Hi Jonathan!

These days it's quite popular to both bash the copyright system and sue those thieving filesharers to oblivion. I'd like to ask you what you, as an independant musician, think would be a good balance between the creator rights and the public interests? Would it be a RIAA wet dream where all the content is locked up behind paywalls and getting a copy from an unauthorized source, like say a library, would constitute a crime with a minimum of 6 months in jail? Do you believe more in the Pirate Parties vision of abolishing the monopoly on creating copies, but retaining the protection against economic abuse? Or are you more in favor of going full nuclear by abolishing the entire copyright system alltogether? Thank you for all the great songs you have produced over the years!

DirectCompute isn't widely used last time I checked, CUDA and OpenCL has far greater mindshare. It's also more or less equivalent to those two technologies. Though granted you must use it for XBox...

DirectSetup is only a minor utility library that only makes sense if you're already using DirectX.

DirectXMath is, likewise, more of a utility library. I consider it a part of D3D, since 90% of the functions only make sense with D3D (and maybe DirectCompute).

So, yeah, revising that list, Direct3D, Direct2D, DirectCompute and DirectWrite.

Sometimes you need more fine-grained control than Apache gives you though.

Like, consider an Apache system running three domains at foo.example.com, bar.example.com and baz.example.com. Baz needs CGI scripts, Foo and Bar doesn't.

These days this scenario will probably be solved with three separate virtual machines running from the same master copy (i.e. RO mounted filesystem over local netboot with separate storage partitions), but, yeah...

If you're going to be nitpicky, then yes, it's SDL+OpenGL.

However, the only DirectX system still relevant in Win8.1 is Direct3D. Everything else has been removed;

DirectDraw - Repaced by Direct2D
DirectInput - Replaced by XInput
DirectSound - Replaced by XAudio2
DirectMusic - Legacy MIDI format - also replaced by XAudio2
DirectPlay - A complete joke, replaced by Games for Windows Live and XB Live.
DirectX Media/Media Objects: Deprecated and replaced/removed by all of above

That leaves DirectWrite and Direct2D as the only relevant (and minor) DIrectX components left. So yes, DX is more than a graphics API; these days and for gaming though, the only thing being used is D3D in DX.

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.

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