More Insight On Longhorn's Avalon And Aero Design

Lispy writes "While monitoring the Xorg mailinglist I came across this set of WinHEC PPT-presentations (work fine in OOorg) that cover some interesting details on the underlying architecture of Aero, Aero Glass and future font rendering in Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn OS. What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?" (KPresenter works fine, too, btw.)

Comments

Setting a precendent

[Shazzman]

Let's keep posts on topic and avoid any comments others might find offensive. Thanks.

Re:snoop onto them as they snoop onto us?

[BiggerIsBetter]

It probably won't help much. The current MS tactice seems to be to patent everything, so odds are they'll patent anything interesting here too.

Re:Longhorn... when?

[big daddy kane]

honestly, no matter what anyone tells you longhorn won't be out until late 2006 at the earliest. Most reports from microsoft say that 2006, but its already been delayed a few times so don't get your hopes up.

Re:Longhorn... when?

[Anonymous Coward]

probably Longhorn won't be out until 2008 at the earliest

Re:snoop onto them as they snoop onto us?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why in the world would you quote that terrible movie?

"Hey Burn, this is Nikon. We uh got us a lil problem.."

Re:Longhorn... when?

[klasikahl]

The date is pretty much up for grabs. Everyone has their own opinion - everyone is speculating. Some say as soon as next year, others say as late as 2007.

Last I heard, it's schedule for the day after Duke Nukem: Forever.

left text cutoff

[nycsubway]

When certain fonts are displayed in Windows, certain characters are cut off on the left. It seems when the bounding box of text is calculated, it is incorrect, allowing some text to be cut off when displayed. I've noticed this is IE and Word especially.

Hopefuly they can fix this in the new fonts.

Re:left text cutoff

[AndroidCat]

Isn't replacing the operating system to fix the left side of certain characters in certain fonts using a rather large hammer to solve the problem? :)

Re:left text cutoff

[red tiger]

Would a small hammer be better for your computer?

Anyway, I'd rather prefer taking a font editor and looking into the font files themselves - perhaps the error lies in there, not in the OS itself.

Re:left text cutoff

[1010011010]

I've noticed the newest Visio has lots of problems along this line... I generally have to print using PDF995, then print the PDF, to get the output to look right.

Re:left text cutoff

[AndroidCat]

I'm sure that trying to run Longhorn on my current Win computer would be like hitting it with a very large hammer. (I wonder if they delayed the release to wait for Moore's law to catch up?)

Re:left text cutoff

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case no, it was mandatory due to the number of required chages/dependencies necessary. The OS needed a change anyway.

Re:left text cutoff

[spectecjr]

All you need to do is figure out the A width of the leftmost character and adjust accordingly. The question is whether or not it is correct to do so. For some characters, probably not.

This is why things like Adobe PageMill now do optical kerning; it's not a simple matter of just "fixing it in the new fonts" - and it's not something you can easily automate.

Re:left text cutoff

[etnoy]

No, it isn't. :)
And the solution for simple programming bugs like buffer overflows is of course to implement hardware-based cryptography and rights managment. Palladium.
The Microsoft Way as usual.

Re:left text cutoff

[pmjordan]

I wonder, does the problem disappear if you disable antialiased fonts? I know they're a pain to implement pretty much anywhere, and if they really bother you and you have a reasonable screen resolution, you may be better off with aliased fonts.

Re:left text cutoff

[Anonymous Coward]

The OS needed a change anyway.

Sure it does. But does replacing Windows with another variant of Windows really solve the problem...

Interesting

[metlin]

Joe Beda had said that Avalon is going to be more of an advanced UI/Visualization toolkit, while Dx will continue to contain all the other serious stuff.

Now, it looks like Avalon can do 3d on it's own and maybe more too -- what's the idea behind this anyway?

Are they trying to get a fresh new API or something? It seems unlikely, since I remember Joe and Scobles saying that they will probably be using Dx for serious graphics and game development. The redundancy seems strange.

From the presentation --

Avalon 3-D are not a replacement for Direct3D
You will find Avalon 3-D useful if:
- You want to integrate 3-D seamlessly into an Avalon app that also contains 2-D content, controls, etc.
- Platform features like Remote Desktop and multimon are high priorities for you
- You want to easily add 3-D functionality without quickly without needing to learn how the graphics hardware works

You will find DirectX useful if:
- You want access to all of the features provided by the graphics hardware
- You want to have full control over how your scene is stored and managed in memory
- Plan for interop between Direct3D and Avalon
Render Direct3D in a HWND and host within Avalon


So basically it seems to help ease the creation of bells and whistles, more than anything. Weird.

And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?

Re:Interesting

[Nasarius]

And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?

Trademark issues, I believe. The software package is technically called "OpenOffice.org", because something else was already named OpenOffice.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a commercial! Look what a cool thing he have here, all thanks to SUN MICROSYSTEMS!

When people ask me what i'm running i say i am running Debian.org GNU.org/Linux.org after which i babble "oh and i hate the .com bubble".

Re:Interesting

[drinkypoo]

Your OT question could be trivially answered by visiting www.openoffice.org... "OpenOffice.org is both an open-source application and project. It is free. The product is a multi-platform office productivity suite compatible with all major file formats." The product is actually called OpenOffice.org. That's sort of like calling your really fancy version of hack "nethack" because it was developed in collaboration via the internet - it has no networking features, why is it nethack? It's not a domain, why is it OpenOffice.org? Now you know :)

Re:Interesting

[Distinguished Hero]

And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?

"The name is "OpenOffice.org" and not "OpenOffice", because someone else already had the trademark. The name should be used as an adjective: "OpenOffice.org Application", "OpenOffice.org Community" and so on..." Link

Re:Interesting

[iamplupp]

the org part was added due to trademark issues

Re:Interesting

[BandwidthHog]

I was gonna reply by pasting some text from the PPT, but I see you've already got that... it seems to me (very much not a developer, nor an XWindows user) that they're reorganizing things more along the lines of XWindows; a 3D API (DirectX) for low level 3D stuff, and a window manager (Avalon) for, well, window management.

As a Mac user, you could also look at it is Avalon kinda sorta equals Quartz, but I don't think it's as 1:1 as the XWindows analogy.

(The *nix developers and more knowledgeable XWindows users will now commence flaming me into next week for so thoroughly muddying the waters.)

Re:Interesting

[sumdumass]

i believe the full name of open office (oo) is open office.org (OO.o)

I think it was a marketing decision to always let people know were to get the latest and all. I'm, guessing on that though.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

You will find Avalon 3-D userfull if:
- Your are a basic flash programmer
- You can only offer to have basic editon of Visual Studio.

You will find DirectX usefull if:
- Your need is to devlop for Xbox supportive games.
- You are allready company
- You have capacity to buy the Development licience

If your need/offadability is somewhere in-between, god only can help you.
god=??

Re:Interesting

[caseih]

And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?

Because the name of the program is "OpenOffice.org." See www.openoffice.org for the reason why this is so (something about another project called OpenOffice).

Hence the abbreviation, OO.org.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Write an smart post, raising valid points and asking interesting, ontopic questions.
2. End it by asking a clearly marked offtopic question./li>
3. Get fifteen karma whore answers to offtopic question, and no comments on your real post.
4. ???
5. Profit!

Re:Interesting

[iammaxus]

I think it pretty clearly states in the ppt that Avalon will be a layer on top of DirectX utilizing DirectX for all the actual rendering. Avalon just provides this convenient (will it's supposed to be...) "visual tree" to make window management more powerful and easier.

Re:Interesting

[1010011010]

I remember reading an "Avalon is nothing like Quartz Extreme" article recently. Well, the powerpoint application says this:

"Window client areas are each represented by a single large texture"

The PPT pres makes Avalon look exactly like QE. Compositing within the app in software, with single, large client bitmaps composited in hardware.

Re:Interesting

[metlin]

Exactly my point.

With LH flaunting out as having only managed code, are they looking at Avalon to be a new fresh/clean API over Dx, or what?

Right now -- they say that use Dx if you want complex stuff, but Dx is not managed code. But Avalon is -- so are they looking at making Avalon the new standard or something?

Re:Interesting

[iammaxus]

I think games and anything that really needs performance will stay in DirectX. Its more like Avalon is replacing GDI and they just decided that the easiest way to implement all the complex graphics is using the existing DirectX. I don't think it was designed to replace anything that DirectX is used for today.

Re:Interesting

[iammaxus]

I just can't wait for all the bugs in DirectX games to show up on my Windows desktop. I'm not bashing MS or whatever, but it will just be really funny when a window flickers or something like a full screen game does when you minimize it. I'll have a framerate counter running in the corner, too, lol.

Re:Interesting

[EddWo]

Except the difference with Avalon is it uses hardware to render the individual windows to their own textures, and then uses hardware again to composite the textures on the desktop. Everything that can be done in hardware will be, vectors, gradient fills, antialiased text, etc. with software fallback available only for features the hardware doesn't support.
You can use hardware to render a texture too you know.

Re:Interesting

[idealego]

You will find DirectX useful if:
- You want access to all of the features provided by the graphics hardware

This isn't true, with directx you don't have access to all the hardware features, you only have access to the hardware features that directx supports. If you come out with a new card with new features you have to wait for a newer version of directx to be able to use those features. This is one of the areas where opengl is more useful since you can use extensions to access any features not specifically supported by the api.

Re:Interesting

[Too Much Noise]

Looks like Avalon3D will be some simplified wrapper around a subset of DX to extend/replace the GDI. I'm a little puzzled, though, about its use for Remote Desktop - there's no need to have 3D there. Does this mean that MS wants to do something like XWindows with RD, sending over a bunch of DX-like draw commands that wil be executed locally by Avalon3D?

Re:Interesting

[dreadlock9]

They should have a library of pixel and vertex shaders for use within Avalon. There should be an easy way to add shaders, maybe dragging a shader file into the library window. That would make the 3D graphs and other stuff look a lot more interesting. Avalon should also be capable of creating real time shadows. It would make 3D presentations much more lifelike.

Re:Interesting

[1010011010]

For new applications, only:

GDI hardware acceleration will be disabled when desktop composition is enabled
This is because GDI rendering is being redirected to an offscreen surface rather than going directly to the screen

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fucking brain-damaged. Couldn't they just choose a name that doesn't step on a trademark?

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who would mod me down, I have three words I know they'll understand: "Bring it on!"

Don't worry, the metamoderators have your back!

Re:snoop onto them as they snoop onto us?

[lawngnome]

hehe, it seemed like a good title. Ill agree the movie has some pretty bad examples of computers (bad enough to get into that recent poll...)

Preparing for the release date

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently an Aero testing suite will be released at least 18 months before Longhorn's release. Is this demo yet available? It's interesting to note that if this message is right, Longhorn will not be available until 2006.

Will MS publicly announce this Aero test, so that we can anticipate a real release date for Longhorn?

Re:Preparing for the release date

[mrchaotica]

We've known that Longhorn won't be available until (at least) 2006 for a while now.

Re:snoop onto them as they snoop onto us?

[kahei]

Meanwhile, in the real world outside slashdot, patenting everything has been _everyone's_ tactic for at least ten years.

I remember one place I worked, every engineer _had_ to file at least one patent a year, even if all they did was write device drivers... had to do it, though, in case someone else ever sued.

Silly question...

[Gogo Dodo]

What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?

This is /. and you're asking about how they will like a Microsoft technology? Of course, they'll hate it. Microsoft could come out with something that that's the coolest thing since Linux and /. will still hate it.

Re:Silly question...

[Stevyn]

"Because it will be bloated DRM'ed closed proprietary standard breaking winblowz crap"

That's if microsoft came out with a can opener. However, it wouldn't open all cans, they'd have to be registered. RFID would ensure this. Not surprisingly, these are tin cans.

Re:Silly question...

