95% of NVidia's code is shared across Linux, Windows and Mac. That Doom 3 performance drop is do to the Doom 3 code, not the NVidia driver. I read that in one of the Linux Doom3 vs. Windows Doom3 comparisons. The Linux Doom 3 code is not as optimized yet as the Windows Doom3 code. Again, this has nothing to do with NVidia which as I stated shares 95% of the code between different platforms. That other 5% is different due to the way the code needs to interface with the kernel/graphics system.
Granted there are opensource drivers avalible in the offical Linux tree now, but this begs the question why? If the nvidia drivers are as great as you profess why does forcedeth even exist?
You answered your own question. Some people don't want to use a binary driver. I personally use the Open Source drivers for my NForce mobo and I use the binary driver for only my NVidia grapichs card.
Note that I am only talking about the graphics drivers as I don't use the binary chipset drivers. I will agree that NVidia was dragging on that and they didn't work with my newer kernel under Fedora Core.
but there performance and features pale in comparison to the windows version
Just making things up to try to prove a point? The NVidia chipsets work out-of-the-box under Linux with Open Source drivers, no binary drivers required. For NVidia graphics cards, NVidia uses a unified driver that shares most code cross-platform. The Linux and Windows NVidia drivers are feature for feature compatible. The performance numbers are all about the same. I get just as good FPS under Linux with NVidia that I do on the same hardware under MS Windows. Even the installation is about the same. For Windows you run the executable and reboot. For Linux you just log out of X and run the executable without a reboot.
It is not stupid. I think it was a good question, though it sounded like you made up your mind about the answer. I can tell you that you were not correct about emulation. I replied to someone that posted below your original post trying to answer his and your question which is here
While you are technically correct, most geeks think emulator and VMWare, MS Virtual PC, or another CPU emulator pops into their mind. Most people think emulator and think CPU emulator == slow or slower. And they are correct because a software CPU emulator will always be slower then the actual hardware. However, Wine is different, because it is just a differnt implementaion of an API. From the link you posted:
The advantage is that, unlike solutions that rely on CPU emulation, Wine runs applications at full speed. Sometimes a program run under Wine will be slower than when run on a copy of Microsoft Windows, but this is more due to the fact that Microsoft has heavily optimized parts of their code, whereas mostly Wine is not well optimized (yet). Occasionally, an app may run faster under Wine than on Windows. Most apps run at roughly the same speed.
If I made a new library to access some new device I created and you came along and reverse engineered it 100% and wrote your _own_ implementation, most people would not call it an emulator, but just another implementation.
No, there is no emulation in Wine. As others have already posted, you can think of it as translator if you want, though that is not a very good description. See, when someone writes a program, they write to an API (Application Programming Interface). An API is nothing more then the set of function that your program can call. What is a function? A function is just a grouping of code that does a specific task. For example, Add(int x, int y) may be a function that takes two numbers and just returns the result. Granted, gaming API's are usually much more involved then just adding two number. What is DirectX? It is just a gaming API that game programmers can use to write games under MS windows. A bunch of function to tell MS Windows to do this or that such as draw a line from point A to point B. There are other gaming API's like OpenGL. OpenGL actually runs on many platforms including Linux. However, DirectX is written by MS and is not on other platforms. Wine actually implements most of the Win32 API which is the standard set of functions you call to write MS Windows programs. Wine didn't have any DirectX support until Transgaming came along and started writing support for DirectX.
So, you have Wine with the DirectX support, it is no different to a game then the same DirectX function calls on MS Windows. Some games run better under Wine on Linux then directly under MS Windows. Though most games should still run a little faster under MS Windows because the Wine project got a much later start on writing a Win32 API implementation and especially the DirectX API implementation then Microsoft did, and Wine doesn't have access to the source code of MS Windows like the MS Windows programmers do. So there will be some less optimized Wine Win32 API's under Linux then under MS Windows.
However, the important thing to remember about all of this is that Wine is Not an emulator. VMWare and MS Virtual PC are emulators and emulate, in software, a hardware device. Wine just implements the same function names and parameters (the data you send into a function) that a MS Windows application will be trying to use.
