Maybe not as broken as you find it on Linux, but when it comes to sucking performance for no reason or doing really stupid things like cropping video when flipping to full screen video it has some rather hugh problems. (Multi-Monitors is something Adobe thinks people don't use for watching Flash Video apparently, cause it looks very untested.)
Sadly, Flash with Firefox is 10x worse than Flash with IE. After thinking I was going insane on a few new personal installs, I pulled techs to examine the Flash differences. Same sites, same Flash content, and inside Firefox it would bring the CPU to 100% and with IE not even scratch the CPU.
These are also not lemur porn quality sites, these are mainstream sites that have Flash based Ads or even MSNBC which has not moved to Silverlight.
In contrast, the new Silverlight is pretty, efficient and shiny in comparison on both Firefox and IE and even OS X. The NBC Olympic HD streaming it has been handling works better than even my Silverlight developer 'fans' expected, making Flash look problematic and more like an old dog.
"LMG is one of several firms we work with in D.C.," Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said. "It's no secret that we oppose the Google-Yahoo deal and that there's been a great deal of opposition to it by advertisers, publishers, consumers, and legal experts." Evans points out that Google has hired a constellation of D.C. lobbyists and public relations groups to tell its side of the story.
The SlashDot poster acts like this is a single issue lobby. If you believe that, then you have no concept of lobbiest firms.
Microsoft has worked against anti-net neutrality, as they would have the LEAST to gain from ISP lock in, as they have no ISP bundling deals, which you can't even say about Yahoo or Google. (Toolbars anyone?)
So how did this get to be about Microsoft? Because they hired a firm to oppose the Yahoo-Google deal?
They didn't hire them to DO ANYTHING ELSE... Move on to Comcast and other ISP nut balls that are working against net neutrality.
Repeat after me, XBox 360 uses a modified DX9 implementation, not DX10.
XBox 360's development team from the GPU designers to the API designers where behind both DX10 and the WDDM in Vista. They took their DX9 modifications and GPU design gains and took them back to Microsoft, hence becoming DX10 and Vista WDDM...
This is where the DX10 reliance on WDDM comes from and other XBox API concepts like GPU RAM virtualization and GPU scheduling made it all the way into the main driver/video subsystem of Vista and why DX10 requires Vista, because the OS handles this stuff and is 'expected' to, not the game, just as the XBox 360 relies on the OS and Graphical API set to do the same.
Oh, and PS, the article you reference is technically wrong, check your sources better in the future, although there are 'reasons' the XBox 360 doesn't run the full blown DX10, but the essential parts of DX10 are already alive and well in the 360 and have been since release. Think of the XBox 360 architecture as a stepping stone from DX9 to DX10 and from XPDM to WDDM.
(Talk to the XNA team, or even go to the 360 team if you really don't get this, have them explain it to you like a 5yr old.)
This is an issue for a large production product...
I see a lot of people of fanbois running to say all products have glitches blah blah blah...
This is a large production product and it is not an 'only' nor even a 'new' technology...
You can get a 4yr old Razr or 715 or even a free Samsung R500 at Walmart that have outstanding 3G reception, and this is the 'cheap' stuff, not even a pocket PC or pda class phone device.
Apple 'pretends' to be better or provide a 'better' product, but it isn't reality anymore, and hasn't been for years and years. They are more of the 'me too' crowd and when it comes to hardware quality, they will buy the cheapest crap they can find making even model to model have different LCDs, GPUs, or chipsets on their computers because they get a 'deal'.
They have gotten way too much of a free ride on SlashDot because of Darwin, which is now nicely closed up in all important areas, and in their products and business practices they make Microsoft look like the 'nice' consumer friendly company...
(how many games are DX10-only? - commercial suicide...)
Exactly, none so far... Even games 'supporting' DX10 are just strapping on DX10 texture increases and a few shadow light tricks. If a game was a pure DX10 title, it would run faster than the same game under DX9; hence why DX10 seems clunky at this point.
If people want to see a glimpse of the DX10 'performance' that was added to the new API set, look at a XBox 360 game shoving graphics on a low end ATI GPU at levels that make DX9 on high end PCs stutter and blush at even 720p resolutions.
It is strange that you are 'correctly' making a good point, and a point that many that are 'disagreeing' with you also the same people that made fun of DX10 for the same reasons. And with DX10 Microsoft had good reasons, bringing a new API designed from the XBox developers and using the WDDM in Vista to host it, which also was a result of XBox 360 development (unified shaders, RAM virtualization, GPU scheduling at OS level, etc).
One of the 'main' arguments against DX10 was in favor of OpenGL contrasting that 'at least' OpenGL will always be backward compatible.
And sadly there are already more users running Vista than OS X and Linux combined... Ouch.
MS is only competing with itself here, doesn't anyone get the non-Windows market is only grabbing a tiny share of the 'new installations'?
From someone in Business, Vista wasn't planned to be rolled out at all in 2007 in most major companies.
The Reason? Windows 2008 Server...
Vista and Windows 2008 Server are presented as a package deal to business from Microsoft, as the whole integration and management features of each product are designed to be each other's bitch, and work well together.
Rolling out Vista on Windows 2003 Servers would have been a waste of time and resources. (It would be just as insane to deploy a new Windows 2008 Server with XP clients.)
Even the big business MS Fans get this and waited for Windows 2008 Server, as the new deployment tools alone are reason enough to have waited for Windows 2008 Server. (Literally, click policy rules, plug in new computer to network, click, done - add another new workstation, plug in, click, done.)
There are also the Vista features that just weren't designed to even enable or work in a Windows 2003 Server environment, from new roaming and profile technology, to search abstraction, down to even how Vista and Windows 2008 Server talk to each other with the new TCP/IP stacks.
Assessing deployment and testing timelines of many companies, the year 2008 will probably even give XP the edge over Vista, but by 2009, Vista will be installed everywhere on all the new Windows 2008 Server networks.
Whoever suggests that this user even 'thinks' about developing his game for the iPhone is either working at Apple or just giving horrible advice.
Developing for iPhone, you give up all rights to the product in any technical terms. This means that Apple can shut off your application on everyone's phone at anytime and ban you from further development. Also if you have a killer hit, they can shut you down and make a carbon copy of the idea themselves and sell theirs, as you have given them rights to do so.
In fact ANYONE developing for the iPhone knowing this is a freaking idiot that is doing nothing but helping Apple sell a phone with a HORRID UI concept for a phone.
MP3 player, Touch iPods are grand for what they are, phones are for dialing without having to read the screen either feeling the keys or using voice commands - both which the iPhone fail to provide. - God only help the people driving near iPhone users.
(Apple has the biggest DRMing of Software in history, even with remote disable.)
Why do Slashdoters love Apple and iPhones again, I thought we fought DRM and evil?
just as they forced incompatibility into the Web by installing IE with every Windows upgrade
WTF?