[selderrr]

I think the technology is OK, but overbuffed beyond recognition. Comon : they have a screenshot of a 3D bar graph behind some semi-transparent buttons. Cool maybe, but then they boast having done it in 2-3 days.

duh ? I don't know how many whistles are behind it, but putting a rotating 3D object in an app can be done right now with a few clicks and a few lines code adding an ActiveX control to an ordinary MFC app. Putting transparent shit on it is supposed to be OS-level, so that should take 2 minutes once the OS supports it. What were they doing 3 days ? It can be done TODAY in less time. On Windows. On a P3 with 64MB ram.

that's what I hate the most about these presentations. They fart in a bottle and present it as the new coming of Christ. And everyone buys it.


Note : I'm NOT saying that avalon isn't cool and so, but the stuff they demonstrate is nothing out-of-the-ordinary. Yet it makes the headlines. Bah

Re:Silly question...

[thakadu]

Actually I think the concept of WinFS is very cool. If they get it right I may choose LH over a GNU/Linux based OS.

Re:Silly question...

[mrchaotica]

What we really need to do is start working on our own version the WinFS idea. And hope that Apple does too.

Re:Silly question...

[thakadu]

You are right and it would be great to have an open standard "WinFS" that all platforms implement. Any chance of that happening?

Re:Silly question...

[mrchaotica]

depends whether anybody is willing to work on it. I don't know if such a project exists now, but it ought to - I'd start it, but I don't have the programming skills necessary yet.

Anybody know of such a project, or want to start it?

Re:Silly question...

[Anonymous Coward]

What takes time is not programming the stuff (once you've got the idea and the plumbing, it's basically connecting things together), it's the graphic design that surrounds the process. For instance, designing a set of good looking icons, textures, animations, and then tweaking the app to get the lightning right with those.
Ask any game programmer, the artistic part is what take the most time.
That said, this app doesn't look much complicated art-wise...

Re:Silly question...

[Dizzle]

Speaking of tin, sounds like you're wearing a tin foil hat.

Re:Silly question...

[VividU]

Xbox & Xbox Live.

It's fun to go check out the Slashdot posts when Xbox and Live was announced. They were about as wrong as it gets.

Re:Silly question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats wrong with ReiserFS and a SQL middleman and the client would run commands such as locate on top of the mysql layer, being able to also use the search term or terms to grep' thru the content? WinFS is really not all that, its just implemented at user level, keeping the mysql up-2-date would be a matter of tracking filesystem access via /proc i guess, and ignoring /var unless specified in search etc.

Re:Silly question...

[mrchaotica]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that - except there's no conveniently packaged setup, and it's not a transparent solution.

Having it use SQL and a pre-existing low-level filesystem is a good idea, but it also needs the client layer, which isn't implemented yet.

Re:Silly question...

[evdp]

Perhaps they spent those extra three day discovering how they could apply darwins laws of evolution too it.

Re:Silly question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you read /.?

Re:Silly question...

[ArsenneLupin]

duh ? I don't know how many whistles are behind it, but putting a rotating 3D object in an app can be done right now with a few clicks and a few lines code adding an ActiveX control to an ordinary MFC app. Putting transparent shit on it is supposed to be OS-level, so that should take 2 minutes once the OS supports it. What were they doing 3 days ? It can be done TODAY in less time. On Windows. On a P3 with 64MB ram.

Indeed. Rotating 3D objects behind a translucid panel are hardly rocket science...

They fart in a bottle and present it as the new coming of Christ.

Wait until they hold a match to the bottle...

Re:Silly question...

[bonch]

So, you can do all that using hardware acceleration through the normal Win32 API, using XAML and .NET today?

Slashdotters will invent any sort of argument to criticize something Microsoft did.

You're completely missing the point--ActiveX on top of an MFC app? They're removing all those layers and doing it all in hardware through .NET and Avalon presentation libraries.

Re:Silly question...

[selderrr]

They're removing all those layers and doing it all in hardware through .NET and Avalon presentation libraries.

lol... talking about a contradictio in terminis...
DirectX is as close to HW as you can get dude. Anything on top of that is just a step away from the hardware.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Anonymous Coward]

yup. I have OOo on WinXP.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Anonymous Coward]

yes.

Re:Longhorn... when?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wait? Send all your money to Microsoft today and a year and half from now just do the same. Continue to use the current Windows (3.x/95/98/NT/2K/XP) computer you are using today. You will have achieved the same effect as buying a computer with Microsoft Windows LongHorn.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[sumdumass]

[OT]Hey, is OO.o available in Win32?[/OT]

yep

Why would you switch from microsoft to linux when you incinuate warezing it? I'm not judging but i guess there would be more to the "it's free" to being the answer here. I would like to hear about what else is apealing to you.

peeerty

[Anonymous Coward]

Peeeerrrrty

Look at those two screen shots. If Longhorn wan't an OS I would bang her 4 times a day.

Then again, I would get a virus, like MSclap

=)

Re:peeerty

[jayveekay]

If Longhorn wan't an OS I would bang her 4 times a day.

I was about to go home with a chick named "Longhorn" once, 'til I did a crotch check and discovered the secret behind 'her' nickname. ;)

Re:peeerty

[Dizzle]

She was a... rhinocerous?

Re:peeerty

[wwvuillemot]

Following that logic I take you already banged Mac OS X for 8 days...and that would be 2 years ago...and no MSclap.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can find it on the download page.

If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[BandwidthHog]

Icons with reflection and depth

While I have to admit it sounds cool, I can't really think of a real need for this.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[sn0wman3030]

Sounds fine to me. Actuallly, now that you mention it, I want it in GNOME. We really should spend more time making eye-candy and such because as it is, the typical Linux desktop looks plain-as-can-be when compared to Mac and Windows.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[BandwidthHog]

Yeah, I have to admit that as useless as it technically is, the eye candy is a really enjoyable part of OS X, both for me and for the guests who see my system. I've played with some window transparency utilities on WinXP at work, but it just ain't the same. It really looks like if they can pull it off, their implementation of Aqua, uhh, I mean Aero, will be pretty cool to play with.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[drinkypoo]

I have a really good reason for eye candy, actually. If the icons do shit when the mouse passes over them it's easier to figure out where the mouse is - not just its position in space but what it will do if you click. It doesn't need to be taken to this extent but your video card is mostly idle while you're using the desktop, why not do it?

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[metlin]

While I have to admit it sounds cool, I can't really think of a real need for this.

And while you are at it, I think I speak for everyone when I say I can't think of a real need for Longhorn either ;-)

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[big daddy kane]

i dunno call me a nerd or whatnot but aqua is just plain sexy. everytime i even so much see the word osx i get turned on, its really just a sexy desktop.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[BandwidthHog]

And I'm the one getting modded -1, Troll in this discussion? Sheesh.

Not that I don't agree with you and all, but sheesh.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[LiquidCoooled]

Eye candy is fine, and making things look as good as is possible is one thing.

But take a look at the candy on offer in XP - Sliding and scrolling and rolling menus windows etc - they all slow me up - I get the same amount of frustration when using a cordless mouse - the fractional delay induced is just annoying as hell.

If they can make the effects instant and seamless it will be nice.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[KingReuben]

I disagree completely, sir! Eye-candy is EXTREMELY important! Computers should be works of art as much as possible -- this should not necessarily mean at the expense of functionality of course.

Look at the world of cars. Look at BMW, for example.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[0x0d0a]

I don't notice cordless delay, but visual effects that require time are incredibly annoying. The slow to-appear time for the Start Menu under Windows is also very annoying.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[mattyrobinson69]

People moan about kde's eye candy. i love it.

as far as i'm concerned, default windows XP is ugly, compared to a tweaked kde 3.2.2 (using plastik buttons, menun transparency and glow for the window borders, and a better colour scheme).

i dont think i'd like kde anywhere near as much as i do, if it wasn't for the useless eyecandy (although i do find it very productive, and i still quite like it on my g/f's pentium-MMX (all eyecandy turned off)

ps. im not trying to start a flame war, im just saying kde is pretty.

pps. ive never ever used mac osx

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[Tim C]

I can think of a need for it - I spend somewhere in the region of 10-12 hours a day staring at my monitor (7-8 of them due to work). Given that I'm spending that long looking at it, what I'm looking at had better be pleasing to my eye.

That's part of the reason why I switched from Mandrake to XP - after a month or so of using XP, 'drake just looked plain and flat in comparison. A small thing, but important to me, all other things being pretty-much equal.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[ashot]

you can turn all of these things off in the registry (its not a regular setting) or if you download one of the powerpacks that gives you more control.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[hawado]

I can't really think of a real need for this.

Of course there is a need for this, how else would M$ slow down your P4 HT system with 4 gig of memory thereby convincing you you need to upgrade... In cahoots with Intel I tells ya! the lot of them... It seems it will take more processing power to run the flashy things in M$ than to render a scene from LTR in using Maya. I thought the OS was supposed to be the less system intensive part of the computer experience.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Icons with reflection and depth

While I have to admit it sounds cool, I can't really think of a real need for this.

Perhaps by "reflection" and "depth" they mean that the icons are intelligent or something? E.g. you move your mouse towards an icon and it double-clicks itself and changes to a little sign which sas "No, no, let me get that for you"? But they also have protective instincts, so like if you keep clicking on the image viewer icon it'll change into a little sign which says "Haven't you seen enough pr0n already?"

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[Anonymous Coward]

why not do it?

Because not everyone has the latest Ultramegawizbang graphic board in his computer?

...Erm, since we're gonna get all that extra bloat anyway, let me rephrase this :

because not everyone has the latest Ultramegawizbang graphic board in his computer _yet_ ?

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[drinkypoo]

Presumably they will just be sending geometry for windows (or other objects) and occasional texture data, so the amount of information going to the screen will actually be reduced. Frequently-displayed menus can be based on cached textures so displaying them or not is a case of sending minimal information to the video card.

The faster your video card, the faster your display will be.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[Anonymous Coward]

oh my god you fucking lamer. lol, must suck to be you.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[KarmaMB84]

Today's mid-range DX9 card will probably be able to handle Longhorn's graphics when it comes out. By that time, the mainstream OEM cards will HOPEFULLY have that kind of power too.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and I think life has too much eye candy too. Come on, it's just a drain on system resources, let's cut on these...

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[evdp]

come on window has always been about 'eye candy'... why else would kde and gnome and the like stuggle so hard to be windows like... If you think about it the only real 'inovations' in the desktop enviroment have come from the max OS... AA fonts and the rest, this coming from a person who is completely XP on KDE *should* have at least a little envy and insite.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[evdp]

What I can't figure out is why the fsck they are not just doing the who thing in direct-x... why the overlapping APT's. If direct-x already has hardware accelerated 3xAA why are we dicking around with this BS middleware? Why not just use what is already there, fix it and make it worth it... I know my CPU is 99% idle till I get pissed off enough at the cluesless masses to finally open BF:V and start killing people.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[ArsenneLupin]

If the icons do shit when the mouse passes over them it's easier to figure out where the mouse is - not just its position in space but what it will do if you click.

Hey, excellent idea. Just make all your icons look like small men, with different faces, different shirt & trousers color, etc.

As soon as the mouse approaches, they drop their pants.

When the mouse approaches even further they'll turn their back, and go down into a squatting position.

And finally, when the mouse is right over them...

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[Hard_Code]

Seriously for people that can repartition their hard drive, configure X and recompile their kernel, simply turning off these eye-canding options seems bogglingly difficult. Geez. Just turn off the damn effects. It's the first thing I do. If you are in XP you can even revert to the Windows 2000 look and feel without all the eyecandy.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[psycho_eddy]

interesting my ass. bmw's are cock replacements, most pcs that'll run longhorn will be gaming/soho stations. the day a longhorn laden box pulls in an equal volume in chickadees (that a beemer does) i might give that eye candy a shot.

not that all eye candy is terrible, just this, seems overboard. we've been surviving without translucenct icons & 3d presentations (actually, some of us have been surviving Despite clueless dweebs making '3d' presentations) for long enough & been happy this way.

i'm not against progress, just the false prophets that promote something less than it, under the guise. this is Not progress.

Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy...

