Re:What applications are there
on
Mono Beta 2 Released
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
"Absolutly positioned buttons..."
I'm looking forward to Longhorn's vector based UI. The static buttons problem goes away at that point. Within the last year or so, MS made a deal with... oh I wanna say Viewsonic, but I could be in error about which company it is. They were going to create a 300dpi LCD screen. The idea was that Longhorn would just get clearer and clearer as the resolution goes up, as opposed to the buttons getting smaller and smaller. I've seen interfaces made with Flash that do that. Fun stuff.
We got some cool stuff coming along in the next few years.
Well that's just about any network. Fox's specialty is playing musical time slots so nobody can find the show. I think the original Battlestar Galactica withstood a similar fate.
"I think it was mainly a satire of The Time Machine."
I saw something a little different in that joke. Man is defeated by aliens, man rebuilds, man is defeated by the same aliens again. Couldn't tell you if that was a time machine gag or not, but I did enjoy the "Oh yeah, we didn't exactly 'win' that battle, did we." I watched it thinking "Yeah, here's what ID4 2 would really look like."
"why does my 3ghz p4 choke on spellchecking a 50k doc with a 500mb text editor (Word2k3) ?"
Because W2k3 is also checking your grammar and other common writing mistakes?
"why does explorer choke on listing 10,000 files ?"
Microsoft wasn't forward thinking enough. It's worth mentioning, though, that Windows is checking information on each file. Icon, thumbnail, permissions, other stuff.
"why should i ever upgrade my word processing applications ? or can they type for me now ?"
That is entirely up to what you do with it. You do not have a gun to your head.
"If that's what you mean by "refresh", then that's actually Windows Explorer (which the desktop is an instance of) crashing followed by a background process realizing it died and starting it back up."
Um, no. XP gives you an 'Explorer just crashed' message when it tanks. Heh my coworker next to me is actually having this 'explorer likes to crash regularly' problem. When you lose your taskbar and all your icons in the system tray disappear, then you know Explorer has gone south and restarted.
Windows does have a 'refresh and rebuild the desktop' function. It's the same one they use to put your desktop icons back when you change video modes. (I.e. playing a game.) That's exactly what the person is describing.
"Sure, they look cool.. but are they really necessary?"
Ugh I hate this question. "Is it really necessary?"... is the type of question you can ask if you really want to make anything go away. "Is a >500mhz processor really necessary? Is a color monitor really necessary? Is being connected to the net 24/7 really necessary? Is a color printer really necessary when B&W is cheaper?" Who really cares so long as you can choose?
I'll answer your question, though: The more your UI gives you, the better reflexes you can build while using your machine. Have you ever reacted to a screen refresh? (Particularly in the olden days when the CPU had to fight harder...) Ever notice change in window focus simply by spotting the change in titlebar color? Etc.
I have no problem with people turning the fancy stuff off to boost performance, but the "is it really necessary" argument does not apply. The question is really "Do I want it?"
"Actually, with WM9, video quality seems to be consistently better than MPEG or DivX files of the same size. So, yeah, it's very reasonable for someone to use WM."
On top of that, you can send a WM9 video file and just about anybody running Windows can play it. No format has better coverage except maybe MPEG1, but them's not so low-data-rate friendly.
"If we can't come up with a single pre-2002 OS that used double-clicking, then we're really, really bad off. I mean, Microsoft itself has used it since about 1991 in Windows..."
I dunno if I should yell "RTFA" at the guy who posted this, or the multiple ppl that modded this +5 Interesting. This is not about mice or even desktop PCs.
"Does this mean that the button on the front of my case that I hold in for 6 seconds to do a hard power reset (as opposed to a soft one/APM call if I just press it) is also subject to this patent?"
No.
"How far can this possibly extend? "
To PDAs. Possibly even sophisticated enough cell phones.
"What kind of interface doesn't use a button with some sort of timing involved?"
What in the abstract implies that this is such a global over-whelming patent? It's a little broad in the sense that a resource limited thing-a-ma-jigger isn't that well defined, but the power button your computer? C'mon folks. It's only a valid patent until it's challenged.
"CHERISH AND APPRECIATE EVERY MOMENT with your significant other. He/She doesn't have to sit there and put up with your quirks and intricacies."
