What kind of person says "I really want Windows Vista for Christmas"?? For that matter, what kind of dork asks for any specific operating system for Christmas anyway? I can see wanting a new computer, but a specific OS, for Christmas?
Well, I was happy when OS X 10.3 came out on October 25th a few years ago -- my birthday! Yay... I spent the next few days cursing because Xcode 1.0 sucked so hard.
One double sided blade, no silliness. And you know what? Exactly the same shave as I was getting from my mach 3, but instead of paying 10 to 15 bucks for a package of 5 blades, I now pay 5 bucks for a package of 10. Just like with the mach 3, I get about 3 or 4 shaves from a blade before it goes too dull. The only trouble is you can only buy the blades from drug stores, supermarkets won't carry them.
Anyway, the other thing -- as was mentioned in an earlier post -- is that shaving cream is a god damned scam. Just use ivory soap and hot water. And if you've got thick stubble like me, shave after a hot shower. The soap lubricates better, and frankly, I can see my face while shaving and that's important if you don't want to cut your lips off.
he simple answer is that the base windowing system of Win32 was designed in the 80's for very weak computers
That's certainly true, and you see the same malarky when you look at Mac OS Classic code -- except that it's even hackier there, if you can believe that.
But that said, ObjectiveC and Cocoa were designed back in the 80's, too, and they're quite pleasant to work with. I have to assume, of course, that Cocoa's evolved quite a bit, but the principles of how those apps work are essentially the same as they were 15 years ago. Cocoa's a robust API, and it's aged nicely.
To answer the question -- from screenshots I've seen of Vista -- the answer is that vista performs some per-pixel convolutions. For example, the blurring effect on the titlebars of what's beneath is actually a fairly expensive computation. I've done GLSL gaussian convolutions, and without taking a number of shortcuts ( specifically, bi-directional separation, and performing my blur on an averaged/downsampled copy ) my nVIDIA 5200 barely made 7 fps on a 800x600 scene. I know, 5200 == crappy card, but it's what's in my powerbook.
Anyway, those per-pixel convolutions are hideously expensive. Simple alpha blending and geometric transforms are, in comparison, essentially free, and that's what XGL is doing.
Now, what MS does with it is very conservative ( not to mention unimaginative ) compared to XGL, but I wanted to answer your question. Vista: simple effects performed in about the most computationally expensive manner. XGL: clever, brilliant effects done in a computationally inexpensive manner.
There you go.
Now, why vista requires a fast processor is obvious. To sell new computers:P
... a whole lot of not-funny ranting from some asshole
How about 10 shocks for Windows/Linux users who are constantly angry at Mac users simply because Mac users can't get it in their heads that they should just give up and use PCs? I mean, come on? Don't you arrogant elitists realize that your computers are worthless and that you're assholes for even using Macs?
You know what? I'm an "artist", a graphic designer. I use macs because, well fuck] I've used Photoshop, Quark and illustrator -- on macs -- since the early/mid 90's. I like the platform. I know the platform. The platform fucking works. I don't need to justify being an elitist asshole if your definition of being an elitist asshole is that I'm a guy who makes a living, you know, eating, paying rent, etc by using a computer you clearly disapprove of.
Also, I'm a programmer. I've done professional embedded systems programming on Solaris ( cross compiling to embedded hardware ) and I used linux exclusively at home for several years. I've also done Win32 programming, as well. You know why I have a Mac at home now? Because they're so goddamned well designed, at the API level that they're a dream to program for. And the hardware works. Quite well, too.
And you know what? I've not had a virus on any mac of mine since maybe 1993 or 1994.
So I say you get 10 shocks for being a dismissive PC user who insists that everybody do things the way you do, because clearly you know better than us how to do what we do.
The only people who use MacOS are those who want an alternative operating system and don't care about whether it is Free Software or not.
Uh... plenty of people use Mac OS X not because they want an alternative system but rather because they prefer it. It's not like Mac users are (all) a bunch of elitist assholes who're using it just to be different. Some are, sure, but not everybody.