[Anonymous Coward]

transluCent. like dollars & cents. not cenct. that doesn't mean anything.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Danny Dale the Not-S]

Ah, got it.

http://download.openoffice.org/1.1.1/index-nojs.ht ml#en

USR/BIN/SLASHDOTSTAR:Target is Locked; You may /. when ready...
USR/BIN/SLASHDOTSTAR:Commence_Primary_Ignition -rf

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Danny Dale the Not-S]

I'm not interested in warezing it; Why steal a Ford Pinto when Linus is giving away Lamborghinis for free?

Re:Server? What server?

[danlor]

This has been going on for at least wo weeks. You can get to the download.microsoft.com by appending "c.footprint.net" on the end of the server address. So, the link becomes:

http://download.microsoft.com.c.footprint.net/down load/1/8/f/18f8 cee2-0b64-41f2-893d-a6f2295b40c8/TW04006_WINHEC200 4.ppt

Go figure. I have no idea excatly why this is happening. I'll leave that to people who care.

Yup

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if Microsoft does a good job with Aero/Aero Glass, let's not forget that it's nothing but a ripoff of Mac OS X's Quartz/Quartz Extreme-- which by the time Longhorn comes out will be even more advanced.

I think the reason that MS is showing so little of Aero is that its design will be the last thing they do before kicking Longhorn out the door. They'll need to wait to see what they'll want to copy from whatever the latest version of OS X is at the time.

Re:Yup

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll need to wait to see what they'll want to copy from whatever the latest version of OS X is at the time.

And it's a fair bet that this is exactly why Apple is trying to patent UI elements-- so they don't show up three years from now as Microsoft's latest "innovations."

Re:Yup

[AvitarX]

Yeah, because if they are only 3 years ahead in the computer industry they are going to have big troubles.

That would be like using windows ME.

or OS9 (I think, but could be wrong here) or gnome/kde god awfully horrible, or star office, or Mozilla pre slimming down of the UI.

If apple is afraid that they won't be far advanced from where they are now in three years MS will eventually catch them even at the mollassase slow pace they move.

YAY!!

[Danny Dale the Not-S]

More time for me to learn my Linux...

change the name

[Anonymous Coward]

call it longshot

Re:change the name

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not Longworm?

Re:change the name

[thebatlab]

because that's stupid

"Patient Blood Sugar Tracker"

[Jeremy Erwin]

What would Edward Tufte make of this plot? Ah well, perhaps the multidimensional rotating bar graph will be of some use, should the presenter want to conceal some data.

It's somewhat disappointing that the presenter chose not to include a lens flare, though.

Re:"Patient Blood Sugar Tracker"

[rnd()]

Edward Tufte is under the mistaken impression that all graphs are intended to convey information objectively. His books are way overhyped.

Re:"Patient Blood Sugar Tracker"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Edward Tufte is under the mistaken impression that all graphs are intended to convey information objectively."

WTF? Seriously..What The Fuck are you trying to say??? Are you implying that some graphs *should* be designed so as to not be objectively interpretable?

+1? Your post is way overhyped.

Re:"Patient Blood Sugar Tracker"

[rnd()]

Ever hear of propaganda? Sometimes graphs are intended to distort information so that the viewer obtains an inaccurate conclusion from it.

It's not how graphs should be done in scientific papers, but well, it sometimes is. If Tufte thinks that newspapers are bastions of objectivity, he's sadly mistaken. They are not naively doing their best to produce accurate graphs and failing, but rather they are quite skilled at producing highly misleading graphs that support their bias. This is life. It's not a failure of science but a way of utilizing the same science Tufte practices but with a different goal.

Tufte's books are so obvious it's rediculous. Some content is not obvious, but that's because it's pedantic and based on Tufte's own personal taste.

Re:Longhorn... when?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really care anymore, I run linux on all my boxes... _____ | _ _ | --- See, it's happy... |__'__|

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is the roads only support Pintos.

Re:Aero? Aqua?

[CountBrass]

Perhaps "Iron Pyrites" would probably be the best mineral related name for Direct3D.

Re:Longhorn... when?

[CountBrass]

Now that's not fair on Microsoft is it.

They do at least deliver versions of Windows (much as many of us would rather they'd stop!)

Wow...

[Cyno01]

Thats a really excelent analogy. *applause*

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[jrockway]

He was implying that nobody buys Windows. Which is true... one of my friends said this to me "Linux is nice, but Windows is free too. If I had to buy it I'd use Linux..."

I'm the only person I know that has a legal copy (and I have NEVER had a Windows partition in my life... I used MacOS before I switched to Linux) because M$ sent me some brainwashing kit for UNIX developers or something to that effect.

Re:Aero? Aqua?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps "Iron Pyrites" would probably be the best mineral related name for Direct3D.

Comedy gold!

Oh, wait...

Re:Longhorn... when?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, if Longhorn doesn't have that activation shit then I'll probably run it.

XP, I will never run as my primary OS.

Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging

[Rosyna]

No, not hot.

But reading Avalon's text support it seems that Longhorn will FINALLY be able to have the same deep text support that OS X has had since at least 10.0. Yes, all the APIs are marked AVAILABLE_MAC_OS_X_VERSION_10_0_AND_LATER with most of them having support in CarbonLib 1.0, ATSUnicodeLib 8.5 (Mac OS 8.5). Nice to see longhorn might finally be catching up.

The only thing that longhorn claims it will have that ATSUI doesn't have yet is the graphics card rendering support. Ever wonder why resizing a window is so slow on OS X? ATSUI is the reason.

Re:Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging

[Peter McC]

The only thing that longhorn claims it will have that ATSUI doesn't have yet is the graphics card rendering support. Ever wonder why resizing a window is so slow on OS X? ATSUI is the reason.

Gesundheit.

Re:Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing that longhorn claims it will have that ATSUI doesn't have yet is the graphics card rendering support. Ever wonder why resizing a window is so slow on OS X? ATSUI is the reason.

Well that certainly sounds hotter than say, SAMUI, but what does it do? What is "deep" text support?

I suppose a web search would help, or at least installing something that can read ppt, but much too lazy.

Re:Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging

[Anonymous Coward]

Two things:

1. HW acceleration is coming.

2. It has already gotten much faster over the past few releases.

(Don't ask me how I know this; I just do.)

Re:Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging

[arekusu]

Robust Unicode imaging. For example, rotate Chinese an arbitrary amount and still have proper LCD sub-pixel smoothing. Working Bidi text support, ligatures, glyph combining/reordering, etc etc etc.

http://developer.apple.com/intl/atsui.html

Re:Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging

[theTerribleRobbo]

Well, considering 'Atsui' means 'Hot' in Japanese, I think it might be a backronym. ;)

Re:Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging

[TheDredd]

Nice to see longhorn might finally be catching up

When will longhorn be released again??

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that you are thinking of the slower speed limits in construction areas.

New font engine?

[Anonymous Coward]

In what way, if any, is this different from Apple's Quartz techniques?

Re:New font engine?

[bwoodring]

If you are interested in learning more about Avalon, consider reading this article and especially the comments at the end. The author discusses Avalon vs. Quartz in the comments.

Graphical Composition in Avalon

Re:New font engine?

[znu]

Avalon is rather more advanced than Quartz in certain respects. Of course, how it'll stack up with the version of Quartz that Apple is shipping in three years, or whenever Longhorn actually shows up, nobody knows. Betting against Apple on this one probably isn't a great idea.

Re:New font engine?

[Anonymous Coward]

In what way, if any, is this different from Apple's Quartz techniques?

Well, you won't have to buy a better computer to run the OS that uses it. Oh, wait.

Re:New font engine?

[woodhouse]

Or save yourself the effort. The article takes two pages to say that Avalon has proper transparency support for sub-elements and uses double buffering to prevent flicker/animation artifacts.

Re:New font engine?

[KarmaMB84]

And it makes better use of available graphics hardware to do its rendering. That in itself is a huge improvement.

running behind again

[selderrr]

from the 2nd presentation (in huge capitals, orange text on blue background to make your eyes bleed. So far for userfriendlyness)

"64-bit is the future !!"


Doh. MS is missing the ball by a few 100 miles again : Billy, 64-bit is THE PRESENT. 128bit or nanocomputing is the future.

Re:running behind again

[Anonymous Coward]

So, can you explain how 64-bit is the present when probably 90% of consumer hardware and software on desktops is still 32-bit? :confused:

Re:running behind again

[Anonymous Coward]

You stupid! they are correct ... there is no future for M$ after 64-bit era.

Re:running behind again

[amembleton]

orange text on blue background is one of the built in template style things for OO.o Presentation.

Re:running behind again

[Anonymous Coward]

now thats interesting..

Re:running behind again

[N1KO]

You can buy a 64 bit desktop in the present.

Re:running behind again

[Hythlodaeus]

Yes, 128-bit computing is the future. I have all sorts of exabyte-sized files I need to memory-map.

Re:running behind again

[John Starks]

Er, that's like saying IPv6 is the present because a few people are using it.

I mean, I know this is Slashdot, and I know bashing Microsoft is mandatory, but you can do better than that.

Re:running behind again

[haruchai]

What's your definition of a "few"? Or how many do you consider to be a "lot"? 64-bit may still be considered the future on Wintel but it's long been a reality on other platforms.

Re:running behind again

[Tough Love]

Yes, 128-bit computing is the future. I have all sorts of exabyte-sized files I need to memory-map.

64 bits already gives you 16 exabytes.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Tim Browse]

Because you can find a place to park the Pinto.

Re:Aero? Aqua?

[jomas1]

Take a look at this cam of Jim Allchin's Keynote showing off Longhorn's directx capabilities.
This makes it pretty clear why Apple is trying to patent transparent windows and some other elements of their UI.

<http://www.neowin.net/staff/creamhackered/winhe c/ WinHEC2004-JimAllchinKeynote.zip>

OOo

[swusr]

And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?

From Logos, Trademark, and OpenOffice.org in a Nutshell:

Trademark

Because of trademark issues, OpenOffice.org must insist that all public communications refer to the project and software as "OpenOffice.org" or "OpenOffice.org 1.0," and not "OpenOffice" or "Open Office."

Re:OOo

[pseudochaotic]

OpenOffice.org, eh? What's their website again?

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[JamesTRexx]

Except according to the alleged specifications you need a parkingspace the size of two 18 wheelers to park that Pinto... :-P

Install the gnome-themes-extras.

[Anonymous Coward]

There ARE 100's of good looks for GNOME, you just haven't looked (and thats why you made that ignorant comment!
Go here and get the best themes for GNOME!
You can also visit this website!

You should try Fedora though since bluecurve looks really slick!

Re:Install the gnome-themes-extras.

[sn0wman3030]

I'm using gentoo primarily, and I have a box running Fedora Core 2. Bluecurve is nice, but it still can't hold a candle to Mac OS X or Longhorn (from the screenshots I've seen). With SVG now implemented in GNOME, it would be my guess that there will eventually be a big wave of pretty vector-based icon sets and themes. I sure hope we will be able to compete against the big guys (Microsoft) though.

Re:Install the gnome-themes-extras.

[evdp]

I completely agree that that OS X is the bomb, but as far as I can tell M$ is really playing catchup here. I remember when gnome and eligtenment where the best you could get for a x desktop... now I think it really is OSX (too bad I can't affor the hardware)... but I am truely amazed at the stretches the KDE desktop has made. I really think those developeres (KDE) are trying to pre-empt the opposition and be innovative... I *believe* that the whole open source ummm... revolution is making strides into the mainsteam "desktop" hordes... but at the same time keeping to the 'oldskol'. I'm sure alot of people who learned assembly from typing it in from a 'games' magazine feel the same way. I *know* I want my desktop to be pretty (and at the same time to keep it interactive... why can't I have my own HTML doing includes to the blogs and news I want as my desktop(In pretty AA 3D))? and as alway as a paranoid leftist... ANY SOFTWARE THAT IS NOT OPEN SOURCE *CAN NOT* BE TRUSTED.. Because if you'r being truely innovative, the catch up time is long enough to warrent the (LACK OF NEED OF) patents. 2 cents from a drunken geek in WI.

Re:Install the gnome-themes-extras.

[sn0wman3030]

2 cents from a drunken geek in WI.

