This granted patent came from a patent application claiming priority to a provisional patent application filed in 1999, so you need to find art prior to Mar. 5, 1999.
I have prior art from 1998... I'm pretty sure that Visual J++ 6.0 had this feature in it.
Oh... wait a minute... damn... that's a Microsoft product.
I don't know what candy-ass systems you people are using, but the X I'm using right now gets point sizes absolutely dead-on, within ±1px (which error, btw, is caused by grid fitting).
And what did you use to check? If your answer does not include some kind of micrometer screw gauge or vernier calipers, and your display is not an LCD, I'll be very surprised as to how you justify that its' "absolutely dead-on".
You gotta be kidding me. Windows probably has the WORST typography system of any current OS. You can't get a font in the right size. People resort to lying about their display's DPI to get the fonts sized properly, and even then the DPI setting has the opposite effect of what you would expect. Windows typography is fucking stupid, and FreeType looks every bit as good as ClearType (better, IMHO, than MacOS X's on-screen type).
If you really think that Mac OS or X actually get their onscreen font point size calculations accurate, you're smoking something.
Others have made this point, but it's true: there's plenty worse than this to come. There are very powerful forces that are threatened by the development of Linux, and they will fight to the death. Hired character assassins are just the beginning.
Are hired character assassins better than the unpaid free-software ones in terms of quality? Because I certainly see a lot of character assassination going on on this very website, aimed at a couple of people with the initials SB and WHG3.
Or is character assassination only wrong when it's happening to one of your guys?
You are suggesting that Microsoft's executives and the legal department observe every single coder as they produce every line of code. Gee, if they do that, maybe they could peer review it at the same time and fix the security holes. You really don't know how it works, and you're showing it. Again ( try reading the words this time) appropriating code does not have to be a huge operation nor does it have to be a large amount of code, it could be only one programmer taking code from somewhere else. Microsoft has taken BSD code in the past, it's not news.
No, what I'm suggesting is that you are making claims which are basically nothing but FUD - there's nothing to back them up, but they sound at least vaguely plausible.
Similarly, while it's possible that you are a serial killer, it would be disingenuous of me to claim that you indeed are a serial killer unless I provide some kind of proof. Showing that you eat meat (which is legal - and in this analogy, the equivalent of using BSD code) does not mean that you are a serial killer.
Any code where the value proposition is such that it makes more sense for Microsoft to steal it and roll it into their OS rather than writing their own version from scratch will indeed be complex enough that it cannot be done overnight.
OK, I never said that either. YOU are a LIAR. yes, that is not only sarcastic, it is a diredct insult to YOU personally. I said you had the same odds,generally speaking, that human beinbgs are the same. there's human beings in both closed source and open source projects and shops. I guess you just don't WANT to understand, because I know you do, you're just looking for some childinsh argument nowe. No time for you anymore, see ya later, there's a lot more intelligent people here to talk to. I can discuss anything with anyone, but I'm just not gonna get sucked into some JO flame fest with some punk kid. Go fly a kite, you are just trolling now
Ah. So if someone calls you on your baseless claims, they're trolling are they?
The problem with you conspiracy nuts is that you believe in things that by definition you cannot disprove.
You are probably correct, from your point of view. A self taught coder, even a guy with a BS/CS or BA/MIS degree in his first year in a code writing position is likely to write a good tight sort routine or a nice tight SQL statement that is 12.7% faster than the bubble sort or select statement an older guy / guy with a few years of experience / guy with better 'credentials' might use - same way some AMD/ATI fanboy is going to put together a computer that uses liquid cooling to keep his overclocked record setting system running circles (18.9% faster!) around the off the shelf Dell system an older guy might be using.
Speaking as someone with no formal CS education, here's a few pointers:
1. If you're writing your own sort routine, you're probably wasting your time doing something that would be better served by using a library function.
2. If you're writing your own sort routine, make sure you're using the right algorithms. For example, sometimes you don't need everything sorted precisely - just roughly sorted. Using quicksort is a mistake here.
3. Sometimes a bubble sort / shell sort or insertion sort is the right thing to do. For example, if you have an array of 10 integers that you need to sort, you might be surprised if you profile the speed of an insertion or bubble sort on that puppy, compared to doing the "right" thing algorithmically. (It's all to do with cache coherence).
And to be very specific going back to the original article, I would be beyond surprised if there wasn't a lot of code inside MS's shop *in general with all their products* that was "borrrowed" and not necessarily from a BSD styled licensed piece of code.
