examples of big name studios producing extremely lousy games. Some are boring to play, many hide shoddy playability behind great looking graphics, some games would be great except for a serious flaw or two that utterly ruins the experience and some games are just horrendously buggy.
Also "quality" is entirely subjective... All of the console platforms are flooded with low quality crap from big name publishers already, and being flooded with huge quantities of extremely variable quality software doesn't seem to have done windows any harm.
The problem with facebook, is that its a single site controlled by a single entity... Google+ would just be transferring that control to Google instead of facebook... What we need, is something open and decentralised.
GDocs may be inferior, but it's cheaper, and has a large company with a big marketing budget behind it. That's what MS is afraid of, because their business model has always been all about offering cheaper inferior products, marketing them heavily and getting the users locked in.
Also, people were getting their work done with office a decade ago, and the things they need to do haven't really changed.
Problems with export to excel are likely due to microsoft's proprietary formats, do the same problems occur if you export to openoffice?
The collaborative features of GDocs are great too, and nothing from MS or OOo comes close to them. On the other hand tho, there should be an open set of APIs so that users of desktop software can interact with gdocs users and vice-versa, desktop apps may be more powerful but web based apps are far more convenient. That way a company can move to google and choose between using the web based or native apps depending on requirements and budget.
You can, but exchange likes to mangle messages, for instance if you receive a plain text email exchange will create a very poor html copy of it too... This breaks things like encryption and signed mails.
In hardware, yes absolutely... The cost of producing hardware is high and this will always make it extremely difficult for smaller groups or individuals to compete against the large manufacturers.
In software, where the barriers of entry are lower, open source is doing extremely well... Android, Firefox, and Linux is in everything from TVs, Routers and all manner of networking kit, Phones, all the way up to massive database servers and supercomputers. Linux and BSD are running on thousands of devices that people don't even realise and if you added them all up you would probably find that Linux is the most widespread OS by quite large a margin.
In my house alone, i know that linux runs on my TV, my Satellite receiver, my gps, my wireless ap and my phone.
It's not ahead of the PS3 because of piracy, at all... It has been possible to pirate xbox360 games almost from the very beginning of the console (ie before the ps3 even existed), whereas this has only been possible on the ps3 recently...
The xbox is ahead of the ps3 because its been around longer, its cheaper, xbox live didn't have a massive high profile outage or leak of customers details recently etc...
You could also argue that the earlier availability of piracy on the xbox has helped the platform relative to the ps3, i know quite a lot of people who chose xbox over ps3 years ago because the xbox allowed them to pirate games. Some of these people pay for xbox live (well you cant pirate a service), pay for additional hardware (Cant pirate that either), and of course are contributing towards the overall market share of the platform. What they don't do, is pay for something they can get massively cheaper elsewhere.
The point is its all a step backwards, the system is designed to keep the big boys raking it in and anyone else out so they don't have to compete.
Compare to say the C64, Amiga, or even Windows... Everyone has access to the same APIs, and there are/were thriving scenes of indie games. Many great games were released for free or as shareware.
A system like XBLIG has so many arbitrary restrictions, the whole thing is quite insulting. They restrict the languages you can use, restrict the price you can sell for, the size of game you can produce and force you to use their distribution channel exclusively.
All of this will ensure that Indie games are always perceived as inferior to the big name studios.
$650 for mono on android is not a huge price to pay for someone who has already bought a mac, an iphone developer subscription, windows, visual studio etc...
Does this mean they will be updating snow leopard to support new hardware? If you take an old OSX dvd and try to install it on a newer mac, it usually fails to install...
You would assume that at the very least Apple will make install media available for new hardware.
There really should be exceptions made when both participants are effectively the same age... Many people have been screwed for celebrating their 18th birthday by having sex with their (few weeks or months) younger girlfriend.
Slashdot Mirror
Interestingly, windows boots a lot faster inside of a vm running on linux than it does on the hative hardware (seriously, give it a try)...
If going the other way round, linux runs somewhat slower inside of a vm running on windows... The performance penalty when running in a vm on linux is much smaller.
