But key is, did it run x86 software faster? Running it through something like, FX!32, it would have to quite a bit faster than x86 to best x86 at x86. So in affect, it was more expensive , slower, processor because all the apps where x86.

But Mono aims to be compatible. If they give up that, that would be one less problem I have with them. However, MS haven't really started the swerving to control the standard yet, they are still very much in the growing the standard part of the cycle.

It doesn't work. At least for shell stuff, Win7 is drifting away from being documented. Much better than rely on someone taking MS to court every time they find themselves hand-stringed compared with MS, why not just split MS into a software business and a OS business. Cure rather than treat.

For the last two years I've been doing shell stuff. It is not well enough documented. With Win7 there seams to be more stuff now undocumented. Weather it's on purpose or because they don't care, it's not enough. The key I found for XP was finding the torrent with most of the shell code for Windows 2000 (and it is awful code), for Win7, it's back to guess work and trial and error. Some classes and defines/flags/enums are not documented at all, but generally the biggest problem is interaction information about how all these classes work together. Maybe for this level of complexity, source is just better documentation, I find so, but I except I'm odd in preferring to read code than docs.

The problem is clearly knowing where to look. If you try and look anywhere but where the focus point is, it's uncomfortable. The first time I watch something in 3D, it took me a while to learn not to look in the background at anything, to learn to let my eyes be led. Even then, if there is a lot going on, it's not always clear where you should be looking. A mate of mine, a 3D fan, has just gone crazy and bought a massive, high end 3D TV, and even he admits he can't watch it in 3D all the time as it gives him headaches. BR>
3D will only work perfectly when each eye is presented with an image for where it is looking. I'm not being a luddite, if I was still doing 3D modelling on the computer, I think this could be very useful, but I'm not going to buy into this technology for every film. Films are long and the current 3D technology is too much work to watch. Doing proper 3D, with a proper image for each eye (i.e. hologram) isn't happening any time soon.

It's not just a patent problem. It's the old chasing tail lights problem. MS have a long history of encouraging people to commit to follow them, and then swerving like mad to loose them. Throwing patent rocks out the back is just one dirty trick that they have used in the past. It's all well documented, you won't have to look hard. One of the better sources is as always Groklaw.

But you could walk away from Google much easier than you could from Windows, providing you haven't made that jump already.

Because anyone who writes software in competition with Microsoft software on the Microsoft platform is at a disadvantage. They don't have access to everything in the same way. MS (and Apple, and probably other in the same position) can and do make use of API calls not available (due to not being publicly exposed or documented) to competitors. That is is anticompetitive. On the scale of Windows and Microsoft, it's a real problem.

Wrong. I use to use AllOfMp3.com, paying for music for the first time in years, because the service was so great and the price was so low. Then of course it was shutdown. You can compete with free, you just have to add enough value at a price people are willing to pay for. Or you make money from something other than selling the product. Plenty of examples, Christ, internet search, the subject of this post is one. Pay much for your internet search engine do you?

Google are no angels, but compared with MS they are.
MS make a closed operating system and closed software for that closed operating system. How is that not anticompetitive? (I know this doesn't just apply to MS). It was even found as such in court, they where to be broken in two (a OS business and a software business), but then they got out of it!
MS bully the OEM to force Windows on us, and those of us free of them, end up paying more to not have it!
MS where given a monopoly by IBM from the get go and have maintained it with every trick in the book, and a few new ones they came up with themselves. Many of which come under "dirty trick". I could rant about MS and standards, but it's old ground everyone knows. Even the MS fan boys must be able to see Goolge are less bad by a order of magnitude or two, even through the MS cool aid vision. It Google do go properly evil, we can just change search engine, big deal. Many people aren't ready or able to change OS, in fact they are often deliberately locked in.

Thus the Gates Foundation to be remember by something else. Plus I'm sure it does MS no harm with him being all charitable and still supporting Windows. Everyone is a winner......

> Saying nice things about people never sold anything. If he said nice things about Gates, would the book even be on Slashdot?

Quite possibly, as a shock factor. This is pretty much as we expected.

Exactly, exactly. :-)

No high end game is done in managed languages. If you suggested that kind of shit in my company to anyone who really knows (i.e engine team or real game programmers) they will laugh at you. Also, you can't get the most out of these things if you don't understand the virtual machine and the real machine it runs on. It's not a excuse for ignorance as many use it, if anything, it requires you know more as you need to understand the virtual machine as well as the real machine.

What? Grow ourselves out of the mess? Government debt not like personal debt? What madness. No, we need to cut to the bone because that has such a long history of working......