Hrm, interesting. Apart from fonts, which was just mentioned, I can't imagine why the same application itself would render the same format differently across two platforms.
But I do agree that you brought up a good point. OpenOffice isn't striving to make the same document look exactly the same across all platforms. They are just trying to make the same data accessible and editable across all platforms.
Thanks. That's what I thought, but the parent article seemed to suggest that Adobe had opened sourced Flash. And it is version 4 of the scripting language.
Please forgive my ignorance on the matter. I do recall reading the article earlier on how Adobe has released the code on the scripting portion of Flash to Mozilla, and how it created the Tamarin project.
Is the scripting portion alone enough for Mozilla to have their own embedded fully-functional Flash player?
Can we compile from source a 64-bit Flash player some day through this project?
The Tamarin Project mentions Firefox 2, and as far as I can tell from reading the Firefox 2 features, it never made a new impact in the 2 release. Will this impact Firefox 3? When will it be implemented, and what exactly does it mean?
I don't know that this move has more meaning today than if it was done two years ago, but I certainly see more motivation today. The purpose of the ODF is to ensure that 100 years from now we can still access data. Closed formats mean data may not be accessible in the future. PDF used to be the sole means to have a document look exactly the same across any platform. That is no longer the case, and even Microsoft has opened the standard (mostly) on their new Office data files.
While I still applaud the effort, Adobe is late to the party.
I would call this innovative, but ultimately isn't this what Counter-Strike started in a sense?
There is an actual mission where you play against fellow players? This seems to be a larger extension of what Counter-Strike already does. While not wholly innovative, I think this is a very good idea. Too bad my FPS skills are so weak. I enjoy a FPS with good ambiance and story, but I'm a poor FPS player since I rarely play them.
Sony has said that they eventually want to support homebrew games, they just haven't come forward with details.
In my opinion, that is the biggest problem with the PS3 right now. (not to fly tangental airlines)
Launch PS3 games aren't that superior to the 360 counterparts, and the sixaxis functionality is hardly used. Why? Because 360 developers got dev kits very early on. The PS3 developers were kept in the dark for ages, and then got dev kits at the last second. Less than a month away from launch, Bethesda is working on porting Oblivion to the PS3 and the media asks them about downloadable content, to which Bethesda says they have no clue because Sony won't tell anyone.
I don't think Sony is evil like so many others. I think Sony, MS and Nintendo have all told untruths. They are all corporations, and they are all out to make a profit. All three have given me happy gaming experiences, and all three have pissed me off.
Blu-Ray could work out really well. The PS3 could be a smash hit. But right now, it is a physical product, but largely it is still a mystery. Sony though they would just show up and win the console war, but maybe they should actually sell the thing, work with developers, and do something with it.
Actually both Sony and MS are providing a means for indie developers to distribute their games via their online service. MS has provided XNA, but makes you pay a subscription to even consider trying to get your game noticed, and how you get it digitally signed and distributed is still unclear.
Sony released fl0w as a downloadable game via their service, and is actively trying to recruit indie developers as well.
The XNA is designed more for fairly large developers to easily develop a game for the XBox and Windows simultaneously without going through the usual channels to get dev XBoxes.
Sony allows Linux without GPU support for the same reason that MS won't allow homebrew content at all, they lose money on the hardware, and if you can just install games for free, then they lose out. However, allowing Linux in the first place is a step up from not allowing at all, which is the MS camp.
I firmly agree. Microsoft will never let this software on the 360, nor do they care for it on the original XBox. I know they want to combat piracy of games, but they should embrace and offer digital signatures for quality homebrew applications.
Microsoft has not embraced the hacker movement in the least, and while there is a lot of anti-Sony sentiment right now, I personally respect Sony for allowing Linux on the PS3 from day one.
They are making installing Linux fairly easy, though I think Suse has the best installer, and YAST is great for new users.
I don't think Ubuntu is a sexy name, the mascot isn't sexy, and I don't care for the color scheme. It seems to be the fastest growing Linux distro on the planet, but I don't think it is a marketing home run either.
I'm a big advocate of Gentoo as well, though lately I've been frustrated with the lack of updates in Portage for certain packages. They sorely need more package maintainers.
But Gentoo is not the magic bullet to spark the Linux revolution for the typical user.
Not trying to start a flame-war here, but I loathe Gnome. I point most "typical-users" to SUSE, but with the Novell fiasco, I'd point them to Kubuntu likely.
Both show great promise to that end. If the community weren't so completely fractured, we could develop a magic bullet.
You can buy them for $500, unless you absolutely need the wifi built in. Sony said they weren't going to really try and stop modders from putting in larger HDDs themselves. Just as it is plain stupid to buy a $300 360, it is pretty stupid to buy the $600 PS3.
