I doubt codeweavers will be as well recieved by the OSX crowd as by the Linux crowd. The OSX crowd likes Mac because it is cool looking and everything works out of the box, the Mac way. The linux crowd likes to tweak and adjust and fine tune their software, and many know a great deal about PCs, and like to do stuff like this. Wine is still early in development, and many Mac users wont like the fact that OMG, you must change a few settings and perform DLL overrides to get some things to work and it wont have a nice aqua feel to it. Many linux users will happily do this. Thus I bet WIne will fair better with Linux than DarWine will with OSX.
Since mac and Linux dont support directX, all directX calls are translated to openGL. DirectX works, but Direct3D is a tad flacky. This is because Wine halted work on direct3d when transgaming promised to give them their work on direct3d, but transgamming simply refused to follow through and backstabbed em. So they lag behind in that area, but are catching up.
I'm actually going to try to run wine on a G4, at some point. The plan is to install a Linux and get that working first, then qemu. I believe qemu can emulate a CPU for user-level apps, thus meaning I should be able to run an x86 wine, under qemu, under my ppc Linux. And then run a Windows app under that.
Darwine, a port of Wine to OSX has a PPC version with QEMU bundled with it, just don't expect speed.
OS X has a vastly larger chunk of the desktop market than does Linux.
Not really, Linux has quickly gained on OSX, though I think if I remember right, if you count BSD (other than OSX or Darwin) then Linux has about 3-4% of the global OS market, while Mac has about 5-6%, not too big a difference.
Actually, I think Microsoft is scared of everyone.
Linux strikes an especially sensitive area. Their core buisness, Windows OS is being challenged by a free, technologically superior alternative. They are well aware of the fact that if they lose Windows on the desktop, they then probably loose Office, MSN and the IE7 Search, Windows Live One Care, Internet Explorer, MS Exchange, some of the Xbox 360's media features, Windows Media DRM, Zune, Virtual PC, Windows Server,.NET, DirectX, their PC gaming division, Visual Basic, and all their other Windows software that compeates with other stuff. Most of their other stuff either only works on Windows, or there are a few that are ported to Mac, but they get most of their buisness on the Win ports (such as office). Plus most Mac users only want things like MS Office because it eases the transition to OSX. MS gets most of their money through Windows, so they have a lot to loose. Plus, when you have 90% of the market, well, there is no way to go but down. That is what SCO is for, to try to scare people away from this new challenger. MS uses SCO in addition to their deals with hardware vendors as a form of containment.
Northeast Asia is currently the most economically dynamic area of the world. And yet, in the center of this region sits a basket case. A country in a cult of personality throwback to the early 1950s, still fighting the Korean War.
While China continues its relentless march to economic modernity and eventual superiority, while South Korea has the most advanced internet culture in the world (see recent slashdot story still on the front page from the New York Times), and while Japan is pretty much the most advanced nation on the planet, according to a number of measures (GNP, life expectancy, etc), North Korea keeps its citizens in prisoner camps, rummaging for leaves to eat, while it focuses every ounce of its words to the world and every drop of its resources on military belligerence. And counterfeiting currency. And making methamphetamine. And now nukes.
You forgot to mention the special administrative region of Hong Kong, the worlds freest economy and currently the only Lassie-Faire nation in the world. It is a center of trade in that area, and is one of the biggest trade nations in the world.
I suppose there is one thing the US could do militarily if it absolutly had to come to it, but it would require an invasion. We would start with using stealth bombers to attack various suspected nuclear sites, then use conventional fighters and bombers and move in battleships to strike costal facilities. We could then launch an invasion from SK. To prevent NK from firing their nukes, we would have to have very thick fighter coverage over suspected nuclear sites and hope that if a silo opens up we could bomb it's missle in time. If a missle is launched, we are in troubled. Currently, out best plan of action involves having fighters in the US launch a massive number of sidewinder air to air missles at it high up in the atmospheare and hope one happens to get lucky enough to damage or disable the missle. Someday, we hope to have sucessful antinuke missles near all US cities, but that is a ways off. I hope we can diplomatically shut them up. Hopefully we can cox China into cutting off aid and encourage resistance and unreast so that a revolution could occoure.