How surprised? Because I'm tempted to video you finding out, just because I could sell it for a lot of money if you're being serious.
No wait... you are being serious. Because only the One True Open Source Developers have ethics when it comes to doing their jobs.
I'm not a coder, but I do observe how business works. There's these things like deadlines, over hyped sales, etc and the temptation is right there. I know you can't "steal" open source and free code, but I don't know how to phrase it more accurately. You got a flock of PHBs breathing down your neck,because some clients are breathing down their necks, or the "stock" holders, etc, you can see some shortcuts to take to get them off your back. I've seen it first hand in other industries, so I imagine software is no different. It's just a variant of industrial espionage, and obviously fairly easy to do.
Where in this copyright-infringement-causing miraculous deadline of which you speak, is there the time for the person allegedly doing the copying to actually figure out which code to copy, work out how it works, and then work out how to splice it into their existing codebase?
This isn't a task that could be done overnight - negating the supposed advantage you were talking about.
There is this common misconception among people (especially non-technical ones) that coding requires a great amount of skill to do. The truth is that it doesn't. This is evidenced by its tendency to be outsourced.
Your assumption is that the people that it is being outsourced to are idiots without skill.
Bit of an unsafe assumption to make there, skippy. You might want to understand your 'enemy' instead of spewing rhetoric. That way at the very worst at least you'll have a speech prepared for how these people are all "idiots" when you're training them to take over your job.
Yup. That's by design. To improve "user experience", XP loads an image of a ready-to-use desktop while it's finishing getting things ready. During that time when the computer *looks* ready but the drive's still thrashing away and you can't use it, that's because Explorer is probably not even loaded yet.. Some people at Microsoft figured people like the computer to *look* ready, and apparently found a lot of people just sit there a while and get ready to use the computer after it appears ready. It annoys the hell out of me to have a computer lie about being ready probably as much as it annoys you 8-).
The only lie in this whole story is the one you just posted.
No, they do not display a bitmap of the desktop and then load Explorer. Try using it - you'll find that (shock!) you can.
Even better, bring up the properties of an icon on your desktop - you'll see that it's not a stored bitmap image at all.
What they do is they store a BINARY IMAGE of the system the way it loaded last time, and use that to speed up loading this time. In other words, they cache the loading of the OS.
3) Because you aren't forced to "buy" redhat products with your new machine purchase
Wait a minute. If you were "forced" to buy it, then you have a legit copy - so this argument about whether or not you should get to install SP2 on it is moot.
Speaking as a very experienced, multiplatform (including multiwin platforms), I call bullshit on your ignorant trolls.
I agree. You are a very experienced multiplatform.
Most likely platforms 6 and 7 at Euston Station.
Stop pretending you know anything about optimizing Windows systems. You do not. Your words - and insistence that only Microsoft can optimize apps - speak for themselves.
Yes, I've done financial applications on Win systems which were expected to run 24/7 and had billions of dollars go through them.
I wouldn't call writing a few lines of HTML "doing financial applications".
I've also done like applications on OS/2, SCO, Digital Unix, OSF/1, and HP/UX. Furthermore, our applications were some of the first to be deployed on NT/Alpha. So, my Win experience goes back a fair bit, up to and including, current platforms.
Yet you continue to make completely false claims that you don't back up with any real data about a platform that - to an experienced Windows developer - it's obvious that you know nothing about.
Biases? MS' only bias is that its apps work well on Windows. If Mac users can boo and hiss when someone gives them a non-Carbonized app, why can't Windows users crib when you hand them an app that's obviously not optimized for Windows?
Because only recently have any non-MS developers been able to even think about doing something like this. Worse, those that did, were shot in the foot by Microsoft purposely breaking their applications. That's why. The parallel doesn't exist on other platforms.
Wrong. Non-MS developers have been able to do all of these optimizations since at least Windows 95 - and probably much earlier.
Have you *ever* done any professional Windows development? Or did you just look at it once and decide that you were the be-all and end-all of computing?
Frankly, my friend, you're a fucking idiot who shouldn't be allowed near a compiler. You certainly don't know jack about Windows development.
Well, that's amazing because it speaks exceptionally poor of Microsoft. Microsoft has a number of block read optimizations which are standard as well as a number of DLLs which get loaded during start up. Worse, Mozilla has to load a ton of stuff (e.g. XUL) which IE doesn't. Add in the fact that Mozilla has implemented much more features, that's down right crappy of MS. If Mozilla really is getting that close, it means Microsoft is one of the biggest idiots in world. None of which change, all of the facts that I've presented.