You count contend that is also the best way to cut your teeth. A few years back someone gave me a Mandrake CD, and Linux lasted all of three days on my PC. That was my only Linux experience. Then I decided to give Gentoo a shot as a total newb, and learned a lot.
I don't know why people say you can't start with Gentoo. I think it is the place to start.
Some do consider alternatives, and that is why programs like ReactOS exist. Most of the smaller alternatives aren't really designed to be desktop replacements for the world, but rather small niche desktops. Of all the alternatives, Linux is the best candidate to supplant Windows on someone's PC.
Firefox used aggressive marketing in quick blitz. It had a great name. And Firefox had rapid growth because of that.
Linux is associated with geeks and carries plenty of negative baggage with the average person. When Mozilla became Firefox, it was able to be reborn in a marketing perspective, and may someday win the fight that Mozilla never could.
If Linux gets a similiar marketing facelift, you could see similiar adoption rates that Firefox had. It is a much bigger adjustment for people, but in the wake of Vista, more people may be looking for alternatives. However, the majority of the Linux community is quite content to cater to themselves rather than try to cater to the outside market. For mass consumption you would really need:
1 major primary distro for home users. 1 major desktop Easy conversion wizard to help people convert Microsoft documents, desktops and settings. 1 major form of package management, and thusly one major package repository
Remember the GetFirefox.com campaign? Remember all the CDs thrown around?
Imagine a LiveCD distribution campaign that did the same thing, but also helped you convert/migrate? Give it a snappy name, and a cute mascot and there you go!
I was young enough to have played an original 2600, but not old enough to remember much of that time. I actually really enjoy the emulation scene as a way to revisit these systems that I missed, and preserve software that would otherwise be completely forgotten.
You mean like the Spolight clone desktop search API?
Given that this is a feature that has been in development since pre NT4, clearly this was stolen from the Mac world. And given that the Linux world had a tool like this before Mac, clearly this was stolen from Mac.
Or the PDF clone metro?
Since when was then PDF format something that Apple invented? Oh wait, they didn't! And you're suggesting that any document standard is now a rip off on PDF? You're just stretching. And again, since you have no clue what you're talking about, I'd like to point out that the feature is actually named XPS, not Metro.
Or the Sudo clone UAC?
Windows is the last OS to get something like UAC, but again, Mac was late to this party as well. You sure love to give Mac credit for all these inventions that come from the Unix/Linux world while claiming that MS is ripping off Apple.
Or the Smart folder clone Virtual folders?
Again, this is a feature that MS has been talking about as part of WinFS since the NT4 days. But please try again. Not to mention that it was a promised feature of Windows 2000 and then XP, but got yanked at the last moment both times.
Or the Quarz Extreme clone Aero?
For the record, I don't believe that all shiny GUI's copy Apple. I do believe that Aero actually looks better than anything Mac is currently offering. And either way this was the one point I conceded that people seem convinced Microsoft stole, but a visual style does not make an OS. When you ignore hundreds of new features and focus your argument on visual styles it proves you don't really know what you're talking about.
Or the Drag-n-Drop install clone ClickOnce?
I'm not an avid Mac user, so I'm not sure when they got this feature, but MS was talking about this feature as part of Longhorn over three years ago. I can't say one way or another where they got the idea from, but again, it could easily have come from the Linux world. In fact, once again I wouldn't be surprised if Apple took it from the Linux world.
Or the Dashboard clone Sidebar?
There have been third-party sidebars in Windows for ages, and again in Linux. And didn't really early OSes like OS/2 and GeoWorks have them as well? But clearly, Vista is nothing more than a Mac OS rip off, even though it operates nothing like OS X, doesn't use a microkernel, has no basis on BSD, and isn't a GUI thrown over a command-line driven OS.
Or the myriad of bundled apps like Windows iPhoto Gallery?
Now you're clearly talking out of your ass. XP has photo folders built in, and Microsoft has had photo gallery software available for free for years and years. I especially get irate when I see those Mac commercials that say that Macs come with gallery and movie making software but Windows doesn't. It is a flat out lie. I guess Windows Movie Maker, free bundled software ceases to exist in the eyes of Mac users.
OS X is built on Linux/BSD code, and took a great deal of improvements from Linux/BSD code. My favorite moment was the press conference where Steve Jobs was claiming to have invented the virtual desktop.
If you want to point fingers at an OS stealing features perhaps you need to take a serious look at Apple.
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Thanks, an actual informative post!
I was very disappointed. I was expecting a video of Verizon in the oven, not their phone.
Damn!
Hrm, interesting. Apart from fonts, which was just mentioned, I can't imagine why the same application itself would render the same format differently across two platforms.
But I do agree that you brought up a good point. OpenOffice isn't striving to make the same document look exactly the same across all platforms. They are just trying to make the same data accessible and editable across all platforms.