I know the PS3 will use Linux, and now it looks like the Wii will too. I suppose this "propriatary Linux" will be done TiVo style, were the source is released, but can't really be changed. That isn't all that bad though. Game developers often want their games avalible on many different platforms. Consols are nice because if it works on one PS3, it works on all PS3s the same way. A Wii is a Wii is a Wii. It also means game studios will be making versions of their software that use OpenGL and run on Linux, so when they release the PC version, they might as well make a Linux port of a game since it would cost next to nothing to make a binary since the code has been ported and it uses OpenGL. Already it is getting cheaper to port to linux, thanks to wine. No I am not talking about running the program on Wine per se, I mean taking the google Picasa approch and using Wine code (which uses the LGPL instead of the GPL for this exact reason) to make a Linux version. Between the two, it will cost probably less that a few hundred to port a major game from Wii or PS3 to Linux.
Also, there is one advantage to porting to linux, you pretty much go unchallenged as far as competition if you port to linux. Think about it, Unreal Tournament is very popular on Linux, why? Because they are the biggest major shooter for Linux. If Loki hadn't had managment issues, they would have had potential to make a lot of money.
I am sorta thinking out loud here, but I wonder if another console maker will just make a PC and sell it as a consol. MS did this with the origional XBox sorta. The origional Xbox was simply a PC with a Celeron processor, an ATI graphics card with a special connector. A DVD-ROM drive with a special power supply. An 8 or 10 GB HDD which was formated with a modified FAT filesystem called "FATX", the Win 2000 Kernel and directX graphics, an ethernet adapter, the memory cards were all standard USB flash drives that had a propriatary connector, 64 MB of RAM with a paging file, the controller ports were modified USB 1.1 ports, and if you cut one up you could plug flash drives into it and they worked. The XBox came close to using the PC as a console idea well, but they didn't do that for the 360. I wonder if some console maker will eventually take the idea further, and use a normal X86 (or X86-64) processor, normal PC style hardware and drives and stuff but use FOSS software. Not just a Linux kernel, but also linux software that would help game devs. Stuff like wine to help with PC to consol ports, license Java to help Java programmers make games, license Flash and Shockwave, and put a copy of Firefox on there to browse the web. A media player (though the codecs for MP3 and DVD support would be licensed) for multimedia, such as Xine or MPlayer. The only reason for consols to exist is for devs to have a standard platform for games to run on that use predictable hardware, why not make is as PC-like as possible?
I don't like MS (I hate apple too, so don't get me wrong) but I think knowing how well MS can dominate the desktop, their Zune could succeed. They can easily push the Zune with advertising and would have little trouble in simply winning with bundled software. Making it so WMP could sync with the Zune out of the box would be good. They could also temporarily sell for a loss to knock out Apple. They can take losses, Apple can't. Once they get apple off the market, they can raise prices. Chances are, they will allow Napster and Rapsody back in on their DRM scheme (while at the same time killing iRiver, Gigabeat, and other Playforsure devices). They have radio and sharing while the iPod doesn't. Plus they very well could release updates that "accedentally" screw up iTunes.
But apple will survive. They can keep selling their computers, and although apple can never dominate the market, they can keep their fans happy and thus stay in buisness (which is all they were before iPods).
Many TV and Movie crews use Linux for digital editing and the like. They like linux because it is cheap and versitle. They very well could have just grabbed a laptop on the set and used it.
why can't there be a good FOSS alternative to virtualization? I mean, we have Xen, which requires either special hardware or you must be using linux on both, or we have QEMU, an emulator. We can use KQEMU, but that is closed source, and QVM86 hardly works as a replacment. I wish there was a FOSS virtualization program of the same quality as VMWare or Virtual PC.