Frankly, lots of people don't give a fig if the OS is open, or "alternative" ( what does that mean? To me, Windows is an "alternative" ). They want what works for them.
The thing that nags me -- and I know it's no fault of the electric car designers -- is that electric cars are completely, utterly, useless to folks who live in apartments. That's a lot of people, and we're not all poor. I'd buy an electric NOW if I could get one in the ~20 to 30k range. But how do I charge it? Do I dangle an extra long extension cord from my balcony?
Someday we might see roadside chargers like in _The Watchmen_. But until then, no dice for the majority of urban populations around the world. I'll keep riding my bike, and I'll keep around my little 2-door stickshift focus for long hauls.
One thing I want to say is that I -- a reasonably well educated white collar american ( a graphic designer, living in Washington DC ) -- spend about half my 1st world salary on food and rent. In fact, it can be as much as two thirds. And I'm responsible with my money.
I don't see the big deal here. Firefox -- today -- runs fine ( I suppose, I use OS X ) on win98. When Firefox 3 or whatever comes out and drops support, so be it. But 1.5 and 2.0 ( I suppose ) will continue to work, right?
So what's the big deal? The people *still* running win98 are clearly not bleeding-edge upgrade-or-die types, so what's the commotion? It's not like they're being forced to upgrade to a new, incompatible firefox.
Huh. My father -- when I was a kid -- had told me that jet fuel was kerosene, but I had assumed he was just exaggerating. Learn something new every day, I guess.
I work in DC, and lived -- at the time -- in Old Town Alexandria. On Sept 11, given the general state of confusion, I opted not to take the metro home that day, and instead walked home along the GW parkway ( it was such a beautiful day, actually -- and the ten mile walk allowed me to really think about the situation, and how this was pretty much the end of freedom in the US for a while at least, but that's another story ).
Anyway -- here's the thing. I was upwind of the pentagon, maybe a mile away, and I smelled ( what smelled to me like ) burning kerosene. LOTS of burning kerosene. As in, I personally stank of kerosene smoke after walking past.
Frankly, that's enough for me. I understand that jet fuel is more or less like kerosene, and I would expect a crashed airplane to burn up whatever's in its tanks. Hence, the stench of lots of burning kerosene.
Now, regarding the "another story"... as I was approaching National airport ( I will never call it "Reagan National" ), I came across a bunch of toddlers and little kids, surrounded by military personnel. There was another civilian ( like me ) walking past, she had a camera, and took a photo of the pentagon smoke, and another of the military types and the children. The officials immediately stormed her, confiscated her camera and tore out the film. Very rudely, I might add. I saw all this, and after the lady left, I walked up and said to one of the friendlier looking guards "What was that all about?". She said the kids were pentagon employee children from the daycare facilities and they wanted to respect their privacy -- which is commendable, so in principle I understand. But the way they went about it was unnacceptable.
I saw one of the opening acts of our descent into a police state, right there.
Procedural is great, when you're talking about certain types of things ( say, fractally generating displacement maps for terrain ), but isn't going to help when you want, for example, foot prints, blood spatters, graffiti, cigarette butts, candy bar wrappers, etc etc. Artists can do all this, and can do it well. Who cares how far you can zoom into, say, a ceramic tile texture if it's just a ceramic tile texture? With this mega texture, artists can make each tile slightly different and can put in indivudal scratches, bloody handprints, and so on.
You'll never eliminate the role of artists in this work. Technology is acting, here, to make it easier for them to do a really good job. And really, isn't that what tech's about?
All very true ( and I'm aware of it ) but what tickles me about this app is the non-destructive partitioning, which is something that OS X didn't have, before.
Though I've seen online just today that the new disk utility with 10.4.6 brings that functionality. So... looks like I'm good to go.
I just scanned the page, perhaps should read it more closely, but I'm curious if it would let me multiboot linux and older versions of OS X?