It seems you suffer from reading comprehension. So I will go slow for you.
You were the one suggesting Apple should give away all their source
Hmm, I am looking at this whole stupid thread with you and where did I _once_ say Apple should release _all_ their source?
And that if they did that they would somehow be on a level playing field with MS, who give away none (nada, zip, 0%) of their operating system in source code form, or for free.
While I am not a big MS fan, I will say that you are wrong. Microsoft grants full access to Windows CE source. While the amount of code that is available from MS is pretty lame IMO, there are some like C#/JScript/CLI Implementations, Windows CE 5.0, FlexWiki, WiX and others. Also a few years ago MS purchased Interix which MS still gives away and parts of it are under the GPL. While MS could never be considered a champion of Open Source, neither can Apple.
Holy crap! When did MS release the entire source code to their OS?
Holy crap! When did Apple release the entire source code to their OS? Oh, yeah, they didn't. Just the kernel.
Or is the "level playing field" you talk about one where MS doesn't have to give away anything, or provide Windows on any other platforms, while Apple has to give away their entire OS for nothing and make sure it works on every hardware platform?
Exactly how many platforms does Mac OS X run on again? Oh yeah, just the one Apple sells.
Oh, I see... the playing field's not even that level, in addition to giving away all of their source code for free, they also have to release it according to your schedule?
In addition to giving away _all_ of their source code for free? Dude, what freaking Apple Zealot(tm) world do you live in? Apple doesn't give away crap for free. The only things they "give away" are Open Sorce codes they have used from the community in their products.
Linux/*nix handles shared libraries well. Something called the soname is used. That is why you may see libpng-1.0.0.so, libpng-1.0.1.so, libpng-1.1.0.so, etc. Each application can install their own version and not worry about stepping on other versions./usr/lib/libpng.so will always point to that latest lib-png.x.x.x.so, however any application can still ask for libpng-0.0.1.so, libpng-0.0.2.so, etc if it needed it and not worry about what other applications need/use.
I do agree with you about static apps. With current disk/memory space, static application are not such a bad thing anymore. The only draw back about static applications is that each instance of a static application will not reuse a shared instance of a particular library, such as is done with dynamic libraries. With most desktop apps only running as one instance, it is not really an issue. However, if the _whole_ system is static linked, it would be an issue, since for example with Linux, each GTK+ application would have their own version of the GTK+ libraries loaded even if they are the same version as other applications and this would dramatically increase memory footprint for your typical desktop.
Wow, a Californian that knows how to make a rational argument! You are a rare find my friend : )
Seriously, I don't see how this tax would drive out business. Most business don't care about the tax burden of their employees. Most/All Californian companies know that they can easily set up a "surrogate" company in Nevada which doesn't have to pay corporate taxes, just like MS does. It is how MS gets out of paying hundreds of millions in state and local corporate taxes every year. You gotta love MS not supporting the local community. You would be surprised at how many companies are getting out of corporate taxes every year, while citizens are overburdened by taxes, especially the middle class.
For you Californians, I do hope this doesn't happen, though you never know what wacky laws California will throw at its citizens.
Because in killing the convicted killer, you imply that there is no humanity left in him.
His humanity was lost when he killed a child after sticking his penis in a 1 year old, or killed someone for a glad baggy with 1/4oz of weed, or raped a women and then killed her so she wouldn't be able to identify him.
Also, by killing him you do not respect *his* life.
HIS life was respected _everyday_ of his life _until_ he choose to kill another human. Remember that to get the death penalty in the USA, a jury has to be convinced that the murder was planned and not an act of passion or rage, etc.
You dont have to agree with a person, but it would be nice if you attempted to love them enough to forgive them their transgression and admit that everyone has a chance to be reformed.
I guess you have never heard of the criminal that has a rap-sheet since they were 10 or so and each crime became more and more violent. I will take a stab-in-the-dark and say you are not married and have no children? I am married to a wonderful women with a beautiful 3 year old little girl and a wonderful 8 month old son. So, if I took one of your loved ones and did all kinds of perverted things to them and as they were _begging_ me for their life, I stabbed them to death, you would want to extend forgiveness to me and try to get me back into society? Or would you just put me in "jail" for the rest of my life and have society pay the millions to keep me alive? You see, modern jail in the USA are not really punishment IMO. They have cable TV, 3-4 meal a day, no hard labor, _great_ exercise facilities, etc. I don't see how that is making some scum pay for the crime they committed against humanity.