Am I the only person that remembers reality?
These things are said like 'fact', hell even Wikipedia has "included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995." - and IE was NOT included with any Windows OS in 1995, whatsoever... The only way to even get IE was through the Plus Pack for Win95, and it cost as much as Netscape.
Talk about urban legend becoming 'people's' reality. Geesh...
So Microsoft screwed up the Web with non-standard handling? You mean like adapting to a missing end table tag and still showing the freaking table instead of giving the user a GPF or a blank page like Netscape did? Ya, Microsoft was being evil by letting crap HTML not crash the program and still display content.
In contrast to IE, Netscape was crap, even Marc said the code was crap, and MS got a raw deal in the Anti-Trust after it was all said and done.
Going back to history, does everyone forget IE was based on SpyGlass's Mosaic of all things (yeah no standard there uh?)...
Netscape at version 3 was originally the most 'non-standard' browser with their 'own' html handling, and poor html handling, that existed all the way through Netscape 4 when they finally were de-throned. (Just requesting the page again when the window was resized was enough to backhand the Netscape developers for being really freaking stupid.)
Ok, most people here don't like Microsoft, but can we at least stick to freaking reality for a moment. Netscape hated MS for giving away the browser, and making IIS free, another Netscape slap in the HTTP server realm.
As for the web and Standards, Microsoft's browsers have NOT always been great, but Microsoft itself has handed over other standards like AJAX and XHTML to the web, with no 'revisionism' and without any freaking strings, and we still have dorks like this seeing everything MS touches as some evil plot of 'embrace, extend, extinguish'?
IE had nothing to do with a Windows tie-in, as IE was released for *nix, and Mac System for years, gaining Microsoft NOTHING in the Mac world, other than giving people a free browser. Man were they evil...
IE itself wasn't even designed to be a 'browser' but a set of DLLs for rendering HTML for developers. (Hence why AOL used IE's engine for years after owning Netscape.) - The IE 'Browser' was a proof of concept tool at first, as Microsoft believed a simple fact that an OS should be able to display HTML natively, just as it displays Fonts, Bitmaps, and Metafiles...
Now please, explain to me what other 'GREAT' technology have been 'embraced, extended, and extinguished'? Seriously, this is said a lot, yet MS doesn't have the power to extiguish a technology, and if people here think they do, then the OSS movement is already dead, pack it up, go home...
If people really don't want to see MS have any input in the 'standards' or non-Microsoft world, then either de-throne them, or be happy with the 'shit' they produce that is nothing like what everyone else is doing because they were kicked out of the playground... Pick One.
I personally would rather see MS be a part of the 'real world' and 'have' to play with everyone else, as they are slowly being forced and moving to do. Kicking them out of the Apache playground is going to gain people what?
The second choker in this, is people act like Microsoft needs Apache 'Source'...
WTH? For What?
IIS7 is a generation ahead of Apache in features and performance and even 'gasp' stability, and if Microsoft wanted to 'steal' Apache source, they could have read the source already, don't people get this? You don't need to reuse line by line code to 'use' stuff.
In fact you don't even need SOURCE, as assembly and binaries are just as readable to uber geeks as Source Code is. Has the OSS forgot this, and also forgot to teach the 'new kids' that Source Code is NOT required to see or replicate how software works? Talk about 'we need source' crutched mentality...
Open Source is great, but for people to pretend that compiled code is 'worthless' or 'unreadable' is just freaking retarded.
Ouch, nobody should be carting around any laptop just for presentations anymore. This is 2008.
There are a ton of Portable Media players that have Video out capabilities and can do either slide shows via pictures (exported from presentation software) or Video (exported from presentation software). This is also a cheap way to go.
I have an old Creative Zen:M Vision, and it outputs DVD resolution, even though the built in screen is 320x240, and I use it for things like this all the time. RCA cables and any projector or TV and viola an instant presentation, movie fest, etc...
Just check the Video output specs and then size and video/photo format he is comfortable working with.
If you need MORE than just a picture viewer or video player...
UMPC if you have $$ to burn, there are several tiny PCs (smaller than Airbooks) that are full XP or Vista based computers or even older Windows CE/Mobile based computers. Think checkbook size..
Assuming $500-1000 isn't an option...
Pick up (even an old) Windows PDA or Windows Mobile Phone that has Video out (Pocket PC, Windows CE) - they are all the same thing, and can do Powerpoint with annotations and other 'presentation' like functions.
Again, just make sure the device has a Video out connector that works for typical senerios.
(This is not a time to hate MS and Windows, as you can get Windows Mobile PDAs very cheap, especially an older model that will do everything but shine your shoes, and you can even use freaking VB to write an application for him if you want it to do more.)
Oh, right, it doesn't apply if it allows them to save money...
Meet Google, the next Microsoft, this time a scary version with enough information on all people to keep them in jail or quiet. Love the data mining! Go GMail, Go Search, Go Ad clicks, Go Firefox reporting back...
Just brown outs alone permanently degrade circuits, let alone most power losses.
This is one reason you will find even old laptops survive longer than a desktop counterpart that is not running on regulated power. (Except for the few laptops with GPU/CPUS that can cook eggs and people don't clean the vents out.)
Seriously, if this concept is new to anyone, run to buy a UPS with uber-fast switching or looped continous power...
As for good old power losses, nothing is coded to be completely impervious, although some out there do a beter than expected job, especially when it comes to data loss situations. The tricks do help, like a 'good' RAID and journaling and an OS that expects people to be stupid enough to pull the plug at anytime. Here is an area where Windows and OS X tend to be a bit better as the OS and software integration is designed around users that think unplugging the unit or flipping a power switch is normal. And between the two, I give a nod to Vista because of NTFS and its journaling, until Apple gets around to ZFS.
Vista is the only OS that has internal optimizations to work with SSD read/write array patterns." Very wrong. Solaris, BSD & OSX. ZFS. L2ARC & ZIL
Ya I should have been more specific. Vista is the OS with kernel level optimizations outside of the FS, with SSD/Flash optimizations that propagate throughout the OS from the FS to Memory Caching and Paging.
Slapping a SSD optimized FS onto the other OSes is not 'technically' integrated into the OS either, but I will give you a pass since the FS technologies have implemented SSD optimizations.
(Note difference, Vista can use FAT/FAT32/NTFS or whatever FS you install and still get Vista's SSD/Flash optimizations, and it tends to work a bit better when the Caching and Memory systems are also 'understanding' of the variation of the Media beyond the FS.)
Ok, even on SlashDot, this deserves to be bashed for what it is, instead of the we hate MS lovefest that it will probably get.
Why is this the only manufacturer that seems to be having production issues, performance issues and general reliability problems on all OSes? SanDisk is the joke of Flash in all forms, especially SSD.
Motives against Vista...