I mean, sometimes you need to have an older version of OS X ( for testing apps ) and hell, linux would be nice, too.
P.S. I like their word to the wise:
Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it'll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.
P.P.S. I read it more thoroughly. Says nothing of linux or other versions of OS X. And it requires an intel mac.
Interestingly, OS X *used* to use transparent titlebars for inactive windows and had very transparent menus as well as buttons. It looked nice, but got distracting sometimes. As of 10.3, inactive windows simply got their titlebars drawn with an opaque-but-disabled look, and menus got more opaque and buttons became very opaque and contained in their little lozenge. A big improvement, in my mind.
The issue here is not so much the tech -- since OS X, XGL and Vista can all do it -- but how it's used. Apple seems to be cleaning up, using less and less transparency in day-to-day situations ( which is to say, not the Dashboard ).
That said, MS is on the money with the blurring. It's a neat effect, and does lend to usability in this context. I have seen, however, some shots with a lot of windows open and it looks pretty muddy and ugly. I guess you can't have it both ways.
I can't read the article since it's slashdotted, but here's what I want to know:
First, what physics API are they using? This is, after all, a little like OpenGL vs DirectX. You need a physics API to do this stuff, and there are out there a *lot* of portable and high quality APIs. Havok, Newton, Aegeia (spelling?), and the open source ODE ( which I use ). The APIs aren't interchangeable, and aren't necessarily free.
Second, at least when I'm doing this work, there's a *lot* of back and forth between the physics and my game engine. Maybe not a whole lot of data, but a lot of callbacks -- a lot of situations where the collision system determines A & B are about to touch and has to ask my code what to do about it. And my code has to do some hairy stuff to forward these events to A & B ( since physics engines have their own idea of what a physical object instance is, and it's orthogonal to my game objects, so I have to have some container and void ptr mojo ) and so on and so forth. If all this is running on the GPU, sure the math may be fast but I worry about all the stalls resulting from the back and forth. Sure, that can be parallelized and the callbacks can be queued, but still.
Anyway, I want info, not marketing.
Oh christ, and finally, I work on a Mac. When will I see support? ( lol. this is me falling off my chair, crying and laughing, crying... sobbing. Because I know the answer ). Can we at least assume/hope that they'll provide a software fallback api, and that that api will be available for linux and mac? After all, NVIDIA has linux and mac ports of Cg, so why not this? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
The SS didn't do anything, they recognized the hysterics of an idiot ( the woman who reported him ) and ignored it. Now, I don't know how it got to *them*, I would have expected a different agency, but what do I know. Shit trickles, both up and down.
Anyway, believe it or not, I don't care. I've know this guy for > ten years, and he's as stand-up a guy as I've *ever* known. The rare kind of person who you simply can trust, without reservations.
Whenever I see stuff like this, I always wonder about the pathological high-resolution situations. Professionals will *not* be sorting small 72dpi images. They'll be sorting 300 or 600 dpi photos, and they'll be dealing with hundreds, if not thousands of them.
I don't know the specifics of how this guy's app gets the pixels on the screen -- from what I recall looking at this from Digg a few weeks back I think he's using Cairo, which implies glitz, which implies opengl. Now, I don't know about you, but my powerbook has only 64mb of vram. Sure, gamerz out there will have 256 or 512, but still, that's only enough for a handful of full, high-res professional photography.
As a game programmer, I've seen ( and profiled ) a lot of what happens when you hit the vram limit. Your app goes to shit. Sure, it still runs, but ( on OS X, at least ) the whole system slows down since every window's back buffer gets paged to system ram.
I'm not saying this can't be done -- it can -- but not trivially. I mean, doing this right would probably result in such complex code to page and transition between low res and high res that a "free time" developer might just give up.
Consider, Apple's got some serious programming resources; lots of talented people. And look how badly Aperture performs. People are screaming about how slow it is. This is non-trivial stuff.