Hehe. I can tell. :)

Re:Longhorn... when?

[Anonymous Coward]

I smell a new /. poll:

First to finish line?

a. Longhorn -- BETA!
b. 2.8.0
c. Duke Nukem Forever, gold version
d. global thermonuclear holocaust

Power Comsumption?

[Graemee]

What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?"

With the specs to run Longhorn What kind a laptop. From the previous slashdot story. 'Microsoft is expected to recommend that the 'average' Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.'"

I expect big honking batteries and lots of heat.

Re:Power Comsumption?

[Keeper]

Those weren't MS recommendations, nor were they based on any information from MS. Those requirements were from some reporter pulling numbers out of his ass.

Re:Power Comsumption?

[ClippyHater]

I expect big honking batteries and lots of heat.

You know, the heat is ok, I guess. But those damn honking batteries would get irritating after awhile. But that's just me.

"Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use."

[RotJ]

According to Raymond Chen, during usability studies people remarked that XP's Luna would be a great UI for their dad, employees, etc., but didn't want it for themselves. Now, when they look at Aero, it's "Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use." Most of the people participating in these studies are probably not part of the Slashdot crowd, though. And Raymond Chen works for Microsoft, so he's obviously the Boogeyman. So take his post as you will.

Windows seems to be going down the road of "show fewer things but with bigger pictures", which may be great for regular folkum. Advanced users will just scrap the bells and whistles anyway for a basic, functional setup. "Dumbing down" through simplification isn't always a bad thing though. I actually like the new WinXP start menu a lot better than the classic one, albeit with small icons instead of the huge default setting. Silver Luna isn't too bad either, as long as I reduce the size of the titlebars and buttons to classic size. Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons? Are they trying to cater to the bad eyesight but too cool to wear glasses crowd?

Re:"Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use."

[davidstrauss]

Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons?

Try running XP with 1600x1200 with 20.1" diagonal (my flat panel) or 1400x1050 with 14.1" diagonal (my laptop). Anything smaller than the "huge" icons is quite tiny.

Re:"Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use."

[daEnlitnd1]

Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons? Are they trying to cater to the bad eyesight but too cool to wear glasses crowd?

Fitt's Law: "The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target." asktog.com

This means that big icons and buttons are faster. I sometimes really don't understand why Power Users want small icons -- its actually faster to work with bigger icons!!

Re:"Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use."

[omicronish]

Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons? Are they trying to cater to the bad eyesight but too cool to wear glasses crowd?

It seems to be a welcome appearance for people like my parents and uncles, who surf the Internet with absolutely huge fonts and low resolutions. My dad doesn't even have bad eyesight either; he doesn't wear glasses while I do. Large is easier to read and work with when all you're doing is surfing and emailing. Plus some of my relatives don't have really good control of the mouse, so largeness makes it easier to click buttons and other UI widgets.

Re:"Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use."

[RotJ]

I guess it's because I've never owned a display larger than 17". So the more screen real estate I have, the better. Also, playing a lot of FPS games makes target acquisition in Windows a joke.

Re:"Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use."

[SuperRob]

They're planning NOW for the high-dpi flat panels. Come on, THINK before you post.

Re:"Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use."

[Anonymous Coward]

That statement seems awfully vague to be called a law. After looking up the precise statement of "Fitt's law", I would argue that it does not apply in the context in which Tog is trying to use it. That is not to say that his conclusion is wrong, just that it is not sufficient to state Fitt's law in order to justify his conclusion being correct. Personally, I suspect that Tog is wrong, but I don't have anything to back this up other than my own personal experience.

Re:"Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use."

[Anonymous Coward]

the funny thing is, I remember way back in the Win3.1 days how nice it would have been to run with icons similar to how I could get my X window manager to display them (twm on an NCD MX w/ 17" monitor), and how happy I was. Then, I saw Win3.1 on a similar system w/ 1280x1024 (it was rare then), and thought, "wow. Windows is finally as cool/nice as X".

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re:"Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use."

[RESPAWN]

Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons? Are they trying to cater to the bad eyesight but too cool to wear glasses crowd?

Agreed. I keep asking myself that same question every time I see screenshots of Longhorn. I look at Aero and think, "Wow, that sure is pretty, but look at all of that desktop space that is wasted with the bells and whistles." I'm the guy who still has to switch to classic menus on XP whenever I use a machine. I find that even Luna is harder for me to use than the 2000 interface. But I guess that I'm not the kind of person whom Aero and Luna are targetted at.

Re:"Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use."

[Hard_Code]

Did you RTFA? In the slides they specifically mention that they "eyecandy" version (Aero Glass) will most probably be turned OFF for enterprise users.

I can see it now...

[Anonymous Coward]

...A developer stands up in the conference and says:

"w00t! Now Windows is just as gay looking as OSX! We beat Apple! YEAH!"

Re:I can see it now...

[Anonymous Coward]

