Not going to happen. HD WMV like 720p or 1080i requires a hefty CPU to decode. Standalone blu ray or HD DVD players aren't going to start putting hefty CPU's inside the box with fans and crap. Last I checked, there weren't even any normal standlone dvd players that could play normal non HD WMV. I've seen plenty that could play AVI of various types like xvid and divx though. The companies selling the HD movies are going to put them in a format that an average standalone player can play. This doesn't mean WMV format. If everyone was jumping on the HD WMV wagon, why dont we see more dvds with it? Its been availible for years. Isn't that T2 HD WMV version like 1 or 2 years old by now? Yet it still hasn't taken off.
Whats going to happen is either blu ray and HD DVD battle it out, or one comes out on top near the start and takes over. Either way it won't be WMV vids on those disks that the movie studios will be selling.
In a PC world, ya it does take some processing power, but when putting the codecs in silicon designed to process this stuff, it is pretty simple. Look at DVD's and MPEG2, even the fastest computer at the time couldn't decode MPEG2 fast enough to play (like a 200-400Mhz PII), yet DVD players were EVERYWHERE.
OH, and by the way, there are already DVD players that fully support WMV-HD formats, I suggest you do a search. Pioneer was the first to have one out for a while now.
Your complete argument shows how little you understand about this topic. If you were correct, they by your theory DVD players wouldn't have existed when they did, since a normal PC had trouble even deccoding an MPEG2 stream.
Have you actually looked at Java vs.NET benchmarks? It might be an idea before you post such things.
None currently exist my friend, since the current version of.Net technology's NDA prohibits benchmarking. If you magically have some, then I'm sure a lawyer would like to talk to you. 8P
How about this challenge since you think what I said was nonesense, write us all a cute java application that can render full scenes in 3D in realtime at near toy story quality. Then I will say, yep I was wrong,.NET isn't the only managed development environment that can do this type of performance.
Actually I would be happy to see a version of Solitaire in Java that the cards moving around the screen didn't drop a 3Ghz P4 to a crawl...
So where is your information, then? I've not heard any plans from anyone to use this format. I've not heard of any standalone players who are supporting this format (I know some play WMV, but I assume this is some kind of DRM'd WMV?) I've certainly seen noone advertising that the player is ready for HD, which I'm sure they would. All I've seen are that HD DVD and Blu-Ray are coming next year, in consoles, stand-alone players, laptops and even burners (probably very pricey), which movie studios support who and so on. If the fabled format you speak of isn't here already, it is too little, too late.
Sorry, I assumed if people were on slashdot they could figure out how to type wmv-hd or wmvhd in the google search window. My mistake... (Just because you missed the press releases, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Did you catch the news article where in florida now, you can shoot someone if they anger you? -It exists, even if YOU didn't know about it.)
If you do google, or MSN, or altavista these terms, you will find that there are several WMV-HD capable DVD players on the market, Pioneer was the first.
Additionally you will find various clips about studios like Warner Bros, etc that have stated their support wor WMV-HD.
You will also find that the majority of the movie theathers that have converted to digital and digital distribution in the past 3 years are usig WMV formats for the big screeen - so chances are, if you been to a theater lately that has Digital Display, you were watching the movie on a version of Microsoft Windows run WMV format.
Irony uh?
Guess if people hate Microsoft enough, they will stop going to the digital theaters with the better quality displays and audio, and not buy any WMV-HD DVDs...
Also as a side note, even HD-DVD has plans for its players to support WMV-HD content, thereby utiliizing better than MPEG2 type of compressions for not only more capacity but higher quality video than other codecs.
BTW, the WMV-HD codecs are something Microsoft make an 'open' codec and gave it over to a standards body. (VC1 if I remeber right)
Another nail in the coffin to Blu-Ray if they don't support more than just what Sony dictates... Blu-Ray right now has a big problem, it has Sony support, but also Sony restrictions, HD-DVD is being more open about the format and standard codecs.
Sony did this with the Mini-Disc, their Memory sticks and numerous other products. Sure they are partner with companies on the Blu-Ray technology, but bottom line, is all Blu-Ray devices are going to put money in Sony's Pocket - further closing their acceptance by manufacturers, where HD-DVD doesn't have a single royalty parent that they all have to bend over for.
And if you remember - this is what ultimately killed BetaMax, as well as made the memory stick and other 'Sony' exclusives not quite so popular in the 'real' market. Why pay royalties to Sony, when you can make a Camera use a different Flash Memory and skip the 'Sony' tax.
Even at that datarate the examples are not as sharp as they should be at that resolution, apparently even higher data rates are really required
Really? Strange the Theaters that have been moving to digital using WMV formats don't seem to have a problem with the quality. But then again, what are a few 1000 experts inthe field compared to your 'keen' eye...
Well, you are factually correct in your post, but miss one important issue...
Some people want applications to run faster than a snail.
With.NET you get a much higher level of performance, and most of the benefits that Java.
For example, even part of Direct 9.0c is written in Managed.NET - and it is very important that DirectX be super fast, and if you can implement key features of it in.NET without performance loss, then it probably can do about anything.
Java on the other hand would have a hell of a time trying to get enough performance out of the VM to do very advanced graphics for example, and with.NET it is a no sweat do able thing.
So why bother? Speed my friend, speed. Also reliability isn't on the side of JAVA at the moment either. You still have to test your apps on all platforms, so being fully transparent to each VM on all OSes, JAVA still has a ways to go.
Xbox 360 only has a plain DVD drive, this means PS3 will be the only console that can play HD movies
The XBOX 360 plays HD just fine - as MOST Studios have already backed and plan to distribute HD DVD Content on regular DVDs using WMV format, just like the "T2 Extreme Edition" that was released two years or more ago.
Using WMV HD capable compression capabilities, most studios have commited to providing HD Content on Regular DVDs using the Windows HD Media format.
This is why the XBox 360 didn't need a HD-DVD player, and will actually help to promote the basic DVD using more advanced compression techniques than the VERY AGED MPEG2 format.
Additionally, does anyone not see the irony? Microsoft doesn't like BlueRay because of the 'additional' content restrictions - and yet people here are like "Yeah Sony, you are making it easier to lock our movies!". WTF?
This story is not only FUD, but makes assumptions based on CRAP information.
Slashdot editors and contributors, do you even fact check or monitor each other? Your commentary and news is turning into the laughing joke of the internet.
But it was from Apple or part of a Linux distribution it would be wonderful and a perfect way to ensure even the casual user had some level of protection.
Just because they use big bad words like Microsoft, doesn't mean it is a bad idea...
"Look at NTFS, it had journaling, object/token security, and a lot of 'advanced file system features' all the way back in 1993."
NTFS was built on HPFS, which was developed in conjunction with IBM for OS/2.
Shared concepts Microsoft introduced from HPFS - yes; however, NTFS was a complete rewrite.
There is a BIG difference in many aspects of HPFS and NTFS. Or Microsoft would have just used HPFS, as they had full rights to do so...
Google this stuff if you really are curious... There are some interesting facts. For example, you could be reading about the transactional NTFS that will be in Vista, another step forward in data reliability, yet still buiding on the extensibility of the original NTFS design.
Also let me say this once again, in the computing world you cannot create something 'innovative' without there being pieces that came before it.
Just the idea of storing bits on a device is not unique to ANY File System, but yet a lot of File Systems have been innovative and added a lot to the diversity of OS file handling.
Also don't forget that HPFS was written at Microsoft, look up an employee named 'Letwin' if you have no understanding of the history of HPFS, or think Microsoft didn't create it as well.
To this day I still can't think of a *single* product that Microsoft actually "invented" completely in-house.
