No, the extensions aren't standard, that's true. It's not a perfect solution. But if you want to use a new nifty feature not yet standardised by OpenGL, you do not have to wait for the ARB to get their shit together. You as a developer can use it and then with minimal fuss port your non-standard extension to the standard when it becomes available. DirectX does not have that advantage.

This is a major advantage if some new technology shows up, like say geometry shaders. OpenGL supported geometry shaders from day one - but through proprietary extensions. These then trickled down to the specification. Even if it's invented elsewhere OpenGL can take advantage of it basicly instantly. It's not standard - true - but it's there and if it's a good idea it will most probably become standard.

Similarly, I have no doubt extensions will show up that will implement these new DX inventions, should they prove to be helpful.

XBOne can't use DX12. Reason being, the hardware in XBOne is not DX12 compatible. I can't see how a GPU manufactured atleast 9 months earlier than DX12 release will ever be compatible with DX12.

Oh, yes, one more point to note;

OpenGL is now the dominant API on around 80% of all computing devices (Smartphone+Tablet+PC).

While this was sorta-kinda true five years ago, a *lot* has changed since then.

The OpenGL specification has one big fundamental advantage over Direct X, namely, extensions. While extensions certainly aren't perfect, they do allow you to include new functionality in OpenGL - in DirectX, if you got a new technology, you have to wait for Microsoft to implement this.

Furthermore, OpenGL 4.4 has all features of DirectX 11 has and then some. It is about as easy if not easier to develop for, and is even faster[1] than DX11. DX11 is a good API, but it's getting outdated.

Shame that the XB One won't be able to utilize DX12...

Further reading: http://wccftech.com/open-gl-di...

[1] http://www.extremetech.com/gam...

You do know it's possible to embed binary formats in XML, right?

Someone obviously didn't do their homework...

1. This is mostly done already in either case. If you look at, for example, Unity3D, you work pretty much entirerly with scripts. Today most professional games have a scripting engine and have had it for the last 15 years, since the decoupling benefits are tremendous. Performance wise, game logic isn't heavy unless we're talking physics calculations - But even then much can be offloaded on the GPU using OpenCL or similar technologies.

2. Basicly some token encryption and maybe some proprietary DRM extensions. DRM is, however, all about delivering a crippled product to your customers while letting pirates have a complete and fully functional product.

3. Consoles: See SteamBox, OUYA. But yes, definitely - as long as no AAA games are open source, there is no incentive to develop for it. If you're a small-time developer though, chances are you won't ever get onto the console market in any case. One could of course dual-license, but yeah...

Actually, for any given router hop you need, at the very least, four addresses.

Provided your network looks like this:

  { } ---> [A] <---> [B] <---- { }

The network AB is called 192.168.0.252 and contains four public addresses:

Interface A (192.168.0.253/30)
Interface B (192.168.0.254/30)
Network name (192.168.0.252/30)
Network broadcast (192.168.0.255/30)

So, you would be wrong. :)

Actually, the model of Open Source Games is really solid. Atleast for Single Player games.

The reason why that model works is because you're giving away essentially the whole of the source codebase. But textures, 3D maps, specific game scripting for levels (when pressing button X, Y happens) isn't free.

The only proprietary bits, in other words, are the content itself. Think of it as releasing an Open Source e-reader but selling the books separately.

These "arm-chair engineers" are actually very smart people working with real-world networking scenarios all the time. I refuse to believe that the specs they have come up with are that much different to implement from IPv4.

The reality, here, is that the problem lies in economics of scale. The large network companies do not have the incentive to fund research to develop a carrier-grade IPv6 hardware-based router that can be produced in scale, since everyone is still IPv4.

ISPs are starting to feel the burn. CGNs are horrible and, in the long run, the biggest threat to network neutrality, yes even larger than the ISPs themselves.

I wish someone could kickstart a hardware-only IPv6 router with a software IPv4 under an open spec, let the chinese copy it tenfold and watch as fast, cheap IPv6-routers starts rolling in. But that's probably not ever going to happen...

In the short term, this is true. Including countries with lesser living standards will cost the EU as a whole.

In the mid-term (10-25 yrs), these countries will adopt some practices from EU-regulation, get an influx of highly educated workers that start to build up the country, all the while exporting cheap labor (both goods and services meaning immigrants coming to clean your house).

In the long term (25+ yrs) we will see a strong economic country with high education and living standards. Not including these countries in the EU is very shortsighted thinking IMO.

I do however agree that the EU cannot expand further until the economy is fixed - unfortunately the Euro is tanking very hard right now, but it may yet be possible to fix it, somehow. Don't blame it all on the poor countries though, that's just racist.

Ah, I remember when Microsoft did the same thing with the OpenGL ARB and more or less poisoned it, leaving OpenGL for dead once they had completed their mission. Also, W3C, Java and pretty much every other standard group they've sabotaged^H joined usually end up the same way.

So forgive me if I see this as yet another attempt at killing off open standards.

More reading

Because the open source implementations are tied to the MESA project - whatever MESA supports is possible to support, although not required to support.

Anything MESA doesn't support, well, is impossible at the moment.

Non-free AMD driver is also up there somewhere. Can't find exact version for Linux but whatever, it's probably at 4.2 or later.

The problem is more that MESA only supports 3.3 - But the free drivers (e.g. Nouveau) does NOT support 3.3 so AMD is actually better at the moment. I do believe Nouveau will get 3.3 support soon however.

The real news here, though, is that performance of the free drivers are catching up to the proprietary drivers. That means AMD can ditch the proprietary drivers completely within a couple of years - which, if they can stay afloat that long, means great news for us Linux desktopers! :)

SteamOS won't ever become the app-store for Linux. Reason being, an app-store is only a glorified package repository.

I do believe we will see less centralised package repositories though, not more.

I do not believe in a total abolishment of copyright. It does three things well:

1. Protect the authors' right to recognition by making it illegal to claim another persons work as your own.
2. Protect the authors' reputation by allowing the author to veto any use of his work that may damage his or her reputation.
3. Protect the author from unwanted commercial exploitation by granting every author a monopoly over each and every copy of their work, for a limited time.

However, the means it does to accomplish these protections - by granting every author a monopoly - is simply outdated. One cannot have that kind of control anymore, if ever. Everyone on the internet is their own printing press, but also their own authors nowadays.

If, instead, an author may have the right to all profit-driven earnings derived from his work for a limited time, as well as the right to recognition and reputation for life + 25 years, then we still preserve the original purpose of copyright - but all of a sudden we get rid of the unwanted side effects of the law that makes millions of people into criminal scum ready for jail as soon as the government gets around to prosecuting you. I find that a much better solution.