But, hey, if all you're doing is sorting 72 dpi pr0n and desktop wallpapers, knock yourself out.
Slashdot Mirror
If it weren't for Microsoft, Apple would be Microsoft.
Slashdot: News for consumers.
When they turned razors into vibrators, I told myself "That's it. Technology has betrayed us". So about a year ago I bought a classic safety razor: http://www.classicshaving.com/catalog/item/522941/ 906442.htm
One double sided blade, no silliness. And you know what? Exactly the same shave as I was getting from my mach 3, but instead of paying 10 to 15 bucks for a package of 5 blades, I now pay 5 bucks for a package of 10. Just like with the mach 3, I get about 3 or 4 shaves from a blade before it goes too dull. The only trouble is you can only buy the blades from drug stores, supermarkets won't carry them.
Anyway, the other thing -- as was mentioned in an earlier post -- is that shaving cream is a god damned scam. Just use ivory soap and hot water. And if you've got thick stubble like me, shave after a hot shower. The soap lubricates better, and frankly, I can see my face while shaving and that's important if you don't want to cut your lips off.
To answer the question -- from screenshots I've seen of Vista -- the answer is that vista performs some per-pixel convolutions. For example, the blurring effect on the titlebars of what's beneath is actually a fairly expensive computation. I've done GLSL gaussian convolutions, and without taking a number of shortcuts ( specifically, bi-directional separation, and performing my blur on an averaged/downsampled copy ) my nVIDIA 5200 barely made 7 fps on a 800x600 scene. I know, 5200 == crappy card, but it's what's in my powerbook.
:P
Anyway, those per-pixel convolutions are hideously expensive. Simple alpha blending and geometric transforms are, in comparison, essentially free, and that's what XGL is doing.
Now, what MS does with it is very conservative ( not to mention unimaginative ) compared to XGL, but I wanted to answer your question. Vista: simple effects performed in about the most computationally expensive manner. XGL: clever, brilliant effects done in a computationally inexpensive manner.
There you go.
Now, why vista requires a fast processor is obvious. To sell new computers
Right -- it's like putting your swap file on a ram disk. Pure genius!!
I agree with you, 100%.
But it should be said, Microsoft has earned much of the distrust it receives.
How about 10 shocks for Windows/Linux users who are constantly angry at Mac users simply because Mac users can't get it in their heads that they should just give up and use PCs? I mean, come on? Don't you arrogant elitists realize that your computers are worthless and that you're assholes for even using Macs?
You know what? I'm an "artist", a graphic designer. I use macs because, well fuck] I've used Photoshop, Quark and illustrator -- on macs -- since the early/mid 90's. I like the platform. I know the platform. The platform fucking works. I don't need to justify being an elitist asshole if your definition of being an elitist asshole is that I'm a guy who makes a living, you know, eating, paying rent, etc by using a computer you clearly disapprove of.
Also, I'm a programmer. I've done professional embedded systems programming on Solaris ( cross compiling to embedded hardware ) and I used linux exclusively at home for several years. I've also done Win32 programming, as well. You know why I have a Mac at home now? Because they're so goddamned well designed, at the API level that they're a dream to program for. And the hardware works. Quite well, too.
And you know what? I've not had a virus on any mac of mine since maybe 1993 or 1994.
So I say you get 10 shocks for being a dismissive PC user who insists that everybody do things the way you do, because clearly you know better than us how to do what we do.
Uh... plenty of people use Mac OS X not because they want an alternative system but rather because they prefer it. It's not like Mac users are (all) a bunch of elitist assholes who're using it just to be different. Some are, sure, but not everybody.
Frankly, lots of people don't give a fig if the OS is open, or "alternative" ( what does that mean? To me, Windows is an "alternative" ). They want what works for them.
The thing that nags me -- and I know it's no fault of the electric car designers -- is that electric cars are completely, utterly, useless to folks who live in apartments. That's a lot of people, and we're not all poor. I'd buy an electric NOW if I could get one in the ~20 to 30k range. But how do I charge it? Do I dangle an extra long extension cord from my balcony?
