Apple was for a time a major contributor to GCC, and is currently the driving force behind llvm and clang.

Also, they improved kHTML and released the result as webkit, which they are still one of the main contributors to.

The GSM Nexus S started OTA updating in December, then stopped with no explanation when the majority still haven't received an update, and finally restarted in March with the 4.0.4 update. The rumours were that the OTA update was suspended because of poor battery performance, which was only fixed in 4.0.4. Fair enough, but Google could have been more open about it.

"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- Carl Sagan

You have an interesting definition of "full speed". Turkey applied for membership in 1987, when EEC had 12 members. It is negotiating membership today 25 years later, when EU have 27 members, some of which didn't even exists as nations at the time Turkey first applied for membership.

The main effect of the Apollo Project was not scientific, it was psychological. Sputnik had scared the Americans (and the rest of the world) with Soviet technological superiority. The response to this was a push for science and technology in the US, of which the Apollo Project was part Beating the Russians to the Moon restored the confidence of Americans (and the rest of the world) in US superiority.

The alternative to the push towards science would be a push towards religion. This happened, but would have even stronger. If US could not be the undisputed master of the material world, it could at least be the master of the spiritual world. New ideas and technology would no longer come from the US. US military would still be formidable, but without the crushing superiority. US would look inwards, only keeping enough of an active interest in world affairs to keep the oil flowing. US had saved the world from dictatorship in WWII, from now on, the world could look after itself.

Europe would be unable to fill the power vacuum, although they would be a leader in science. France and England would still be occupied with crumbling empires, and preventing West Germany to take leadership. They would fall under influence of the Soviet Empire. The Soviets were always numerically superior, but they were scared of US technology. With that gone, they would be even more expansionist. Their economic system would still be doomed eventually, but by expansion they would be to delay the collapse. Without the protection of the US, Japan would see the need to regain their military might, while keeping their economic growth. Japan would become the new leader in technology. Mao's China would suffer from the pressure from two sides (Soviet and Japan), and never develop into a new superpower.

So, at this time, the America's would still be under US influence, Africa, Europe, and South Asia would be under Soviet influence, and SE Asia (and Oceania) dominated by Japan. Technologically, we would be 20 years behind. The Soviet and Japanese empires would both start to show signs of recession, while the US might be rediscovering science which would eventually lead to a come back on the international scene.

EU went from 15 to 27 member states in the period from 2000 to 2010, in case you wonder why we seem to outperform China.

The point is that they shouldn't claim a trademark on the word "scrolls". Scrolls are a staple of the fantasy genre.

"Elder scrolls", yes, "scrolls", no.

They predict that by 2013 non-OS software will grown to almost half the revenue.

Source.

Middleware (likely JBoss) will be the majority of the non-OS software.

Applications are mostly Java, so that shouldn't be a problem either.

The Native code library (NaCl) will be unportable currently. However, they plan to base the next version on LLVM making that too platform independent.

I actually think CVS did more for "open innovation". Together with Sun sponsoring the various SunSites.

CVS was the first (at least widely used) free server based version control system, and it made it very easy for anyone with a server to setup a free software project. The SunSites were probably the most common hosting platform until SourceForge. Before CVS you either gave collaborators login access so they could work locally on your machine (GNU did that), or relied on sending patches, which Linus did for years. CVS made it so much more convenient. Especially with anonymous CVS which essentially allowed anyone to create their own "fork" that still tracked mainline. A very poor mans github.

CVS was buggy in design and replaced by SVN, and the DVCS's provided another leap ahead in collaboration, so CVS got a bad reputation. But for its time, it was a revolution at least as important as git.

For comparison, North America is 5% is the ncsoft's market for *all* their games (lineage, city of heroes/villains, aion, guild wars). They are not going to base any decision on releasing code on how the game is doing on the North American market.

Lineage (I) was 29% of ncsoft sales in Q4 2010 according to their financial report.

Diablo was inspired by nethack, a roguelike.

The boundaries of the genre are not well defined, but turn-based would usually be considered one of the defining characteristics.

I know it is a joke, but the connection is there. The original rogue is vi-like, adopting the cursor keys of vi.

> Joking aside, I am kind of curious what thuis "as microsoft would have you beiieve" comment is coming from.

This blog post, which was linked to in the article. Especially the last section ("Full Hardware Acceleration is the Difference") would lead the reader to believe that the difference was architectural.