Thats mostly software side, and has nothing to do with the hardware. Essentially you could have said 'XBox Live is innovative' (which it is). Hardware wise, there is very little innovation with the xbox 360 at all. Both Nintendo and Sony are doing SOMETHING different.
There's nothing innovative hardware-wise about the PS3 either. Where did you get that idea?
If you're talking about the controller, Microsoft came up with one of those in 1998. It sucked.
Subpixel rendering doesn't work on CRTs. And the Apple II color trick isn't subpixel rendering - it's just rendering pixel patterns which cause the NTSC color carrier to generate colors instead of black/white. The entire three-color cluster becomes either magenta or green in that area - you don't get any control.
Anyone trying to claim that this is technology designed for smoothing or subpixel rendering is smoking something.
Get a better graphics system than the very botched one in the current 360, ie. 10meg EDRAM tiling AA/jaggy fiasco we are seeing
What the hell are you babbling about? Sure, it'd be nice to have 4x that much EDRAM so you didn't need to do predicative tiling, but it's not "very botched"... I certainly don't see a "jaggy fiasco"
Unmanaged Microsoft VS6 C++ does have some exception handling support, but from what I can see it appear to only work when triggered manually with a throw statement. It can't catch null pointers or memory overflows like.NET can (because it's UNMANAGED). Thus even in one of these blocks a program can easily crash.
Try looking up Structured Exception Handling on MSDN - it's a base OS feature.
Previously if you wanted to change some of these settings it was digging through the registry (a frightning prospect for Mr. Old School businessman who can barely master Hotmail or for Joe Sixpack) or knowing about and downloading xteq's xsetup (or for some settings, TweakUI from Microsoft Powertoys)
Er... or use the "Set Program Access and Defaults" wizard, which has been on the start menu since Windows 2000 and Windows 98 SE came out.
Ah, so it's in beta stage yet? Oh, I needed it about 3 years ago. Now I'm not going to switch to beta software if I have tried and true final versions that work, and did so 3 years ago too.
So your criteria for whether or not Word can do something is "Must do it in the oldest version"?
Try writing equations that take up half a page in MS Word. Example with a simple one: z=sqrt(x^2+y^2)/2
Equations in MS Word: Click 'basic' tab. Click "=". Click box left from "=". Type "y". Click fraction icon. Click box above fraction line. Click root tab. Click root symbol. Click below the inserted root symbol. Click "basic" tab. Click "+". Click left to "+". Click "upper index". In respective boxes type "x" and "2". Click right to "+". Repeat with "y" and "2". Click below the fraction bar. Type "2".
Open the Microsoft Equation editor and type "z = \sqrt(x^2+y^2)/2"
Sorry, but no... Apple OSX Tiger is $129 retail through the Apple store online. And I assume you don't remember the ones fallen by the wayside; Be, DOS, DR DOS, CP/M 86, GEM, OS/2 and a host of others. Microsoft has never been "cheap," just ubiquitous.
That's upgrade pricing - you can't buy OSX in the first place without buying a Mac. Comparatively, Windows XP Home Edition Upgrade is $99.99 - which is cheaper.
Man, it's weird how much pro-Microsoft shilling appears on Slashdot whenever there's a EU discussion. All Microsoft had to do was document their APIs as requested by the commission. Why do MS fanbois hate that idea so much?
They don't. The problem is that the EU commission won't specify exactly what's "good enough" documentation.
It's like I asked you to give me some fruit. You're looking for a kumquat. I give you an orange, and you say "no, that's not good enough". I give you a lime, and you say "no, that won't do either". I ask you what kind of fruit you really want, and you say "no, you just have to give me the fruit".
I'm totally for the Free Software. Because I want to be free to write whatever code I want. And be free to do with my code whatever I want. So I also want others to be free to write code they want. And be free to do with their code whatever they want. Including selling for a buck or for a credit (assuming there's someone who wants to buy/use it).