Hmm, maybe when Vista was released and 80% of the SanDisk Flash Memory failed to perform well enough to be used for Readyboost, they were a bit Pissed Off? How about the devices Vista won't even see properly because they don't meet basic USB or SD specifications, that also POed SanDisk a bit.
SanDisk also has a horrible reputation with USB Card readers, as the devices won't even work at the basic BIOS levels, and people buying them that 'only' used them in Devices were POed and returning them because they started expecting them to work in their computers now too. (Issues like can't see device, SD card, or see it as 1GB when it is a 2GB card are some of the basic problems with SanDisk SD and Flash USB devices.)
99% of all other SD/Flash brands work fine with Vista, see a pattern yet?
Ok, now on to the Vista Issue - This is where it gets borderline insane...
Vista is the only OS that has internal optimizations to work with SSD read/write array patterns. Even with as 'crappy' as the SanDisk people would like everyone to believe Vista handles SSD, Vista actually squeezes about 10-15% more performance out of a hybrid or SSD than XP or other OSes in general. (Sure there are some arguments about how MFRs implemented the SSD array controllers, and SanDisk again seems to be the odd dog out in this discussion.)
So are SanDisk's problems because of Vista or because of SanDisk's 'own' issues?
I guess everyone here should decide for themselves. A few searches on both Vista and SSD or Flash devices in general and a search or two on SanDisk should put this article in perspective.
This would be a lot less laughable if they used any excuse except Vista, the main OS to have SSD kernel level support and the only OS(Windows) to outperform XP and previous versions of NT on SSD drives.
(Be sure to check out the SanDisk demonstrations that specifically use Vista to 'show off' the performance of their drives, that even makes it more goofy.)
You have outlined what the author of the site and people on Slashdot don't seem to understand no matter how many times it is explained to them or written about on Wikipedia.
Vista SP1 and Windows 2008 are identical OSes. The only differences is the features or components allowed to run and the default packages for applications installed.
If you turn on the same applications and services on both OSes (Vista SP1/Win2008) they function 100% the same.
They are the same code, just as NT has 'tried' to always be, with XP and 2003 Server being the exception (XP 64bit and 2003 were the same).
Going back to NT 4.0 people would claim that NT 4.0 Server was more stable or faster than NT 4.0 workstation, which back then was as insane as it is today.
For anyone here that doesn't get this... Go read any whitepaper on NT or Vista or Windows 2008 server.
If people are 'minimalists' and want Vista's features removed, it is easier to just TURN THEM OFF ON VISTA than to monkey with trying to get Windows 2008 to work as your desktop OS. You can turn off the Vista features in about 10-15 clicks, and BINGO, EXACTLY like Windows 2008 Server. Even though you are actually reducing overall performance by doing so.
This is like the people that turn off Aero when they first Boot Vista 'thinking' they are increasing performance, because if they had a clue they would realize that they just turned of 20% of the performance Vista brings to applications, and I'm not talking just what a Composer does, as Aero shoves GDI functions through the 3D GPU, as well as font drawing, and even bitmap decompression/compression that speeds up OLD applications drawing on the screen, and this isn't even touching the benefits of.NET 3.0/WPF and the Vector Composer relationship they lose by turning off Aero.
Microsoft is NOT stupid, their engineers are NOT stupid... Vista has features turned on that are not used on a Server and Windows 2008 has features turned on that a desktop won't use. That is the difference.
As consumers, turn as many of them on or off as you want, MS isn't stopping anybody.
And the ones running on OS X are protected from ignorant people like yourself that like to live in a make believe world where Apple and OS X are perfect... (NT was considered Virus proof in the early 90s as well, see ya in 10 years.)
BTW, How many Vista botnets zombies have you heard about? Oh, ya, none...
If it's all marketing then why does Apple have the highest consumer satisfaction rates in the entire industry?
If their products were crap, or even equivalent, consumers would not speak so highly of them, for so long after their purchases.
Um, marketing and borderline mindwashing is exactly what this is and why they get these results.
Go read the Psychology of Influence or heck even go look up any mislead cult in history. When people 'invest themselves' into a product or idea, they will support it until it bites their leg off, and often even after that.
Apple marketing is not far from a cult, as they USE THE SAME PRINCIPLES. (Stuff other marketing companies won't freaking do because of 'ethics'.)
Go look up what manipulation 'wins you' in this world. The koolaid comments that come from Jonestown are meant to strike a cord. Many survivors of Jonestown cult took years of deprogramming, and this is after their friends and family were murdered from 'good marketing masking reality'. (Hint: The koolaid was NOT the magical drink that fixed everything.)
You also discount how hard Apple works to keep people quiet. From the Apple message boards, to the stores, you would be freaking amazed at the level Apple will go to kill the truth.
Do you realize how many journalist have received free Apple computers and products in the past five years alone? Basically enough that they have become one of the largest userbase of Macs and 'iPhones'.
I know or work with about 2000 journalists, and every one of them have been offered free products from Apple, and the ones that decline still joke about finally saying yes so they can use it as a doorstop and get the Apple people to shut up and quit bugging them about taking the free stuff.
So how 'unbiased' do you think the journalists are, especially the ones that are OUTSIDE the tech industry and don't find it a conflict of interest and TAKE THE FREE iPods, Macs, iPhones, etc from Apple... (Besides the fact even Tech journalists often take the crap for home use, or resign as calling themselves 'journalists' so they can get the freebies.)
Remember the Windows guy that got news because he was abandoning Vista and moving to OS X? The real story is he stopped calling himself a technical journalist also got several thousands of dollars in free hardware from Apple. The story had NOTHING to do with Vista or Windows, it had to do with him being borderline broke, as a TV 'has been' of ZD TV. At least it was a computer company he sold out for, and at least he admits it...
So knowing this about the 'press', you...
Hear about the high fail rate of Airbooks?
Hear about how Apple downclocks Video card speed in both notebooks and iMacs because of Thermal problems? (This is not the NVidia issue of recent news either.)
Hear about the high reports of incompatible hardware with 10.5 (and Apple controls the hardware even)?
Hear about the LCD screens in Mac books, their inconsistency prompting lawsuits, and the findings showing Apple knew they were shit and didn't care?
Hear about how 10.5 Leopard has been out less time and has 20x the security flaws than Vista?
Hear about all the imcompatibility with software 10.5 had, where the software list ended up being longer than the MS published list for known software Vista would break? (Apple let users find out on their own, nice uh?)
Hear about the 10.4 users that HATE 10.5?
Hear about the 10.4 users that had to upgrade to 1GB of RAM and new video cards to run 10.5 - you know EXACTLY like Apple made fun of PCs for in their TV ads for Vista?
And there are hundreds of headlines like this that never make it to the news or even off the Apple message boards. GOOGLE or YAHOO or LIVE this crap, you might just get a bit shocked, depending on the level of indoctrination you have fallen to.