Spoken like somebody who hasn't been in a serious relationship. If you have to cover up a lot of your flaws in order to maintain a relationship, it's doomed to failure.
"Its no wonder geeks are lonely. They have no interpersonal skills. Not that I'm so much better, I really screwed up my last relationship via 'harmless' personal time to dawdle and hack together various computer bits, only realzing too late that I could have spent that time on picnics or walks through the park or taking in a good movie or discussing a book or learning something about my ex that I didn't know before."
It's not that we don't have interpersonal skills, it's that we live in a different world. Women, in general, aren't too keen on gadgets or scifi like we are. That 'common ground' thing you need becomes more difficult to come by. To put it another way, it's not immediately clear that spending time on picnics or walks through the park would have saved your relationship.
I don't totally disagree with you, but turning up the volume on a relationship isn't necessarily the solution. You gotta be you.
In general, you don't want to make your girlfriend feel like she's 2nd place. For example, don't go straight to the computer after getting home. Sit down, chat with her, let the day kinda die down before going to a game. This alone will make a much bigger difference than simply cutting back the number of hours involved. Sadly I found this out the hard way once.
Reverse engineering software that is intentionally scrambled is still illegal. This is more like "what does this number mean?", I doubt that qualifies as DMCA.
"I am not the only one. Linux users on average have much more respect for copyright than Windows users."
What the fuck does this have to do with copyright or piracy? In any event, lots of companies make money by selling Windows software. More so than they could, today, with Linux. Why your dumb comment is modded above mine is beyond me.
".. they'd release the authoring tool in a Linux version?"
Hate to sound like I'm trolling here, but in order to get Macromedia to make authoring tools for Linux, you guys gotta prove you're willing to buy it. All this free-software movement probably puts the taste in a lot of people's mouthes that nobody wants to spend money on software.
"Ok, perhaps you can cast more light on what he meant when he said this: "Level the playing field before punishing consumers for being the only competitor this industry has."
By 'level the playing field', I'm pretty sure he was referring to the number of times he bought a CD and it only had 1 or two songs he liked. Hence the appeal of downloading Mp3s.
As for punishing consumers, I think he meant it less specifically than is assumed. (We've had a lot of discussion about this before.) They're being punished by locking the CDs. They're being punished by not being able to return CDs. They're being punished by being called thieves. Laws like the DMCA have been passed which can be a legal landmine when doing simple things like making MP3s or DivX copies of your DVDs. (Note: Ripping != piracy.) I'm not sure he meant the jail time for the offenders. He's said before that he doesn't really care a whole lot about the people who make them available. Unfortunately, and this is my own opinion here not NG's, they are the ones that have caused changes such as iTunes to happen. Taking them out means the record industry can do whatever the heck they want without opposition.
"Hell the record labels pay good money just to get whats on those CDs played on local radio stations. Thats hardly a "Big secret"
They play one or two teaser songs on the radio, they do not play every song on a CD.
"WHAT? Microsoft has a monopoly over the Internet??? They wish. I think you are a bit confused..."
Don't forget that I was poking a little fun at your own reference. But just to clarify, I was talking about Internet Explorer. They have a monopoly on the browser market.
"He was talking about an industry having a monopoly, not a company."
It is an oligopoly. Notice labels aren't competing with each other?
"Of course they do. I've got $15."
I see your point, and I accept it to a degree, however there's a large portion I respectfully disagree with. iTunes is the first serious attempt at innovation I've seen in a long time.
"Prices have dropped considerably if you factor in for inflation."
Slashdot Mirror
"Absolutly positioned buttons..."
... oh I wanna say Viewsonic, but I could be in error about which company it is. They were going to create a 300dpi LCD screen. The idea was that Longhorn would just get clearer and clearer as the resolution goes up, as opposed to the buttons getting smaller and smaller. I've seen interfaces made with Flash that do that. Fun stuff.
I'm looking forward to Longhorn's vector based UI. The static buttons problem goes away at that point. Within the last year or so, MS made a deal with
We got some cool stuff coming along in the next few years.
"Lots of people worked hard to make Futurama happen, and you want a freebie."
Yeah!! Somewhere I wrote down all the Pepsi commercials I had to endure to keep that show alive.
"= Fox Network"
Well that's just about any network. Fox's specialty is playing musical time slots so nobody can find the show. I think the original Battlestar Galactica withstood a similar fate.