You already are free to do that - that's what Copyright gives you, and it's why you get the copyright on your work the moment you create it.
Nope. I think you have it the wrong way round. The fact that Microsoft is an (illegally maintained) monopoly, is what *allows* them to sell an operating system for 300 - 400 instead of a more reasonable 50 - 100.
Compare that to historical prices for other operating systems. Until Linux came around, Windows was the cheapest operating system. Taking into account inflation, it still is. Linux is only as cheap as it is because people work on it for free.
The next question is: should this push the price down? Arguably, Linux operates outside of the capitalist market - it doesn't obey the same laws.
I clicked on the link to the ogg file and it started playing (Movie Player) as soon as it downloaded... Lo and behold the magical dapper drake knows what to do with Ogg files without me telling it. Now be honest, are you using Windows?
Hmmm... you'd think that given that most of the audience who needs to be educated about this stuff is running Windows, maybe, just maybe, a format that they can easily listen to would take precedence?
Er... there are licensing issues here. Not every TTF file you can get your hands on is licensed for generalized distribution. That's why MS has their embedding format - to respect the copyright of the font creators.
Earlier than that. Almost Vietnam Era, but not quite. I still have a scar from where a doc at Keesler AFB decided to treat a rather angry boil with antibiotics rather than lancing it. It burst on its own the next day. What fun!
I'm not sure if you're saying he did the right thing or the wrong thing here... Anyway, even if you lance a boil, it can still leave a scar.
No, the system clock uses what the OS tells it to. Every OS known to man except Microsoft, when configured properly, uses UTC as their system time. I choose to live with options, adherence to standards and best practices, not what any single company tells me I should do, especially with hardware that I own. You may choose to live with it, some of us don't. Live with that.
Unless, of course, you set the system clock from the BIOS. In which case, it uses local time. Note that you DON'T set a timezone in the BIOS, which would be the case if it was meant to store UTC.
They can't even get the atomic clock right. The OS sets your hardware clock adjusted with the local time zone offset pretty much borking anything else that needs to reference it and bucking the trend of every other hardware vendor and every other OS known to man. No other OS on the planet is so bold to assume it's the only thing running on the hardware and that it should do whatever it wants with the hardware. Drone on, nothing to see here.
Even though Windows NT uses UTC internally, the BIOS clock stays on local time. Why is that?
There are a few reasons. One is a chain of backwards compatibility.
In the early days, people often dual-booted between Windows NT and MS-DOS/Windows 3.1. MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 operate on local time, so Windows NT followed suit so that you wouldn't have to keep changing your clock each time you changed operating systems.
As people upgraded from Windows NT to Windows 2000 to Windows XP, this choice of time zone had to be preserved so that people could dual-boot between their previous operating system and the new operating system.
Another reason for keeping the BIOS clock on local time is to avoid confusing people who set their time via the BIOS itself. If you hit the magic key during the power-on self-test, the BIOS will go into its configuration mode, and one of the things you can configure here is the time. Imagine how confusing it would be if you set the time to 3pm, and then when you started Windows, the clock read 11am.
"Stupid computer. Why did it even ask me to change the time if it's going to screw it up and make me change it a second time?"
And if you explain to them, "No, you see, that time was UTC, not local time," the response is likely to be "What kind of totally propeller-headed nonsense is that? You're telling me that when the computer asks me what time it is, I have to tell it what time it is in London? (Except during the summer in the northern hemisphere, when I have to tell it what time it is in Reykjavik!?) Why do I have to remember my time zone and manually subtract four hours? Or is it five during the summer? Or maybe I have to add. Why do I even have to think about this? Stupid Microsoft. My watch says three o'clock. I type three o'clock. End of story."
(What's more, some BIOSes have alarm clocks built in, where you can program them to have the computer turn itself on at a particular time. Do you want to have to convert all those times to UTC each time you want to set a wake-up call?)