Printers were just an example, since they were probably the most common problem
Then why did you go to the trouble to use a specific example that was not even correct.
If you are going to make generalized comments, then make them um, oh, more general. At least don't make fucking wrong comments to illustrate your inane views.
still not supported by CUPS, I suggest you head over and help out, since you're such an elite coder
If more OSS people were not so 'crippled' by not having a freaking clue what to do with devices without pure source, then maybe CUPS would be doing better. That was my point exactly... Thank you for demonstrating your ignorance of assembly to further promote my argument.
As for your personal attacks, take your pedantic love of MrHanky and please use it as inspiration, I suggest trephination, so you can insert your own crap directly in your head instead of having to bore the rest of us with it.
I've worked with the iPhone SDK and 3rd-party apps cannot push to the UI unless they are selected and running.
Glad I haven't spent much time looking at the iPhone SDK. We could push to UI on Motorola phones as far back as the first RAZRs and the v715 even. And this was old hat when I was involved with that project. It provided MSN Messenger and Yahoo applets on the phone that could either run, run in background, or even run in background and push through to the main UI or even to the Text Inbox pretending to be incoming SMS.
How does Apple put these insane restrictions on crap, and have a 'we can stop your software anytime' contract, and people still like this garbage?
I would still like to see voice recognition on the freaking iPhone, that is a feature only 5 years behind Microsoft and Motorola... Geesh.
If people want to develop for a Phone platform, there are far better things out there without these restrictions. Windows Mobile isn't so bad to develop for, does more than the freaking iPhone (especially with.NET 3.x), and there are also a few nice Linux phones and other fairly open SDKs from other companies. (Tell Apple to stick it.)
(Anyone else notice Apple was 'promoting' 500 applications for the iPhone? And did anyone see some of these 'Applications'? Holy freaking cow.
I thought the 18000 applications on Windows Mobile was too generous with what was considered applications, but after looking at the iPhone list, there are probably another 50,000 Windows Mobile applications that would qualify to be listed. Geesh.
(Sssshhh, don't tell the Apple fanatics that people have been writing software, without restriction and for any use for Windows Mobile cell phones for 5+ years. And it has always supported Video and Music and Maps, and had GPS years ago, etc...)
Could be anything. As you have probably noticed, crap developers are sometimes the people that get the jobs and end up in over their heads. Their solutions to the lack of ability is to pass the buck or use any crutch they can to compensate for their crappy software.
I have seen developers write applications that continually take out GDI objects and never free them properly, and even on NT 4.0, there was a limit (even though fairly large) to these objects, so after about a week the machine would start running out of Objects and seem to go crazy, and the developer blamed it on NT and set the machines to just restart once a week.
(Bad developer, easy fix for them without getting egg on their face or even having to consider fixing the problems they created.)
This is about openness. Closed drivers (kernel or userspace) is a time limit on the hardware's usefulness. With open drivers, a competent coder can relatively easily port them from one OS to another, or recompile from one architecture to another. Windows printers were just one extremely common example. Whether their drivers are kernel space or user space (and I know they are user space) is irrelevant. It's hardware. It's time limited to work only on whatever software platform its manufacturer supported at the time of release. You're not going to stay on the same software platform for a very long time.
1) You are stupid if you NEED the source code to understand or port a driver. Open Source is about making code easier to read. Prior to the 'big' open source movement people like myself lived in a world where we just read the freaking assemblies. Most 'real' freaking geeks can read the native binaries just like reading freaking C code is to idiots like you. If you need 'source' to truly port a driver or any piece of code, then the OSS movement has failed and produced more idiots than it has helped the development community as a whole.
2) Your arguments about Windows were wrong on so many levels, and you run back to repeat them. Do you really have no desire to understand and instead just want to throw about insane hyperbole?
The driver movement from Win9X to XP was not an issue. There was the common driver library that allowed both Win98 and Win2K/WinXP drivers to work on both platforms, since these are higher level user drivers and Microsoft did a lot of work so that drivers didn't fail between the platforms.
The 'printer' drivers that failed to migrate were drivers from 'idiot' mfrs that either used older NT 4.0 driver models or used VXM based Win9x drivers, both of which had NO migration path forward.
So even if these companies provided drivers as 'open source', you would have as much to work from as their assemblies to produce as new driver that worked. (Additionally, it was not the 'drivers', but companies like HP bypassing the Windows printing engine and the additional software that was added to the systems that SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ALLOWED. PERIOD.)
Your angst here lies with the Printer MFRs, leave it there, and it doesn't matter whether they were making printers for Windows or Linux at the time, they messed up if they killed the migration process. Some companies commit to a timeframe of life for a product, some don't give a shit once you buy it.
Epson (they usually care about the product and use a common model fallback mode), HP (they have never given a shit, and even going back to Win3.x and Win95 the best they would do is deliver Win3.1 16bit drivers for Win95, causing system instability and horrible multi-tasking due to the Win16 mutext in Win95. Even all the way up to the move to WinXP, HP was still shipping Win16bit drivers to Win98 and WInME users and using their own printing subsystems to bypass the inherent printing mechanisms in Windows, which caused enough instability they should have been banned from any corporate system.)
Do you really think Open Source would fix the HP drivers? The best HP drivers are from people that dug through the assemblies and designed their own drivers, no SOURCE needed.
This means that people that have been doing crap like this for the last 5+ years must be geniuses...
Everyone I know has been going to live.com (formerly MSN) and using the WAP browser version of Messenger for years. And now that someone figured this out on the iPhone they are brilliant? WTF...
Is this stuff really that 'cool' to the SlashDot readers, or has Apple just replaced all the Slashdot crowd with their drones while we weren't looking?
(SlashDot readers, GET THE HELL OUT OF YOUR BASEMENT MORE OFTEN, NOW!)
Anyone who has ever owned a Windows printer and upgraded from eg. 98 to 2000 or XP knows this. Closed drivers may be a time bomb.
WTH does this ignorance come from? Win9X was a DIFFERENT OS than 2000 or XP, and even with that, a lot of user mode drivers did work on both Win9X and 2000 XP.
Do you expect drivers from OS 9 to work on OS X? Do you expect DOS drivers to work on Linux too? That is about how crazy this statement is...
Win9X is a completely different architecture than NT.
As for drivers, there are both kernel level and user level drivers, and people mixing them together in this argument is wrong.
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Flash is even broken on Windows and OSX
Maybe not as broken as you find it on Linux, but when it comes to sucking performance for no reason or doing really stupid things like cropping video when flipping to full screen video it has some rather hugh problems. (Multi-Monitors is something Adobe thinks people don't use for watching Flash Video apparently, cause it looks very untested.)
Sadly, Flash with Firefox is 10x worse than Flash with IE. After thinking I was going insane on a few new personal installs, I pulled techs to examine the Flash differences. Same sites, same Flash content, and inside Firefox it would bring the CPU to 100% and with IE not even scratch the CPU.