Don't get me wrong. I am not a Texan who thinks that everyone should be killed. I think that the death penalty should be for very horrid 1st degree murders, though I also think prison life should be made much harder.
It just shows how the government and media have created millions of drones in the USA. I pray for the day when Americans wake up and remember their rights under the constitution and also remember that our government was never setup to be "Big Brother" and tell us how we should live outside of the Constitution.
Oh, great, just what the USA needs. More people packing into urban areas. Yes. let us all move to a big city and live like sardines so we can save money from some stupid tax. Thank GOD I don't live in California, I would be moving if a law like this passed. I think the best that that could happen for Kalifornia is that the San Andreas Fault goes haywire and Kalifornia floats out into international waters. Then Kalifornia can become their own nation and tax everyone at 80%, tax any earned income over $100,000 at 100% and join Canada in the land of glorious Socialism where the elite get the best and the rest wait.
That I have never lived in California nor will I ever have the ambition to : )
Seriously, California is really getting "too far out there" for most HUMANS to understand their motivations. Taxing someone on how far they drive? Holy crap batman. So I guess everyone should be forced to live close to where they work even if the neighborhood is not favorable to them?
I work for a big fortune 500 in Orlando, FL and I drive 26 miles each way to/from work. I would never live close to work because outside of all the commercial properties, the homes are crap and the neighborhood is bad. I guess that no matter how much I make, I should subject my wife and two children to a crappy community with drugs and violence?
OK, you are a big boy, so I am sure you can understand the difference between someone killing because they want to steal from you, rape you, get drugs or any number of reason scum murder; And society saying that you have committed the most horrific offense against society and because of that we do not want you in _our_ society. There are two options. Capital punishment and paying millions in tax payer dollars to keep that scum alive for the rest of their life. Do you want me taking money out of your paycheck to keep a _convicted_ murder alive?
Don't forget that is is very _hard_ to get the death penalty in the USA. You have to commit 1st degree murder to get the death penalty. Any other murder results in our tax dollars keeping that killer alive for the rest of their life. To get convicted of 1st degree murder, a jury actually has to be convinced that you _PLANED_ the murder and _WANTED_ to kill the person/people.
Compare the number of people that are convicted of murder _each_ year in the USA vs. the number of people that get put on death row. The ratio is very low. Most murders get life in prison, while death row is saved for the most horrid murderers.
Seriously though, AllOfMP3 offers MP3, OGG, Wav, WMA, MP4 and MPC. Far more choices then the DRM'ed AAC from Apple. Sorry, but my money won't go to support DRM'ed music. I am a little older then the average music buyer (31), so I don't care about all the pop-crap out there. I have about 500 MP3's and it is honetly enogh to last me the rest of my life without ever having to contribute to the RIAA monopoly again or supporting crap like Brittany, Christina Aguilera, Ricky Maritn, or all the other pop/rap crap.
No, a "conservative" wants to save an innocent baby that has committed no harm against humanity vs. a _convicted_ murderer that has committed the _ultimate_ crime against humanity, taking another human life. You see, if you kill, you lose your rights to life. Plain and simple. If you have no respect for another life, _why_ in the world should society have respect for your life and pay millions to keep you alive for an average of 75 years or so?
I am a Libertarian, so I don't follow all the Demo/Republi crap that is spewed. However, it doesn't take Albert Einstein to figure out that if you do not respect life, why should others respect your life.
I think that sig is very Insightful in the way that it highlights the typical democrats stance of being allowed to kill a human while they are babies, yet detest killing a murderer while they are adults and having _full_ control over their actions. A baby has no defense against a doctor with a vacuum trying to kill it.
What disgust me are people that are enamored with being able to kill babies that have committed no offense against society, yet not want to kill real abominations that have committed murder.