In a way, that was the point of the guy's article. No company can claim to have fully developed any product in house, without some concepts or technology being borrowed from what came before.
However, you can take products and the concept they introduced that changed computing as 'innovations' even though as a whole, not all of it was new, which would be impossible.
Take Microsoft Word, it has introduced innovations that are in use across the computing world today, but were new and unique when introduced in the late 80s and early 90s. Sure a wordprocessor is very old concept so Microsoft didn't invent the wordprocessor, nor did they invent characters on a crt screen.
What they did invent or innovate is things that are used by everyone, everyday in the computeing world. Take select and modify. Open almost any application on any platform you want, type a sentance, highlight one word in the sentance and change the Font, Font Size, etc. This concept of select and modify was a Microsoft Word innovation that didn't exist even in the GUI world until MS Word, but yet we see it as a simple concept that almost all products use. (Prior to this MS Word Innovation we hand coded tags or marked blocks to change things like Fonts. The concept of select and modify was a MS Word Innovation - and the MS Word Team should get credit.) Next take other little things from the MS Word Team (Drag and Drop of Text - Jagged Underscore of Mis-spellings, etc).
Also take a hard look at NT. It was built by Microsoft, and even though it has some things that reflect other kernel concepts, it is unique. It has the speed of a monolithic kernel without the kernel queue being tied to monolithic responses. It is also a full client/server kernel model - the first commercial one in existence. This is why Windows (Win32) is actually just a subsystem running on top of the NT kernel (Client/Server Kernel).
Sure the people Microsoft hired created this, but it was paid for and came from the Microsoft camp. Other things from the NT platform have been innovative, and you can watch open source work to mimic some of its features, even though the people working on these projects hate Microsoft.
Look at NTFS, it had journaling, object/token security, and a lot of 'advanced file system features' all the way back in 1993. Additionally they added things like file level compression, encryption, and now Volume Shadow copy technology and Vista is building on top of these NTFS features (basically using what is good about NTFS and turning on new concepts that have been possible since it was created).
There are literally hundreds of things like this that have made massive impacts on the industry, and for any of us NOT to recognize this is either admitting our ignorance or our bias. Which in the end will kill any competition to Microsoft, as they will keep leapfrogging everyone else when least expected.
Take Vista for example, the development level of infrastructure in it is years ahead of anything out there, it would be in our best interest to realize this and find what are good things and implement these technologies in the open source world.
No, we should not be managed, watch-dogged or even monitored by our property.
If we don't own it, then don't bother *selling* it.
If you wish to call it renting, or leasing, then call it that.
FYI- there is *NO* such thing as Intellectual Property. It doesn't exist. It's not a material object.
It isn't YOUR content, even though I don't really care for most of the DRM crap myself.
And they can sell it, it is called selling 'usage' - so you are bound to the terms of 'usage' by any type of media you purchase.
If it was selling, then you and everyone that bought a copy of Thriller would own the songs and the distribution and royalty rights. Instead you bought usage of the content.
This is not hard to figure out, when computer software companies are in the business of selling software usage and not the 'ownership' of the software.
So you own the 'usage' you purchase.
Again I think a lot of the hard locking that is possible with DRM is crap, but just as in the past, if the people lock their content down that hard, people won't buy it - this is where the market balances this crap out.
I bet Metro could pump out OpenDocument formatted files easily enough too. What benign motive do you think is preventing them from doing that?
None... They will probably pump out OpenDocument - Documents just fine...
Microsoft has no problem supporting OpenDocument, they just don't want to be limited by it, because OpenDocument will not go far enough for to establish standards for common things stored in documents today.
Microsoft is basically saying, ok if you want to standardize, the freaking do it all the way. Don't let the users lose INK, Sound, and other things that are stored in the document in a non-standard format. They are saying these concepts should be standardized further, so that a Document that has INK or more advanced Media stored in it, that it still should be open to be opened on more than just the application that created it and packaged up the extra pieces that there is no standard for and other programs won't be able to disply, hear, or reproduce.
Microsoft's top people screw up the terminology a bit, but go read what Microsoft really wants when it comes to a standard Document format.
For example, something more advanced that handles all this type of stuff like XAML would be closer to a better choice, and it may be Microsoft's presentation format and document, but is basically open to anyone. That is why people in the Beta group are already creating XAML based readers for *nix and OSX.
Bascially if OpenDocument did ENOUGH to support even the silly crap that can be stored in a 8yr old MS Word or WordPerfect Document, it would be a hell of a lot better than what it is now, since it doesn't provide enough standards to even do that properly. So how can you base an industry standard on this type of Docuemnt format?
Wow, that was the most breathless shilling I have seen in a long time. So MS took SVG and did an embrace and extend and it's AWESOME!. Yea right.
Really, SVG has a full 3D model that can display both raster and vector in a 3D space and link back to actually represent the UI and process UI events?
Wow I didn't realize SVG was anything more than an XML Vector format.
Oh wait, that is all SVG is... I wonder why Microsoft just didn't use only SVG and limit the Windows display to 2D vectoring. Hmm...
Maybe because they were doing both vector and raster and providing UI support (not just displaying a picture), and also a fairly rich 3D environment as well, in addition to various forms of media support and other things that can be represented and classed out like INK.
Wow that could be it, since SVG only supports about 5% of what XAML does, do you think that is why Microsoft didn't just use SVG?
Nah, that would make sense - we can't have that on slashdot when Microsoft is concerned.
So after you get done hyperventilating over this super-exciting "new" Microsoft innovation, why don't you read up on OS X and what it has done with PDF for the past five years? Quartz, also vector-based, is built on the PDF object graph, which is itself a subset of Postscript, and has allowed applications to save their contents to a PDF for years. It's one of the reasons OS X is so great with desktop publishing--what you see really is exactly what you'll get, down to the typography spacing, because the same graphics operations drawing the screen are also what get sent to the printer and what get saved to PDF.
Ok, when you get done oohing and ahhing OSX and its PDF and Quartz, maybe you might want to actually read about the WPF and XAML.
Since Postscript is a 1980s technology, I hope you surely wasn't meaning that as a compliment to OSX and its PDF usage.
Vector to Raster operations of a 3D space are really not even a part of the PDF/Postscript foundations in OSX. To get to real 3D Space in Quartz you drop to OpenGL. (Should I quote Apple on this for you, or do you know enough about Quartz?)
As for Avalon, it is like taking what Apple did with the PDF/Adobe style screen rendering and printing and jumping ahead 10years.
Quartz can be used to display great Vector and 3D graphics on the screen but aren't designed to work in the same context well together or be the actually framework of an application UI. It is there to display pictures and render images for applications, not to actually MAKE the UI of the application.
Additionally, the graphical support level between Quartz and Avalon are quite a few years apart. From the simple 3D UI design model for Avalon, i.e. every button has light source, depth, etc. In OSX, even the 'pretty things' are raster images.
In Avalon they are Vector images that have full preservation all the way to the screen, and aren't lost in rastering like in OSX.
For example, in Avalon you can truly zoom the screen to any resolution, and the UI can stay the same size in, and if Microsoft wants to do cute animations like the Genie Effect, it isn't a blocky raster image of the application, it would be a vector representation of the applicaiton, and not get blocky.
(Next time you genie a window, notice how jagged the image is coming up, and especially the edges.) Why? because OSX uses accelerated raster layers for this stuff, any original vector information has long been lost at this point in the drawing of the application. In Avalon, it isn't.
Now dig deeper into Avalon and you will see that it's XAML can represent multi layers of both raster and vector imaging, and do some pretty cool things in those layers. It can represent stuff in straight vector graphics (from blurring to alpha blends), that normally you only find in high end illustration applications.