These are also not lemur porn quality sites, these are mainstream sites that have Flash based Ads or even MSNBC which has not moved to Silverlight.
In contrast, the new Silverlight is pretty, efficient and shiny in comparison on both Firefox and IE and even OS X. The NBC Olympic HD streaming it has been handling works better than even my Silverlight developer 'fans' expected, making Flash look problematic and more like an old dog.
"LMG is one of several firms we work with in D.C.," Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said. "It's no secret that we oppose the Google-Yahoo deal and that there's been a great deal of opposition to it by advertisers, publishers, consumers, and legal experts." Evans points out that Google has hired a constellation of D.C. lobbyists and public relations groups to tell its side of the story.
The SlashDot poster acts like this is a single issue lobby. If you believe that, then you have no concept of lobbiest firms.
Microsoft has worked against anti-net neutrality, as they would have the LEAST to gain from ISP lock in, as they have no ISP bundling deals, which you can't even say about Yahoo or Google. (Toolbars anyone?)
So how did this get to be about Microsoft? Because they hired a firm to oppose the Yahoo-Google deal?
They didn't hire them to DO ANYTHING ELSE... Move on to Comcast and other ISP nut balls that are working against net neutrality.
Repeat after me, XBox 360 uses a modified DX9 implementation, not DX10.
XBox 360's development team from the GPU designers to the API designers where behind both DX10 and the WDDM in Vista. They took their DX9 modifications and GPU design gains and took them back to Microsoft, hence becoming DX10 and Vista WDDM...
This is where the DX10 reliance on WDDM comes from and other XBox API concepts like GPU RAM virtualization and GPU scheduling made it all the way into the main driver/video subsystem of Vista and why DX10 requires Vista, because the OS handles this stuff and is 'expected' to, not the game, just as the XBox 360 relies on the OS and Graphical API set to do the same.
Oh, and PS, the article you reference is technically wrong, check your sources better in the future, although there are 'reasons' the XBox 360 doesn't run the full blown DX10, but the essential parts of DX10 are already alive and well in the 360 and have been since release. Think of the XBox 360 architecture as a stepping stone from DX9 to DX10 and from XPDM to WDDM.
(Talk to the XNA team, or even go to the 360 team if you really don't get this, have them explain it to you like a 5yr old.)
This is an issue for a large production product...
I see a lot of people of fanbois running to say all products have glitches blah blah blah...
This is a large production product and it is not an 'only' nor even a 'new' technology...
You can get a 4yr old Razr or 715 or even a free Samsung R500 at Walmart that have outstanding 3G reception, and this is the 'cheap' stuff, not even a pocket PC or pda class phone device.
Apple 'pretends' to be better or provide a 'better' product, but it isn't reality anymore, and hasn't been for years and years. They are more of the 'me too' crowd and when it comes to hardware quality, they will buy the cheapest crap they can find making even model to model have different LCDs, GPUs, or chipsets on their computers because they get a 'deal'.
They have gotten way too much of a free ride on SlashDot because of Darwin, which is now nicely closed up in all important areas, and in their products and business practices they make Microsoft look like the 'nice' consumer friendly company...
(how many games are DX10-only? - commercial suicide ...)
Exactly, none so far... Even games 'supporting' DX10 are just strapping on DX10 texture increases and a few shadow light tricks. If a game was a pure DX10 title, it would run faster than the same game under DX9; hence why DX10 seems clunky at this point.
If people want to see a glimpse of the DX10 'performance' that was added to the new API set, look at a XBox 360 game shoving graphics on a low end ATI GPU at levels that make DX9 on high end PCs stutter and blush at even 720p resolutions.
It is strange that you are 'correctly' making a good point, and a point that many that are 'disagreeing' with you also the same people that made fun of DX10 for the same reasons. And with DX10 Microsoft had good reasons, bringing a new API designed from the XBox developers and using the WDDM in Vista to host it, which also was a result of XBox 360 development (unified shaders, RAM virtualization, GPU scheduling at OS level, etc).
One of the 'main' arguments against DX10 was in favor of OpenGL contrasting that 'at least' OpenGL will always be backward compatible.
And sadly there are already more users running Vista than OS X and Linux combined... Ouch.
MS is only competing with itself here, doesn't anyone get the non-Windows market is only grabbing a tiny share of the 'new installations'?
From someone in Business, Vista wasn't planned to be rolled out at all in 2007 in most major companies.
The Reason? Windows 2008 Server...
Vista and Windows 2008 Server are presented as a package deal to business from Microsoft, as the whole integration and management features of each product are designed to be each other's bitch, and work well together.
Rolling out Vista on Windows 2003 Servers would have been a waste of time and resources. (It would be just as insane to deploy a new Windows 2008 Server with XP clients.)
Even the big business MS Fans get this and waited for Windows 2008 Server, as the new deployment tools alone are reason enough to have waited for Windows 2008 Server. (Literally, click policy rules, plug in new computer to network, click, done - add another new workstation, plug in, click, done.)
There are also the Vista features that just weren't designed to even enable or work in a Windows 2003 Server environment, from new roaming and profile technology, to search abstraction, down to even how Vista and Windows 2008 Server talk to each other with the new TCP/IP stacks.
Assessing deployment and testing timelines of many companies, the year 2008 will probably even give XP the edge over Vista, but by 2009, Vista will be installed everywhere on all the new Windows 2008 Server networks.
Whoever suggests that this user even 'thinks' about developing his game for the iPhone is either working at Apple or just giving horrible advice.
Developing for iPhone, you give up all rights to the product in any technical terms. This means that Apple can shut off your application on everyone's phone at anytime and ban you from further development. Also if you have a killer hit, they can shut you down and make a carbon copy of the idea themselves and sell theirs, as you have given them rights to do so.
In fact ANYONE developing for the iPhone knowing this is a freaking idiot that is doing nothing but helping Apple sell a phone with a HORRID UI concept for a phone.
MP3 player, Touch iPods are grand for what they are, phones are for dialing without having to read the screen either feeling the keys or using voice commands - both which the iPhone fail to provide. - God only help the people driving near iPhone users.
(Apple has the biggest DRMing of Software in history, even with remote disable.)
Why do Slashdoters love Apple and iPhones again, I thought we fought DRM and evil?
just as they forced incompatibility into the Web by installing IE with every Windows upgrade
WTF?
Am I the only person that remembers reality?
These things are said like 'fact', hell even Wikipedia has "included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995." - and IE was NOT included with any Windows OS in 1995, whatsoever... The only way to even get IE was through the Plus Pack for Win95, and it cost as much as Netscape.
Talk about urban legend becoming 'people's' reality. Geesh...