"I think it was mainly a satire of The Time Machine."
I saw something a little different in that joke. Man is defeated by aliens, man rebuilds, man is defeated by the same aliens again. Couldn't tell you if that was a time machine gag or not, but I did enjoy the "Oh yeah, we didn't exactly 'win' that battle, did we." I watched it thinking "Yeah, here's what ID4 2 would really look like."
"why does my 3ghz p4 choke on spellchecking a 50k doc with a 500mb text editor (Word2k3) ?"
Because W2k3 is also checking your grammar and other common writing mistakes?
"why does explorer choke on listing 10,000 files ?"
Microsoft wasn't forward thinking enough. It's worth mentioning, though, that Windows is checking information on each file. Icon, thumbnail, permissions, other stuff.
"why should i ever upgrade my word processing applications ? or can they type for me now ?"
That is entirely up to what you do with it. You do not have a gun to your head.
"bah, innovation is dead, shame"
Based on...?
"If that's what you mean by "refresh", then that's actually Windows Explorer (which the desktop is an instance of) crashing followed by a background process realizing it died and starting it back up."
Um, no. XP gives you an 'Explorer just crashed' message when it tanks. Heh my coworker next to me is actually having this 'explorer likes to crash regularly' problem. When you lose your taskbar and all your icons in the system tray disappear, then you know Explorer has gone south and restarted.
Windows does have a 'refresh and rebuild the desktop' function. It's the same one they use to put your desktop icons back when you change video modes. (I.e. playing a game.) That's exactly what the person is describing.
"Sure, they look cool.. but are they really necessary?"
Ugh I hate this question. "Is it really necessary?"... is the type of question you can ask if you really want to make anything go away. "Is a >500mhz processor really necessary? Is a color monitor really necessary? Is being connected to the net 24/7 really necessary? Is a color printer really necessary when B&W is cheaper?" Who really cares so long as you can choose?
I'll answer your question, though: The more your UI gives you, the better reflexes you can build while using your machine. Have you ever reacted to a screen refresh? (Particularly in the olden days when the CPU had to fight harder...) Ever notice change in window focus simply by spotting the change in titlebar color? Etc.
I have no problem with people turning the fancy stuff off to boost performance, but the "is it really necessary" argument does not apply. The question is really "Do I want it?"
"torrent link"
No way! I aint falling for that again! But... it does have the right icon, though...
"Actually, with WM9, video quality seems to be consistently better than MPEG or DivX files of the same size. So, yeah, it's very reasonable for someone to use WM."
On top of that, you can send a WM9 video file and just about anybody running Windows can play it. No format has better coverage except maybe MPEG1, but them's not so low-data-rate friendly.
"Well, arguing over wordsmithing does not changing this from being something obvious, to a non-obvious invention worthy of patenting."
Patents are all about word-smithing, not about right and wrong.
"If we can't come up with a single pre-2002 OS that used double-clicking, then we're really, really bad off. I mean, Microsoft itself has used it since about 1991 in Windows..."
I dunno if I should yell "RTFA" at the guy who posted this, or the multiple ppl that modded this +5 Interesting. This is not about mice or even desktop PCs.
"Does this mean that the button on the front of my case that I hold in for 6 seconds to do a hard power reset (as opposed to a soft one/APM call if I just press it) is also subject to this patent?"
No.
"How far can this possibly extend? "
To PDAs. Possibly even sophisticated enough cell phones.
"What kind of interface doesn't use a button with some sort of timing involved?"
What in the abstract implies that this is such a global over-whelming patent? It's a little broad in the sense that a resource limited thing-a-ma-jigger isn't that well defined, but the power button your computer? C'mon folks. It's only a valid patent until it's challenged.
"My Creative MuVo2 only has 2 buttons... "
Your Creative MuVo2 is not aa limited resource computing device, it's a music playback device. Not enough to be prior art, or to vaporize the patent.
"f thats the case, I've seen prior art. A panasonic walkman I once had, included a single-button remote control."
Um, yeah, anyway your walkman is not a "limited resource computing device".
" I do use a hardware button..." ...and a pre-determined set of x and y co-ordinates.."...to click on my screen."
" This is just twice as stupid as Amazon's 1-Click patent..."