Now compare this to a PDF file, which for advanced Vector graphics, it can't even natively represent, it has to rasterize them to a compressed JPEG to do a lot of cool effects, so all vecotr information is lost. In Avalon's XAML, it is not.
Avalon has a full 3D UI model, OSX can display 3D images, but no UI model built around it.
Imagine a floating cube, with a contact list on one side, and a button on the other, and a calendar on the other side. Now image it rotating slowly in from of a array of smoke and fog, that the cube even seems to be floating through. Now image the user clicking on the button or clicking on the contact list and typing a new contact while the cube is still spinning. Now imagine the user panning around the back side of the cube with a flick of the mouse and adding a date to the calendar, then imagine the user taking the cube and throwing it to the back of the screen to get it out of the way.
All in crisp vector representation and using nothing more than XAML. Show me where you can do that with Quartz even (without writing it in OpenGL), and also show me where you can use the Vector and PDF layers of OSX to draw this application, all vector based, a lot like a cool 3D video game.
Other than the off screen acceleration abilities in OSX, and OSX's support for PDF, it basically renders much like Windows' GDI system, which is being replaced by Avalon.
You actually said "simple and efficient" and "XML" in the same sentence. I would have shot myself after doing that. The current trend of "Its XML so its better" is really annoying. Specifically, everything which is changed to and XML based protocol becomes bloated and takes a lot more bandwidth to transmit and more processing power to read and use. It makes sense in some areas, such as certain internet protocols, but its makes no sense whatsoever in high-bandwidth/high-speed applications such as drawing to the screen. So, as to your questions, Microsoft is evil and Apple's Quartz is tons better.
Actually for people that know better, XML is more efficient in this case.
For example which would you think is faster. A) Sending a Bitmap of a desktop at 1600x1200 or B) Sending a compressed XAML based representation with both Vector and Raster information about a 1600x1200 desktop.
Here is a hint, one is 1.3mb at minimum compressed, the other could be anywhere from 30kb to 1mb at the max.
You need to read up on this. Go to Tom's hardware - which is usually not a Window's friendly site, even they kind of 'got it' from the PDC and the stuff Microsoft literally bombshelled the industry with.
That's not my point. What I'm saying is, if the kernel space is compromised or corrupted in any way, how do you know the pointer to DontDeleteThisFileItsLocked() hasn't been redirected to EraseFileByWritingBinaryZeroes()?
Ah, but see, that was my whole point...
Win32 and the full thing everyone thinks is windows like kernel32.dll etc, don't have a freaking thing to do with the kernel.
If the NT kernel gets compromised, then you are correct. If the Windows Win32 OS Subsystem kernel gets compromised, NT goes, no no, and doesn't give a crap. If another OS Subsystem was running, it could shut down and restart the Win32 Subsystem without the actual NT OS or kernel even flinching.
More likely PDF support will be built through Metro, as basically Metro is the XPS system in a Document.
As for the post above... Silly...
PDF will be rendered using Metro technologies is my guess, as they are not coding to the GDI but XPS. XPS is the new Windows/Document/Printer XAML format that the OS uses for virtually EVERYTHING.
Even CALLS between applications in exchanging data will pass XAML XPS information, let allow this is how the OS passes info to the Screen to Draw and the Pinter to Print.
GDI conversion layers are included for both way compatibility for Screen and Printer. i.e. your app uses XAML(WPF/XPS) to display something, but your driver only knows GDI, it will convert it.
Does everything Microsoft does have to be sinister?
How about this for a 'senerio'... For better performance and to take advantage of some of the new drawing capabilities in the WPF, chances are Adobe will even make a PDF reader for Windows that uses XAML/XPS/WPF to render the PDF information to the screen and the printer.
So does that make Adobe evil too?
These are such borderline (as a lot of people get them confused) concepts, but yet different. Metro is an extention of how elegant the new 3D Vector system built in Windows is - and also how different it is from anything Apple or anyone else has even attempted to do. Bascially when new applications for Windows are rendering cool graphics on the screen or printer, they are using XML in the from of XAML - which looks a lot like SVG, but has a 'chunk' of different abilities and purposes than SVG does.
So Metro is basically just saying, ok instead of drawing this to the screen, save it in a Document, a Metro Document - because the communication system for Graphic and any form of Media content throughout Windows is built in a simple and efficient XML format.
It amazes me how people here see Win32 and its Kernel as being the same as NT and its Kernel.
When some of these other posters actually start to realize people are running an NT based OS and not Windows98, then the previous posts that are jaw droppers might begin to stop.
As for drivers dropping NT, Video or a hardware level Storage driver are a couple of the few that can actually even take NT itself down. (Since losing the HardDrive tends to screw up any computer)
Kernel space is of ultimate importance to the OS. If something compromises it, there's no way whatsoever to know that continuing won't do something like erase every file you try to open off the hard disk, or disable file permission checking and locking, so that any guest user can delete kernel32.dll while it's running.
Ah, but there is BIG freaking difference between the Win32 OS Subsystem Kernel and the underlying NT kernel. That is why this is a foreign concept for some reason. NT doesn't CARE about the Subsystem OSes, they manage themselves. So if Win32 lets itself delete a DLL (which is impossible since like 2000), then it Win32's fault, not NT and the REAL OS underlying the subsystem model of the NT Architecture and Kernel.
* It makes me wonder how many XP systems that people say "never blue screen anymore" are still blue screening, they just don't know it because it's restarted itself after the BSOD
I have had so many Linux users that were newbies and it was installed by some 'super genius' Linux nut (i.e. they really had no idea about Linux) for their offices say the exact same thing to me. Famous quotes like, "It NEVER crashes, sometimes all the programs disappear and it restarts, but I have yet to see it ever crash." and "Oh, it is great, no crashes, although I do lose my work once in a while when it is doing some Panic operation and restarts."
Sadly these have also been famous lines from Mac Users, "Our systems have never crashed, our only problem is that when it restarts itself sometimes we lose what we were working on."
Geesh... And for Windows users, the BlueScreen is not always shown, so it is possible this is true for newbies as well. However, I have almost everything development wise (and with the possibility to compromise the OS, with abstract in development drivers, debuggers, etc) and I have NOT see a CRASH, REBOOT, Blue Screen or Stop Error in a long long time.
In fact the last one I can remember was a Stop error was when my 60gb drive died in my old Laptop (or was in the throws of death). ATAPI errors in logs confirmed it was a hardware problem, and drive was replaced.
If this was 1998, ya Linux or other *nixes would have the edge on stability, but Since Win2k, and users fully moving to the NT architecture of Windows, crashes or problems are NO MORE FREQUENT in the Windows world than they are on any other OS. PERIOD.
So find a new reason to complain about Windows, stability is not something you can 'intelligently' grip about anymore.
Also consider the vast user base with WindowsXP, wider range of drivers, and doing a bit more advanced things with the Hardware like running Doom, pausing the game, and then Flipping to a couple of DirectX games, with Email and several apps in the background running, and not having a single error, glitch or even performance problem since I want to keep my 60fps in Doom at 1920x1200 on my freaking laptop with Anti-Alasing enabled.
Sure, if these were tools to allow multiple people to work on the same document simultaneously, but these all seem to share data only after it's been saved back to the server. As someone else pointed out, the presentation application doesn't even use AJAX!
Actually usuing a server side technology is exactly what stuff like this is for - and yes Sharing of the application. You may want to split hairs as the server is only sharing the data between the two people, but in essence they are sharing the application. That is what sharing is about, the DATA!
From the WordProcess example even: 3. Then, you can edit it together online: If another person starts editing the same document, a small notice will appear.
