I guess what amazes me is the amount of information people here either don't know or simply don't get.
Since 2000, MS has options for storing ALL of their documents in various formats that can be predefined by any user, with the except of Access.
Microsoft could really give a crap whether or not people save the document in Word format or whatever. Microsoft's argument is that the OpenDocument specification does not GO FAR enough to do what is necessary for it be the 'standard' Open document format. There are many features of the OpenDocument model missing that have been a standard part of document structures for other products like Word and WordPerfect for years.
Yet no one here seems to grasp that this is the argument in the long run.
It was just like when Microsoft was fighting with the OpenGL group to expand to support more gaming features and better hardware direct support. OpenGL told Microsoft to go pound sand that OpenGL was good enough, and Microsoft said fine, and went off to work on WinG and what would become DirectX. It wasn't till DirectX had popularity and showed promise that a GUI could integrate and run Games seamlessly as fast as in a non-GUI environment did the OpenGL group get off their butts and decide to support more than the CAD/Engineering community.
This also was Microsoft trying to get the 'standards' of the time to PROGRESS and facing a wall, just as they are now.
As for the OpenDocument debate - Microsoft has already one this. Word from 2000 was designed to ROUND trip XML/HTML documents, even though it was not the default.DOC format.
Microsoft will simply support OpenDocument standards, as easily as everyone else has, but Microsoft will once again make the case, you can save in OpenDocument if you want, but here is what it doesn't support and what will not be able to be used in your document and saved. From loss of INK and other 'standard' formats to integration with upcoming concepts of media integration, OpenDocument users will be the poor step children until they get off their BUTTS as Microsoft has begged them to do and support more advanced and rich storage concepts in a freaking standard.
This industry has fought and stagnated so many times with companies trying to do this or that and the infighting, it is usually when Microsoft finally gets fed up with this crap, does their own thing and then waits for the infighting to stop and the other companies and projects to realize that the consumers are more important than what freaking company gets the royalties or what file format is used.
I have watched fights in the *nix world destroy their platforms, XWindows environment in-fights and destroy their markets, DOS and PC application makers in-fight and destroy any market they had, and Microsoft come along, show them how to put the freaking pieces together for a real standard (even if Microsoft created the sucker) and continue on moving the consumers forward.
From the printer and peripheral support back in the WordPerferct/Lotus DOS days to Sound standards, streaming video standards, bitmap standards, font standards, to more advanced ventures like Direct Hardware support for GPUs in DirectX and full library of abstraction for game developers.
And people wonder why Windows and Windows development took over the 90s. You could write an application easily and not have to write the video drivers and printer drivers for every freaking device you wanted to use, and you could play sound in your application without having to program it for every freaking sound card made.
And all of this without the fighting of the best Video runtimes fights, and printer PCL/Postricpt fights and all the other crap all these other companies tried to force on the consumers to keep their 'stake' in the world.
Am I the only person that remembers WordPerfect's 'standard' document structure, how it is STILL closed, and am I the only one that remembers having 500 printer drivers installed in WordPerfect and still hope an
Ok, your response is about as full of information as the crap from this article.
Some of us here actually USE what these idiots are trying to understand and report on.
Take for example your 128mb example. Notice the reviews says the 'TOP OF THE LINE'. You somehow even miss that. For the TOP OF THE LINE Glass/AERO Blurring and Transparent effects, yes it does take a video card made in the last 4 years with 64mb of RAM.
However there are two tiers of visual enhancments under the TOP TIER. With the basic being not much more than WindowsXP.
And yes the computer only had 128Mb of SYSTEM RAM, and for video it has 2Mb and a very old NeoMagic Video Card.
And my performance claims still STAND.
I'm sorry the media misleads you, but maybe trying something for yourself would be better in the long run instead of just believing the reviews or the commercials the rest of your life.
The media still 'claims' that WindowsXP needs more than 128mb of RAM to run properly; however, anything over 80mb on WindowsXP is where the swap/application scale hits, and performance with a system with 80mb of RAM will run XP faster than it will run Win9x.