So Microsoft screwed up the Web with non-standard handling? You mean like adapting to a missing end table tag and still showing the freaking table instead of giving the user a GPF or a blank page like Netscape did? Ya, Microsoft was being evil by letting crap HTML not crash the program and still display content.
In contrast to IE, Netscape was crap, even Marc said the code was crap, and MS got a raw deal in the Anti-Trust after it was all said and done.
Going back to history, does everyone forget IE was based on SpyGlass's Mosaic of all things (yeah no standard there uh?)...
Netscape at version 3 was originally the most 'non-standard' browser with their 'own' html handling, and poor html handling, that existed all the way through Netscape 4 when they finally were de-throned.
(Just requesting the page again when the window was resized was enough to backhand the Netscape developers for being really freaking stupid.)
Ok, most people here don't like Microsoft, but can we at least stick to freaking reality for a moment. Netscape hated MS for giving away the browser, and making IIS free, another Netscape slap in the HTTP server realm.
As for the web and Standards, Microsoft's browsers have NOT always been great, but Microsoft itself has handed over other standards like AJAX and XHTML to the web, with no 'revisionism' and without any freaking strings, and we still have dorks like this seeing everything MS touches as some evil plot of 'embrace, extend, extinguish'?
IE had nothing to do with a Windows tie-in, as IE was released for *nix, and Mac System for years, gaining Microsoft NOTHING in the Mac world, other than giving people a free browser. Man were they evil...
IE itself wasn't even designed to be a 'browser' but a set of DLLs for rendering HTML for developers. (Hence why AOL used IE's engine for years after owning Netscape.) - The IE 'Browser' was a proof of concept tool at first, as Microsoft believed a simple fact that an OS should be able to display HTML natively, just as it displays Fonts, Bitmaps, and Metafiles...
Now please, explain to me what other 'GREAT' technology have been 'embraced, extended, and extinguished'? Seriously, this is said a lot, yet MS doesn't have the power to extiguish a technology, and if people here think they do, then the OSS movement is already dead, pack it up, go home...
If people really don't want to see MS have any input in the 'standards' or non-Microsoft world, then either de-throne them, or be happy with the 'shit' they produce that is nothing like what everyone else is doing because they were kicked out of the playground... Pick One.
I personally would rather see MS be a part of the 'real world' and 'have' to play with everyone else, as they are slowly being forced and moving to do. Kicking them out of the Apache playground is going to gain people what?
The second choker in this, is people act like Microsoft needs Apache 'Source'...
WTH? For What?
IIS7 is a generation ahead of Apache in features and performance and even 'gasp' stability, and if Microsoft wanted to 'steal' Apache source, they could have read the source already, don't people get this? You don't need to reuse line by line code to 'use' stuff.
In fact you don't even need SOURCE, as assembly and binaries are just as readable to uber geeks as Source Code is. Has the OSS forgot this, and also forgot to teach the 'new kids' that Source Code is NOT required to see or replicate how software works? Talk about 'we need source' crutched mentality...
Open Source is great, but for people to pretend that compiled code is 'worthless' or 'unreadable' is just freaking retarded.
Ok, rant off...
Ouch, nobody should be carting around any laptop just for presentations anymore. This is 2008.
There are a ton of Portable Media players that have Video out capabilities and can do either slide shows via pictures (exported from presentation software) or Video (exported from presentation software). This is also a cheap way to go.
I have an old Creative Zen:M Vision, and it outputs DVD resolution, even though the built in screen is 320x240, and I use it for things like this all the time. RCA cables and any projector or TV and viola an instant presentation, movie fest, etc...
Just check the Video output specs and then size and video/photo format he is comfortable working with.
If you need MORE than just a picture viewer or video player...
UMPC if you have $$ to burn, there are several tiny PCs (smaller than Airbooks) that are full XP or Vista based computers or even older Windows CE/Mobile based computers. Think checkbook size..
Assuming $500-1000 isn't an option...
Pick up (even an old) Windows PDA or Windows Mobile Phone that has Video out (Pocket PC, Windows CE) - they are all the same thing, and can do Powerpoint with annotations and other 'presentation' like functions.
Again, just make sure the device has a Video out connector that works for typical senerios.
(This is not a time to hate MS and Windows, as you can get Windows Mobile PDAs very cheap, especially an older model that will do everything but shine your shoes, and you can even use freaking VB to write an application for him if you want it to do more.)
Good Luck...
What happend to do no evil?
Oh, right, it doesn't apply if it allows them to save money...
Meet Google, the next Microsoft, this time a scary version with enough information on all people to keep them in jail or quiet. Love the data mining! Go GMail, Go Search, Go Ad clicks, Go Firefox reporting back...
Yeah Google!
Just brown outs alone permanently degrade circuits, let alone most power losses.
This is one reason you will find even old laptops survive longer than a desktop counterpart that is not running on regulated power. (Except for the few laptops with GPU/CPUS that can cook eggs and people don't clean the vents out.)
Seriously, if this concept is new to anyone, run to buy a UPS with uber-fast switching or looped continous power...
As for good old power losses, nothing is coded to be completely impervious, although some out there do a beter than expected job, especially when it comes to data loss situations. The tricks do help, like a 'good' RAID and journaling and an OS that expects people to be stupid enough to pull the plug at anytime. Here is an area where Windows and OS X tend to be a bit better as the OS and software integration is designed around users that think unplugging the unit or flipping a power switch is normal. And between the two, I give a nod to Vista because of NTFS and its journaling, until Apple gets around to ZFS.
Vista is the only OS that has internal optimizations to work with SSD read/write array patterns." Very wrong. Solaris, BSD & OSX. ZFS. L2ARC & ZIL
Ya I should have been more specific. Vista is the OS with kernel level optimizations outside of the FS, with SSD/Flash optimizations that propagate throughout the OS from the FS to Memory Caching and Paging.
Slapping a SSD optimized FS onto the other OSes is not 'technically' integrated into the OS either, but I will give you a pass since the FS technologies have implemented SSD optimizations.
(Note difference, Vista can use FAT/FAT32/NTFS or whatever FS you install and still get Vista's SSD/Flash optimizations, and it tends to work a bit better when the Caching and Memory systems are also 'understanding' of the variation of the Media beyond the FS.)
Ok, even on SlashDot, this deserves to be bashed for what it is, instead of the we hate MS lovefest that it will probably get.
Why is this the only manufacturer that seems to be having production issues, performance issues and general reliability problems on all OSes? SanDisk is the joke of Flash in all forms, especially SSD.
Motives against Vista...
Hmm, maybe when Vista was released and 80% of the SanDisk Flash Memory failed to perform well enough to be used for Readyboost, they were a bit Pissed Off? How about the devices Vista won't even see properly because they don't meet basic USB or SD specifications, that also POed SanDisk a bit.