I kind of think Apple and Microsoft need to make it so that each can deal with the other's filesystem. Vista should be able to read and write HFS, and OSX should be able to read and write NTFS (currently I think it can read only). It would benifit both companies to work together on doing this. Maybe in the final release of the next OSX and Vista, they will be able to do that. Of course, Linux can do both (true, you need an NTFS write driver).
Why would intel change things, the box works. It is efficient, inexpensive, and intel has made millions off of it. Apple has not done nearly as well as the:beige box" Dell and HP have. Plus Apples are very expensive and they have crappy nonstandard hardware.
The article never mentions online music sales, which the RIAA sure as hell benifits from. SOme people might switch from buying CDs to using an online service.
While the American approach is quite honestly hypocritical (we are going to force you to be "free" by our definition of free), it is no less so than the communist line of a state run by the workers.
So basicly the US is like the GPL in that both demand freedom?
Even if the US Government's antitrust lawyers would allow it I doubht MS wants it. Sony is really only compeating with MS in the gaming market. Microsoft is not a multimedia company, and probably would not want to enter that market as it would cause further antitrust issues and they are a software company. MS would also not know what to do with the Vaio computer division. MS does not want to enter the hardware market. They saw what happened to Apple, Amiga, Be, Commadore, and the other hardware/software companies. They obviously want to remain dominant by selling software that runs on any X86 PC. They could have entered the hardware market long ago if they had wanted to, but other than a few mice and keyboards and the Xbox (which was a normal X86 PC in disguise) they have not entered the hardware market. They also don't want the multimedia corperations. They are not a multimedia company, and their closest relation to them is with their WM DRM. They are happy to continue to dominate the software buisness.
But then who would buy them? Toshiba possibly might if they got weak enough. That way Toshiba would be the only option in the HD movie market. They would win the format war hands down. Sony's hardware could possibly be of interest to Toshiba as well. Nintendo might consider buying their Playstation division. Nintendo however doesn't really need non-game stuff as it is a game company. Keep in mind, Nintendo has almost always remained profitable, no matter how small their market share. Sega might buy out that division and re-enter the console market. Sega is still around producing games, and they only failed due to the fact that the dream cast was too far out for most. Another multimedia company could also buy out Sony.
Sony could survive but really, the only way they could is if their PS3 takes the market by storm or if Blu-Ray wins. It looks like the hightened cost of both will prevent that. Not to mention all the hardware companies lining up behind HD-DVD, and they are the ones with the real say.
Sony could also eventually go out of buisness. They are not the megacorp they once were and this is possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Now all we need to worry about is the newest vulnurabilities.
Now in addition to calling linux a cancer and anticommercial, MS can say it is a murder weapon.
I doubt codeweavers will be as well recieved by the OSX crowd as by the Linux crowd. The OSX crowd likes Mac because it is cool looking and everything works out of the box, the Mac way. The linux crowd likes to tweak and adjust and fine tune their software, and many know a great deal about PCs, and like to do stuff like this. Wine is still early in development, and many Mac users wont like the fact that OMG, you must change a few settings and perform DLL overrides to get some things to work and it wont have a nice aqua feel to it. Many linux users will happily do this. Thus I bet WIne will fair better with Linux than DarWine will with OSX.
Darwine works on PPC with aid from the QEMU emulator, but things will only run at 20% normal speed.
I suppose there is one thing the US could do militarily if it absolutly had to come to it, but it would require an invasion. We would start with using stealth bombers to attack various suspected nuclear sites, then use conventional fighters and bombers and move in battleships to strike costal facilities. We could then launch an invasion from SK. To prevent NK from firing their nukes, we would have to have very thick fighter coverage over suspected nuclear sites and hope that if a silo opens up we could bomb it's missle in time. If a missle is launched, we are in troubled. Currently, out best plan of action involves having fighters in the US launch a massive number of sidewinder air to air missles at it high up in the atmospheare and hope one happens to get lucky enough to damage or disable the missle. Someday, we hope to have sucessful antinuke missles near all US cities, but that is a ways off. I hope we can diplomatically shut them up. Hopefully we can cox China into cutting off aid and encourage resistance and unreast so that a revolution could occoure.