Thanks. That's what I thought, but the parent article seemed to suggest that Adobe had opened sourced Flash. And it is version 4 of the scripting language.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/
Please forgive my ignorance on the matter. I do recall reading the article earlier on how Adobe has released the code on the scripting portion of Flash to Mozilla, and how it created the Tamarin project.
Is the scripting portion alone enough for Mozilla to have their own embedded fully-functional Flash player?
Can we compile from source a 64-bit Flash player some day through this project?
The Tamarin Project mentions Firefox 2, and as far as I can tell from reading the Firefox 2 features, it never made a new impact in the 2 release. Will this impact Firefox 3? When will it be implemented, and what exactly does it mean?
I tip my hat to them.
I don't know that this move has more meaning today than if it was done two years ago, but I certainly see more motivation today. The purpose of the ODF is to ensure that 100 years from now we can still access data. Closed formats mean data may not be accessible in the future. PDF used to be the sole means to have a document look exactly the same across any platform. That is no longer the case, and even Microsoft has opened the standard (mostly) on their new Office data files.
While I still applaud the effort, Adobe is late to the party.
I would call this innovative, but ultimately isn't this what Counter-Strike started in a sense?
There is an actual mission where you play against fellow players? This seems to be a larger extension of what Counter-Strike already does. While not wholly innovative, I think this is a very good idea. Too bad my FPS skills are so weak. I enjoy a FPS with good ambiance and story, but I'm a poor FPS player since I rarely play them.
I couldn't agree more. I sense the article is just another attempt to bash Google for anything and everything.
There is no web standard to use the term "tag" and label is more appropriate. And does it really matter either way?
He is producing the Halo film. A first-time director was directing it.
Sony has said that they eventually want to support homebrew games, they just haven't come forward with details.
In my opinion, that is the biggest problem with the PS3 right now. (not to fly tangental airlines)
Launch PS3 games aren't that superior to the 360 counterparts, and the sixaxis functionality is hardly used. Why? Because 360 developers got dev kits very early on. The PS3 developers were kept in the dark for ages, and then got dev kits at the last second. Less than a month away from launch, Bethesda is working on porting Oblivion to the PS3 and the media asks them about downloadable content, to which Bethesda says they have no clue because Sony won't tell anyone.
I don't think Sony is evil like so many others. I think Sony, MS and Nintendo have all told untruths. They are all corporations, and they are all out to make a profit. All three have given me happy gaming experiences, and all three have pissed me off.
Blu-Ray could work out really well. The PS3 could be a smash hit. But right now, it is a physical product, but largely it is still a mystery. Sony though they would just show up and win the console war, but maybe they should actually sell the thing, work with developers, and do something with it.
Actually both Sony and MS are providing a means for indie developers to distribute their games via their online service. MS has provided XNA, but makes you pay a subscription to even consider trying to get your game noticed, and how you get it digitally signed and distributed is still unclear.
Sony released fl0w as a downloadable game via their service, and is actively trying to recruit indie developers as well.
The XNA is designed more for fairly large developers to easily develop a game for the XBox and Windows simultaneously without going through the usual channels to get dev XBoxes.
Sony allows Linux without GPU support for the same reason that MS won't allow homebrew content at all, they lose money on the hardware, and if you can just install games for free, then they lose out. However, allowing Linux in the first place is a step up from not allowing at all, which is the MS camp.
I firmly agree. Microsoft will never let this software on the 360, nor do they care for it on the original XBox. I know they want to combat piracy of games, but they should embrace and offer digital signatures for quality homebrew applications.
Microsoft has not embraced the hacker movement in the least, and while there is a lot of anti-Sony sentiment right now, I personally respect Sony for allowing Linux on the PS3 from day one.
And please mod this up!
Possibly. OS/2 Warp was a little bloated, but I actually liked it. I ran a BBS off it back in the day.
They are making installing Linux fairly easy, though I think Suse has the best installer, and YAST is great for new users.
I don't think Ubuntu is a sexy name, the mascot isn't sexy, and I don't care for the color scheme. It seems to be the fastest growing Linux distro on the planet, but I don't think it is a marketing home run either.
I'm a big advocate of Gentoo as well, though lately I've been frustrated with the lack of updates in Portage for certain packages. They sorely need more package maintainers.
But Gentoo is not the magic bullet to spark the Linux revolution for the typical user.
Not trying to start a flame-war here, but I loathe Gnome. I point most "typical-users" to SUSE, but with the Novell fiasco, I'd point them to Kubuntu likely.
Both show great promise to that end. If the community weren't so completely fractured, we could develop a magic bullet.
You can buy them for $500, unless you absolutely need the wifi built in. Sony said they weren't going to really try and stop modders from putting in larger HDDs themselves. Just as it is plain stupid to buy a $300 360, it is pretty stupid to buy the $600 PS3.