SanDisk also has a horrible reputation with USB Card readers, as the devices won't even work at the basic BIOS levels, and people buying them that 'only' used them in Devices were POed and returning them because they started expecting them to work in their computers now too. (Issues like can't see device, SD card, or see it as 1GB when it is a 2GB card are some of the basic problems with SanDisk SD and Flash USB devices.)
99% of all other SD/Flash brands work fine with Vista, see a pattern yet?
Ok, now on to the Vista Issue - This is where it gets borderline insane...
Vista is the only OS that has internal optimizations to work with SSD read/write array patterns. Even with as 'crappy' as the SanDisk people would like everyone to believe Vista handles SSD, Vista actually squeezes about 10-15% more performance out of a hybrid or SSD than XP or other OSes in general. (Sure there are some arguments about how MFRs implemented the SSD array controllers, and SanDisk again seems to be the odd dog out in this discussion.)
So are SanDisk's problems because of Vista or because of SanDisk's 'own' issues?
I guess everyone here should decide for themselves. A few searches on both Vista and SSD or Flash devices in general and a search or two on SanDisk should put this article in perspective.
This would be a lot less laughable if they used any excuse except Vista, the main OS to have SSD kernel level support and the only OS(Windows) to outperform XP and previous versions of NT on SSD drives.
(Be sure to check out the SanDisk demonstrations that specifically use Vista to 'show off' the performance of their drives, that even makes it more goofy.)
I'd rather give it to Steve
Ya, cause he does more with his money to help the world than that evil bastard Gates at Micro... Oh wait.
You have outlined what the author of the site and people on Slashdot don't seem to understand no matter how many times it is explained to them or written about on Wikipedia.
Vista SP1 and Windows 2008 are identical OSes. The only differences is the features or components allowed to run and the default packages for applications installed.
If you turn on the same applications and services on both OSes (Vista SP1/Win2008) they function 100% the same.
They are the same code, just as NT has 'tried' to always be, with XP and 2003 Server being the exception (XP 64bit and 2003 were the same).
Going back to NT 4.0 people would claim that NT 4.0 Server was more stable or faster than NT 4.0 workstation, which back then was as insane as it is today.
For anyone here that doesn't get this... Go read any whitepaper on NT or Vista or Windows 2008 server.
If people are 'minimalists' and want Vista's features removed, it is easier to just TURN THEM OFF ON VISTA than to monkey with trying to get Windows 2008 to work as your desktop OS. You can turn off the Vista features in about 10-15 clicks, and BINGO, EXACTLY like Windows 2008 Server. Even though you are actually reducing overall performance by doing so.
This is like the people that turn off Aero when they first Boot Vista 'thinking' they are increasing performance, because if they had a clue they would realize that they just turned of 20% of the performance Vista brings to applications, and I'm not talking just what a Composer does, as Aero shoves GDI functions through the 3D GPU, as well as font drawing, and even bitmap decompression/compression that speeds up OLD applications drawing on the screen, and this isn't even touching the benefits of .NET 3.0/WPF and the Vector Composer relationship they lose by turning off Aero.
Microsoft is NOT stupid, their engineers are NOT stupid... Vista has features turned on that are not used on a Server and Windows 2008 has features turned on that a desktop won't use. That is the difference.
As consumers, turn as many of them on or off as you want, MS isn't stopping anybody.
Hear about the 23500 botnet zombies running OSX?
And the ones running on OS X are protected from ignorant people like yourself that like to live in a make believe world where Apple and OS X are perfect... (NT was considered Virus proof in the early 90s as well, see ya in 10 years.)
BTW, How many Vista botnets zombies have you heard about? Oh, ya, none...
But, does this constitute evil? So far so good. My gmail account is my real name anyway. I'll be looking out for the evil...
So if it doesn't affect you, then it is ok?
I think you have defined for us what evil is and you are a shining example of it yourself...
If it's all marketing then why does Apple have the highest consumer satisfaction rates in the entire industry?
If their products were crap, or even equivalent, consumers would not speak so highly of them, for so long after their purchases.
Um, marketing and borderline mindwashing is exactly what this is and why they get these results.
Go read the Psychology of Influence or heck even go look up any mislead cult in history. When people 'invest themselves' into a product or idea, they will support it until it bites their leg off, and often even after that.
Apple marketing is not far from a cult, as they USE THE SAME PRINCIPLES. (Stuff other marketing companies won't freaking do because of 'ethics'.)
Go look up what manipulation 'wins you' in this world. The koolaid comments that come from Jonestown are meant to strike a cord. Many survivors of Jonestown cult took years of deprogramming, and this is after their friends and family were murdered from 'good marketing masking reality'. (Hint: The koolaid was NOT the magical drink that fixed everything.)
You also discount how hard Apple works to keep people quiet. From the Apple message boards, to the stores, you would be freaking amazed at the level Apple will go to kill the truth.
Do you realize how many journalist have received free Apple computers and products in the past five years alone? Basically enough that they have become one of the largest userbase of Macs and 'iPhones'.
I know or work with about 2000 journalists, and every one of them have been offered free products from Apple, and the ones that decline still joke about finally saying yes so they can use it as a doorstop and get the Apple people to shut up and quit bugging them about taking the free stuff.
So how 'unbiased' do you think the journalists are, especially the ones that are OUTSIDE the tech industry and don't find it a conflict of interest and TAKE THE FREE iPods, Macs, iPhones, etc from Apple... (Besides the fact even Tech journalists often take the crap for home use, or resign as calling themselves 'journalists' so they can get the freebies.)
Remember the Windows guy that got news because he was abandoning Vista and moving to OS X? The real story is he stopped calling himself a technical journalist also got several thousands of dollars in free hardware from Apple. The story had NOTHING to do with Vista or Windows, it had to do with him being borderline broke, as a TV 'has been' of ZD TV. At least it was a computer company he sold out for, and at least he admits it...
So knowing this about the 'press', you...
Hear about the high fail rate of Airbooks?
Hear about how Apple downclocks Video card speed in both notebooks and iMacs because of Thermal problems? (This is not the NVidia issue of recent news either.)
Hear about the high reports of incompatible hardware with 10.5 (and Apple controls the hardware even)?
Hear about the LCD screens in Mac books, their inconsistency prompting lawsuits, and the findings showing Apple knew they were shit and didn't care?
Hear about how 10.5 Leopard has been out less time and has 20x the security flaws than Vista?
Hear about all the imcompatibility with software 10.5 had, where the software list ended up being longer than the MS published list for known software Vista would break? (Apple let users find out on their own, nice uh?)
Hear about the 10.4 users that HATE 10.5?
Hear about the 10.4 users that had to upgrade to 1GB of RAM and new video cards to run 10.5 - you know EXACTLY like Apple made fun of PCs for in their TV ads for Vista?
And there are hundreds of headlines like this that never make it to the news or even off the Apple message boards. GOOGLE or YAHOO or LIVE this crap, you might just get a bit shocked, depending on the level of indoctrination you have fallen to.