Prior art!! Windows 3.1 did this years ago!!
"Spoken like somebody who hasn't been in a serious relationship."
Hmm.. you know what, I regret saying that particular bit. I'm sorry, man.
"CHERISH AND APPRECIATE EVERY MOMENT with your significant other. He/She doesn't have to sit there and put up with your quirks and intricacies."
Spoken like somebody who hasn't been in a serious relationship. If you have to cover up a lot of your flaws in order to maintain a relationship, it's doomed to failure.
"Its no wonder geeks are lonely. They have no interpersonal skills. Not that I'm so much better, I really screwed up my last relationship via 'harmless' personal time to dawdle and hack together various computer bits, only realzing too late that I could have spent that time on picnics or walks through the park or taking in a good movie or discussing a book or learning something about my ex that I didn't know before."
It's not that we don't have interpersonal skills, it's that we live in a different world. Women, in general, aren't too keen on gadgets or scifi like we are. That 'common ground' thing you need becomes more difficult to come by. To put it another way, it's not immediately clear that spending time on picnics or walks through the park would have saved your relationship.
I don't totally disagree with you, but turning up the volume on a relationship isn't necessarily the solution. You gotta be you.
"You know, I should have dumped that old broad and played more video games..."
Yeah because "Man I bent over backwards for that cow and she STILL dumped me" is so much better.
In general, you don't want to make your girlfriend feel like she's 2nd place. For example, don't go straight to the computer after getting home. Sit down, chat with her, let the day kinda die down before going to a game. This alone will make a much bigger difference than simply cutting back the number of hours involved. Sadly I found this out the hard way once.
" Reverse engineering is still legal?
I thought DMCA made it illegal."
Reverse engineering software that is intentionally scrambled is still illegal. This is more like "what does this number mean?", I doubt that qualifies as DMCA.
"I am not the only one. Linux users on average have much more respect for copyright than Windows users."
What the fuck does this have to do with copyright or piracy? In any event, lots of companies make money by selling Windows software. More so than they could, today, with Linux. Why your dumb comment is modded above mine is beyond me.
".. they'd release the authoring tool in a Linux version?"
Hate to sound like I'm trolling here, but in order to get Macromedia to make authoring tools for Linux, you guys gotta prove you're willing to buy it. All this free-software movement probably puts the taste in a lot of people's mouthes that nobody wants to spend money on software.
"Whatever happened to outdoing your competitors?
Way to go MS. Aim low."
Oh right. Here's what the reverse would be:
"Um, M$, this is nothing like the elegance of the iPod. Way to go MS, blow it again."
"Ok, perhaps you can cast more light on what he meant when he said this: "Level the playing field before punishing consumers for being the only competitor this industry has."
By 'level the playing field', I'm pretty sure he was referring to the number of times he bought a CD and it only had 1 or two songs he liked. Hence the appeal of downloading Mp3s.
As for punishing consumers, I think he meant it less specifically than is assumed. (We've had a lot of discussion about this before.) They're being punished by locking the CDs. They're being punished by not being able to return CDs. They're being punished by being called thieves. Laws like the DMCA have been passed which can be a legal landmine when doing simple things like making MP3s or DivX copies of your DVDs. (Note: Ripping != piracy.) I'm not sure he meant the jail time for the offenders. He's said before that he doesn't really care a whole lot about the people who make them available. Unfortunately, and this is my own opinion here not NG's, they are the ones that have caused changes such as iTunes to happen. Taking them out means the record industry can do whatever the heck they want without opposition.
"Hell the record labels pay good money just to get whats on those CDs played on local radio stations. Thats hardly a "Big secret"
They play one or two teaser songs on the radio, they do not play every song on a CD.
"WHAT? Microsoft has a monopoly over the Internet??? They wish. I think you are a bit confused..."
Don't forget that I was poking a little fun at your own reference. But just to clarify, I was talking about Internet Explorer. They have a monopoly on the browser market.
"He was talking about an industry having a monopoly, not a company."
It is an oligopoly. Notice labels aren't competing with each other?
"Of course they do. I've got $15."
I see your point, and I accept it to a degree, however there's a large portion I respectfully disagree with. iTunes is the first serious attempt at innovation I've seen in a long time.
"Prices have dropped considerably if you factor in for inflation."
Wrong.