I actually don't like iTunes. It sucks up tons of memory to just play some stinking music under WinXP. The UI is very bloated. I will say that I like the way the playlist is presented. Other then that, I like Rhythmbox much better. It is faster and uses less resources under Linux then iTuens under WinXP. This is on a P4 3.06GHz HT system with 1GB memory and fast ATA 133 drives. The iTunes UI still feels sluggish.
Why couldn't Linux user buy music before? I use Linux and WinXP and I have been able to walk into tons of music stores and buy music. I was never thrown out because I like Linux. As for buying online music, I have been able to use AllOfMP3 under Linux with no problems. Oh, and AllOfMP3 charges $0.02 - $0.25 per songs depending on qulity vs. $0.99 for iTunes. AllOfMP3 sounds like a much better option for my money.
Well, from AllOfMP3 you can get 2.5GB of music for $25, that is about 700 MP3's at 192kbs. The same number of songs from iTMS would cost you oh, about $700! With almost _all_ of that money going to the RIAA and Apple, _not_ the artists.
Hmm, I am surprised that Apple Zealots(tm) haven't swarmed over your post and modded you down. Apple actually allowing interoperability? Never! The only reason that iTunes runs on MS Windows is because Apple _knew_ they wouldn't have a market without it. Apple doesn't really care what their users want to use unless is it Max OS X running on some Mac hardware.
Insert Apple Zealot(tm) post about how Apple uses Open Source stuff and how the kernel is open. Umm, but don't mention how all the important stuff that makes a Mac a Mac is closed and locked away by Apple, because that would ruin the Mac Zealot(tm) argument (and put Mac on a level playing field with MS). Then insert counter point that Apple _needs_ to keep somethings proprietary in order to compete. Then ingnore the fact how Apple loves Open source code they can take and use to save millions in development costs and then take ages to return changes to the community (cough, safari, cough).
Sorry champ, you are way off the mark. Not wanting to support the RIAA != being cheap. I am anything but cheap. I just won't continue to support a broken system. Also where in my post did I say I buy CD's from an artist site? I don't buy CD's. I buy other items and go to concerts.
So let me get this straight. You are going to support the artist by purchasing from a service where they see none of the money instead of one where do?
Do you know how much AllOfMP3.com pays artists? According to their FAQ:
All the materials in the MediaServices projects are available for distribution through Internet according to license # LS-3-03-79 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. Under the license terms,
MediaServices pays license fees for all the materials subject to the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights". All the materials are available solely for personal use and must not be used for further distribution, resale or broadcasting.
Where I work, we design our sites to work with IE; Not my decision
So where you work someone comes along and if they see one your sites working in Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/Safari they yell out you and make you break it on purpose?
You see, if you actaully follow some _very_ simple standards, you will get sites that work in the major browsers. Don't do stupid things like use document.all, use document.getElementById instead. When you refer to a forms "controls" such as textarea and inputs, don't just use FormName.inputName, use docuemnt.FormName.inputName. It only takes one second to look at a site your building in IE and Firefox.
If I am doing a web app, I only use Firefox to test with. Firefox has tons of great extenstion to make it much easier to do web development. Once everything is working. I then go through the app with IE to make sure it works. If I find a problem with IE, I make changes as needed. However, 99.99% of the time if you follow the simple rules above, your web sites/apps will work in the major browsers.
I do GUI, server and web based apps. I put the same level of effort into web apps as my C/C#/Java GUI/Server apps. If I need some DHMTL type functionality, I spend an extra 5 minutes to write or find something that works with the major browser. For example, I wanted a popup calendar. There are tons of crappy IE only popup calendars on the web. However, I spent an extra 2 minutes on Google and found this one, Calendar Components III. I wanted a JavaScript based table sorter and found this one, SortTable. You just drop SortTable into a page and it does the rest and makes all your tables sortable in IE _and_ Firefox/Mozilla. The point of all of this is that it takes no extra time to do things right and not have silly IE only requirements. The only things that should be IE only is if you are for some reason using an ActiveX control.
If you don't find the songs you want on iTMS, try allofmp3. I am not sure if they have as many songs as iTMS or not. Howver, the price is far better. Instead of paying by song, you pay by MB or GB of download. If you think about it, this is the best way to sell a song. It doensn't cost any more money to keep sending the same bits down a pipe, so why charge per song? I know Apple doesn't have this option because of the RIAA.