Someday we might see roadside chargers like in _The Watchmen_. But until then, no dice for the majority of urban populations around the world. I'll keep riding my bike, and I'll keep around my little 2-door stickshift focus for long hauls.
Love your sig. As an American, I can't agree more. I'd welcome with open arms European soldiers marching on Washington, bringing freedom.
That said, good post. Firefox, as a browser, is already excellent ( though not great on Macs ). Fix the rendering!
Actually, I'm impressed they did it well with four. I expected six.
One thing I want to say is that I -- a reasonably well educated white collar american ( a graphic designer, living in Washington DC ) -- spend about half my 1st world salary on food and rent. In fact, it can be as much as two thirds. And I'm responsible with my money.
Just saying.
I don't see the big deal here. Firefox -- today -- runs fine ( I suppose, I use OS X ) on win98. When Firefox 3 or whatever comes out and drops support, so be it. But 1.5 and 2.0 ( I suppose ) will continue to work, right?
So what's the big deal? The people *still* running win98 are clearly not bleeding-edge upgrade-or-die types, so what's the commotion? It's not like they're being forced to upgrade to a new, incompatible firefox.
Huh. My father -- when I was a kid -- had told me that jet fuel was kerosene, but I had assumed he was just exaggerating. Learn something new every day, I guess.
I work in DC, and lived -- at the time -- in Old Town Alexandria. On Sept 11, given the general state of confusion, I opted not to take the metro home that day, and instead walked home along the GW parkway ( it was such a beautiful day, actually -- and the ten mile walk allowed me to really think about the situation, and how this was pretty much the end of freedom in the US for a while at least, but that's another story ).
Anyway -- here's the thing. I was upwind of the pentagon, maybe a mile away, and I smelled ( what smelled to me like ) burning kerosene. LOTS of burning kerosene. As in, I personally stank of kerosene smoke after walking past.
Frankly, that's enough for me. I understand that jet fuel is more or less like kerosene, and I would expect a crashed airplane to burn up whatever's in its tanks. Hence, the stench of lots of burning kerosene.
Now, regarding the "another story"... as I was approaching National airport ( I will never call it "Reagan National" ), I came across a bunch of toddlers and little kids, surrounded by military personnel. There was another civilian ( like me ) walking past, she had a camera, and took a photo of the pentagon smoke, and another of the military types and the children. The officials immediately stormed her, confiscated her camera and tore out the film. Very rudely, I might add. I saw all this, and after the lady left, I walked up and said to one of the friendlier looking guards "What was that all about?". She said the kids were pentagon employee children from the daycare facilities and they wanted to respect their privacy -- which is commendable, so in principle I understand. But the way they went about it was unnacceptable.
I saw one of the opening acts of our descent into a police state, right there.
Artists.
Procedural is great, when you're talking about certain types of things ( say, fractally generating displacement maps for terrain ), but isn't going to help when you want, for example, foot prints, blood spatters, graffiti, cigarette butts, candy bar wrappers, etc etc. Artists can do all this, and can do it well. Who cares how far you can zoom into, say, a ceramic tile texture if it's just a ceramic tile texture? With this mega texture, artists can make each tile slightly different and can put in indivudal scratches, bloody handprints, and so on.
You'll never eliminate the role of artists in this work. Technology is acting, here, to make it easier for them to do a really good job. And really, isn't that what tech's about?
All very true ( and I'm aware of it ) but what tickles me about this app is the non-destructive partitioning, which is something that OS X didn't have, before.
Though I've seen online just today that the new disk utility with 10.4.6 brings that functionality. So... looks like I'm good to go.
I just scanned the page, perhaps should read it more closely, but I'm curious if it would let me multiboot linux and older versions of OS X?
I mean, sometimes you need to have an older version of OS X ( for testing apps ) and hell, linux would be nice, too.