BTW on the test we work with, they are not baseline OS tests, we even force our testers to use these systems, and run everything from CorelDraw to Microsoft Office.
Quartz Composer (You are kidding right?) Ok, should I just restate my post?
There is a difference between making a scene for a screen saver or a animation that is 'displayed' in an application and full 3D Vector/Raster Environment that becomes and reacts as a part of the application and even encapsulates the interface and user interaction metaphor, they are entirely two different things.
Making a ball with a cute texture bounce around or display information is not the same as having your contact list on the ball, type a new contact on the ball, then take and throw the ball to the back of the screen to get it out of your way.
Oh, also, OSX couldn't run the 3D spatial applications or the advanced vectoring abilities these tools are used to create. That sentence doesn't make any sense.
If these terms are so foreign that it impairs your ability to understand this sentence, then why are you even replying to this topic? Grammatically perfect, no, but it does make sense, go look up the words.
Actually, both are artsy type of brain activities. Hence why good programmers usually have a good ability to work from both sides of the brain as well.
Go look up Bridged Brains, there are a lot of people out there that can use more of both sides of their brain at once, even if you can't.
Oh, also, these tools are for designers for the most part, not developers, developers take the output of these tools, shove it into Visual Studio for example, and code the backend to these interfaces.
You've read it on Slashdot first, folks : hardware accelerated XML presentation layer will change the computing world ! Forget quantum computing, you really more eye candies in the end.
I'm so excited, I just pissed on the carpet.
And once again ignorance raced to prove my point for me.
If you were only paying attention to the limited information about the upcoming technologies announced by Microsoft prior to the Beta 1 Vista release and prior to the PDC, you might be considered to be informed of what is happening.
However, since Beta 1 of Vista - intentionally left out a large portion of the technology Microsoft has ready to keep people guessing, you will be lost int he crowd assuming what everyone knew several months ago about the WPF and XML.
I suggest you do some catch up reading and see what is 'really' coming from Redmond. Even as someone that gets PAID to follow their stuff, I was significantly surprised at what they have to bring to the table and how it will impact and advance some of the things we take for granted.
So make your jokes, close your eyes, ears and scream la la la, while the rest of the computing industry passes you by if you choose.
If there isn't something out of what new to what people know about the upcoming technology and development platforms that were released at the PDC that don't make almost everyone on these boards go, "Ok, even if it is Microsoft, that is cool." I will eat my hat.
Mmmm, am i wrong or vista has all that using D3D? how the hell can the os have 3d acceleration without an 3d api as d3d or ogl?
There is a different between providing the DirectX foundation classes for Games, which Windows hansles quite well, and providing this functionality to the OS's GUI as well.
Just like OSX you can play many great OpenGL 3D games, but when moving Icons around and doing cute animations, these are not 3D, onr 3D accelerated effects, as OSX has no concept of 3D in the Presentation Layer.
Go read the articles on this, Microsoft explains the difference Between DirectX and the GUI WPF, and why you woulndn't want to write a high end game in WPF, but could use it to make one one kick ass visually rich application. With literally only a few lines of code to do things people developing 3D used to take months to setup.
When I got Win98, my Mac had already been playing multiple audio streams for 6 years!
And as another poster pointed out, it wasn't even a feature of Win98, it was a feature of the soundblaster cards at the time.
Actually no, and also no...
Just cause another poster says it was the audio cards doesn't make it true. We had a full development team that had to turn ship with Win98, as we could let the OS handle and mix the audio.
We wouldn't of had a project and abandoned a whole section devoted to sound if we kind of didn't understand what Win98 was doing.
As for your Mac doing this for 6 years... Hmm.. I Just fired up an old Mac running 8.1 - it is the last of the non-PPC models and came out in 1995 I think. (3 years before Win98) And sorry, it is too dusty to crawl back and look at label.
And even with System 8.1 the sound could not play more than one audio stream at a time. When one application or sound was playing, and another application or sound tried to play, it would stop the first audio stream instead of letting it continue to play and just sample it in.