Your changes will be automatically sync'd with theirs every few seconds.
what a load of crap.in all my years admining linux systems i have never seen ANYTHING even remotely close to a windows blue screen style crash. a user land process cannot blow away the system like that under linux
A) You are admitting you truly know nothing about the NT architecture. B) And it is normally called Kernel Panic, or a Random Reboot in your world. C) If you never saw any OS fail in ALL YOUR YEARS ADMINING, are you sure they are really years?
And you would want to run a low performance non-scalable application development base on them why?
Or you just purchased the HPC with hopes of getting good performance out of JAVA?:*)
This is like saying, "We heated the syrup to 400 degrees F. so it would come out of the jar faster, but now realize this won't work cause the jar keeps breaking."
Who in the heck would be trying to use something like JAVA on a HPC in the first place, and WHY?
Do you realize how much performance you are losing by not picking a better suited development platform? Or even one that doesn't make solitare chunk on a 3ghz P4.
On Windows XP SP2. Sound support? They basically threw wrappers around years of common SoundBlaster practice, and still follow them around for things like surround sound. OpenGL was creating advanced graphics long before PCs were capable of it. That's what standards are for. DirectX is in Forward-Incompatible version 9 (or 10?) already, with lots of new ad hoc "standard" features being haphazardly added. Yay.
I don't want to go into details, as I don't fully diagree with you. However a couple of clarifications.
The sound support example I gave was About Win98 and even Win 3.1, not XP, and the XP wrapper is far from a SB wrapper - truly look at the driver development levels on this.
DirectX is not a GRAPHICS standard, it is a Game development platform for the PC. That is why there is more to it than just the Video rendering. It supports everything from Input devices and network messaging to Sound and anything else Game developers need. That is why OpenGL really isn't even a competitor to DirectX anymore.
Also Microsoft was a part of the OpenGL as was behind it 100% prior to when Microsoft saw the need for Direct GPU access via a GUI environment, wanted OpenGL group to move in that direction and was denied. NT had OpenGL support back in 3.5 if I remember right, and maybe some support prior to that. OpenGL is where Microsoft was pushing NT and Windows developers until they realized that A) GPUs were going to capable of a lot more than blitting and raster acceleration and 3D capable Video was going to move the gaming (and other areas) far ahead of what was currently possible. OpenGL failed Microsoft by not wanted to offer the direct Hardware access capabilities that were required for even the gaming of the time, they were only about CAD/vectoring and simple lighting and texturing, not what the Games of the time were needing. OpenGL failed Microsoft, or DirectX would NOT exist - PERIOD.
As for the extra stuff in DirectX, most of the additions to DirectX are stuff that is a collaborative work with Microsoft and the GPU designers - Not Microsoft telling them what their GPUs or Sound Cards HAVE TO DO, but them telling Microsoft what their GPUs can do and what they want to do, and the two getting together to form a standard around this.
Make fun of DirectX, but because it does encapsulate so much of Gaming development - past video, Microsoft was able to throw together a successful console (XBOX) based just on the DirectX technologies. Not too shabby.
Also in new features of DirectX, Microsoft is moving to XNA and with the new LDDM concepts of Vista and the technologies the XBOX 360, they are not only giving the game developers what they need to make good games but ultimately give consumers better games in the end - their goal.
Microsoft could give a crap whether Pixel Shader 3.0 technology even existed for example, but it is a technology the GPU companies defined and said, this is big, and DirectX should understand it. It isn't just Microsoft saying, make your silicon do this cause we want it - ATI and NVidia would give them the finger if this was the case.
This is so far from what NT was about, and is I wouldn't know where to really start. Cutler was *nix guru and other members of the team at the time were also considered some of the best *nix people designers in the world at the time. They had the chance and full support of MS to use Xenix for NT if they wanted, that is why Microsoft held Xenix during this time.
Cutler and his team specially wanted to get past the short falls of not only the kernel technologies of the, but only past the inadequacies of the *nix model and create something 'better' - and that is basically in their words.
NT is not DOS with wallpaper. You need to do some homework here. NT is a client/server kernel technology that has full subsystem support. Something no other consumer *nix or other OS kernel can touch. That is why Win32 (what you are seeing) is just a subsystem and not even required for NT to run. They could Slap a
You MS employees keep changing your tune on what you're upset about. Why are we hearing so many conflicting things from MS employees? Why don't you admit it, you hate open standards like opendocument?
Sorry my friend, don't work for them. Just have been a developer for a long time and have worked with crap for a lot of years. I remember IBM charging us 2-3K just to write OS/2 applications after they split with Microsoft, and then Microsoft was giving us the tools and information on how to write for Windows for almost nothing. Even Sun was raping us for development tools at the time. And short of hand coding in a mix of standards, we could push out applications on a standard platform at the time.
(Even today, some of the best all around development resources are FREE and on Microsoft's developer's website, and not Just MS stuff, but everything from CSS/XML/HTML to DHTML. They don't charge for these resources and are a good place to check thing out sometimes.)
Microsoft really wasn't stupid about all of this. Even Word back when it was a Mac only and then DOS creation wasn't designed to rule the world, just fit a gap that was needed. And ya, the Mac users that still hate Microsoft should have some appreciation for them stepping in to give the Mac business credibility, Lotus and WordPerfect had no intention of doing this AT ALL in the 80s.
I remember Microsoft recognizing how important development concepts like were introduced with Visual Basic were, and rewarding the original developers very well (made them rich). And took this concept, made it a complete environment (talking VB 2.0 and 3.0 days) and making it so even a psydo-coding conceptual developer could create real applications that ran easily and just worked for people. No it wasn't the best programming language, but it was easy and did enough to be viable.
No other company has given the development or consumer base this. Sure there were other things out there, but no company or 'grand consistent design' that worked semi-ok and made it easy for both the developers and consumers without raping both of them.
Sure Windows (especially 3.1) wasn't the most perfect OS, MS even knew this, that is why NT was designed, but it worked ok for what it was at the time, and it made things a lot easier for people no matter how much anyone here hates Microsoft or other crap they have pulled.
And even though it can sound like I am a MS fan boy/girl, I am not stupid and things are not that black and white. But people here on Slashdot are often TOO far to the other extreme and are just as guilty of the FUD they accuse Microsoft of, and just as guilty of not giving credit to other companies like Microsoft as they accuse Microsoft of doing.
So take it for what its worth. The world is not Black and White, Microsoft is not Good or Evil, but they have stepped in (for their own interests and not) when needed to make stuff easier and more consistent for users and developers.
And we could argue about the OpenDocument limitations all day, and you are right, it is different, but that doesn't mean it is better. There are a lot of things just not 'defined' that NEED to be, no matter how Open you leave the packaging of other media into the document. INK is a pretty common concept - not even a Microsoft original concept, but one they have tried to keep on the table for years knowing its future importance which is now coming to fruition, and there are a lot of other issues along these lines that aren't addressed, and need to be.
Having an OpenDocument format that lets developers drop in all different tons of crap that no one else can read or use is not going to help it, things that are somewhat universal need to be defined, and not left as Open as they are, or it just won't work when a user tries to open a packaged OpenDocument that has Inks and medias their software program doesn't recognize. That is the problem.
And the irony, I truly wish lots of luck to the OpenDocument approach, but they can't be so anti-Microso
Slashdot Mirror
Not going to happen. HD WMV like 720p or 1080i requires a hefty CPU to decode. Standalone blu ray or HD DVD players aren't going to start putting hefty CPU's inside the box with fans and crap. Last I checked, there weren't even any normal standlone dvd players that could play normal non HD WMV. I've seen plenty that could play AVI of various types like xvid and divx though.
The companies selling the HD movies are going to put them in a format that an average standalone player can play. This doesn't mean WMV format.