Actually, current versions of VMware require windows machines for the management infrastructure, it was only older versions (esx 2.x and earlier) which came with a linux client.
This is the reason i stopped using vmware, and migrated all my machines to kvm.
Interoperability for MS is a short term goal..
When IE was new and competing with netscape, they worked to make it interoperable with netscape...
Once netscape was gone, that flew out of the window and they tried to maintain lock-in.
Now that firefox and chrome have become popular, ie is now trying to interoperate again.
The same can be said of msoffice, when they faced serious competition they supported opening wordperfect files and had a relatively open rtf spec, once the competition was overcome they turn the screws of lockin again.
I predict the same will happen with hyper-v if they get the chance... If vmware, xen and kvm fall by the wayside then it wont be long before hyper-v only runs windows, the linux support will stagnate and new versions of hyper-v will come out which aren't compatible with it.
And yet the open driver supports them anyway.
The more widespread open source becomes, the more practical alternative architectures become.
Many reasons..
The binary driver cannot be redistributed with the linux distros..
The binary driver may drop support for older hardware at any point, and the older versions which still support your hardware are unlikely support current kernels or X11 versions.
You cannot fix a binary blob driver yourself, you are beholden to the vendor to do so.
Also that "100%" is relative to the binary driver itself, its possible that given time the open driver will surpass it.
Out of interest, does the open driver support OpenCL yet?
You split the banks up...
Don't let any single entity become too big, if its too bit to fail then its simply too big.
Then ensure that any bank which fails won't be bailed out, if there is a fallback (bailout) then whatever you do isn't a risk as far as the bankers are concerned.
And far less well known, people use what they're comfortable with, even when it's a poor tool for the job.
All of this highend kit also carries a highend price tag, it's often cheaper to buy hundreds of lowend x86 boxes...
As for scaling, technical scaling is one thing, financial scaling is another. Consider that facebook not only need enough capacity to handle the load, they need to be able to replicate to other locations and handle the load somewhere else if the primary site goes offline etc so you need multiple sets of expensive servers, not to mention test environments which replicate live as closely as possible.
Also as you point out, not wanting to be locked in... Being locked to MySQL is bad, but nowhere near as bad because they have all the sourcecode and specifications. They have already done a lot of work improving the performance of PHP, and will most likely look at doing the same for MySQL, options which simply wouldnt be available to them with closed source software.
What you fail to consider tho, is that while Oracle is perfectly capable of scaling technically... It does not scale very well financially, once you get to the size and scale of facebook the cost of oracle licenses would be absolutely crippling... It makes more sense for them to modify mysql to better suit their requirements.
Because the system is grossly corrupt...
There are only a very small number of very large and highly bureaucratic consultancies who ever get picked to manage these projects, and they tend to have very little in the way of technical skills and a corporate culture that scares such people away.
They massively over charge, deliver extremely poor quality work safe in the knowledge that there are very few competitors all of which are equally incompetent so there's no danger of losing out.
Has there ever been an implementation of SAP that didn't go massively budget and fail to meet its initial goals?
As you pointed out, the industry tries to abuse its paying customers...
Bought a movie in standard definition, pay again if you want high def.
Bought a movie in high definition, pay again if you want a clearly inferior standard definition copy.
Bought a movie in one country and want to watch it in another, pay again.
Bought a movie on dvd and want to watch it on an alternative device (ipad etc), pay again.
Want to copy a movie you bought to a media server, so you have convenient access to it without swapping media, not allowed.
Want to copy your movie to a laptop so you can watch it on the go without the hassle of media, not allowed.
Want to make copies of a movie so your kids can play it and not risk damaging the original, not allowed.
If movies were available legitimately without DRM, i would buy the highest quality version i could find and then convert it to whichever format suits me at the time. But as it stands, only the pirates are currently providing me the features that i want.
The problem with that, is that the torrent version is still a superior product... You are not constrained by physical media, you can download instantly without waiting for shipping, and there is no DRM or region restrictions on the torrents (tho the DRM on DVDs is thoroughly cracked, the user-hostile intent is there).