P.S. I like their word to the wise:
P.P.S. I read it more thoroughly. Says nothing of linux or other versions of OS X. And it requires an intel mac.
Interestingly, OS X *used* to use transparent titlebars for inactive windows and had very transparent menus as well as buttons. It looked nice, but got distracting sometimes. As of 10.3, inactive windows simply got their titlebars drawn with an opaque-but-disabled look, and menus got more opaque and buttons became very opaque and contained in their little lozenge. A big improvement, in my mind.
The issue here is not so much the tech -- since OS X, XGL and Vista can all do it -- but how it's used. Apple seems to be cleaning up, using less and less transparency in day-to-day situations ( which is to say, not the Dashboard ).
That said, MS is on the money with the blurring. It's a neat effect, and does lend to usability in this context. I have seen, however, some shots with a lot of windows open and it looks pretty muddy and ugly. I guess you can't have it both ways.
Huh. This is by no means meant as an insult, but, I suspect you aren't the target audience of this website.
I can't read the article since it's slashdotted, but here's what I want to know:
First, what physics API are they using? This is, after all, a little like OpenGL vs DirectX. You need a physics API to do this stuff, and there are out there a *lot* of portable and high quality APIs. Havok, Newton, Aegeia (spelling?), and the open source ODE ( which I use ). The APIs aren't interchangeable, and aren't necessarily free.
Second, at least when I'm doing this work, there's a *lot* of back and forth between the physics and my game engine. Maybe not a whole lot of data, but a lot of callbacks -- a lot of situations where the collision system determines A & B are about to touch and has to ask my code what to do about it. And my code has to do some hairy stuff to forward these events to A & B ( since physics engines have their own idea of what a physical object instance is, and it's orthogonal to my game objects, so I have to have some container and void ptr mojo ) and so on and so forth. If all this is running on the GPU, sure the math may be fast but I worry about all the stalls resulting from the back and forth. Sure, that can be parallelized and the callbacks can be queued, but still.
Anyway, I want info, not marketing.
Oh christ, and finally, I work on a Mac. When will I see support? ( lol. this is me falling off my chair, crying and laughing, crying... sobbing. Because I know the answer ). Can we at least assume/hope that they'll provide a software fallback api, and that that api will be available for linux and mac? After all, NVIDIA has linux and mac ports of Cg, so why not this? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
And yet, he was.
The SS didn't do anything, they recognized the hysterics of an idiot ( the woman who reported him ) and ignored it. Now, I don't know how it got to *them*, I would have expected a different agency, but what do I know. Shit trickles, both up and down.
Anyway, believe it or not, I don't care. I've know this guy for > ten years, and he's as stand-up a guy as I've *ever* known. The rare kind of person who you simply can trust, without reservations.
Whenever I see stuff like this, I always wonder about the pathological high-resolution situations. Professionals will *not* be sorting small 72dpi images. They'll be sorting 300 or 600 dpi photos, and they'll be dealing with hundreds, if not thousands of them.
I don't know the specifics of how this guy's app gets the pixels on the screen -- from what I recall looking at this from Digg a few weeks back I think he's using Cairo, which implies glitz, which implies opengl. Now, I don't know about you, but my powerbook has only 64mb of vram. Sure, gamerz out there will have 256 or 512, but still, that's only enough for a handful of full, high-res professional photography.
As a game programmer, I've seen ( and profiled ) a lot of what happens when you hit the vram limit. Your app goes to shit. Sure, it still runs, but ( on OS X, at least ) the whole system slows down since every window's back buffer gets paged to system ram.
I'm not saying this can't be done -- it can -- but not trivially. I mean, doing this right would probably result in such complex code to page and transition between low res and high res that a "free time" developer might just give up.
Consider, Apple's got some serious programming resources; lots of talented people. And look how badly Aperture performs. People are screaming about how slow it is. This is non-trivial stuff.
But, hey, if all you're doing is sorting 72 dpi pr0n and desktop wallpapers, knock yourself out.