If everyone was jumping on the HD WMV wagon, why dont we see more dvds with it? Its been availible for years. Isn't that T2 HD WMV version like 1 or 2 years old by now? Yet it still hasn't taken off.
Whats going to happen is either blu ray and HD DVD battle it out, or one comes out on top near the start and takes over. Either way it won't be WMV vids on those disks that the movie studios will be selling.
In a PC world, ya it does take some processing power, but when putting the codecs in silicon designed to process this stuff, it is pretty simple. Look at DVD's and MPEG2, even the fastest computer at the time couldn't decode MPEG2 fast enough to play (like a 200-400Mhz PII), yet DVD players were EVERYWHERE.
OH, and by the way, there are already DVD players that fully support WMV-HD formats, I suggest you do a search. Pioneer was the first to have one out for a while now.
Your complete argument shows how little you understand about this topic. If you were correct, they by your theory DVD players wouldn't have existed when they did, since a normal PC had trouble even deccoding an MPEG2 stream.
Geesh...
Have you actually looked at Java vs .NET benchmarks? It might be an idea before you post such things.
.Net technology's NDA prohibits benchmarking. If you magically have some, then I'm sure a lawyer would like to talk to you. 8P
.NET isn't the only managed development environment that can do this type of performance.
None currently exist my friend, since the current version of
How about this challenge since you think what I said was nonesense, write us all a cute java application that can render full scenes in 3D in realtime at near toy story quality. Then I will say, yep I was wrong,
Actually I would be happy to see a version of Solitaire in Java that the cards moving around the screen didn't drop a 3Ghz P4 to a crawl...
So where is your information, then? I've not heard any plans from anyone to use this format. I've not heard of any standalone players who are supporting this format (I know some play WMV, but I assume this is some kind of DRM'd WMV?) I've certainly seen noone advertising that the player is ready for HD, which I'm sure they would. All I've seen are that HD DVD and Blu-Ray are coming next year, in consoles, stand-alone players, laptops and even burners (probably very pricey), which movie studios support who and so on. If the fabled format you speak of isn't here already, it is too little, too late.
Sorry, I assumed if people were on slashdot they could figure out how to type wmv-hd or wmvhd in the google search window. My mistake... (Just because you missed the press releases, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Did you catch the news article where in florida now, you can shoot someone if they anger you? -It exists, even if YOU didn't know about it.)
If you do google, or MSN, or altavista these terms, you will find that there are several WMV-HD capable DVD players on the market, Pioneer was the first.
Additionally you will find various clips about studios like Warner Bros, etc that have stated their support wor WMV-HD.
You will also find that the majority of the movie theathers that have converted to digital and digital distribution in the past 3 years are usig WMV formats for the big screeen - so chances are, if you been to a theater lately that has Digital Display, you were watching the movie on a version of Microsoft Windows run WMV format.
Irony uh?
Guess if people hate Microsoft enough, they will stop going to the digital theaters with the better quality displays and audio, and not buy any WMV-HD DVDs...
Also as a side note, even HD-DVD has plans for its players to support WMV-HD content, thereby utiliizing better than MPEG2 type of compressions for not only more capacity but higher quality video than other codecs.
BTW, the WMV-HD codecs are something Microsoft make an 'open' codec and gave it over to a standards body. (VC1 if I remeber right)
Another nail in the coffin to Blu-Ray if they don't support more than just what Sony dictates... Blu-Ray right now has a big problem, it has Sony support, but also Sony restrictions, HD-DVD is being more open about the format and standard codecs.
Sony did this with the Mini-Disc, their Memory sticks and numerous other products. Sure they are partner with companies on the Blu-Ray technology, but bottom line, is all Blu-Ray devices are going to put money in Sony's Pocket - further closing their acceptance by manufacturers, where HD-DVD doesn't have a single royalty parent that they all have to bend over for.
And if you remember - this is what ultimately killed BetaMax, as well as made the memory stick and other 'Sony' exclusives not quite so popular in the 'real' market. Why pay royalties to Sony, when you can make a Camera use a different Flash Memory and skip the 'Sony' tax.
Even at that datarate the examples are not as sharp as they should be at that resolution, apparently even higher data rates are really required
Really? Strange the Theaters that have been moving to digital using WMV formats don't seem to have a problem with the quality. But then again, what are a few 1000 experts inthe field compared to your 'keen' eye...
Why bother?
.NET you get a much higher level of performance, and most of the benefits that Java.
.NET - and it is very important that DirectX be super fast, and if you can implement key features of it in .NET without performance loss, then it probably can do about anything.
.NET it is a no sweat do able thing.
Well, you are factually correct in your post, but miss one important issue...
Some people want applications to run faster than a snail.
With
For example, even part of Direct 9.0c is written in Managed
Java on the other hand would have a hell of a time trying to get enough performance out of the VM to do very advanced graphics for example, and with
So why bother? Speed my friend, speed. Also reliability isn't on the side of JAVA at the moment either. You still have to test your apps on all platforms, so being fully transparent to each VM on all OSes, JAVA still has a ways to go.
Take Care,
The Net Avenger
Xbox 360 only has a plain DVD drive, this means PS3 will be the only console that can play HD movies
The XBOX 360 plays HD just fine - as MOST Studios have already backed and plan to distribute HD DVD Content on regular DVDs using WMV format, just like the "T2 Extreme Edition" that was released two years or more ago.
Using WMV HD capable compression capabilities, most studios have commited to providing HD Content on Regular DVDs using the Windows HD Media format.
This is why the XBox 360 didn't need a HD-DVD player, and will actually help to promote the basic DVD using more advanced compression techniques than the VERY AGED MPEG2 format.
Goto: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia if you want to see what 5.1 or BETTER and High Definition Video that will easily fit on a dual layer standard DVD looks like.
Additionally, does anyone not see the irony? Microsoft doesn't like BlueRay because of the 'additional' content restrictions - and yet people here are like "Yeah Sony, you are making it easier to lock our movies!". WTF?
This story is not only FUD, but makes assumptions based on CRAP information.
Slashdot editors and contributors, do you even fact check or monitor each other? Your commentary and news is turning into the laughing joke of the internet.
But it was from Apple or part of a Linux distribution it would be wonderful and a perfect way to ensure even the casual user had some level of protection.
Just because they use big bad words like Microsoft, doesn't mean it is a bad idea...
"Look at NTFS, it had journaling, object/token security, and a lot of 'advanced file system features' all the way back in 1993."
NTFS was built on HPFS, which was developed in conjunction with IBM for OS/2.
Shared concepts Microsoft introduced from HPFS - yes; however, NTFS was a complete rewrite.
There is a BIG difference in many aspects of HPFS and NTFS. Or Microsoft would have just used HPFS, as they had full rights to do so...
Google this stuff if you really are curious... There are some interesting facts. For example, you could be reading about the transactional NTFS that will be in Vista, another step forward in data reliability, yet still buiding on the extensibility of the original NTFS design.
Also let me say this once again, in the computing world you cannot create something 'innovative' without there being pieces that came before it.
Just the idea of storing bits on a device is not unique to ANY File System, but yet a lot of File Systems have been innovative and added a lot to the diversity of OS file handling.
Also don't forget that HPFS was written at Microsoft, look up an employee named 'Letwin' if you have no understanding of the history of HPFS, or think Microsoft didn't create it as well.
To this day I still can't think of a *single* product that Microsoft actually "invented" completely in-house.
In a way, that was the point of the guy's article. No company can claim to have fully developed any product in house, without some concepts or technology being borrowed from what came before.
However, you can take products and the concept they introduced that changed computing as 'innovations' even though as a whole, not all of it was new, which would be impossible.