With AllOfMP3, you can get 2.5 Gb for $25. If your average MP3 is 3.5Mb you can get about 700 for that $25 vs. $700 with iTMS. Most of that $700 for iTMS will go to the RIAA and Apple, with the artists as usual getting the shaft. Until that stops, I will never use a system like iTMS which just encourages the RIAA and Apple to take a larger share then what the artist gets. When I want to compensate an artist, I check their website for items to buy or go to their concert.
The stink about the auto update feature in WinXP is because MS patches are know to break things. I have never seen a Linux update break a system. Most major Linux distros have had auto update for a long time now. Even if they didn't, a simple nightly cron job to run yum or apt-get does the job.
My work desktop has a broken MDAC 2.8 install. WinXP SP2 doesn't let you reinstall it! When I try to reinstall MDAC 2.8 I get a message that I already have these features, though WinXP doesn't care about the fact that MDAC 2.8 is broken. I searched the web and MS knowledge base, the only option is to _remove_ sp2, reinstall MDAC 2.8 and then reinstall SP2, a _very_ slow process which could result in more things breaking. The only solution I have right now is to downgrade some of my programs to MDAC 2.7. Again, I have never run into this type of madness on my Linux computers at work or home.
For software, perhaps this is true, but someone above mentioned manufacturing process refinement by the small inventor, and it seems that removing "conceive" from that definition would actually work in a big corp.'s favor, given the capital intensive nature of large manufacturing.
Why should someone be allowed to get a patent for just thinking up or "conceiving" some manufacturing process refinement? They don't have to spend money to test out the new process to see if it actually works. The costs are in actually implementing things and testing them out, not in just thinking about them. I can think about crap all day at no cost. I can write down ideas at no cost. It is not until I start testing and trying to implement those ideas that cost come in to play. A patent should only be allowed to protect those investments, the R&D which is the real meat-n-potatoes in innovation.
For example I can patent an idea for an electric car. Currently I just have to write down some unproven ideas and I can be laughing all the way to the bank. Now, if I was required to actually have a prototype that was at least 60% functional, then the patent would be fair and protect my work. By requiring real working patents, it makes way for the real innovators and not just groups of lawyers and other scam artist that just patent ideas and then hold the worlds innovators hostage.
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You are wrong. The NVidia Unified Driver Architecture (UDA) shares 95% of its code base between all supported operating systems. That other 5% obviously needs to be different because each OS has a different way to interface with the kernel/graphics system.
Note that I am only talking about the graphics drivers as I don't use the binary chipset drivers. I will agree that NVidia was dragging on that and they didn't work with my newer kernel under Fedora Core.
It is not stupid. I think it was a good question, though it sounded like you made up your mind about the answer. I can tell you that you were not correct about emulation. I replied to someone that posted below your original post trying to answer his and your question which is here
So, you have Wine with the DirectX support, it is no different to a game then the same DirectX function calls on MS Windows. Some games run better under Wine on Linux then directly under MS Windows. Though most games should still run a little faster under MS Windows because the Wine project got a much later start on writing a Win32 API implementation and especially the DirectX API implementation then Microsoft did, and Wine doesn't have access to the source code of MS Windows like the MS Windows programmers do. So there will be some less optimized Wine Win32 API's under Linux then under MS Windows.
However, the important thing to remember about all of this is that Wine is Not an emulator. VMWare and MS Virtual PC are emulators and emulate, in software, a hardware device. Wine just implements the same function names and parameters (the data you send into a function) that a MS Windows application will be trying to use.
Does Apple give away AppleScript?
Does Apple give away iCal?
Does Apple give away iChat AV?
Does Apple give away iSync?
Does Apple give away Safari?
Does Apple give away X11?
Does Apple give away iLife?
Does Apple give away iTunes?
Does Apple give away iPhoto?
Does Apple give away iMovie?
Does Apple give away GarageBand?
Does Apple give away iDVD?
Does Apple give away Logic Pro?
Does Apple give away Motion?