Just because a company has lots of money, doesn't mean their games will stand up to any arbitrary definition of "quality"...
There have been countless examples of big name studios producing extremely lousy games. Some are boring to play, many hide shoddy playability behind great looking graphics, some games would be great except for a serious flaw or two that utterly ruins the experience and some games are just horrendously buggy.
Also "quality" is entirely subjective...
All of the console platforms are flooded with low quality crap from big name publishers already, and being flooded with huge quantities of extremely variable quality software doesn't seem to have done windows any harm.
The problem with facebook, is that its a single site controlled by a single entity...
Google+ would just be transferring that control to Google instead of facebook...
What we need, is something open and decentralised.
GDocs may be inferior, but it's cheaper, and has a large company with a big marketing budget behind it. That's what MS is afraid of, because their business model has always been all about offering cheaper inferior products, marketing them heavily and getting the users locked in.
Also, people were getting their work done with office a decade ago, and the things they need to do haven't really changed.
Problems with export to excel are likely due to microsoft's proprietary formats, do the same problems occur if you export to openoffice?
The collaborative features of GDocs are great too, and nothing from MS or OOo comes close to them.
On the other hand tho, there should be an open set of APIs so that users of desktop software can interact with gdocs users and vice-versa, desktop apps may be more powerful but web based apps are far more convenient. That way a company can move to google and choose between using the web based or native apps depending on requirements and budget.
You can, but exchange likes to mangle messages, for instance if you receive a plain text email exchange will create a very poor html copy of it too... This breaks things like encryption and signed mails.
Does it really matter? Most tv sets these days are perfectly capable of handling both...
It's all about scale...
In hardware, yes absolutely... The cost of producing hardware is high and this will always make it extremely difficult for smaller groups or individuals to compete against the large manufacturers.
In software, where the barriers of entry are lower, open source is doing extremely well... Android, Firefox, and Linux is in everything from TVs, Routers and all manner of networking kit, Phones, all the way up to massive database servers and supercomputers. Linux and BSD are running on thousands of devices that people don't even realise and if you added them all up you would probably find that Linux is the most widespread OS by quite large a margin.
In my house alone, i know that linux runs on my TV, my Satellite receiver, my gps, my wireless ap and my phone.
It's not ahead of the PS3 because of piracy, at all...
It has been possible to pirate xbox360 games almost from the very beginning of the console (ie before the ps3 even existed), whereas this has only been possible on the ps3 recently...
The xbox is ahead of the ps3 because its been around longer, its cheaper, xbox live didn't have a massive high profile outage or leak of customers details recently etc...
You could also argue that the earlier availability of piracy on the xbox has helped the platform relative to the ps3, i know quite a lot of people who chose xbox over ps3 years ago because the xbox allowed them to pirate games.
Some of these people pay for xbox live (well you cant pirate a service), pay for additional hardware (Cant pirate that either), and of course are contributing towards the overall market share of the platform. What they don't do, is pay for something they can get massively cheaper elsewhere.
The point is its all a step backwards, the system is designed to keep the big boys raking it in and anyone else out so they don't have to compete.
Compare to say the C64, Amiga, or even Windows... Everyone has access to the same APIs, and there are/were thriving scenes of indie games. Many great games were released for free or as shareware.
A system like XBLIG has so many arbitrary restrictions, the whole thing is quite insulting. They restrict the languages you can use, restrict the price you can sell for, the size of game you can produce and force you to use their distribution channel exclusively.
All of this will ensure that Indie games are always perceived as inferior to the big name studios.
$650 for mono on android is not a huge price to pay for someone who has already bought a mac, an iphone developer subscription, windows, visual studio etc...
I would, if they were sold outside the US.
Does this mean they will be updating snow leopard to support new hardware?
If you take an old OSX dvd and try to install it on a newer mac, it usually fails to install...
You would assume that at the very least Apple will make install media available for new hardware.
There really should be exceptions made when both participants are effectively the same age... Many people have been screwed for celebrating their 18th birthday by having sex with their (few weeks or months) younger girlfriend.