Take Microsoft Word, it has introduced innovations that are in use across the computing world today, but were new and unique when introduced in the late 80s and early 90s. Sure a wordprocessor is very old concept so Microsoft didn't invent the wordprocessor, nor did they invent characters on a crt screen.
What they did invent or innovate is things that are used by everyone, everyday in the computeing world. Take select and modify. Open almost any application on any platform you want, type a sentance, highlight one word in the sentance and change the Font, Font Size, etc. This concept of select and modify was a Microsoft Word innovation that didn't exist even in the GUI world until MS Word, but yet we see it as a simple concept that almost all products use. (Prior to this MS Word Innovation we hand coded tags or marked blocks to change things like Fonts. The concept of select and modify was a MS Word Innovation - and the MS Word Team should get credit.) Next take other little things from the MS Word Team (Drag and Drop of Text - Jagged Underscore of Mis-spellings, etc).
Also take a hard look at NT. It was built by Microsoft, and even though it has some things that reflect other kernel concepts, it is unique. It has the speed of a monolithic kernel without the kernel queue being tied to monolithic responses. It is also a full client/server kernel model - the first commercial one in existence. This is why Windows (Win32) is actually just a subsystem running on top of the NT kernel (Client/Server Kernel).
Sure the people Microsoft hired created this, but it was paid for and came from the Microsoft camp. Other things from the NT platform have been innovative, and you can watch open source work to mimic some of its features, even though the people working on these projects hate Microsoft.
Look at NTFS, it had journaling, object/token security, and a lot of 'advanced file system features' all the way back in 1993. Additionally they added things like file level compression, encryption, and now Volume Shadow copy technology and Vista is building on top of these NTFS features (basically using what is good about NTFS and turning on new concepts that have been possible since it was created).
There are literally hundreds of things like this that have made massive impacts on the industry, and for any of us NOT to recognize this is either admitting our ignorance or our bias. Which in the end will kill any competition to Microsoft, as they will keep leapfrogging everyone else when least expected.
Take Vista for example, the development level of infrastructure in it is years ahead of anything out there, it would be in our best interest to realize this and find what are good things and implement these technologies in the open source world.
No, Microsoft does not want to lose whatever amount of control they think they have due to owning the de facto document standard.
You don't know this, it is nothing but your own assumptions.
My statements were based upon documents and consistency of Microsoft's position on this throughout the whole process.
Unless you are psychic and 'truly' know better than just assumption, go chase some time portal in your backyard.
I get so sick of people thinking they know what other people's motives are, and paint them with their own myopic brush of the world.
No, we should not be managed, watch-dogged or even monitored by our property.
If we don't own it, then don't bother *selling* it.
If you wish to call it renting, or leasing, then call it that.
FYI- there is *NO* such thing as Intellectual Property. It doesn't exist. It's not a material object.
It isn't YOUR content, even though I don't really care for most of the DRM crap myself.
And they can sell it, it is called selling 'usage' - so you are bound to the terms of 'usage' by any type of media you purchase.
If it was selling, then you and everyone that bought a copy of Thriller would own the songs and the distribution and royalty rights. Instead you bought usage of the content.
This is not hard to figure out, when computer software companies are in the business of selling software usage and not the 'ownership' of the software.
So you own the 'usage' you purchase.
Again I think a lot of the hard locking that is possible with DRM is crap, but just as in the past, if the people lock their content down that hard, people won't buy it - this is where the market balances this crap out.
I bet Metro could pump out OpenDocument formatted files easily enough too. What benign motive do you think is preventing them from doing that?
None... They will probably pump out OpenDocument - Documents just fine...
Microsoft has no problem supporting OpenDocument, they just don't want to be limited by it, because OpenDocument will not go far enough for to establish standards for common things stored in documents today.
Microsoft is basically saying, ok if you want to standardize, the freaking do it all the way. Don't let the users lose INK, Sound, and other things that are stored in the document in a non-standard format. They are saying these concepts should be standardized further, so that a Document that has INK or more advanced Media stored in it, that it still should be open to be opened on more than just the application that created it and packaged up the extra pieces that there is no standard for and other programs won't be able to disply, hear, or reproduce.
Microsoft's top people screw up the terminology a bit, but go read what Microsoft really wants when it comes to a standard Document format.
For example, something more advanced that handles all this type of stuff like XAML would be closer to a better choice, and it may be Microsoft's presentation format and document, but is basically open to anyone. That is why people in the Beta group are already creating XAML based readers for *nix and OSX.
Bascially if OpenDocument did ENOUGH to support even the silly crap that can be stored in a 8yr old MS Word or WordPerfect Document, it would be a hell of a lot better than what it is now, since it doesn't provide enough standards to even do that properly. So how can you base an industry standard on this type of Docuemnt format?
Wow, that was the most breathless shilling I have seen in a long time. So MS took SVG and did an embrace and extend and it's AWESOME!. Yea right.
Really, SVG has a full 3D model that can display both raster and vector in a 3D space and link back to actually represent the UI and process UI events?
Wow I didn't realize SVG was anything more than an XML Vector format.
Oh wait, that is all SVG is... I wonder why Microsoft just didn't use only SVG and limit the Windows display to 2D vectoring. Hmm...
Maybe because they were doing both vector and raster and providing UI support (not just displaying a picture), and also a fairly rich 3D environment as well, in addition to various forms of media support and other things that can be represented and classed out like INK.
Wow that could be it, since SVG only supports about 5% of what XAML does, do you think that is why Microsoft didn't just use SVG?
Nah, that would make sense - we can't have that on slashdot when Microsoft is concerned.
So after you get done hyperventilating over this super-exciting "new" Microsoft innovation, why don't you read up on OS X and what it has done with PDF for the past five years? Quartz, also vector-based, is built on the PDF object graph, which is itself a subset of Postscript, and has allowed applications to save their contents to a PDF for years. It's one of the reasons OS X is so great with desktop publishing--what you see really is exactly what you'll get, down to the typography spacing, because the same graphics operations drawing the screen are also what get sent to the printer and what get saved to PDF.
Ok, when you get done oohing and ahhing OSX and its PDF and Quartz, maybe you might want to actually read about the WPF and XAML.
Since Postscript is a 1980s technology, I hope you surely wasn't meaning that as a compliment to OSX and its PDF usage.
Vector to Raster operations of a 3D space are really not even a part of the PDF/Postscript foundations in OSX. To get to real 3D Space in Quartz you drop to OpenGL. (Should I quote Apple on this for you, or do you know enough about Quartz?)
As for Avalon, it is like taking what Apple did with the PDF/Adobe style screen rendering and printing and jumping ahead 10years.
Quartz can be used to display great Vector and 3D graphics on the screen but aren't designed to work in the same context well together or be the actually framework of an application UI. It is there to display pictures and render images for applications, not to actually MAKE the UI of the application.
Additionally, the graphical support level between Quartz and Avalon are quite a few years apart. From the simple 3D UI design model for Avalon, i.e. every button has light source, depth, etc. In OSX, even the 'pretty things' are raster images.
In Avalon they are Vector images that have full preservation all the way to the screen, and aren't lost in rastering like in OSX.
For example, in Avalon you can truly zoom the screen to any resolution, and the UI can stay the same size in, and if Microsoft wants to do cute animations like the Genie Effect, it isn't a blocky raster image of the application, it would be a vector representation of the applicaiton, and not get blocky.
(Next time you genie a window, notice how jagged the image is coming up, and especially the edges.) Why? because OSX uses accelerated raster layers for this stuff, any original vector information has long been lost at this point in the drawing of the application. In Avalon, it isn't.
Now dig deeper into Avalon and you will see that it's XAML can represent multi layers of both raster and vector imaging, and do some pretty cool things in those layers. It can represent stuff in straight vector graphics (from blurring to alpha blends), that normally you only find in high end illustration applications.