This happened to my Uncle's computer yesterday - Uncle Sam that is. The WinBlows PC that is my email machine popped up the "This copy of Windows is not genuine" tag yesterday. This is on a major DoD site that has Everything legit, monitored, and locked up. It locked the system down so that I could not access the system with either the CAC card/PIN method nor the username/password means.
The Genuine Advantage tool doesn't lock your system. It just doesn't let you download cool freebies (at this time).
You got hit by something else. Upthread someone said that there's some spyware which masquerades as the Genuine Advantage system, and *does* lock your system down.
You just pasted a block of text that says there's no information on the porting kit, which we knew.
No, that block of text said that it didn't cost you anything.
On the same page that said that, there was this:
Steps to Obtain the Windows Media Photo XPS Component License To obtain the Windows Media Photo XPS Component License, follow these steps: To request the license application, send an e-mail message to wmla@microsoft.com with the following subject line: XPS WMPhoto License. Complete and return the application electronically. WMLA will draft the requested license agreement and send you an e-mail message that contains the draft agreement in PDF format for your review. Review and approve the draft license that you received from WMLA. Submit the draft license for approval using the instructions sent to you in the e-mail message with the draft agreement. WMLA will send you an e-mail message that contains the approved license for your signature. Print 2 copies of the license, and then complete, sign, and return the original to DMD Licensing via mail courier. WMLA will review and countersign the agreement, and send you an e-mail message that confirms the executed agreement and provides instructions for downloading deliverables. WMLA will also mail you one original license agreement for your records. After you receive confirmation of the executed agreement, follow the instructions provided by WMLA to download the deliverables, including the Windows Media Photo Device Porting Kit. Note WMLA will send a separate e-mail message with the passwords you will need to access the deliverables.
Licensing of the porting kit is unknown to me, buy my guess would be that this is an expensive add-on.
Why guess when you can research? From the Microsoft site:
Windows Media Photo Licenses
There are no fees or costs to license Windows Media Photo for implementation as a component of the XML Paper Specification (XPS). For more information about XPS implementation and specifications, see Printing - Architecture and Driver Support. At present, Microsoft is only offering a license for Windows Media Photo as a component of XPS. Information on licensing Windows Media Photo for other applications will be provided in the future.
The primary reason to favor jpg and gif over png on web pages is that png support in MSIE has not been very good. Go figure.
Uhhh... don't think so. Use JPEG if you don't need transparency, and you have a photographic image. Use PNG for everything else.
Pretty simple. JPEG is only suitable for photographic images where you can handle the loss of data. PNG is really only suitable for line art - eg. screenshots, graphics with lots of areas of solid color, lots of repeating sections.
Slashdot Mirror
Thats mostly software side, and has nothing to do with the hardware. Essentially you could have said 'XBox Live is innovative' (which it is). Hardware wise, there is very little innovation with the xbox 360 at all. Both Nintendo and Sony are doing SOMETHING different.
There's nothing innovative hardware-wise about the PS3 either. Where did you get that idea?
If you're talking about the controller, Microsoft came up with one of those in 1998. It sucked.
Subpixel rendering doesn't work on CRTs. And the Apple II color trick isn't subpixel rendering - it's just rendering pixel patterns which cause the NTSC color carrier to generate colors instead of black/white. The entire three-color cluster becomes either magenta or green in that area - you don't get any control.
Anyone trying to claim that this is technology designed for smoothing or subpixel rendering is smoking something.
Not the same thing, by a LONG stretch.
Get a better graphics system than the very botched one in the current 360, ie. 10meg EDRAM tiling AA/jaggy fiasco we are seeing
What the hell are you babbling about? Sure, it'd be nice to have 4x that much EDRAM so you didn't need to do predicative tiling, but it's not "very botched"... I certainly don't see a "jaggy fiasco"
For the love of god, please get them to fix that.
Unmanaged Microsoft VS6 C++ does have some exception handling support, but from what I can see it appear to only work when triggered manually with a throw statement. It can't catch null pointers or memory overflows like .NET can (because it's UNMANAGED). Thus even in one of these blocks a program can easily crash.
