Posted 10/16/2009 at 12:11:24pm

There are two things that I dislike about that article.

First, we read it roughly every twelve months.  The 'Linux shortcomings' meme has been around for over a decade and it always points to the same 'shortcomings.'  You'd think that would hint at something.

 Second, it demonstrates an astounding ignorance of the linux community.  This is made more obvious by the fact that the author missed (again) the hint mentioned above.

 Linux is not a for-profit project.  Things like marketing are completely irrelevant to the linux community.  It is relevant to those who are attempting to monetize the project, however, and this type of article should be aimed specifically at those companies.  Tarring 'linux' with the same brush makes as much sense as criticizing the entire Microsoft development staff for the outrage that is the Office 2007 ribbon UI.

Linux is not interested in making a single product.  Criticizing 'linux' because there are multiple projects working on similar tools ignores the point of an open-source project.  Yes, it would be more efficient if all of the volunteer developers working on GUIs chose KDE or Gnome rather than splitting their time between them.  However, the point of these projects is not to release a product to market in a timely fashion in order to capitalize on their work.  The point of these projects is for developers to work on a project that they enjoy and to product the product that they want.

 In the professional world, we (developers) are told what to create and how.  In our volunteer time, we'd rather make those decisions ourselves.  That is one of the main reasons we enjoy open-source projects.  Criticising us for our choices is childish and ignores (again) the purpose of open-source:  if you don't like something, go home and improve it or write your own code.

 Linux isn't shooting itself in the foot anymore than I did when I was 8 and decided to paint my model airplanes the 'wrong' colour.  My project, my hobby, my choices.  If you don't it, feel free to create your own.  

 If there isn't a paycheque with your signature on the bottom, feel free to keep derogatory opinions to yourself.  Change requests will be dealt with in an 'as interested' basis.  Thank you. 

Posted 12/30/2008 at 08:41:14am

This topic is explained in full detail in the forums for those who are interested in a complete answer.

All 4GB ARE being used ... but the portion that you can't see are being used as address space for your devices ... video card, hard drives, peripherals, etc..  Since this portion is neither user nor software-addressable, Windows (for whatever reason) hides it from view. 

Rest assured that it is there and that it is being used ... poorly.  ;)

Posted 09/24/2008 at 01:43:34pm

There is a very simple reason that nerds, geeks and hackers are not common in Hollywood:  they are boring to everyone who doesn't belong to the group.

 Nerds have this fantastic ability to destroy a conversation at a party by attacking someone for a random, off-the-cuff comment that peripherally mentions technology.  For instance, when a nice looking girl mentions that her car has an mp3 player, some dork always feels the need to point out that the eight-inch jack in her car doesn't actually play anything.  Somehow, the awkward nerd at the dinner table always manages to crash the discussion with an inane comment about linux ("Well, of course your PC crashed .. you're running Vista *snort*")

 Technology is fantastically interesting to some, but in most it only produces an emotion that wavers between fear and uncertainty.

 There is another reason.  New technology, whether it is a new PC, hybrid car or your fancy new iPhone, is only a tool.  Geeks forget this.  A good movie needs a good story and good stories that are based on tools are pretty damn hard to write.  The Bond franchise does it right:  Bond gets fancy gadgets to help him defeat the bad guys.  The gadgets aren't the movie;  Bond is the movie.  The newest Star Wars movies do it wrong;  the movies feel like an advertisement for LucasArts' ability to CG anything.  Things like plot, acting, story telling and characterisation all disappear in the frantic race to put more aliens, explosions and glowing swords on the screen than were present in the last movie.

Posted 09/11/2008 at 02:36:28pm

Interesting article, guys.

I really like the solution presented for backwards compatibility.  It has long been a thorn in MS' side and using a virtual XP install to run legacy apps is a great solution. 

As a previous poster mentioned, this could be troublesome for non-power users.  However, you (or MS) don't need to tell them that they are running Railroad Tycoon 3 in a virtual OS.  MS could (and should) provide a tool that allows them to install their app seamlessly into such an environment without them knowing. 

One question for the previous poster, though:  when did Microsoft stop being a development shop?  They are devs too, after all.  Finally, the open source community has proven that running 32-bit code in a 64-bit environment isn't all that difficult.  We've been doing it for years now.  ;)

Posted 01/16/2008 at 10:06:29am

Actually, Robert, all of the DirectX versions are hardware APIs; DX10 is not the first version to address hardware specifically. The 'DirectX' implies this ... calls are made directly to and from the hardware. DirectX was developed as a hardware API to allow game developers (and other multimedia applications, of course, but gaming was the impetus) to access hardware directly. We don't have DX10 capability in Wine yet because it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort for OS programmers to reverse engineer MS' API. MS does not provide the source and does not allow developers to simply wrap their API to allow linux to use it. If they provided the source, we could quickly write 'nix versions that mirror the official MS versions. They won't do this for reasons that are evident to anyone who has paid attention to MS' business practices. If they allowed us to wrap their code, we could write a DX10wrapper similar to the ndiswrapper used for wireless cards. Ndiswrapper is a piece of software that is 'wrapped' around Windows driver for a wireless card. The wrapper translates linux hardware requests to the wireless card into 'windows' requests that the driver understands, and it translates the response from the card into something that linux can understand. It is a translator between a windows driver and a linux OS. A similar wrapper could be written around the DX10 code, but using that DX10 code would infringe on MS' software license. This type of wrapper will never be released by anyone who is unwilling to lose their home to MS in a legal battle that they are bound to lose. So, we have to wait until clever programmers rewrite a very complex hardware API. As each version of DirectX becomes more complex, this process will take longer and longer. --Jipstyle