Now compare this to a PDF file, which for advanced Vector graphics, it can't even natively represent, it has to rasterize them to a compressed JPEG to do a lot of cool effects, so all vecotr information is lost. In Avalon's XAML, it is not.
Avalon has a full 3D UI model, OSX can display 3D images, but no UI model built around it.
Imagine a floating cube, with a contact list on one side, and a button on the other, and a calendar on the other side. Now image it rotating slowly in from of a array of smoke and fog, that the cube even seems to be floating through. Now image the user clicking on the button or clicking on the contact list and typing a new contact while the cube is still spinning. Now imagine the user panning around the back side of the cube with a flick of the mouse and adding a date to the calendar, then imagine the user taking the cube and throwing it to the back of the screen to get it out of the way.
All in crisp vector representation and using nothing more than XAML. Show me where you can do that with Quartz even (without writing it in OpenGL), and also show me where you can use the Vector and PDF layers of OSX to draw this application, all vector based, a lot like a cool 3D video game.
Other than the off screen acceleration abilities in OSX, and OSX's support for PDF, it basically renders much like Windows' GDI system, which is being replaced by Avalon.
You actually said "simple and efficient" and "XML" in the same sentence. I would have shot myself after doing that. The current trend of "Its XML so its better" is really annoying. Specifically, everything which is changed to and XML based protocol becomes bloated and takes a lot more bandwidth to transmit and more processing power to read and use. It makes sense in some areas, such as certain internet protocols, but its makes no sense whatsoever in high-bandwidth/high-speed applications such as drawing to the screen. So, as to your questions, Microsoft is evil and Apple's Quartz is tons better.
Actually for people that know better, XML is more efficient in this case.
For example which would you think is faster. A) Sending a Bitmap of a desktop at 1600x1200 or B) Sending a compressed XAML based representation with both Vector and Raster information about a 1600x1200 desktop.
Here is a hint, one is 1.3mb at minimum compressed, the other could be anywhere from 30kb to 1mb at the max.
You need to read up on this. Go to Tom's hardware - which is usually not a Window's friendly site, even they kind of 'got it' from the PDC and the stuff Microsoft literally bombshelled the industry with.
That's not my point. What I'm saying is, if the kernel space is compromised or corrupted in any way, how do you know the pointer to DontDeleteThisFileItsLocked() hasn't been redirected to EraseFileByWritingBinaryZeroes()?
Ah, but see, that was my whole point...
Win32 and the full thing everyone thinks is windows like kernel32.dll etc, don't have a freaking thing to do with the kernel.
If the NT kernel gets compromised, then you are correct. If the Windows Win32 OS Subsystem kernel gets compromised, NT goes, no no, and doesn't give a crap. If another OS Subsystem was running, it could shut down and restart the Win32 Subsystem without the actual NT OS or kernel even flinching.
Which is my point...
Metro? Thy production team be disbanded...
More likely PDF support will be built through Metro, as basically Metro is the XPS system in a Document.
As for the post above... Silly...
PDF will be rendered using Metro technologies is my guess, as they are not coding to the GDI but XPS. XPS is the new Windows/Document/Printer XAML format that the OS uses for virtually EVERYTHING.
Even CALLS between applications in exchanging data will pass XAML XPS information, let allow this is how the OS passes info to the Screen to Draw and the Pinter to Print.
GDI conversion layers are included for both way compatibility for Screen and Printer. i.e. your app uses XAML(WPF/XPS) to display something, but your driver only knows GDI, it will convert it.
Does everything Microsoft does have to be sinister?
How about this for a 'senerio'... For better performance and to take advantage of some of the new drawing capabilities in the WPF, chances are Adobe will even make a PDF reader for Windows that uses XAML/XPS/WPF to render the PDF information to the screen and the printer.
So does that make Adobe evil too?
These are such borderline (as a lot of people get them confused) concepts, but yet different. Metro is an extention of how elegant the new 3D Vector system built in Windows is - and also how different it is from anything Apple or anyone else has even attempted to do. Bascially when new applications for Windows are rendering cool graphics on the screen or printer, they are using XML in the from of XAML - which looks a lot like SVG, but has a 'chunk' of different abilities and purposes than SVG does.
So Metro is basically just saying, ok instead of drawing this to the screen, save it in a Document, a Metro Document - because the communication system for Graphic and any form of Media content throughout Windows is built in a simple and efficient XML format.
I though Slashdot like using concepts like XML?
It amazes me how people here see Win32 and its Kernel as being the same as NT and its Kernel.
When some of these other posters actually start to realize people are running an NT based OS and not Windows98, then the previous posts that are jaw droppers might begin to stop.
As for drivers dropping NT, Video or a hardware level Storage driver are a couple of the few that can actually even take NT itself down. (Since losing the HardDrive tends to screw up any computer)
Kernel space is of ultimate importance to the OS. If something compromises it, there's no way whatsoever to know that continuing won't do something like erase every file you try to open off the hard disk, or disable file permission checking and locking, so that any guest user can delete kernel32.dll while it's running.
Ah, but there is BIG freaking difference between the Win32 OS Subsystem Kernel and the underlying NT kernel. That is why this is a foreign concept for some reason. NT doesn't CARE about the Subsystem OSes, they manage themselves. So if Win32 lets itself delete a DLL (which is impossible since like 2000), then it Win32's fault, not NT and the REAL OS underlying the subsystem model of the NT Architecture and Kernel.
* It makes me wonder how many XP systems that people say "never blue screen anymore" are still blue screening, they just don't know it because it's restarted itself after the BSOD
I have had so many Linux users that were newbies and it was installed by some 'super genius' Linux nut (i.e. they really had no idea about Linux) for their offices say the exact same thing to me. Famous quotes like, "It NEVER crashes, sometimes all the programs disappear and it restarts, but I have yet to see it ever crash." and "Oh, it is great, no crashes, although I do lose my work once in a while when it is doing some Panic operation and restarts."
Sadly these have also been famous lines from Mac Users, "Our systems have never crashed, our only problem is that when it restarts itself sometimes we lose what we were working on."
Geesh... And for Windows users, the BlueScreen is not always shown, so it is possible this is true for newbies as well. However, I have almost everything development wise (and with the possibility to compromise the OS, with abstract in development drivers, debuggers, etc) and I have NOT see a CRASH, REBOOT, Blue Screen or Stop Error in a long long time.
In fact the last one I can remember was a Stop error was when my 60gb drive died in my old Laptop (or was in the throws of death). ATAPI errors in logs confirmed it was a hardware problem, and drive was replaced.
If this was 1998, ya Linux or other *nixes would have the edge on stability, but Since Win2k, and users fully moving to the NT architecture of Windows, crashes or problems are NO MORE FREQUENT in the Windows world than they are on any other OS. PERIOD.
So find a new reason to complain about Windows, stability is not something you can 'intelligently' grip about anymore.
Also consider the vast user base with WindowsXP, wider range of drivers, and doing a bit more advanced things with the Hardware like running Doom, pausing the game, and then Flipping to a couple of DirectX games, with Email and several apps in the background running, and not having a single error, glitch or even performance problem since I want to keep my 60fps in Doom at 1920x1200 on my freaking laptop with Anti-Alasing enabled.
Sure, if these were tools to allow multiple people to work on the same document simultaneously, but these all seem to share data only after it's been saved back to the server. As someone else pointed out, the presentation application doesn't even use AJAX!
Actually usuing a server side technology is exactly what stuff like this is for - and yes Sharing of the application. You may want to split hairs as the server is only sharing the data between the two people, but in essence they are sharing the application. That is what sharing is about, the DATA!