But Apple shall have the last laugh, given that it owns a patent on gayness in user interfaces.

~~~

Is it a silly question?

[SerpentMage]

I love having a notebook with about 3-4 hours of battery life. In fact if I could get 7-8 hours that would be fabulous. Because of the advantages of having a notebook with long battery live my habits change. For example I will for extended period of times sit in a cafe, work, AND talk with people. I will not worry that I will run out of juice. It is a truly amazing ability.

Imagine you had a notebook with the following specifications:
- 12 hours of battery life,
- Wifi, GPRS/3G
- 1440x900 screen
- about the size of a letter sized organizer and max 1" high
- affordable

To a large degree the Apple 15" fits in with some problem area's (affordability, battery life is 3-4 hours, and screen). People's habits and needs would completely change because the vast majority would purchase these notebooks and NOT desktops. Ok gamers, and other niche folks would buy desktops because they want full power. But many gamers buy consoles.

Back to the point though, imagine a notebook with those spec's. The software that is being produced today is not the software that we would actually need or use.

So here is where I ask Microsoft, why are you doing this? I truly think that instead of pushing the envelope they want to sell yet another feature. Yet another "killer" user interface in the hopes that people will upgrade.

Re:Is it a silly question?

[neko9]

I truly think that instead of pushing the envelope they want to sell yet another feature. Yet another "killer" user interface in the hopes that people will upgrade.

yep. exactly. again upgrade hardware, software... it's called increasing productivity... damn! how can people be productive while in nonstop process of patching and upgrading, then setting all up, tweaking..........?!

Re:Is it a silly question?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, that would be great, but you're living in a dreamland -- you can buy laptops with that kind of spec; you just need to be prepared to spend the money. Laptop hardware is a smaller volume market, and miniaturisation costs money.

Try http://www.dynamism.com/ for small form factor machines, and look for something that lets you add a big battery on the back. (caveat: big displays are sadly not compatible with long battery life, and you will probably have to add GPRS as a PCMCIA card for the moment). I use a Thinkpad i Series s30 with an expanded battery pack, and running Linux I get 8 hours or so out of it. Once fuel cells become feasible I think we'll stop seeing battery life as such an issue.

Another major factor of course is to go for a low-power CPU -- there's no point in skimping on screen size & so on to have a silly CPU drinking all your juice...

Regarding software, Microsoft definitely seem to be focusing on this market -- look at the push behind OneNote, and all the PocketPC stuff for starters. No-one else seems to even be trying to compete at reading cursive hadwriting (not since the Newton....).

People don't need much of a push to upgrade these days -- new machines come with whatever Microsoft wants the vendor to ship (try getting a windown 2000 restore CD from Dell now), file formats urge you to upgrade ("you may lose features if you save your document in x format"), and businesses are driven by
software assurance (rental, by any other name).

Re:Longhorn... when?

[jb_davis]

That's funny, then how did I install XP without activating it?

Graphics? What about slides full of text??

[Angry Toad]

These are some really nasty slides for a talk - basic presentation design says you shouldn't blast your audience with endless text in little fonts. The slide design leaves a lot to be desired - by the time they're done reading the slide they will have missed what the presenter is saying.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[pr0c]

> He was implying that nobody buys Windows.
> Which is true... one of my friends said this
> to me "Linux is nice, but Windows is free too.
> If I had to buy it I'd use Linux..."

Exactly why I am hoping that Microsoft ends piracy of their products, they will in effect snuff themselves out or at least give Linux, et al a much larger market share.

Re:Server? What server?

[BandwidthHog]

I'm getting modded -1, Troll for this comment, while a guy down below is modded +4, Informative for confirming what I saw?

And here I thought it was just a quaint old urban legend about slashdot moderators smoking crack.

Re:Dear Timothy

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to troll, at least learn how to spell.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Danny Dale the Not-S]

Great idea, but what about the PHBs who actually believe all of MS's lies^H^H^H^HFUD^H^H^Hpropaganda^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H oh screw it.

Re:Server? What server?

[sumdumass]

I'm not even sure how it is a troll.. at most it would be off topic. i guess you either pissed someone off and they had mod-points or you got a windows-zealot without too much experience. On another note, i have sometime found that when i boot into knoppix to get a windows machine on the net and downl;oad some patch needed to get windows back up and running, i have problems accessing microsofts site too. on thing that is aspecially anoying is searching the knowledge bas and gettign 2 different result with the exact same search terms.

after looking at ppt files...

[neko9]

are they creating video game or operating system?

Re:after looking at ppt files...

[Anonymous Coward]

> are they creating video game or operating system?

Microsoft create an Operating system? Hahahaha!
Let them have the X-Box. That's where they belong!

Regards,
Joachim Holst

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[sumdumass]

ok.. I was really just wanting to see what some other people use for reasons on liking linux better then windows. I've heard the it's free and with the worez comment that wasn't an issue. I use linux too.. I think eveyone has different reasons for doing it though. It would be interesting to see what the reason were and how many of them overlap.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[sumdumass]

Great responce, but what makes you think linux is a lamborghini? I mean what is better for you. i'm not trying to flame or anythign. I just would like to know what you like about it over windows. (I'm an avid user of mandrake too) I find it interesting how many people have thier own reasons for using linux other then the "it's free".

Nice article summary!

[Jugalator]

What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?

At least the submitter understand there's no use asking for its upsides here. :-P

Re:Nice article summary!

[Lispy]

Sure. Actually I was posting the story with FDO Xserver in mind and I think it's wise to look at the downsides of a heavily 3D environment. No need to make the same mistakes. ;-)

Where does X stand?

[Anonymous Coward]

I noted with quite a bit of interest that near the end of the Longhorn Text presentation, they claim that 1,000,000 sub-pixel antialiased (cleartype) characters can be rendered per second (8 to 11 point type, on a 96dpi LCD).

Does anyone have any similar performance figures for sub-pixel AA font performance on Linux? I have a sinking feeling it might be closer to 10,000/second :(

Re:Where does X stand?

[0x0d0a]

A) It doesn't make much sense to have cps without data on the CPU of the system.

B) Is this *true* rendering, or using glyph caching?

Re:Where does X stand?

[Anonymous Coward]

A) Let's assume it's 100%. The bottleneck is either going to be the CPU or the video card, and since they're only just starting to explore more complete hardware acceleration, let's assume that the CPU is still at 100%, but pumping more text through because the video card is helping out.

B) Of course it's using glyph caching. That doesn't make it somehow fake: the pixels you get are the same, bit-for-bit. Hence the term "caching" and not "approximation". You get the _same_ data, you just don't compute it over and over again: there's no point.

Does anyone else out there have an equally helpful post? :\

Re:Where does X stand?

[Anonymous Coward]

on my system, running:

x11perf -caa10text

gives 110000 chars/sec.

i'm running xfree 4.3.0.1 with an NVidia quadro 4 board and the NV binariy drivers. this is AA text but NOT subpixel rendered. so it looks like longhorn will render text at least 10 times faster, with a DX10 video card (probably a lot faster than that if you turn cleartype off and just want standard AA glyphs)

Re:Where does X stand?

[Anonymous Coward]

Running the binary nv driver on a nForce2 platform (using the built-in graphics) with an Athlon XP at 1996MHz I get "1600000 reps @ 0.0056 msec (177000.0/sec)" running some relatively recent version of X from Debian/unstable.

Re:Where does X stand?

[Anonymous Coward]

cool, anyone with non-NV video?

Re:Where does X stand?

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds interesting. hope Pango will live up to this competetion.

Re:Where does X stand?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux (Fedora Core 2) with NV drivers and Ti4200/128 with agp4.
800000 reps @ 0.0062 msec (160000.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa core line (Charter 10)

Ok. I understand the need for fast memory, fast ALU, and in general a fast machine. But most unices spewing raw text usually 'skipped over' a lot of the writing as most people (me too) have a hard time reading 160,000 characters per second. In fact, at 80 characters per line and 66 lines per page, I'm looking at 30.3 pages per second. I have a hard time reading 30 pages per second (don't get me wrong, I'm reasonably fast, but not that fast). For example, I have a 700 page operating systems textbook behind me. At the rate shown, I should be able to read it in 23.3 seconds. Alas, it might take me an entire semester to get through it.

Re:Where does X stand?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't believe that text rendering speed is important, try the following simple benchmark: get a stopwatch, download mozilla, configure and build it, and see how long it takes (in your terminal program of choice)

next, kill X and repeat the test.

(this benchmark really only "works" if you have a single CPU system)

Surprisingly, building mozilla in 80x25 VGA text mode is about 3 minutes quicker than building it in X with the NV binary driver (I'm the guy who posted earlier with 110,000 chars/sec)

Combine this with the fact that UNIX users are far more likely to have terminals "spewing stuff out" than their Windows counterparts, and I hope you can see that text rendering performance on Linux could use a *bit* of attention.

Re:Where does X stand?

[Keeper]

I've seen other slide decks with these figures (http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/f/18f8 cee2-0b64-41f2-893d-a6f2295b40c8/388,31,Performanc e: Text Rendering Pipeline Throughput) has approximate estimates based on a dual proc 2.2ghz Xeon w/1gb of ram.

For comparison, the software estimate was 105,000 glyphs per second.

Re:Where does X stand?

[k4rm4_p0l7c3]

I always set windows above, or minimize windows with scrollage to ease
this. Am i actually helping, do you think? I figure if it isn't writing
to the screen cause i can't see it, then it isn't wasting its time :D

i agree with your point 100%. it's things like that that can make or
break usability to people on the corners of the planet.

Re:Where does X stand?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am i actually helping, do you think?

You'd think so, but often it doesn't make a difference. For example, take a look at this bug. Seems to apply only to GNOME users (and gnome-terminal users at that), but pretty scary..

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[M1FCJ]

Why should they? We already pay a grey-box tax to M$ every time we buy hardware? We also pay a CD tax to RIAA for every blank CD we buy. I still can't see why they charge for the software and the music, the money they make out of these hidden taxes should be enough to make them rich.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[flossie]

Because you can find a place to park the Pinto.

No problem. Leave the keys in the lamborghini and someone else will park it for you. Finding out where they parked it is the tricky bit ...

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[NanoGator]

"Why steal a Ford Pinto when Linus is giving away Lamborghinis for free? "

Because the Lamborghini box says "some assembly required"?

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[NanoGator]

"Which is true... one of my friends said this to me "Linux is nice, but Windows is free too. If I had to buy it I'd use Linux..."

Are you sure he means free as in "I can dl it" vs. free as in "it comes with every computer"? In the latter case, people are buying Windows.

Re:Homer sez...

[Lobo93]

...you couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.

BTW, would you mind telling Bill to stand still next time I send hot lead his way? It's damn hard to frag that smeghead when he keeps bunny-jumpin' 'round!

And now I have a 'nade with your name on it, Mr. "leading open source developer"...

Aqua

[oO Peeping Tom Oo]

Now we can make Aqua skins more realistic! w00t!

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus is giving away the source code equivalent of the kelly families tourbus.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[E_elven]

You haven't been alive long, have you? It will make them richer, which seems to be rather anyone's goal these days.

.

Re:Server? What server?

[0x0d0a]

FWIW, whatever Microsoft and Akamai currently have going on is producing lengthy CNAME chains (which is not exactly the norm):

$ host download.microsoft.com
download.microsoft.com is an alias for dl-geodir.microsoft.akadns.net.
dl-geodir.microso ft.akadns.net is an alias for loadsplit-dom-dl.microsoft.akadns.net.
loadsplit- dom-dl.microsoft.akadns.net is an alias for www.download.microsoft.akadns.net.
www.download.m icrosoft.akadns.net has address 207.46.249.92

dipshits still can't code html/css?

[flacco]

anyone on firefox notice that the timestamps are all misaligned on the entries?

what's the purpose of this style applied to the timestamp:

SPAN.DatePlus
{
left: -30px;
color: white;
position: relative;
top: 10px;
}

left -30px? anyone remember that "msn purposely breaks opera" deal when they did the same thing?

Re:dipshits still can't code html/css?

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone on firefox notice that the timestamps are all misaligned on the entries?

I read it on IE also & it appears exactly like it
appears on Firefox. More conspiracy theories, anyone ?

Re:dipshits still can't code html/css?

[flacco]

I read it on IE also & it appears exactly like it appears on Firefox.

so you're saying they both appear screwed up, or they both appear OK?

i'm using ff on debian unstable.

Re:dipshits still can't code html/css?

[Sweetshark]

so you're saying they both appear screwed up, or they both appear OK?
The CSS is b0rked or intented to look ugly - i used wget like they did here: Why doesn't MSN work with Opera? and did get the broken CSS when masq'ing as IE ... Or maybe the author used a old version of IE screwing up CSS completely and making it look somehow better ...

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[larkost]

... and the instructions are in geekese...

Font renedering quality?

[Distortions]

I think the features they are talking about are nice.. But personally I still think their sub-pixel font anti-aliasing looks bad. http://bluehalo.homeunix.org/text/ Shows the line from the PPT and the same thing typed in OS X.

Re:Font renedering quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

the powerpoint font anti-aliasing wouldn't be an accurate depiction of avalon's actual font rendering, as it has been captured then put through powerpoint's bitmap filtering.

Re:Font renedering quality?

[dustmite]

What's powerpoint got to do with the price of eggs? The link is just a normal web page with two screenshots of sub-pixel font anti-aliasing in Mac OS X and Longhorn. And anyway, powerpoint doesn't rasterise text and resample as bitmap, it renders text using the OS text rendering engine in GDI.

Re:Font renedering quality?

[dicka_j]

yeah, but the longhorn one suffers a lot from JPEG compression.....

Re:Font renedering quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

The graphics in that comparison were captured from Longhorn, then pasted as a bitmap into a Powerpoint presentation, then captured and pasted into the comparison bitmap. They were not taken directly from Longhorn. Hence, they've been through Powerpoint's bitmap resampling, and they are no indication of the quality of Longhorn text. I'm not a microsoft fanboy, but know a bullshit comparison when i see one.