Does Apple give away Final Cut Pro HD?
Does Apple give away DVD Studio Pro?
Does Apple give away Shake?
Does Apple give away Soundtrack?
Does Apple give away The Production Suite?
Does Apple give away Xsan?
Does Apple give away Apple Remote Desktop 2?
Does Apple give away WebObjects?
Does Apple give away AppleWorks?
Does Apple give away FileMaker?
Does Apple give away FileMaker Server?
Does Apple give away Final Cut Express?
Does Apple give away Keynote?
Does Apple give away Logic Express?
Does Apple give away ?
Does Apple give away Mail?
Does Apple give away iDisk?
Does Apple give away HomePage?
Does Apple give away Backup?
Does Apple give away Anti-Virus?
Does Apple give away QuickTime Player?
Does Apple give away QuickTime Pro?
Does Apple give away QuickTime Streaming Server?
Does Apple give away QuickTime Broadcaster?
I do agree with you about static apps. With current disk/memory space, static application are not such a bad thing anymore. The only draw back about static applications is that each instance of a static application will not reuse a shared instance of a particular library, such as is done with dynamic libraries. With most desktop apps only running as one instance, it is not really an issue. However, if the _whole_ system is static linked, it would be an issue, since for example with Linux, each GTK+ application would have their own version of the GTK+ libraries loaded even if they are the same version as other applications and this would dramatically increase memory footprint for your typical desktop.
Seriously, I don't see how this tax would drive out business. Most business don't care about the tax burden of their employees. Most/All Californian companies know that they can easily set up a "surrogate" company in Nevada which doesn't have to pay corporate taxes, just like MS does. It is how MS gets out of paying hundreds of millions in state and local corporate taxes every year. You gotta love MS not supporting the local community. You would be surprised at how many companies are getting out of corporate taxes every year, while citizens are overburdened by taxes, especially the middle class.
For you Californians, I do hope this doesn't happen, though you never know what wacky laws California will throw at its citizens.
Don't get me wrong. I am not a Texan who thinks that everyone should be killed. I think that the death penalty should be for very horrid 1st degree murders, though I also think prison life should be made much harder.
It just shows how the government and media have created millions of drones in the USA. I pray for the day when Americans wake up and remember their rights under the constitution and also remember that our government was never setup to be "Big Brother" and tell us how we should live outside of the Constitution.
Seriously, California is really getting "too far out there" for most HUMANS to understand their motivations. Taxing someone on how far they drive? Holy crap batman. So I guess everyone should be forced to live close to where they work even if the neighborhood is not favorable to them?
I work for a big fortune 500 in Orlando, FL and I drive 26 miles each way to/from work. I would never live close to work because outside of all the commercial properties, the homes are crap and the neighborhood is bad. I guess that no matter how much I make, I should subject my wife and two children to a crappy community with drugs and violence?
Don't forget that is is very _hard_ to get the death penalty in the USA. You have to commit 1st degree murder to get the death penalty. Any other murder results in our tax dollars keeping that killer alive for the rest of their life. To get convicted of 1st degree murder, a jury actually has to be convinced that you _PLANED_ the murder and _WANTED_ to kill the person/people.
Compare the number of people that are convicted of murder _each_ year in the USA vs. the number of people that get put on death row. The ratio is very low. Most murders get life in prison, while death row is saved for the most horrid murderers.
Seriously though, AllOfMP3 offers MP3, OGG, Wav, WMA, MP4 and MPC. Far more choices then the DRM'ed AAC from Apple. Sorry, but my money won't go to support DRM'ed music. I am a little older then the average music buyer (31), so I don't care about all the pop-crap out there. I have about 500 MP3's and it is honetly enogh to last me the rest of my life without ever having to contribute to the RIAA monopoly again or supporting crap like Brittany, Christina Aguilera, Ricky Maritn, or all the other pop/rap crap.
I am a Libertarian, so I don't follow all the Demo/Republi crap that is spewed. However, it doesn't take Albert Einstein to figure out that if you do not respect life, why should others respect your life.
I think that sig is very Insightful in the way that it highlights the typical democrats stance of being allowed to kill a human while they are babies, yet detest killing a murderer while they are adults and having _full_ control over their actions. A baby has no defense against a doctor with a vacuum trying to kill it.