From the WordProcess example even:
3. Then, you can edit it together online:
If another person starts editing the same document, a small notice will appear.
Your changes will be automatically sync'd with theirs every few seconds.
what a load of crap.in all my years admining linux systems i have never seen ANYTHING even remotely close to a windows blue screen style crash. a user land process cannot blow away the system like that under linux
A) You are admitting you truly know nothing about the NT architecture.
B) And it is normally called Kernel Panic, or a Random Reboot in your world.
C) If you never saw any OS fail in ALL YOUR YEARS ADMINING, are you sure they are really years?
You can't even run Java on them.
:*)
And you would want to run a low performance non-scalable application development base on them why?
Or you just purchased the HPC with hopes of getting good performance out of JAVA?
This is like saying, "We heated the syrup to 400 degrees F. so it would come out of the jar faster, but now realize this won't work cause the jar keeps breaking."
Who in the heck would be trying to use something like JAVA on a HPC in the first place, and WHY?
Do you realize how much performance you are losing by not picking a better suited development platform? Or even one that doesn't make solitare chunk on a 3ghz P4.
Ok, lets see a list of companies that have no litigation problems of the past first?
Then we can debate the difference between being a Monopoly and participating in illegal practicies.
Do you people have nothing better to do? Isn't this story a bit old for anyone else? Geesh...
On Windows XP SP2. Sound support? They basically threw wrappers around years of common SoundBlaster practice, and still follow them around for things like surround sound. OpenGL was creating advanced graphics long before PCs were capable of it. That's what standards are for. DirectX is in Forward-Incompatible version 9 (or 10?) already, with lots of new ad hoc "standard" features being haphazardly added. Yay.
I don't want to go into details, as I don't fully diagree with you. However a couple of clarifications.
The sound support example I gave was About Win98 and even Win 3.1, not XP, and the XP wrapper is far from a SB wrapper - truly look at the driver development levels on this.
DirectX is not a GRAPHICS standard, it is a Game development platform for the PC. That is why there is more to it than just the Video rendering. It supports everything from Input devices and network messaging to Sound and anything else Game developers need. That is why OpenGL really isn't even a competitor to DirectX anymore.
Also Microsoft was a part of the OpenGL as was behind it 100% prior to when Microsoft saw the need for Direct GPU access via a GUI environment, wanted OpenGL group to move in that direction and was denied. NT had OpenGL support back in 3.5 if I remember right, and maybe some support prior to that. OpenGL is where Microsoft was pushing NT and Windows developers until they realized that A) GPUs were going to capable of a lot more than blitting and raster acceleration and 3D capable Video was going to move the gaming (and other areas) far ahead of what was currently possible. OpenGL failed Microsoft by not wanted to offer the direct Hardware access capabilities that were required for even the gaming of the time, they were only about CAD/vectoring and simple lighting and texturing, not what the Games of the time were needing. OpenGL failed Microsoft, or DirectX would NOT exist - PERIOD.
As for the extra stuff in DirectX, most of the additions to DirectX are stuff that is a collaborative work with Microsoft and the GPU designers - Not Microsoft telling them what their GPUs or Sound Cards HAVE TO DO, but them telling Microsoft what their GPUs can do and what they want to do, and the two getting together to form a standard around this.
Make fun of DirectX, but because it does encapsulate so much of Gaming development - past video, Microsoft was able to throw together a successful console (XBOX) based just on the DirectX technologies. Not too shabby.
Also in new features of DirectX, Microsoft is moving to XNA and with the new LDDM concepts of Vista and the technologies the XBOX 360, they are not only giving the game developers what they need to make good games but ultimately give consumers better games in the end - their goal.
Microsoft could give a crap whether Pixel Shader 3.0 technology even existed for example, but it is a technology the GPU companies defined and said, this is big, and DirectX should understand it. It isn't just Microsoft saying, make your silicon do this cause we want it - ATI and NVidia would give them the finger if this was the case.
This is so far from what NT was about, and is I wouldn't know where to really start. Cutler was *nix guru and other members of the team at the time were also considered some of the best *nix people designers in the world at the time. They had the chance and full support of MS to use Xenix for NT if they wanted, that is why Microsoft held Xenix during this time.
Cutler and his team specially wanted to get past the short falls of not only the kernel technologies of the, but only past the inadequacies of the *nix model and create something 'better' - and that is basically in their words.
NT is not DOS with wallpaper. You need to do some homework here. NT is a client/server kernel technology that has full subsystem support. Something no other consumer *nix or other OS kernel can touch. That is why Win32 (what you are seeing) is just a subsystem and not even required for NT to run. They could Slap a
You MS employees keep changing your tune on what you're upset about. Why are we hearing so many conflicting things from MS employees? Why don't you admit it, you hate open standards like opendocument?
Sorry my friend, don't work for them. Just have been a developer for a long time and have worked with crap for a lot of years. I remember IBM charging us 2-3K just to write OS/2 applications after they split with Microsoft, and then Microsoft was giving us the tools and information on how to write for Windows for almost nothing. Even Sun was raping us for development tools at the time. And short of hand coding in a mix of standards, we could push out applications on a standard platform at the time.
(Even today, some of the best all around development resources are FREE and on Microsoft's developer's website, and not Just MS stuff, but everything from CSS/XML/HTML to DHTML. They don't charge for these resources and are a good place to check thing out sometimes.)
Microsoft really wasn't stupid about all of this. Even Word back when it was a Mac only and then DOS creation wasn't designed to rule the world, just fit a gap that was needed. And ya, the Mac users that still hate Microsoft should have some appreciation for them stepping in to give the Mac business credibility, Lotus and WordPerfect had no intention of doing this AT ALL in the 80s.
I remember Microsoft recognizing how important development concepts like were introduced with Visual Basic were, and rewarding the original developers very well (made them rich). And took this concept, made it a complete environment (talking VB 2.0 and 3.0 days) and making it so even a psydo-coding conceptual developer could create real applications that ran easily and just worked for people. No it wasn't the best programming language, but it was easy and did enough to be viable.
No other company has given the development or consumer base this. Sure there were other things out there, but no company or 'grand consistent design' that worked semi-ok and made it easy for both the developers and consumers without raping both of them.
Sure Windows (especially 3.1) wasn't the most perfect OS, MS even knew this, that is why NT was designed, but it worked ok for what it was at the time, and it made things a lot easier for people no matter how much anyone here hates Microsoft or other crap they have pulled.
And even though it can sound like I am a MS fan boy/girl, I am not stupid and things are not that black and white. But people here on Slashdot are often TOO far to the other extreme and are just as guilty of the FUD they accuse Microsoft of, and just as guilty of not giving credit to other companies like Microsoft as they accuse Microsoft of doing.
So take it for what its worth. The world is not Black and White, Microsoft is not Good or Evil, but they have stepped in (for their own interests and not) when needed to make stuff easier and more consistent for users and developers.
And we could argue about the OpenDocument limitations all day, and you are right, it is different, but that doesn't mean it is better. There are a lot of things just not 'defined' that NEED to be, no matter how Open you leave the packaging of other media into the document. INK is a pretty common concept - not even a Microsoft original concept, but one they have tried to keep on the table for years knowing its future importance which is now coming to fruition, and there are a lot of other issues along these lines that aren't addressed, and need to be.
Having an OpenDocument format that lets developers drop in all different tons of crap that no one else can read or use is not going to help it, things that are somewhat universal need to be defined, and not left as Open as they are, or it just won't work when a user tries to open a packaged OpenDocument that has Inks and medias their software program doesn't recognize. That is the problem.
And the irony, I truly wish lots of luck to the OpenDocument approach, but they can't be so anti-Microso