Try looking up Structured Exception Handling on MSDN - it's a base OS feature.
Microsoft Chrome predates it. 3D web pages in a browser, stacked around the surface of a cube - http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/peter_g/melt down.html
Previously if you wanted to change some of these settings it was digging through the registry (a frightning prospect for Mr. Old School businessman who can barely master Hotmail or for Joe Sixpack) or knowing about and downloading xteq's xsetup (or for some settings, TweakUI from Microsoft Powertoys)
Er... or use the "Set Program Access and Defaults" wizard, which has been on the start menu since Windows 2000 and Windows 98 SE came out.
Ah, so it's in beta stage yet? Oh, I needed it about 3 years ago. Now I'm not going to switch to beta software if I have tried and true final versions that work, and did so 3 years ago too.
So your criteria for whether or not Word can do something is "Must do it in the oldest version"?
Not at all. I spent a hour looking for that editor. I failed. I bet this is a component you need to purchase separately.
You bet wrong. Just download the Beta.
Try writing equations that take up half a page in MS Word. Example with a simple one: z=sqrt(x^2+y^2)/2
Equations in MS Word: Click 'basic' tab. Click "=". Click box left from "=". Type "y". Click fraction icon. Click box above fraction line. Click root tab. Click root symbol. Click below the inserted root symbol. Click "basic" tab. Click "+". Click left to "+". Click "upper index". In respective boxes type "x" and "2". Click right to "+". Repeat with "y" and "2". Click below the fraction bar. Type "2".
Open the Microsoft Equation editor and type "z = \sqrt(x^2+y^2)/2"
Hey presto.
Not that hard, was it?
Sorry, but no... Apple OSX Tiger is $129 retail through the Apple store online. And I assume you don't remember the ones fallen by the wayside; Be, DOS, DR DOS, CP/M 86, GEM, OS/2 and a host of others. Microsoft has never been "cheap," just ubiquitous.
That's upgrade pricing - you can't buy OSX in the first place without buying a Mac. Comparatively, Windows XP Home Edition Upgrade is $99.99 - which is cheaper.
Man, it's weird how much pro-Microsoft shilling appears on Slashdot whenever there's a EU discussion. All Microsoft had to do was document their APIs as requested by the commission. Why do MS fanbois hate that idea so much?
They don't. The problem is that the EU commission won't specify exactly what's "good enough" documentation.
It's like I asked you to give me some fruit. You're looking for a kumquat. I give you an orange, and you say "no, that's not good enough". I give you a lime, and you say "no, that won't do either". I ask you what kind of fruit you really want, and you say "no, you just have to give me the fruit".
Not really fair is it?
I'm totally for the Free Software.
Because I want to be free to write whatever code I want. And be free to do with my code whatever I want.
So I also want others to be free to write code they want. And be free to do with their code whatever they want.
Including selling for a buck or for a credit (assuming there's someone who wants to buy/use it).
You already are free to do that - that's what Copyright gives you, and it's why you get the copyright on your work the moment you create it.
Nope. I think you have it the wrong way round. The fact that Microsoft is an (illegally maintained) monopoly, is what *allows* them to sell an operating system for 300 - 400 instead of a more reasonable 50 - 100.
Compare that to historical prices for other operating systems. Until Linux came around, Windows was the cheapest operating system. Taking into account inflation, it still is. Linux is only as cheap as it is because people work on it for free.
The next question is: should this push the price down? Arguably, Linux operates outside of the capitalist market - it doesn't obey the same laws.
I clicked on the link to the ogg file and it started playing (Movie Player) as soon as it downloaded... Lo and behold the magical dapper drake knows what to do with Ogg files without me telling it. Now be honest, are you using Windows?
Hmmm... you'd think that given that most of the audience who needs to be educated about this stuff is running Windows, maybe, just maybe, a format that they can easily listen to would take precedence?
Just sayin'...
Just tell the server to send the TTF file as gzip'd data, and include it using the @FONT-FACE tag.