What disgust me are people that are enamored with being able to kill babies that have committed no offense against society, yet not want to kill real abominations that have committed murder.
Why couldn't Linux user buy music before? I use Linux and WinXP and I have been able to walk into tons of music stores and buy music. I was never thrown out because I like Linux. As for buying online music, I have been able to use AllOfMP3 under Linux with no problems. Oh, and AllOfMP3 charges $0.02 - $0.25 per songs depending on qulity vs. $0.99 for iTunes. AllOfMP3 sounds like a much better option for my money.
Well, from AllOfMP3 you can get 2.5GB of music for $25, that is about 700 MP3's at 192kbs. The same number of songs from iTMS would cost you oh, about $700! With almost _all_ of that money going to the RIAA and Apple, _not_ the artists.
Insert Apple Zealot(tm) post about how Apple uses Open Source stuff and how the kernel is open. Umm, but don't mention how all the important stuff that makes a Mac a Mac is closed and locked away by Apple, because that would ruin the Mac Zealot(tm) argument (and put Mac on a level playing field with MS). Then insert counter point that Apple _needs_ to keep somethings proprietary in order to compete. Then ingnore the fact how Apple loves Open source code they can take and use to save millions in development costs and then take ages to return changes to the community (cough, safari, cough).
I have plenty karma to burn baby >: P
You see, if you actaully follow some _very_ simple standards, you will get sites that work in the major browsers. Don't do stupid things like use document.all, use document.getElementById instead. When you refer to a forms "controls" such as textarea and inputs, don't just use FormName.inputName, use docuemnt.FormName.inputName. It only takes one second to look at a site your building in IE and Firefox.
If I am doing a web app, I only use Firefox to test with. Firefox has tons of great extenstion to make it much easier to do web development. Once everything is working. I then go through the app with IE to make sure it works. If I find a problem with IE, I make changes as needed. However, 99.99% of the time if you follow the simple rules above, your web sites/apps will work in the major browsers.
I do GUI, server and web based apps. I put the same level of effort into web apps as my C/C#/Java GUI/Server apps. If I need some DHMTL type functionality, I spend an extra 5 minutes to write or find something that works with the major browser. For example, I wanted a popup calendar. There are tons of crappy IE only popup calendars on the web. However, I spent an extra 2 minutes on Google and found this one, Calendar Components III. I wanted a JavaScript based table sorter and found this one, SortTable. You just drop SortTable into a page and it does the rest and makes all your tables sortable in IE _and_ Firefox/Mozilla. The point of all of this is that it takes no extra time to do things right and not have silly IE only requirements. The only things that should be IE only is if you are for some reason using an ActiveX control.
With AllOfMP3, you can get 2.5 Gb for $25. If your average MP3 is 3.5Mb you can get about 700 for that $25 vs. $700 with iTMS. Most of that $700 for iTMS will go to the RIAA and Apple, with the artists as usual getting the shaft. Until that stops, I will never use a system like iTMS which just encourages the RIAA and Apple to take a larger share then what the artist gets. When I want to compensate an artist, I check their website for items to buy or go to their concert.
My work desktop has a broken MDAC 2.8 install. WinXP SP2 doesn't let you reinstall it! When I try to reinstall MDAC 2.8 I get a message that I already have these features, though WinXP doesn't care about the fact that MDAC 2.8 is broken. I searched the web and MS knowledge base, the only option is to _remove_ sp2, reinstall MDAC 2.8 and then reinstall SP2, a _very_ slow process which could result in more things breaking. The only solution I have right now is to downgrade some of my programs to MDAC 2.7. Again, I have never run into this type of madness on my Linux computers at work or home.
For example I can patent an idea for an electric car. Currently I just have to write down some unproven ideas and I can be laughing all the way to the bank. Now, if I was required to actually have a prototype that was at least 60% functional, then the patent would be fair and protect my work. By requiring real working patents, it makes way for the real innovators and not just groups of lawyers and other scam artist that just patent ideas and then hold the worlds innovators hostage.
Ideas are free, working implementations are not.