Re:Font renedering quality?

[dustmite]

How can you possibly know that Powerpoint was used for that? That website says nothing about Powerpoint anywhere. Seems more likely you thought it was Powerpoint because of the topic of this slashdot article. If that person wanted to make bullshit comparison, there are millions of ways, many of which are far better ways than using Powerpoint, and if one removes the context of the slashdot article that this discussion is in, then the idea of this being Powerpoint seems so INCREDIBLY arbitrary that the chances are about zero that this was anything other than a mistake by you. Unless you happen to know the webdeveloper of the http://bluehalo.homeunix.org/ site, and you happen to know that he/she used Powerpoint to create the screenshot. Chances are slim to none - I'm calling you on this, I think you're just FUDding.

Re:Server? What server?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well thats not fair - tho it makes me wonder if anyone else has seen the fact that the AMIGA was doing this in the 80's??

Offload gfx work from the CPU to the GPU!!! GEE THERES AN IDEA MICROSUX.

Shouldn't we be talking about...

[RAMMS EIN]

I know that foghorn is going to have a high wow-factor, but do we really want to be gaping with awe and amazement at every little tip of the veil of a system that won't be out till at least 2006?

My take is that our time is much better spent improving our prefered (open!) system, exploiting the great features that Hans Reiser has given us (which I personally find much more interesting than all the eye candy that serves to addict, distract and slow down my friends and their computers).

Extended attributes are here today. So is OpenGL. Where are the applications that exploit them? Where are the BeOS-like filesystem queries on Linux? Where are the Baldur's Gate clones? And, most of all, where is the stuff that, once and for all, asserts the superiority of the open source community, the proof that we can invent, rather than wait for the corporations to do it for us?

Re:Shouldn't we be talking about...

[schwatoo]

"Where are the Baldur's Gate clones"

I'm glad you know what's important in a modern OS.

Re:Shouldn't we be talking about...

[stud9920]

Where are the Baldur's Gate clones?

What's wrong with Nethack ?

Re:Shouldn't we be talking about...

[RAMMS EIN]

Nothing is wrong with Nethack, but have you seen an open source RPG that matches BG in graphics?

The point was not that there are no good open source games, but more that there is a lot of potential that isn't used, whereas the commercial world not only uses capabilities, but even pushes the limits of what PCs are capable of.

Re:Shouldn't we be talking about...

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

Where are the BeOS-like filesystem queries on Linux? Where are the Baldur's Gate clones? And, most of all, where is the stuff that, once and for all, asserts the superiority of the open source community, the proof that we can invent, rather than wait for the corporations to do it for us?

Er...... cloning/replicating a BeOS-like filesystem and cloning Balder's Gate....... you call this "proof that we can invent"?

The best way to promote the opensource community would be to actually make new ideas rather than new implementations. Or lay the groundwork for those. For example, yet another window manager or OSX skin is just being a poser. Yet another interface paradigm with studies on usability to back them up will make a good impression. Laying the groundwork for a properly user friendly OS would also be beneficial, like moving away from this monolithic kernel.

Re:Longhorn... when?

[Some Dumbass...]

Last I heard, it's schedule for the day after Duke Nukem: Forever.

Well duh, that's the 3-D engine MS is using for Avalon.

Heh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we can make Aqua skins more realistic! w00t!

Hooray! A better brand of paint for the outhouse!

Re:snoop onto them as they snoop onto us?

[k0hlrabi]

Turn on your laptop. Set it to receive a file.

Thoughts on LongHorn:

[crazyphilman]

In the immortal words of Colonel Kurtz, "You must make a FRIEND of the horror".

What horror, you ask? A major Microsoft upgrade. We cal look forward to the following exciting experiences in the coming Longhorn apocalypse ("I love the smell of burning CPU in the morning... It smells like... Job Security!"):

1. Indigo, the new .Net secret sauce coming with Longhorn, will no longer use Remoting "over the wire". Everything is going to be SOAP and web services. Sounds wonderful, right? I think so too. BUT, many consultants are busy writing all your company's apps using remoting between servers! Guess what THAT means?

2. All your computers are going to be landfill fodder, because Longhorn's hardware requirements are going to SMOKE 'em. Ah, well, we didn't need those 20,000 PCs anyway. And, the budget looks so much better cratered. It's like a big empty swimming pool. Makes me think of summer.

3. Performance? The users are asking about performance? Um... HUSH! Look at the pretty screens, children! Ooh, transparency!

4. Filesystem? We don't need no stinkin' filesystem. Let's put everything in a DATABASE!!!
Ok, they might not get this into Longhorn, but it's coming. All your apps that touch the filesystem? Kiss 'em goodbye.

5. More DRM. What's that? the users didn't ask for it? Let's surprise 'em; they'll be so happy!

6. A new, different and strange iteration of IE to worry about. Sigh; better set up resources for the recoding of all your web pages, just in case.

Ah, well. It should be exciting! And, who knows? Maybe the Indians will find it all just too ugly to work with and offshore all the work back here ("Oh, this is just too UGLY, you may take it back, please... No, really. No, I must insist. Oh, you are too kind, sir, but NO, I REALLY must insist... Oh you are making me very ANGRY sir, do not make me go medaeval on your unruly buttocks in the manner of Marcellus!").

Honestly...

[NeuroManson]

I believe this should, mind you, SHOULD raise the heat under the open source movement.

Do your OS of choice under the following:

Make it so it runs on anything from legacy hardware through current hardware.

Don't engineer it specifically as how YOU would want it done, engineer it as how you think Joe Sixpack would like it to be done. Do you know how MS keeps its market share? By making adaptive shifts to their new setups as small and painless as possible. Stop assuming everyone who wants to try Linux already knows every manual and howto available.

Screw the DMCA, reverse engineer everything (do it the old fashioned way, get 50 coders to examine 1/50th a part of the driver code, then compile accordingly, that's how it was done with IBM). That way everything can be supported.

If you want to be mainstream, start acting like you ARE mainstream. This "Lookit me, I'm a rebel!" illusion is just that. That's how Apple did it, that's how Microsoft did it. And look at them now. The rebel theme is only good as long as you expect to lose money.

I'm a MS user myself, but the DRM crap and all makes me WANT to go Linux, but the fact that not every Linux dev doesn't support EVERYTHING I want to do or use, means I'm stuck with MS until they realize this.

It's like wanting to escape from prison, while everyone else is debating the best kind of file, and what kind of cake to bake it in.

Re:Honestly...

[HerbanLegend]

This parent is spot-on. I run 3 WindowsXP machines and a linux PDC and fileserver in my house. I would switch to Linux for the other computers, too - but there just isn't the support for applications and hardware. I would have to spend thousands to "upgrade" to a free os that supports my hardware.

Linux asks you to learn a tremendous amount in order to use it. Fine - but you can't expect to sell a product with such a steep learning curve to people who barely made it out of High School.

Oh, and a reality check: millions of people in America alone are functionally illiterate. They are NOT going to rewrite their .confs.

Microsoft, at this point, is damn near unstoppable because it plays to the crowd - the REAL crowd. The Slashdot Community is a tiny niche in a tiny minority. Let's all work together to write linux apps that are actually easier to use than their microsoft equivalents?

Re:Honestly...

[Anonymous Coward]

If these people are functionally illiterate, then I'm not going to waste my time pandering to them when they can't read a message that says "I can't talk to your printer, are you sure that it's plugged in?" because they got stuck at the word 'printer'.

I agree that Linux needs a lot of work in making the sys-admin side easy for the non-techy crowd, but the desktop side is very solid. My distinctly non-tech parents have been using Linux for a year now, (I'm 400 km away and do all their sys-admin via ssh), with far less problems than when they had Windows 95/98/2000.

Re:Honestly...

[Joe Tie.]

Don't engineer it specifically as how YOU would want it done, engineer it as how you think Joe Sixpack would like it to be done.

Do that and most of the appeal of Linux to me, and to many others, goes down the drain. While I understand that a lot of people are looking for something that's a drop in replacement for windows, doing everything the same way but without the microsoft label, there's a large amount of people using Linux just because we prefer the way it works. We like it specifically because it's an operating system which primarily targets the way we do things, as opposed to targeting the way Joe Sixpack operates. He already has an operating system geared to him, I don't see why he should have ours as well.

Re:Honestly...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't support for aplications and hardware. What applications? What hardware?

If you wanted to use Linux, you would probably check the HCL first. Too hard to do? Then your odds are good if you buy name-brand components, and try to look for "Linux-", "Redhat-", "SuSE-" or "Mandrake-"compatible logos on the box.

You wouldn't buy GM parts for your Ford, now, would you?

Re:Honestly...

[jsebrech]

On the other hand, apple has demonstrated you can make an operating system that works for both joe sixpack and jim geek.

Ofcourse, apple did it by innovating, redesigning the file system layout to make it more usable, building something better than X, and so on.

I think linux developers are locked too closely into the *nix mindset of "this is how you do things, and not differently" to outdesign apple. And until you outdesign apple you don't have a shot at microsoft's marketshare, because even apple doesn't have a shot at that.

Re:Honestly...

[nathanh]

Linux asks you to learn a tremendous amount in order to use it. Fine - but you can't expect to sell a product with such a steep learning curve to people who barely made it out of High School. Oh, and a reality check: millions of people in America alone are functionally illiterate. They are NOT going to rewrite their .confs.

Reality check: you haven't needed to edit a .conf file on a modern Linux distro for ages. On Fedora Core 2 I have managed to install the OS, configure the network card, install the printer, connect to the Internet, do a software update, download a movie and watch it, and not once did I need to edit a .conf file. In fact, I only used the keyboard to enter a password. Everything else was done with the mouse.

Microsoft, at this point, is damn near unstoppable because it plays to the crowd - the REAL crowd. The Slashdot Community is a tiny niche in a tiny minority. Let's all work together to write linux apps that are actually easier to use than their microsoft equivalents?

Linux doesn't have to be easier to use than their Microsoft equivalents. Windows was never (and still isn't) easier than Macintosh. Linux just needs to be "easy enough", do most of the job, and be cost effective. Most people are quite happy with a half-arsed solution; the popularity of Windows is proof of that.

I know that's not a good slogan for Linux - "we do it half arsed" - but it's the truth. You don't need to be perfect, or even better than the competition. You just need to be "good enough".

Re:Honestly...

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm not going to waste my time pandering to them when they can't read a message that says "I can't talk to your printer, are you sure that it's plugged in?"

If you want more people to use linux then it is not a waste of your time.

Not everyone has English as their first language, and berating people for being illiterate is not the best way to get them to want to learn.

it wouldnt kill programmers to think more about design and provide a good picture to describe the concept of plugging in the printer as well as the text description.

Re:Honestly...

[entrigant]

Don't engineer it specifically as how YOU would want it done, engineer it as how you think Joe Sixpack would like it to be done.

This completely goes against the entire "scratching an itch" idea. I use and like linux because it is engineered how I'D want it done and not how dumbass joe sixpack wants it. Screw joe sixpack. Why should we ruin linux just to make it popular? Maybe there are people who are pushy and try to get everyone to use this wonderful OS. They do it because of many peoples need to share a good thing with their neighbor. If I have to trade what makes linux great now for popularity, then I will say no to that. I hope others agree.

Re:Honestly...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point. I'm not saying that everyone should learn English, I'm saying that everyone should be able to read their own language.

For one, last I checked, there were some fairly massive projects underway to create language packs for the various programs and desktops.

Regardless, pictures take a lot longer that text to 'develop'. Evetually, it becomes impossible to create a picture for every single question, error message, idea and so on. Try translating this for example;

"Could not attach file to email. You do not have permissions to read the file on the the remote network folder."

This is like stating that we should make street signs easier to understand for people who can't read. Perhaps we should start sending out guides for people who can't work out directions from a map? How about 'reading guides' so people who can't read can get money out from the bank or order from a menu? Maybe I should transcribe all my postings on the Internet as a bunch of picto-graphs so that he can pretend to understand what I'm talking about.

No. Reading is a required part of using a computer, just like reading a book.

taking longer than expected

[leprkan]

while somewhat offtopic this has to do with longhorn. i have a friend who has friends on the longhorn development team. I hear they are having to re-write some of it because they invested to much in inter-threading processes. It appears that a Windows XP 2 will come out becaues longhorn is taking so long.

Re:snoop onto them as they snoop onto us?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, there wer tons of posts in that poll because it *wasn't* in the poll.

Yawn.

[justin_saunders]

My 2 year old Powerbook is doing most of this as I type. It irks me that these people don't give Apple credit for leading the way.

That said, I think raising the bar for Wintel notebook graphics hardware is a Good Thing. Dx9 Graphics minimum is gonna make my job as a games programmer so much sweeter.

Isn't power consumption going to be more of a hardware issue - I mean, Dx9 chips nowadays have how many transistors?

Re:As a leading open source developer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Netcraft confirms it!

Re:As a leading open source developer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Miguel honey? Is that you?

remote desktop

[Mr 44]

Thats basically what terminal services does now...

From the whitepaper:

"RDP uses its own video driver on the server side to render display output by constructing the rendering information into network packets using RDP protocol and sending them over the network to the client. On the client side, it receives rendering data and interprets them into the corresponding Win32® GDI API calls. "

different types of "eye candy"

[Onan]

This is an important distinction, and one I remember noticing when seeing other people use Windows 2000 (I think) after I'd been using osx for a while.

Windows's idea of eye candy was that menus (and submenus) would all slowly fade in. The process of navigating deep into hierarchical menus was maddeningly slow--at least until everyone turned it off.