Also, there is one advantage to porting to linux, you pretty much go unchallenged as far as competition if you port to linux. Think about it, Unreal Tournament is very popular on Linux, why? Because they are the biggest major shooter for Linux. If Loki hadn't had managment issues, they would have had potential to make a lot of money.
I am sorta thinking out loud here, but I wonder if another console maker will just make a PC and sell it as a consol. MS did this with the origional XBox sorta. The origional Xbox was simply a PC with a Celeron processor, an ATI graphics card with a special connector. A DVD-ROM drive with a special power supply. An 8 or 10 GB HDD which was formated with a modified FAT filesystem called "FATX", the Win 2000 Kernel and directX graphics, an ethernet adapter, the memory cards were all standard USB flash drives that had a propriatary connector, 64 MB of RAM with a paging file, the controller ports were modified USB 1.1 ports, and if you cut one up you could plug flash drives into it and they worked. The XBox came close to using the PC as a console idea well, but they didn't do that for the 360. I wonder if some console maker will eventually take the idea further, and use a normal X86 (or X86-64) processor, normal PC style hardware and drives and stuff but use FOSS software. Not just a Linux kernel, but also linux software that would help game devs. Stuff like wine to help with PC to consol ports, license Java to help Java programmers make games, license Flash and Shockwave, and put a copy of Firefox on there to browse the web. A media player (though the codecs for MP3 and DVD support would be licensed) for multimedia, such as Xine or MPlayer. The only reason for consols to exist is for devs to have a standard platform for games to run on that use predictable hardware, why not make is as PC-like as possible?
wood it run linux?
Well I bet you they will ban it. Oh wait, I can't bet you :(
How is Dirac any better than Theora?
Of course, they still don't look any better.
But apple will survive. They can keep selling their computers, and although apple can never dominate the market, they can keep their fans happy and thus stay in buisness (which is all they were before iPods).
In other news, Google is announcing their newest product, Google Porn Search (beta).
Many TV and Movie crews use Linux for digital editing and the like. They like linux because it is cheap and versitle. They very well could have just grabbed a laptop on the set and used it.
why can't there be a good FOSS alternative to virtualization? I mean, we have Xen, which requires either special hardware or you must be using linux on both, or we have QEMU, an emulator. We can use KQEMU, but that is closed source, and QVM86 hardly works as a replacment. I wish there was a FOSS virtualization program of the same quality as VMWare or Virtual PC.
I kind of think Apple and Microsoft need to make it so that each can deal with the other's filesystem. Vista should be able to read and write HFS, and OSX should be able to read and write NTFS (currently I think it can read only). It would benifit both companies to work together on doing this. Maybe in the final release of the next OSX and Vista, they will be able to do that. Of course, Linux can do both (true, you need an NTFS write driver).
Aren't Sony Viao laptops affected?
Why would intel change things, the box works. It is efficient, inexpensive, and intel has made millions off of it. Apple has not done nearly as well as the :beige box" Dell and HP have. Plus Apples are very expensive and they have crappy nonstandard hardware.
The article never mentions online music sales, which the RIAA sure as hell benifits from. SOme people might switch from buying CDs to using an online service.
But then who would buy them? Toshiba possibly might if they got weak enough. That way Toshiba would be the only option in the HD movie market. They would win the format war hands down. Sony's hardware could possibly be of interest to Toshiba as well. Nintendo might consider buying their Playstation division. Nintendo however doesn't really need non-game stuff as it is a game company. Keep in mind, Nintendo has almost always remained profitable, no matter how small their market share. Sega might buy out that division and re-enter the console market. Sega is still around producing games, and they only failed due to the fact that the dream cast was too far out for most. Another multimedia company could also buy out Sony.
Sony could survive but really, the only way they could is if their PS3 takes the market by storm or if Blu-Ray wins. It looks like the hightened cost of both will prevent that. Not to mention all the hardware companies lining up behind HD-DVD, and they are the ones with the real say.
Sony could also eventually go out of buisness. They are not the megacorp they once were and this is possible.