Can free source-code stop Microsoft? (The Economist) [LWN.net]

Here are a couple of articles from the Economist. The first looks at RealNetworks' open source announcement. "RealNetworks' move is another sign that the software industry is going hybrid. Mixing elements of proprietary software, where the source-code is tightly controlled, with open-source programs enables firms to expand a market, harvest the ideas of others and, they hope, still make money."

On the fun side here's the theory of Tetris. Thanks to Thomas Blankenhorn

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Can free source-code stop Microsoft? (The Economist)

Posted Nov 14, 2002 6:22 UTC (Thu) by kingdon (guest, #4526) [Link]

The Tetris article doesn't fully explain the problem.
This is a variation of Tetris which captures the
puzzle/intellectual parts without the video game aspects.
They are dealing with the situation in which you know the
full sequence of what pieces will be dropped in what order.
You also get to rotate and move the piece as much as you
want (although they also talk about a variation in which
you get a limited number of rotations/moves).

The paper (preprint) is at http://www.arxiv.org/abs/cs.CC/0210020
and is fairly readable (at least at the start - the farther you
go the harder it would be to someone not versed in math and/or
theoretical computer science).