In osx, menus appear immediately, and then fade out after you select something. This is not only pretty, but functional: it gives you visual confirmation that you've selected a menu item, which can be helpful if whatever you've asked for doesn't produce obvious or instant results.

Microsoft's cargo cult design process often leads them to such mistakes. They manage to take the wrong lessons from other people's work, and conclude that what people want is snazzy looking things which tax hardware. The real lesson is that people want visual continuity and feedback in order to speed up their use. But Microsoft never seems to get as far as understanding the point of anyone else's design, just the appearance.

I *can* code CSS

[JoeBeda]

Actually, I meant it to look that way. It is a little CSS to make the date overlap the title. I think it looks good. I guess it is a style thing. Joe Beda

Re:I *can* code CSS

[flacco]

Joe Beda

come on now, off to troll summer school with you.

but mod you funny first of course. :-)

Re:I *can* code CSS

[EMN13]

It looks fine to me too...

But I think it would be even nicer if the time-stamp were less prominent (for example by placing it behind as opposed to in front of the title using a z-index).

I especially like the way the underline on hover breaks across lines :-).

The rendering differences might be solved by using the "Standard Compliance mode" in IE and gecko, using a valid xhtml doctype is the simplest way of achieving that but...

http://gutfeldt.ch/matthias/articles/doctypeswit ch .html ...gives an in depth overview. The standards mode generally works more consistantly and predicably especially with complicated effects, and you get a bit of cross-browser advantages for free :-).

--Eamon

Load of Aero and Indigo crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, it's all nice and good that windows graphics layer is finally striving for display independent rendering and maximizing GPU usage. What makes me barf is the spin they put on it. Users's don't need the state of the art GPU to render these kinds of graphics efficiently. OSX did it and BeOS did it just as well. This whole SOAP based messaging is going to be a huge mess. XML eats up a ton of CPU resources and RAM. If Indigo really is replacing MSMQ and using all XML/SOAP, then it will be dog slow.

I hope MS really commits to this 100%, because it will be a great mistake. If they haven't noticed, people are no longer buy new machines at the same rate. Now that many families have multiple computers, the need for new systems is no longer there. Even if MS goes with some super secret optimized XML parser, it is still going to eat a ton of CPU and ram. Just look at the most recent research in binary XML. IBM, Oracle and lots of academic researchers have shown binary encoding doesn't provide much benefit for XML. Webservices is nice, but it's hardly the magic sauce of service oriented applications.

Re:Load of Aero and Indigo crap

[dustmite]

This describes just about every single thing Microsoft has ever made - bringing to Windows the features and capabilities that other systems have had for about five years, with a klunky bloated implementation that requires several times more powerful hardware. Then each time we get to listen to Windows users excitedly jabbering on about all the things they can do that was old hat to everyone else at least five years back - big, fat wank. Honestly, I don't know why people bother with Windows anymore.

Re:Load of Aero and Indigo crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we don't take idiots like you seriously. We have work to do, we can't bother with slashdot idiots and their stupidities. But we also like you, you entertain us.

Re:Load of Aero and Indigo crap

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's it like being stupid, Windows-lover-boy?

Here we go again

[taradfong]

The text rendering technology impressed me. The new APIs did not.

When will Microsoft learn...developers don't want great big heaps of their grand designs. There's just too much of an investment to learn their way of doing things, there are too many cages around the good bits, and everything breaks when you go off the beaten path.

Example: few 'real' apps use MFC - and certainly none of Microsoft's. They expose 'Fisher Price' versions of their tools which they hand code in good old SDK.

I mean, does anyone *really* use DCOM? I guess COM has held on bascially because there isn't that much that is 'Microsoft' about it and it basically works. But what happened to ATL? DDE? ActiveX? In fact, the only useful Microsoft software tends to be the stuff they acquire (Visio, SQL Server)

Now I have not used one iota of Avalon, but I remain unconvinced it will be anything other than their typical developer traps with a bit of 'hello world' cute app as bait.

Meanwhile, Linux hacks change the world with Perl scripts. Go figure.

Re:Here we go again

[Jugalator]

few 'real' apps use MFC - and certainly none of Microsoft's

But WordPad does!

And they even give away the source! ;)

Re:Here we go again

[dustmite]

It doesn't. Open the .exe in dependency walker and you'll see it doesn't even link to the MFC libraries. (Microsoft are at least smart enough to never use MFC for anything, I'll grant them that.) Try do those combobox dropdowns built into the toolbars in MFC ...

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Doppler00]

hmm... great logic there. Snuff themselves out of a market share where people don't pay them any money? What a tradgedy that would be...

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Doppler00]

I actually built a computer and then PURCHASED a copy of Windows XP to go with it. You get somewhat of a discount if you buy hardware/OS together, but it still cost me around $120.

It's not worth my time to warez it, and I don't believe in that anyway. If you don't like the cost of Windows use linux and stop complaining.

LongPorn coming soon

[Anonymous Coward]

Star : Bill Gates
Hooker: Darl McBridge

Billy has tuny winy but satifies McBridge Come and see Billy has lot of diseases and never uses condom.

More LongHaul fud

[Anonymous Coward]

So we are talking off on vapour ware thats is coming out in 2008.. man M$ fud ..just like windoze 95.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[pr0c]

If they make piracy impossible then most users will use a different OS rather than pay for it. If a lot of people switch to linux then linux will pickup a lot more support from hardware vendors and software writers and then even more people will switch to linux since it has more support and likely games and othe 'cricital software' that wasn't there before. Yes dumbfuck Microsoft will lose more than pirates when they get rid of piracy...

Not Mozilla friendly...

[Kevin108]

Never trust anybody whose page doesn't format properly in Mozilla. Heh heh.

They didn't even mod that up...

[RAMMS EIN]

I think it warrants a +1 Funny.

Seriously, though, I mentioned BG because I think it's a great game and have been wondering about open source 3D RPGs. It's a bit relevant to the discussion, because Longhorn is going to have some advanced 3D features, whereas in the open-source world 3D hasn't really taken off.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Doppler00]

No, hardware and software vendors won't automagically switch all their apps to Linux just because people stop pirating Windows. Microsoft will still command a large market share of PAYING customers. You're forgetting that consumers are just a small portion of the entire market for Windows. 99.99% of all businesses will pay for software because the legal consequences for them are real, unlike the average "consumer" pirate.

The more difficult Microsoft makes it to pirate their OS, the more paying customers they will have. The reason is, most people are not l337 h4x0r5 with hours available each day to waste looknig for potentially unreliable, virus infected warez.

Linux will have more support and more games? I've not seen this trend to date.

You must support piracy seeing as you feel the need to defend your feeble argument and use profanity against someone you disagree with.

You know why it's called Longhorn??

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me give you a hint:

it involve a little known raunchy flick where one of the main characters, a plumber, was nicknamed by that very name

You didn't read into the comments

[SuperKendall]

The real meat of the whole thing starts here.

A really, really long chain of postings between the guy who wrote the article and a guy who seems to know OSX rendering pretty well.

My take on this is that OSX has tacked a lot of issues with making vector display practical, and trying to maintain a good balance between "everything is a vector and you all need new computers to run the OS" and "everything is a bitmap and you can run this on a 286". Personally I think a lot of graphic designers will be aghast at the limitations an all-vector approach will impose for things like icons - you can see guys spending days tweaking pixels. You may think you've done them a favor by taking that options away, but these are the guys that make your interfaces look good! Treat them nice, I say.

I would also say each is holding his own pretty well in this argument, it did not get too far into name calling and the like (gets more technical as you progress - my link takes you pretty much to the point wher ethey drop the childish bits). I do think the Avalon guy is a little more ignorant of what is going on in OS X rendering-wise than the OS X is of Avalon - the OS X guy for a while was unwilling to believe that anyone would actually take an approach with only vectors, but understood fully that aspect later on.

The Avalon guy has a good point that it's cheaper to send a lot of vectors to the GPU than to calculate very high DPI images for display... but I think the OS X guy has a good point that you can't have the GPU do everything.

Here's a simply summary from my read (not comprehensive):

Article guy: Maintains the vector retained model is the only scalable UI solution. UI's should only be collections of vectors (including all icons and the like) with everything, even text, being rendered by a GPU on your video card.

Also maintains that parts of OSX are not really PDF/DPS based, and therefore will not scale.

Has not yet answered if he thinks it's a good idea for the GPU to be doing typography (like kerning).

Longhorn will require new GPU's for sure, from everyone.

Avalon target is display showing about 10,000 primitives.

Avalon targeting high (300dpi+) displays, only path to good performance is feeding vectors to a video card.

OSX Guy: OSX does use PDF/DPS model correctly, elements will scale - renderer can be set to any DPI. To use the GPU for all drawing operations is madness - OS X has quick operations for things like video, and slower but much more exact operations for things like 2D operations. To use GPU for all operations is going to be a disaster as they cannot handle quality 2D operations (like exact text rendering) all that well.

Showed how saving a window as PDF yields scalable elements (not just a raw bitmap).

Maintains that OS X can support high DPI displays, you just change the rendering target.

Can rotate window contents in real time.

Expose is not supposed to be an exact vector resizing as such an operation should be very fast, not exact.

If Apple continues to patent its UI elements.....

[rspress]

If Apple continues to patent its UI elements Microsoft is going to be in a lot of trouble and will be doing a lot of redesign or groveling at Apple.

Much of what I have seen in the way of screen shots and videos, makes Avalon and Aero look as they are "borrowing" an awful lot of MacOS X's look and feel as well as many UI elements. Even the window widgets are gaining Mac like colors!

This makes Longhorn look very nice but if Apple continues to patent their "look and feel", and they should, it would provided them with a nice bit of leverage with MS. Microsoft might even have to stop "borrowing" features and stop calling them "New and Ground breaking Microsoft developments".

This could become very interesting!

Re:Longhorn... when?

[RdsArts]

Last I heard, it's schedule for the day after Duke Nukem: Forever.

the day after 'when it's done?'

Hmm... That's odd, guess they pushed the release date back two days.

(laugh, it's a joke)

Re: 64-bit is the future

[Anonymous Coward]

64 bits should be enough for everybody.

Re:If Apple continues to patent its UI elements...

[Keeper]

If Apple continues to patent its UI elements Microsoft is going to be in a lot of trouble and will be doing a lot of redesign or groveling at Apple.

Right, as if MS doesn't hold any patents that they could hold over Apple...

Longhorn and cross-platform applications.

[master_p]

Microsoft is very clever. They are upgrading their technology to the point that applications written in native APIs would be much better (at least visually) than applications written with a cross-platform library. Some presentation says that "GDI apps will be software-rendered off to a texture, then use the 3d hardware to map this texture to the display. It will be slower but acceptable due to related performance of CPUs".

Avalon would give a significant advantage to Microsoft, and at the same time spell an end to really successful cross-platform libraries like Qt and WxWindows. Well, not really an end, but it will seem that Qt or WxWindows or GTK developed-apps will be a product of the stone ages when comparing them with Avalon apps. The Microsoft APIs will be totally managed, which means "goodbye C++": either use the managed APIs, develop on Windows only, be fast and smooth, or develop with a cross-platform library, but be slow, and be ugly.

I think that if the Unix world does not move fast and embrace the new technologies quickly, make a new X-Windows system or something similar, Linux has even less chances of getting a respectable share of the desktop market.

The Microsoft model also shows that it has an advantage that the open source model does not have: the ability to follow technology quickly. This is partially because of the ties of Microsoft with hardware vendors, but also partially with technology being driven by economics rather than good willing of people.

Another thought: what will happen to Java ? Swing is already slow and ugly. Imagine putting an Avalon app side to side with a Swing app! the Java app will be like coming from the stone ages.

Does the world really need Avalon ? I think not...we already have good text support, good interfaces etc. But it will be one of those things that nobody thought it would make a difference, but when it comes out, everybody will like it, and everybody will "need" it.

And a final thought: Avalon will make remote desktop very easy to do, since computers on the network will exchange 3d data and not bitmaps. This particular capability may be the final nail in the X-Windows system coffin.

Re:Longhorn and cross-platform applications.

[smallguy78]

Of course they could be doing it to follow Apple's lead in the desktop market, and creating a desktop that can now have limitless graphic capabilities, and not give 2 shits about a small and obscure group of people (mostly developers)trying to run windows on unix/linux desktops

Re:Longhorn and cross-platform applications.

[spitzak]

You are missing the fact that most useful applications want to draw a large image of their own design somewhere and allowing the user to click on it and the program can find out where they clicked. Illustrator is probably the best example. Unless Microsoft slows this down so much that Illustrator itself looks bad, that interface will always be available for drawing a portable GUI.

Likely their main reason for making GDI draw a bitmap rather than being a layer atop their new drawing library is that they are very concerned about back-compatability, for instance programs that read the bitmap back. The fact that all "old" programs will run slower is just an added benefit for them. Unfortunately for them, it is very likely that the portable libraries will be quickly rewritten to use the new graphics interface (being portable already they are not so concerned about back compatability). The result will be that Qt apps will be much faster than anything using GDI directly.

More of the threat of Longhorn is that it could provide a useful graphics interface for the average program and eliminate about 50% of the reason people use Qt, which is to use it's portable graphics. The fact that this should have been done 20 years ago is probably lost on all the Microsoft and X fans who don't realize just how horribly bad system design has been for so long. 20 years ago was when PostScript was being developed, and Irix GL already existed. The NeWS window system was also being designed then. Nothing we have today approaches any of those, but maybe Longhorn...