You count contend that is also the best way to cut your teeth. A few years back someone gave me a Mandrake CD, and Linux lasted all of three days on my PC. That was my only Linux experience. Then I decided to give Gentoo a shot as a total newb, and learned a lot.
I don't know why people say you can't start with Gentoo. I think it is the place to start.
Some do consider alternatives, and that is why programs like ReactOS exist. Most of the smaller alternatives aren't really designed to be desktop replacements for the world, but rather small niche desktops. Of all the alternatives, Linux is the best candidate to supplant Windows on someone's PC.
Firefox used aggressive marketing in quick blitz. It had a great name. And Firefox had rapid growth because of that.
Linux is associated with geeks and carries plenty of negative baggage with the average person. When Mozilla became Firefox, it was able to be reborn in a marketing perspective, and may someday win the fight that Mozilla never could.
If Linux gets a similiar marketing facelift, you could see similiar adoption rates that Firefox had. It is a much bigger adjustment for people, but in the wake of Vista, more people may be looking for alternatives. However, the majority of the Linux community is quite content to cater to themselves rather than try to cater to the outside market. For mass consumption you would really need:
1 major primary distro for home users.
1 major desktop
Easy conversion wizard to help people convert Microsoft documents, desktops and settings.
1 major form of package management, and thusly one major package repository
Remember the GetFirefox.com campaign? Remember all the CDs thrown around?
Imagine a LiveCD distribution campaign that did the same thing, but also helped you convert/migrate? Give it a snappy name, and a cute mascot and there you go!
Except there are more alternatives. Your three alternatives are the largest out there, but not the only three.
I was young enough to have played an original 2600, but not old enough to remember much of that time. I actually really enjoy the emulation scene as a way to revisit these systems that I missed, and preserve software that would otherwise be completely forgotten.
I'm not suggesting that you should, but Vista is a serious departure from XP.
I think XP is the best iteration of Windows ever released, and Vista is an undue resource hog. But that's just my opinion.
You mean like the Spolight clone desktop search API?
Given that this is a feature that has been in development since pre NT4, clearly this was stolen from the Mac world. And given that the Linux world had a tool like this before Mac, clearly this was stolen from Mac.
Or the PDF clone metro?
Since when was then PDF format something that Apple invented? Oh wait, they didn't! And you're suggesting that any document standard is now a rip off on PDF? You're just stretching. And again, since you have no clue what you're talking about, I'd like to point out that the feature is actually named XPS, not Metro.
Or the Sudo clone UAC?
Windows is the last OS to get something like UAC, but again, Mac was late to this party as well. You sure love to give Mac credit for all these inventions that come from the Unix/Linux world while claiming that MS is ripping off Apple.
Or the Smart folder clone Virtual folders?
Again, this is a feature that MS has been talking about as part of WinFS since the NT4 days. But please try again. Not to mention that it was a promised feature of Windows 2000 and then XP, but got yanked at the last moment both times.
Or the Quarz Extreme clone Aero?
For the record, I don't believe that all shiny GUI's copy Apple. I do believe that Aero actually looks better than anything Mac is currently offering. And either way this was the one point I conceded that people seem convinced Microsoft stole, but a visual style does not make an OS. When you ignore hundreds of new features and focus your argument on visual styles it proves you don't really know what you're talking about.
Or the Drag-n-Drop install clone ClickOnce?
I'm not an avid Mac user, so I'm not sure when they got this feature, but MS was talking about this feature as part of Longhorn over three years ago. I can't say one way or another where they got the idea from, but again, it could easily have come from the Linux world. In fact, once again I wouldn't be surprised if Apple took it from the Linux world.
Or the Dashboard clone Sidebar?
There have been third-party sidebars in Windows for ages, and again in Linux. And didn't really early OSes like OS/2 and GeoWorks have them as well? But clearly, Vista is nothing more than a Mac OS rip off, even though it operates nothing like OS X, doesn't use a microkernel, has no basis on BSD, and isn't a GUI thrown over a command-line driven OS.
Or the myriad of bundled apps like Windows iPhoto Gallery?
Now you're clearly talking out of your ass. XP has photo folders built in, and Microsoft has had photo gallery software available for free for years and years. I especially get irate when I see those Mac commercials that say that Macs come with gallery and movie making software but Windows doesn't. It is a flat out lie. I guess Windows Movie Maker, free bundled software ceases to exist in the eyes of Mac users.
OS X is built on Linux/BSD code, and took a great deal of improvements from Linux/BSD code. My favorite moment was the press conference where Steve Jobs was claiming to have invented the virtual desktop.
If you want to point fingers at an OS stealing features perhaps you need to take a serious look at Apple.
There are several distros that are easier to install than Windows and work better out of the box.
Have fun being productive when your box is overwhelmed with spyware and viruses.
I'm not this huge Microsoft hater. Those are just the facts.