OpenTangent

Dust off the old PK3 files: Although it's over 10 years old, Quake 3 is still being played in offices around the world. Since id software has open sourced the Quake 3 engine; a community of developers has created an updated engine called ioquake3 and has recently also included a high resolution texture pack . ioquake3 is 100% compatable with Quake3 v1.32 so you will be able to join servers running the original Quake3 engine and vice versa. All you will need are the original pk3 files found in your Quake 3 baseq3 folder.

A successful corporate alliance inevitably results in a competitive split . This was first demonstrated to me back in the days of the Apple/Microsoft allience vs IBM . Once perception had changed and people realised that innovative startups could take on corporate giants, Gates then realised that he had to get the upper hand in silicon valley . Apple was backstabbed by Microsoft and the alliance was off in favour of competitive innovation ultimately benefiting us as the consumers. Many years down the line Apple had allied with Google since Microsoft was the new giant in town and Apple had a vendetta to fulfill. Apple's iPhone appeared and quickly took center stage since Microsoft overlooked the need for mobility. Once the smartphone market was mature Apple once again got the short end of the alliance stick when Google's Android became a major competitor to the iPhone and Eric Schmidt was forced to leave Apple's board . A...

As i've mentioned before; Microsoft has quite an impressive patent portfolio but instead of being a safeguard against devious copycats, those patents contribute to an aggressive anti-competitive strategy . I am aware of three agreements that have recently been entered into regarding Linux and it's "infringements" on Microsoft's intellectual property. Firstly; after a couple of sessions in the courtroom TomTom gave into to pressure and signed an agreement with Microsoft and effectively paid them to use Linux on it's devices. Amazon runs Linux on it's Kindles and agreed to pay Microsoft for it before any lawyers got involved. HTC has also agreed to pay royalties to Microsoft for the use of Google Android on some of it's phones. It's a win/win situation for Microsoft because the companies that are willing to use Linux instead of Windows will be forced to pay Microsoft anyway. It seems Google has woken up the the fact that Linux is slowly becom...

Nvidia have confirmed that Linux will get 3D Vision support but only for Quadro GPUs for now . Linux has always been big in the scientific world, the Ubuntu Software Center even has a "Science and Engineering" applications section. It appears that the biomolecular sciences would benefit from stereo support in Linux and Quadro GPUs should suite them fine. Although there are no plans to support Geforce GPUs at this stage but i would imagine that given the right amount of demand they should have no problem introducing it since they'd have already gone down that road with the Quadros. Ubuntu is currently pushing over 12 million users and this number will jump significantly with the release of Lucid Lynx which is a long term support version of Ubuntu and a major step in feature innovation. As was pointed out in this thread ; the kind of people who use Linux are the kind of people to want to play around with gadgets like Nvidia 3D vision and i am absolutely one of them. W...

A new look for Ubuntu has long been in the pipelines and is a welcomed addition to Lucid Lynx . The Ayatana Project has done an excellent job at modernising the operating system. I can't help noticing the Mac influence although they've managed to keep the Ubuntu feel. It's a clean, modern and consistent style and in my opinion, it's going to have a huge impact on the perception of Ubuntu . Well done to all involved. Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS): Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS):

Steve Jobs has said that Adobe Flash is a dying technology . For the first time ever, i completely agree with him. Many have said that that comment is simply CEO rhetoric which, to be honest i agree with as well. Adobe Flash was accepted early on as the de facto standard for bringing rich media and vector graphics to a text and image based web. Being a Linux fanboy, i'm very familiar with popularity of certain software increasing based on the popularity of that software thereby creating exponential growth through recursive popularity. To translate my developer speak; people tend to favour popular software rather than good software . Flash is an example of this and therefore despite the fact that it is a buggy CPU hog as Steve rightfully points out, it still has a lot of staying power. HTML5 is here to rescue us from a slow, buggy, inflexible and quite frankly, painful Flash filled web experience. Being the influential character that Steve Jo...

Almost every year for the past three, four, even five years we have had claims that the year to follow was going to be the year of desktop Linux. The following articles are of no particular relevance but serve as proof of how at the end of every year someone feels that the following year will be 'the' year: 2004 the year of desktop Linux 2005 the year of desktop Linux 2006 the year of desktop Linux 2007 the year of desktop Linux? - Seems like hype died down in 2007 2008 the year of desktop Linux - Going strong again in 2008 though 2009 the year of desktop Linux ..and of course, one for next year: 2010 the year of desktop Linux If we think of the year of desktop Linux as being the year in which it begins to grow in popularity then we've passed that year over a decade ago. If the year of Linux is actually the year where it takes majority share then i think we still have a few to go. But i think the year of desktop linux should rather be thought of as the point wh...

" The Cloud " is often confused with the Internet, probably because the Internet is officially portrayed as a cloud in diagrams . A cloud is in fact an application or suite that runs on a server and is served to thin clients , traditionally through a browser but not exclusively. The Internet is a great facilitator to such a deployment. Pretty much all processing and data storage is kept on the server and the user merely taps into it remotely. Obvious advantages of cloud solutions are centralised deployment and maintenance and also the ability to access applications from almost any device that can run a browser . There is also the major advantage of mobility, allowing users the freedom to work from anywhere with a connection. In recent years we have had major strides in mobile technology like netbooks and 3G as well as rapid price reduction for said hardware and services, pushing the mobility envelope even further. The desktop remains a tool for the professional but wit...