It is a correct example
Even if you keep repeating it, it won't make it true. This is getting be sad, and I am starting to feel sorry for you.
My personal attacks were well founded, aspie. You're a know-nothing hack.
Well of course, in debate, especially regarding technical topics you always attack the person when you don't have facts. Bravo, Brilliant... lol
Thanks for the post, it was worth the laugh.
Printers were just an example, since they were probably the most common problem
Then why did you go to the trouble to use a specific example that was not even correct.
If you are going to make generalized comments, then make them um, oh, more general. At least don't make fucking wrong comments to illustrate your inane views.
still not supported by CUPS, I suggest you head over and help out, since you're such an elite coder
If more OSS people were not so 'crippled' by not having a freaking clue what to do with devices without pure source, then maybe CUPS would be doing better. That was my point exactly... Thank you for demonstrating your ignorance of assembly to further promote my argument.
As for your personal attacks, take your pedantic love of MrHanky and please use it as inspiration, I suggest trephination, so you can insert your own crap directly in your head instead of having to bore the rest of us with it.
I've worked with the iPhone SDK and 3rd-party apps cannot push to the UI unless they are selected and running.
Glad I haven't spent much time looking at the iPhone SDK. We could push to UI on Motorola phones as far back as the first RAZRs and the v715 even. And this was old hat when I was involved with that project. It provided MSN Messenger and Yahoo applets on the phone that could either run, run in background, or even run in background and push through to the main UI or even to the Text Inbox pretending to be incoming SMS.
How does Apple put these insane restrictions on crap, and have a 'we can stop your software anytime' contract, and people still like this garbage?
I would still like to see voice recognition on the freaking iPhone, that is a feature only 5 years behind Microsoft and Motorola... Geesh.
If people want to develop for a Phone platform, there are far better things out there without these restrictions. Windows Mobile isn't so bad to develop for, does more than the freaking iPhone (especially with .NET 3.x), and there are also a few nice Linux phones and other fairly open SDKs from other companies. (Tell Apple to stick it.)
(Anyone else notice Apple was 'promoting' 500 applications for the iPhone? And did anyone see some of these 'Applications'? Holy freaking cow.
I thought the 18000 applications on Windows Mobile was too generous with what was considered applications, but after looking at the iPhone list, there are probably another 50,000 Windows Mobile applications that would qualify to be listed. Geesh.
(Sssshhh, don't tell the Apple fanatics that people have been writing software, without restriction and for any use for Windows Mobile cell phones for 5+ years. And it has always supported Video and Music and Maps, and had GPS years ago, etc...)
Could be anything. As you have probably noticed, crap developers are sometimes the people that get the jobs and end up in over their heads. Their solutions to the lack of ability is to pass the buck or use any crutch they can to compensate for their crappy software.
I have seen developers write applications that continually take out GDI objects and never free them properly, and even on NT 4.0, there was a limit (even though fairly large) to these objects, so after about a week the machine would start running out of Objects and seem to go crazy, and the developer blamed it on NT and set the machines to just restart once a week.
(Bad developer, easy fix for them without getting egg on their face or even having to consider fixing the problems they created.)
This is about openness. Closed drivers (kernel or userspace) is a time limit on the hardware's usefulness. With open drivers, a competent coder can relatively easily port them from one OS to another, or recompile from one architecture to another. Windows printers were just one extremely common example. Whether their drivers are kernel space or user space (and I know they are user space) is irrelevant. It's hardware. It's time limited to work only on whatever software platform its manufacturer supported at the time of release. You're not going to stay on the same software platform for a very long time.
1) You are stupid if you NEED the source code to understand or port a driver. Open Source is about making code easier to read. Prior to the 'big' open source movement people like myself lived in a world where we just read the freaking assemblies. Most 'real' freaking geeks can read the native binaries just like reading freaking C code is to idiots like you. If you need 'source' to truly port a driver or any piece of code, then the OSS movement has failed and produced more idiots than it has helped the development community as a whole.
2) Your arguments about Windows were wrong on so many levels, and you run back to repeat them. Do you really have no desire to understand and instead just want to throw about insane hyperbole?
The driver movement from Win9X to XP was not an issue. There was the common driver library that allowed both Win98 and Win2K/WinXP drivers to work on both platforms, since these are higher level user drivers and Microsoft did a lot of work so that drivers didn't fail between the platforms.
The 'printer' drivers that failed to migrate were drivers from 'idiot' mfrs that either used older NT 4.0 driver models or used VXM based Win9x drivers, both of which had NO migration path forward.
So even if these companies provided drivers as 'open source', you would have as much to work from as their assemblies to produce as new driver that worked. (Additionally, it was not the 'drivers', but companies like HP bypassing the Windows printing engine and the additional software that was added to the systems that SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ALLOWED. PERIOD.)
Your angst here lies with the Printer MFRs, leave it there, and it doesn't matter whether they were making printers for Windows or Linux at the time, they messed up if they killed the migration process. Some companies commit to a timeframe of life for a product, some don't give a shit once you buy it.
Epson (they usually care about the product and use a common model fallback mode), HP (they have never given a shit, and even going back to Win3.x and Win95 the best they would do is deliver Win3.1 16bit drivers for Win95, causing system instability and horrible multi-tasking due to the Win16 mutext in Win95. Even all the way up to the move to WinXP, HP was still shipping Win16bit drivers to Win98 and WInME users and using their own printing subsystems to bypass the inherent printing mechanisms in Windows, which caused enough instability they should have been banned from any corporate system.)
Do you really think Open Source would fix the HP drivers? The best HP drivers are from people that dug through the assemblies and designed their own drivers, no SOURCE needed.
Get it, yet?
This means that people that have been doing crap like this for the last 5+ years must be geniuses...
Everyone I know has been going to live.com (formerly MSN) and using the WAP browser version of Messenger for years. And now that someone figured this out on the iPhone they are brilliant? WTF...
Is this stuff really that 'cool' to the SlashDot readers, or has Apple just replaced all the Slashdot crowd with their drones while we weren't looking?
(SlashDot readers, GET THE HELL OUT OF YOUR BASEMENT MORE OFTEN, NOW!)
Holy insanity...
Anyone who has ever owned a Windows printer and upgraded from eg. 98 to 2000 or XP knows this. Closed drivers may be a time bomb.
WTH does this ignorance come from? Win9X was a DIFFERENT OS than 2000 or XP, and even with that, a lot of user mode drivers did work on both Win9X and 2000 XP.
Do you expect drivers from OS 9 to work on OS X? Do you expect DOS drivers to work on Linux too? That is about how crazy this statement is...
Win9X is a completely different architecture than NT.
As for drivers, there are both kernel level and user level drivers, and people mixing them together in this argument is wrong.