>>> Andrew, both emacs and vi come with quite good interactive tutorials.
>> Sure. And do you know how to *find* that?
> 
> Run vimtutor instead of vim.

Heh. It always seems easy once you already know how. ;-)

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Invisible wrote:
> I'm not saying it's impossible to make cross-platform games. But when
> you have a huge codebase invested in DirectX, it would be tantamount to
> a complete rewrite to move to OpenGL.

They could link their program to Winelib. It would still be a native Linux
binary, and they can use Linux-specific stuff, but the Windows-specific
stuff they use would be handled by Wine.

That's how Picasa for Linux was made (a photo organizer by Google).

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>> I'm not saying it's impossible to make cross-platform games. But when
>> you have a huge codebase invested in DirectX, it would be tantamount to
>> a complete rewrite to move to OpenGL.
> 
> They could link their program to Winelib. It would still be a native Linux
> binary, and they can use Linux-specific stuff, but the Windows-specific
> stuff they use would be handled by Wine.
> 
> That's how Picasa for Linux was made (a photo organizer by Google).

Then I guess we're left with "insufficient demand". I presume if Valve 
thought there was money in it, they'd do it.

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:01:33 -0500, nemesis wrote:
> 
>> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> Wow... The concept of using a free OS on a product specifically
>>> designed for vendor lock-in seems astounding to me...
>> 
>> Nobody can stop free software from running anywhere, not even Apple or
>> Dell!! :D
> 
> Apple's having a good run at that on the iPhone....

There's even an iPhoneLinux project...

(although I think they haven't yet got it to *work at all*, last I checked
they were just playing with bootloaders)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> There's even an iPhoneLinux project...
> 
> (although I think they haven't yet got it to *work at all*, last I checked
> they were just playing with bootloaders)

I find it amusing that some 3rd party firmware for my MP3 player works 
better than the firmware written by the people who designed and 
manufactured the player...

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> I find it amusing that some 3rd party firmware for my MP3 player works 
> better than the firmware written by the people who designed and 
> manufactured the player...

That's because a 3rd party doesn't have the pressure that every month they 
spend developing the software is a month of sales lost...

At some point the OEM has to draw the line and release the product, ok so if 
the software was better they would sell 20% more units, but if they waited 
until the software was better they would sell 20% fewer units because better 
alternatives would become available sooner in the product lifecycle.

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scott wrote:
>> I find it amusing that some 3rd party firmware for my MP3 player works 
>> better than the firmware written by the people who designed and 
>> manufactured the player...
> 
> That's because a 3rd party doesn't have the pressure that every month 
> they spend developing the software is a month of sales lost...
> 
> At some point the OEM has to draw the line and release the product, ok 
> so if the software was better they would sell 20% more units, but if 
> they waited until the software was better they would sell 20% fewer 
> units because better alternatives would become available sooner in the 
> product lifecycle.

Well, they release firmware updates from time to time. Only problem is, 
they've more or less stopped doing that any more. The last update was 
years ago. (And the player is only about 6 months old.)

It just amuses me though that a bunch of people can take the device 
apart and figure out how it works with no access to any technical data 
at all. This should be 100% impossible, but somehow they did it. And 
they did it better than the makers themselves...

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> It just amuses me though that a bunch of people can take the device apart 
> and figure out how it works with no access to any technical data at all. 
> This should be 100% impossible, but somehow they did it. And they did it 
> better than the makers themselves...

I'm sure the total number of man-hours they spent reverse engineering it and 
rewriting the firmware *far* outweighs what the OEM spent on it.  For a 
commercial venture it just wouldn't be profitable, but if a group of people 
enjoy doing that for a hobby, sure.

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scott wrote:
>> It just amuses me though that a bunch of people can take the device 
>> apart and figure out how it works with no access to any technical data 
>> at all. This should be 100% impossible, but somehow they did it. And 
>> they did it better than the makers themselves...
> 
> I'm sure the total number of man-hours they spent reverse engineering it 
> and rewriting the firmware *far* outweighs what the OEM spent on it.  
> For a commercial venture it just wouldn't be profitable, but if a group 
> of people enjoy doing that for a hobby, sure.

The OEM has the spec sheet though, so it should be many millions of 
times easier for them to design software for it.

I mean, an MP3 player isn't exactly a complex piece of hardware. There's 
a battery, a harddrive, a processor, and a DAC. I would think those are 
all off-the-shelf components. Just stick them in a box, put in the 3 
microswitches for the buttons, and your hardware is done.

The *software* is what makes it a useful device...

Still, I suppose if you can limit the number of crashes to less than 
once per day, you can probably get people to buy it before they realise 
there's a problem.

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> 
> technically, :q or :q! - the first will exit and prompt you if you made 
> changes, the second will quit and not save your changes.  If you want to 
> quit and save changes, then :w will write.  I prefer shift+ZZ myself, it 
> quits and writes changes. :-)

I use :wq (or :wq!, if :wq complains that the file is write-protected :p).

> Jim

-Aero

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