Apart from the fact that you're completely wrong, of course.
Let's read this into context. You're basically talking out of your ass as I never said you couldn't. Go oh. Learn to read then you can fall on your sword. Period.
Shesh. What a jerk. Fact is, most applications don't use such methods because they simply don't matter. Which, is a point I highlighted and seems to of missed your ever so clueless brow. Simple fact is, IE has serious baises above and beyond what you seem to suggest.
Grow up and stop being ignorant. While you're at it, stop telling half truths. Worse, stop getting pissed off when someone calls you on it.
Funny... you see, I've measured the start up times on the two of them on different versions. I've gone through the Mozilla make file. I've optimized applications to load fast on Windows.
What have you done? Other than making claims that you can't back up?
It's funny that Moz takes 15 to 30 seconds to launch if you don't use the methods that you claim "don't matter", yet it loads in the same time as IE if you *do* use those methods, isn't it?
I have to say I agree with him. I have used Win2kPro for ages, and recently, the last 2ish weeks I have been getting blue screens ever few hours, actual core dumps not just STOP errors. As a dual boot machine I know the hardware is good as the other OS works fine. But Windows doesn't like me. Fixed things, repaired this, reinstalled.dll's every trick I know.
Try running a firewall and getting some antivirus software - because it sounds like you've been infected with one of the more recent worms.
Slashdot Mirror
1999 article discussing the ToDo features in Delphi 5:
i su alj/visualj6/datasheet/default.aspx
s p
I see your 1999 article, and raise you a 1998 article on Visual J++'s ToDo features:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vjsharp/productinfo/v
"Annotate and prioritize source code using TODO comments and track them using the Task List."
Actually, I have some earlier prior art too...
http://www.microsoft.com/mind/0798/j/vj.a
This granted patent came from a patent application claiming priority to a provisional patent application filed in 1999, so you need to find art prior to Mar. 5, 1999.
... wait a minute... damn... that's a Microsoft product.
I have prior art from 1998... I'm pretty sure that Visual J++ 6.0 had this feature in it.
Oh
Oh the calamity.
In that case, what specifically are you claiming is wrong with the Windows font implementation? Can you provide screenshots or examples?
I don't know what candy-ass systems you people are using, but the X I'm using right now gets point sizes absolutely dead-on, within ±1px (which error, btw, is caused by grid fitting).
And what did you use to check? If your answer does not include some kind of micrometer screw gauge or vernier calipers, and your display is not an LCD, I'll be very surprised as to how you justify that its' "absolutely dead-on".
You gotta be kidding me. Windows probably has the WORST typography system of any current OS. You can't get a font in the right size. People resort to lying about their display's DPI to get the fonts sized properly, and even then the DPI setting has the opposite effect of what you would expect. Windows typography is fucking stupid, and FreeType looks every bit as good as ClearType (better, IMHO, than MacOS X's on-screen type).
If you really think that Mac OS or X actually get their onscreen font point size calculations accurate, you're smoking something.
Finally, I don't like the idea of rebooting a system every ten minutes.
Then stop rebooting it every ten minutes.
Others have made this point, but it's true: there's plenty worse than this to come. There are very powerful forces that are threatened by the development of Linux, and they will fight to the death. Hired character assassins are just the beginning.
Are hired character assassins better than the unpaid free-software ones in terms of quality? Because I certainly see a lot of character assassination going on on this very website, aimed at a couple of people with the initials SB and WHG3.
Or is character assassination only wrong when it's happening to one of your guys?
You are suggesting that Microsoft's executives and the legal department observe every single coder as they produce every line of code. Gee, if they do that, maybe they could peer review it at the same time and fix the security holes. You really don't know how it works, and you're showing it. Again ( try reading the words this time) appropriating code does not have to be a huge operation nor does it have to be a large amount of code, it could be only one programmer taking code from somewhere else. Microsoft has taken BSD code in the past, it's not news.
No, what I'm suggesting is that you are making claims which are basically nothing but FUD - there's nothing to back them up, but they sound at least vaguely plausible.
Similarly, while it's possible that you are a serial killer, it would be disingenuous of me to claim that you indeed are a serial killer unless I provide some kind of proof. Showing that you eat meat (which is legal - and in this analogy, the equivalent of using BSD code) does not mean that you are a serial killer.