Er... there are licensing issues here. Not every TTF file you can get your hands on is licensed for generalized distribution. That's why MS has their embedding format - to respect the copyright of the font creators.
Earlier than that. Almost Vietnam Era, but not quite. I still have a scar from where a doc at Keesler AFB decided to treat a rather angry boil with antibiotics rather than lancing it. It burst on its own the next day. What fun!
I'm not sure if you're saying he did the right thing or the wrong thing here... Anyway, even if you lance a boil, it can still leave a scar.
No, the system clock uses what the OS tells it to. Every OS known to man except Microsoft, when configured properly, uses UTC as their system time. I choose to live with options, adherence to standards and best practices, not what any single company tells me I should do, especially with hardware that I own. You may choose to live with it, some of us don't. Live with that.
Unless, of course, you set the system clock from the BIOS. In which case, it uses local time. Note that you DON'T set a timezone in the BIOS, which would be the case if it was meant to store UTC.
There's no good reason for not making this a configurable option.
A configurable option in the BIOS perhaps? Yes, I totally agree.
BIOSes use Local Time, not UTC. Live with it.
There's actually a good reason for doing this...
Why Does Windows Keep Your BIOS Clock on Local Time? (by Raymond Chen)
This happened to my Uncle's computer yesterday - Uncle Sam that is. The WinBlows PC that is my email machine popped up the "This copy of Windows is not genuine" tag yesterday. This is on a major DoD site that has Everything legit, monitored, and locked up. It locked the system down so that I could not access the system with either the CAC card/PIN method nor the username/password means.
The Genuine Advantage tool doesn't lock your system. It just doesn't let you download cool freebies (at this time).
You got hit by something else. Upthread someone said that there's some spyware which masquerades as the Genuine Advantage system, and *does* lock your system down.
You just pasted a block of text that says there's no information on the porting kit, which we knew.
No, that block of text said that it didn't cost you anything.
On the same page that said that, there was this:
Steps to Obtain the Windows Media Photo XPS Component License
To obtain the Windows Media Photo XPS Component License, follow these steps:
To request the license application, send an e-mail message to wmla@microsoft.com with the following subject line: XPS WMPhoto License.
Complete and return the application electronically.
WMLA will draft the requested license agreement and send you an e-mail message that contains the draft agreement in PDF format for your review.
Review and approve the draft license that you received from WMLA.
Submit the draft license for approval using the instructions sent to you in the e-mail message with the draft agreement.
WMLA will send you an e-mail message that contains the approved license for your signature.
Print 2 copies of the license, and then complete, sign, and return the original to DMD Licensing via mail courier.
WMLA will review and countersign the agreement, and send you an e-mail message that confirms the executed agreement and provides instructions for downloading deliverables. WMLA will also mail you one original license agreement for your records.
After you receive confirmation of the executed agreement, follow the instructions provided by WMLA to download the deliverables, including the Windows Media Photo Device Porting Kit.
Note WMLA will send a separate e-mail message with the passwords you will need to access the deliverables.
Licensing of the porting kit is unknown to me, buy my guess would be that this is an expensive add-on.
Why guess when you can research? From the Microsoft site:
Windows Media Photo Licenses
There are no fees or costs to license Windows Media Photo for implementation as a component of the XML Paper Specification (XPS). For more information about XPS implementation and specifications, see Printing - Architecture and Driver Support. At present, Microsoft is only offering a license for Windows Media Photo as a component of XPS. Information on licensing Windows Media Photo for other applications will be provided in the future.
The primary reason to favor jpg and gif over png on web pages is that png support in MSIE has not been very good. Go figure.
Uhhh... don't think so. Use JPEG if you don't need transparency, and you have a photographic image.
Use PNG for everything else.
Pretty simple. JPEG is only suitable for photographic images where you can handle the loss of data. PNG is really only suitable for line art - eg. screenshots, graphics with lots of areas of solid color, lots of repeating sections.