Re:Longhorn and cross-platform applications.

[master_p]

But the technology change will make things very difficult, i.e. Qt and Java would need to call managed code.

I agree though that this should have been done 20 years ago. Instead we got MS-DOS...

Re:Longhorn and cross-platform applications.

[spitzak]

Yes Qt would have to be rewritten, but the result will be a better-performing program than one using GDI32. Thus using Qt right now may be an advantage.

Re:Longhorn and cross-platform applications.

[master_p]

But will so different technologies be easy to bring together ? or the abstraction might slow both down (I am talking about Avalon from one side and X-Windows from the other).

Re:Aero? Aqua?

[smoker2]

Errr, this makes nothing clear. Save time and don't bother, its 17MB of shite.

That's it. I've had it.

[Crazy Eight]

Check out slide 7 in "Graphics On The Windows Desktop" (filename TW04013_WINHEC2004.ppt). It contains a sample screenshot of (I presume) an associative file browser. Look at the sample documents. There is a civil suit entitled "Sam vs The Bike Messenger" with none other than Kenneth Starr representing Sam. Zoinks! Talk about being in with The Man. These Microsoft cats can't just daydream about suing slackers, they've got to fantasize about having Mr. Seventy-Million Dollar Blow Job pull out the big guns on the poor squirt. Are you going to tell me these guys aren't seriously uncool?

All kidding aside, what little I've gleaned so far while skimming these slides sounds very impressive. The attention given to text is very respectable. The notion of pushing GPU hardware as far as it will go is as it should be. Longhorn looks extremely ambitious.

What slashdot thinks.

[jellomizer]

What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?

We will think it is horrible and and the downsides outweigh the advantages and is just an other tactic my Microsoft to gain more dominance.
Until we implement it in Linux then it is OK and we couldn't live without it.

Now what was the technology now?

Re:If Apple continues to patent its UI elements...

[IAmAMacOSXAddict]

Name some, and the proof that M$ did it BEFORE Apple...

Re:If Apple continues to patent its UI elements...

[rspress]

Well, I don't know if they patented it yet but giving everyone except the user more privileges on their own computer is one.

Then there are Windows excellent spyware API's. Don't forget their built in disk compression....oh wait, that was not theirs.

The problem is I use XP pro...so most of the jokes I could make a cruelly funny.

What is funny is that MBU at MS really made use of the transparent windows in latest version of Office for OS X. I doubt Apple will press the matter with the patents with MS, it would make better sense to keep them in reserve in case Ballmer gets weird with the MBU or if Apple wants another MS title on the Mac platform. I do get a chuckle every time an MS press release touts these features as "new" and/or "breakthroughs" when the Mac has been using them for at least a year. Their auto discovery networking "breakthrough" press release at WinHEC really got me going.

Re:If Apple continues to patent its UI elements...

[IAmAMacOSXAddict]

I've never noticed the Permisions/provileges probelems that you talk about. I have both my Fiance' and my self as users (I'm admin, she is normal user). I also have root enabled for when I really want to mess with the system...

I Have never noticed any "spyware" apps run on my system, and I'd now, as I'm a network engineer that monitors for things like that...

I also am forced into using XP pro (at work for the Feds). I'm amazed at how much like OSX even XP is. Even one of the user icons is exactly the same (the rubber duck). At home i have a Dual 2gig G5 with a 23"HD LCD, at work I have a 3.2 gig P4. In at least my observations the G5 os "seems" a lot faster and Much Much smoother. I'm dying to see what more the evil empire duplicates from Apple in Longhorn.

From what I have read over time, the MBU of M$ is the most UN-windows group there is. Though if my understanding of Patent law, wich I fully admit is very very small, Apple would have to fight all infringments of it's patents with all companies that choose to utilize them. I would think that Apple would be able to negoiatiate a resonable settlement exclusively for the MBU of M$, without opening it entirely for the blanket infringment that Longhorn will I'm sure partake in...

Mixed metaphors

[Latent Heat]

Kurtz was the fellow that used heads on sticks to decorate his camp. The "smell of napalm" dude was Kilgore. Willard thought that both were crazy, but Kilgore was someone the military could use for its purposes while Kurtz was beyond their control and hence the need for Willard's mission.

So is Gates Kilgore (the crazy but mainstream guy) while Jobs is Kurtz (the crazy and outside the mainstream guy)?

Re:Mixed metaphors

[crazyphilman]

Nah... The way I see it, Kurtz represents full-time employees who have to handle the upgrade, and are basically already bonkers from past upgrades. It's not too far off; I almost put some tiki torches and faux shrunken heads outside my cubicle (the boss vetoed it, said it would frighten the already skittish users -- I said, "Yes.").

Kilgore represents consultants who are having the time of their lives racking up zillions of billable hours while the IT systems they're working on get more clusterfucked (like Kilgore's men surfing while an entire village is destroyed in a cataclysmic battle and non-surfers become casualties). Charlie don't surf!

I think maybe Willard could be played by Tux, coming in to quietly put us out of our misery, steal the consultant's surfboards, and end the chaos that is Microsoft... Maybe?

spot-on your face

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, what is it like to be paid by MS to post to slashdot?

but there just isn't the support for applications and hardware

Any apps besides games? If so you aren't looking hard enough for the linux ones!

As for hardware support, I call Bullshit!

Re:If Apple continues to patent its UI elements...

[rspress]

I was referring to Microsoft giving its Applications such as outlook and explorer the ability to install programs without the user doing much or nothing at all.

As far as spyware goes everytime I run Ad-aware on the PC it will usually find something that should not be there. Usually cookies that track all visited websites. Often it finds more. Admitted I pick these up on questionable websites that one would not visit at work. Whenever possible I use MacOS X to visit those sites and render their little tricks useless.

I have been using both Macs and PCs since the day the came out and old CPM machines and Apple IIs back to 1978. GUI-wise there are some similarities between X and XP but under the hood is a different story. I much prefer the OS X and the underlying Unix layer....good stuff!

Yes, the MBU is the most unwindows part of Microsoft but MS has been diminishing its role. It no longer makes Explorer for the Mac and therein lies the problem. Some of Microsofts content creation tools create sites that do not work with any other browser besides Explorer....worse yet, some sites only work with Explorer and Windows!

Apple has the right to enforce its patents with whomever it chooses too. It may charge MS for the right and give a free license to another if they choose.

Don't like the size? Change it.

[bonch]

Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons? Are they trying to cater to the bad eyesight but too cool to wear glasses crowd?

Avalon is vector-based and resolution-independent. So you'll be able to just change the size yourself.

Another huge whiny issue solved.

KDE

[bonch]

Funny, one could ask the same thing whenever KDE adds new pointless features. That icon label shading is the most amateurish horrible visual effect I've seen in a desktop operating system. They couldn't even give it a decent fadeout effect?

Come on, you're being silly here. Longhorn has tiers of operationg going all the way back to a "Windows Classic" theme similar to Windows 2000. Microsoft is making sure they have a reliable presentation layer for a new generation of computers that will provide visual quality and not just bland text labels on top of gray like we've been getting since Windows 95. I like technology, so I like to hear about the stuff Microsoft's researchers are coming up with.

I forgot, this is a bash-Microsoft article. Brains must be turned off as a requisite for posting...

Re:KDE

[neko9]

I like technology, so I like to hear about the stuff Microsoft's researchers are coming up with.

good for you.

FreeType quality

[bonch]

Anything's better than FreeType's anti-aliasing. I'm constantly told by fanboys how "FreeType looks better than Microsoft!" and they give me a screenshot with absolutely ugly and horrible rendering, completely with varying levels of thickness on characters with curves like numbers and lowercase letters, even with the byte interpreter on. Apparently I'm supposed to ignore these flaws and declare it better than Windows.

OS X stands as the bastion of high-quality text rendering (and why wouldn't it, considering it uses PDF as a display layer). XP is a very close second.

Mozilla and Slashdot--offtopic

[bonch]

Speaking of Mozilla and Firefox, ever noticed how text always spills over into those table cells on the left side of Slashdot? Is it Mozilla or is it Slashcode?

Hasn't happened since I switched to Opera when 7.5 came out.

Slashbot misinformation

[bonch]

1. Indigo, the new .Net secret sauce coming with Longhorn, will no longer use Remoting "over the wire". Everything is going to be SOAP and web services. Sounds wonderful, right? I think so too. BUT, many consultants are busy writing all your company's apps using remoting between servers! Guess what THAT means?

Oh my gosh, you are so right! A vague description of unnamed "consultants" who are busy writing my company's apps using remoting between servers! You have convinced me with your facts, sir.

2. All your computers are going to be landfill fodder, because Longhorn's hardware requirements are going to SMOKE 'em. Ah, well, we didn't need those 20,000 PCs anyway. And, the budget looks so much better cratered. It's like a big empty swimming pool. Makes me think of summer.

After all, you'll still be using the same PCs you use now in 2006, right?

3. Performance? The users are asking about performance? Um... HUSH! Look at the pretty screens, children! Ooh, transparency!

Complete troll. You don't know what performance will be like on a 2006-level computer with a standard DirectX 9 video card. How could this possibly be insightful? KDE has transparency too, and it's slower than syrup in winter.

4. Filesystem? We don't need no stinkin' filesystem. Let's put everything in a DATABASE!!!
Ok, they might not get this into Longhorn, but it's coming. All your apps that touch the filesystem? Kiss 'em goodbye.

Except that NTFS is still there, so apps that access NTFS will, gasp, still be able to access NTFS since it's still there. WinFS is just a database service running on top of NTFS. But, hey, what's a little Slashbot misinformation to spread false memes that magically become "truth", eh? Just like how WinFS was "cancelled" and Longhorn is "vaporware."

5. More DRM. What's that? the users didn't ask for it? Let's surprise 'em; they'll be so happy!

Name a single bit of DRM in Windows XP. Activation? Regular users don't care. Windows Media Player? The first thing that pops up is a privacy page allowing you to disable automatic CD detection (which, you know, all Linux media players seem to do automatically without asking you).

If you don't want to use signed content, use something else. How is this difficult? You think there won't be free alternatives for Windows if you're so paranoid about your warez phoning home?

6. A new, different and strange iteration of IE to worry about. Sigh; better set up resources for the recoding of all your web pages, just in case.

Please cite a single example of what will be "new, different and strange" about the new IE, seeing as how you've never used it since it's not out yet and couldn't possibly know.

If something works in IE now, it will work in IE7. Microsoft isn't going to break 90% of the Internet for Longhorn. Things seem to be running just fine despite Slashbots' innate hatred of IE.

Ah, well. It should be exciting! And, who knows? Maybe the Indians will find it all just too ugly to work with and offshore all the work back here ("Oh, this is just too UGLY, you may take it back, please... No, really. No, I must insist. Oh, you are too kind, sir, but NO, I REALLY must insist... Oh you are making me very ANGRY sir, do not make me go medaeval on your unruly buttocks in the manner of Marcellus!").

Any moderator modding this up needs to have their heads checked. I fully expect to see this troll post linked on Anti-Slash within the next 24 hours.

Re:Slashbot misinformation

[Anonymous Coward]

I fully expect to see this troll post linked on Anti-Slash within the next 24 hours.

And posted by you, no doubt.

Re:Slashbot misinformation

[crazyphilman]

My, my my. You poor, unfortunate soul. Surely you're on the list for a sense of humor transplant? I hope someone sufficiently humorous dies soon so you can GET THE FUCKING JOKE.

Dipshit.

Of course, your counterpoints were even more full of shit than anything I've ever said. But, that's ok, I don't mind. It adds to the humor. I know, you don't get it. Be patient, it'll come to you.

Dipshit.

Re:Slashbot misinformation

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Love,
bonch




lameness filter encountered. post aborted!

Re:Slashbot misinformation

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh. You're one of THOSE.

Well, I marvel at your astounding l33tness. Your knowledge of adolescent acronym-speak leaves me truly speechless. You may go forth and tell your friends (both of them) how wonderful and l33t you are.

Perhaps they'll give you a cookie.

Cheers,
Phil

Sad

[Pan T. Hose]

This is sad. Unfortunately, I know how you feel. This is a clear abuse of the system. You should definitely contact everyone responsible.

Re:Sad

[BandwidthHog]

I guess I don't really care enough to be truly bothered by it. To be honest, I'm sort of fascinated by it all in that amateur sociologist sort of way that I get when I spend a lot of time people watching. If you check out my posting history you'll see that I've only relatively recently started getting prolific around these parts.

It is a cool feeling when I get a little message telling me that 17 other geeks burned mod points to say they liked what I have to say, and while it is slightly annoying to get a slew of -1, Overrated mods, I just assume they're beer drinking, Windows using, SUV driving, Bush supporters and go about my business. But then again, I got a +1, Underrated for the parent comment, so I know that at least you and one other person agree with me. As my .sig reflects, I think the /. moderation system has some significant flaws, but I'm actually one of the idealistic True Believers who moderates responsibly, metamoderates regularly and flosses daily because I think that it really is a cool system overall.

So to summarize, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. NEXT!!!

Re:Server? What server?

[BandwidthHog]

And to the guy who modded that -1, Troll, the secret is to bang the rocks together.

Re:Longhorn Shmonghorn.

[Anonymous Coward]

You apparently need to associate yourself with people who are not criminals. I know at least a dozen people who have purchased (off the shelf, not bundled) copies of Windows (XP Pro and 2K Pro) because they either built their own machines or did not want to use Win98/Me/XP Home bundled OS.

Graphics speed

[sorbits]

Ever wonder why resizing a window is so slow on OS X? ATSUI is the reason

Text is slow on the Mac, but it's actually the layout, not the drawing, so hardware acceleration for drawing wouldn't help (much), but caching the layout will, and most (if not all) programs already do that.

But generally everything (except OpenGL) on Mac is cpu rendered and then uploaded as a texture to the graphics card, it is mainly this latter part (uploading) which slows it down (since the graphics bus is a bottleneck).

When resizing, the entire bitmap is invalidated and needs re-uploading, which you can verify by resizing an empty window, which is approximately the same speed as one containing text.

METAMOD speaking...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm doing my daily meta modding, and I'm metamodding the "Troll" moderation for this post as UNFAIR. I encourage other intelligent M2ers to do the same.

Re:METAMOD speaking...

[BandwidthHog]

*tips hat*