Any code where the value proposition is such that it makes more sense for Microsoft to steal it and roll it into their OS rather than writing their own version from scratch will indeed be complex enough that it cannot be done overnight.
OK, I never said that either. YOU are a LIAR. yes, that is not only sarcastic, it is a diredct insult to YOU personally. I said you had the same odds,generally speaking, that human beinbgs are the same. there's human beings in both closed source and open source projects and shops. I guess you just don't WANT to understand, because I know you do, you're just looking for some childinsh argument nowe. No time for you anymore, see ya later, there's a lot more intelligent people here to talk to. I can discuss anything with anyone, but I'm just not gonna get sucked into some JO flame fest with some punk kid. Go fly a kite, you are just trolling now
Ah. So if someone calls you on your baseless claims, they're trolling are they?
The problem with you conspiracy nuts is that you believe in things that by definition you cannot disprove.
You are probably correct, from your point of view. A self taught coder, even a guy with a BS/CS or BA/MIS degree in his first year in a code writing position is likely to write a good tight sort routine or a nice tight SQL statement that is 12.7% faster than the bubble sort or select statement an older guy / guy with a few years of experience / guy with better 'credentials' might use - same way some AMD/ATI fanboy is going to put together a computer that uses liquid cooling to keep his overclocked record setting system running circles (18.9% faster!) around the off the shelf Dell system an older guy might be using.
Speaking as someone with no formal CS education, here's a few pointers:
1. If you're writing your own sort routine, you're probably wasting your time doing something that would be better served by using a library function.
2. If you're writing your own sort routine, make sure you're using the right algorithms. For example, sometimes you don't need everything sorted precisely - just roughly sorted. Using quicksort is a mistake here.
3. Sometimes a bubble sort / shell sort or insertion sort is the right thing to do. For example, if you have an array of 10 integers that you need to sort, you might be surprised if you profile the speed of an insertion or bubble sort on that puppy, compared to doing the "right" thing algorithmically. (It's all to do with cache coherence).
And to be very specific going back to the original article, I would be beyond surprised if there wasn't a lot of code inside MS's shop *in general with all their products* that was "borrrowed" and not necessarily from a BSD styled licensed piece of code.
How surprised? Because I'm tempted to video you finding out, just because I could sell it for a lot of money if you're being serious.
No wait... you are being serious. Because only the One True Open Source Developers have ethics when it comes to doing their jobs.
And yes, that was sarcasm.
I'm not a coder, but I do observe how business works. There's these things like deadlines, over hyped sales, etc and the temptation is right there. I know you can't "steal" open source and free code, but I don't know how to phrase it more accurately. You got a flock of PHBs breathing down your neck,because some clients are breathing down their necks, or the "stock" holders, etc, you can see some shortcuts to take to get them off your back. I've seen it first hand in other industries, so I imagine software is no different. It's just a variant of industrial espionage, and obviously fairly easy to do.
Where in this copyright-infringement-causing miraculous deadline of which you speak, is there the time for the person allegedly doing the copying to actually figure out which code to copy, work out how it works, and then work out how to splice it into their existing codebase?
This isn't a task that could be done overnight - negating the supposed advantage you were talking about.
There is this common misconception among people (especially non-technical ones) that coding requires a great amount of skill to do. The truth is that it doesn't. This is evidenced by its tendency to be outsourced.
Your assumption is that the people that it is being outsourced to are idiots without skill.
Bit of an unsafe assumption to make there, skippy. You might want to understand your 'enemy' instead of spewing rhetoric. That way at the very worst at least you'll have a speech prepared for how these people are all "idiots" when you're training them to take over your job.
Yup. That's by design. To improve "user experience", XP loads an image of a ready-to-use desktop while it's finishing getting things ready. During that time when the computer *looks* ready but the drive's still thrashing away and you can't use it, that's because Explorer is probably not even loaded yet.. Some people at Microsoft figured people like the computer to *look* ready, and apparently found a lot of people just sit there a while and get ready to use the computer after it appears ready. It annoys the hell out of me to have a computer lie about being ready probably as much as it annoys you 8-).
The only lie in this whole story is the one you just posted.
No, they do not display a bitmap of the desktop and then load Explorer. Try using it - you'll find that (shock!) you can.
Even better, bring up the properties of an icon on your desktop - you'll see that it's not a stored bitmap image at all.
What they do is they store a BINARY IMAGE of the system the way it loaded last time, and use that to speed up loading this time. In other words, they cache the loading of the OS.
... and a pretty badly written, incoherent, biased, and decidedly uninformed story too, to be honest.
The guy may well have worked at MS once, but it didn't take long for him to become a Born Again Mac User.
3) Because you aren't forced to "buy" redhat products with your new machine purchase
Wait a minute. If you were "forced" to buy it, then you have a legit copy - so this argument about whether or not you should get to install SP2 on it is moot.
Please, try to think logically.
Maybe they could produce "SP-2 Pirate Edition" which would just contain the security fixes and no enhancements?
Maybe they could produce the same thing, but that just formats the user's hard-drive, after telling them off for installing Pirated software?
Although people might not install it if word got out. So maybe a 3 month delay on it or something like that.
Speaking as a very experienced, multiplatform (including multiwin platforms), I call bullshit on your ignorant trolls.
I agree. You are a very experienced multiplatform.
Most likely platforms 6 and 7 at Euston Station.
Stop pretending you know anything about optimizing Windows systems. You do not. Your words - and insistence that only Microsoft can optimize apps - speak for themselves.
Yes, I've done financial applications on Win systems which were expected to run 24/7 and had billions of dollars go through them.
I wouldn't call writing a few lines of HTML "doing financial applications".
I've also done like applications on OS/2, SCO, Digital Unix, OSF/1, and HP/UX. Furthermore, our applications were some of the first to be deployed on NT/Alpha. So, my Win experience goes back a fair bit, up to and including, current platforms.
Yet you continue to make completely false claims that you don't back up with any real data about a platform that - to an experienced Windows developer - it's obvious that you know nothing about.
And you call *me* a troll?
That's rich, Mr. Clueless.
Because only recently have any non-MS developers been able to even think about doing something like this. Worse, those that did, were shot in the foot by Microsoft purposely breaking their applications. That's why. The parallel doesn't exist on other platforms.
Wrong. Non-MS developers have been able to do all of these optimizations since at least Windows 95 - and probably much earlier.
Have you *ever* done any professional Windows development? Or did you just look at it once and decide that you were the be-all and end-all of computing?
Frankly, my friend, you're a fucking idiot who shouldn't be allowed near a compiler. You certainly don't know jack about Windows development.
Well, that's amazing because it speaks exceptionally poor of Microsoft. Microsoft has a number of block read optimizations which are standard as well as a number of DLLs which get loaded during start up. Worse, Mozilla has to load a ton of stuff (e.g. XUL) which IE doesn't. Add in the fact that Mozilla has implemented much more features, that's down right crappy of MS. If Mozilla really is getting that close, it means Microsoft is one of the biggest idiots in world. None of which change, all of the facts that I've presented.
Apart from the fact that you're completely wrong, of course.
Let's read this into context. You're basically talking out of your ass as I never said you couldn't. Go oh. Learn to read then you can fall on your sword. Period.
Shesh. What a jerk. Fact is, most applications don't use such methods because they simply don't matter. Which, is a point I highlighted and seems to of missed your ever so clueless brow. Simple fact is, IE has serious baises above and beyond what you seem to suggest.
Grow up and stop being ignorant. While you're at it, stop telling half truths. Worse, stop getting pissed off when someone calls you on it.
Funny... you see, I've measured the start up times on the two of them on different versions. I've gone through the Mozilla make file. I've optimized applications to load fast on Windows.
What have you done? Other than making claims that you can't back up?
It's funny that Moz takes 15 to 30 seconds to launch if you don't use the methods that you claim "don't matter", yet it loads in the same time as IE if you *do* use those methods, isn't it?
Funny.. you're the one claiming that other apps can't take advantage of Microsoft's tricks for getting IE to load fast.
That's completely wrong and ignorant.
You too can bind your dlls.
You too can rebase your dlls.
You too can tune your working set using the working set smoother.
As I said, as of recently, Mozilla has been binding their DLLs. That's a start.
I have to say I agree with him. I have used Win2kPro for ages, and recently, the last 2ish weeks I have been getting blue screens ever few hours, actual core dumps not just STOP errors. As a dual boot machine I know the hardware is good as the other OS works fine. But Windows doesn't like me. Fixed things, repaired this, reinstalled .dll's every trick I know.
Try running a firewall and getting some antivirus software - because it sounds like you've been infected with one of the more recent worms.