So if your Mac had been doing it for 6 years before Windows 98, you had a 'magical' one, that they gave you to use in the padded room, um I mean your house.
So like I said... Um.. No, and No...
If you people don't have the knowledge or even the tools to test this to know, why do you waste your time posting?
I'm sure Zack probably a really nice guy, and a genius when it comes to what he is doing.
However, I would tend to put my attention at Microsoft, as they have a room of Zacks with enough support and test equipment to make all of us drool cranking out this stuff from their R&D offices.
Just a thought here... At least, lets hope Zack is smart enough to be following what Microsoft is doing, so maybe he will be on top of things and can get you guys into the next generation of computing, since most everyone hear does the cover ears, eyes and sing la la la when they hear Microsoft is actually doing something good that is going to change the computing world.
So lets have some hope in Zack not closing his eyes and ears and screaming la la la after the Microsoft PDC last week.
afaik, the X Windows System is not frozen in time as you seem to think. Far from it, cool and exciting modular technologies either building up on it or adding value are coming. Check it out
True, it is not locked in time. But to do what Microsoft is pulling off would require some extensive rewrite, and to some extent break many of the pillars of the XWindow design model.
BTW Should I mention I might be one the geeks you guys probably pay homage to when sacrificing a goat in your *nix rituals on Fridays?
I use to work on both concept and design with the XWindows project in the late 80s and early 90s... I might know a bit about it, just a bit though. *wink*
XPS is not a traditional 'windowing protocal' like XWindows, but it is built to be network aware, that is why Microsoft is expecting the new RD and TS Clients that take avantage of the WPF will have excellent remote perofamance, as they aren't having to push as many raster images over the network anymore.
Win98 didn't support multiple sound streams simultaneously. If you had that functionality, it's because you had a sound card such as the SoundBlaster Live that had hardware support for it.
Here it is almost 10 years later, and you still don't realize it did this... Wow...
As a developer we had to abandon our 'audio-mix' code when the 98 Betas hit, as it was natively supported on ANY sound card available.
Find the oldest, crapiest sound card you can, I use the one built in to my 1997 laptop as an example.
Have The ocmputer running the very old Windows98.
Open Media Player or whatever you like and play a song, then run any program that makes sound.
You will notice the SONG IN THE BACKGROUND doesn't stop playing when program you are using makes a sound. It is downsampled in realtime right to the hardware via Win98.
Subsquently, Win2k, and XP have also also had this ability. That is why I can listen to Green Day in the background on Media Player when I am playing Matrix or Wow or SWG. (And still have the full sounds of the game as well.)
Please don't be so stupid to make me find the 8yr old documents that show where Windows98's new driver model added the ability to multi-plex audio streams to a single sound device.
Because it could, NO MATTER WHAT FREAKING SOUND CARD IT WAS.
Wow, you totally really hate MS uh and way over thought this a bit.
BTW Vista and the 3D presentation layer runs just fine on 5yr old 3D video cards. (And this is having 'some of the UI effects')
The only requirement for the 'advanced' glass UI effects is DirectX 9 support and 64mb of Video RAM, and if you will look, even these cards have been pretty much common place for several years... Remember the big Comdex event a few YEARS ago where NVidia released the 5200 and subsequent DirectX 9 cards for dirt cheap.
And btw, cards like the 5200 from NVidia don't even require power that cannot be supplied by AGP or even the old PCI interface.
SO as for this being a huge wattage drain, now add in that 95% of the current computers will require no modifications what so ever.
We also have been running vista on a 1997 laptop - 266mhz with 128mb of RAM. It outperforms Win9x on the same machine, and in some tests even out performs WindowsXP. And this is a debug bloated beta with lots of graphical overhead neither WindowsXP or WIn9x have.
So unless you are complaining that 266mhz PII and 128mb of RAM are too high system requirements, then you really don't know what you are talking about.
Oh, and we were running some of the 2D and 3D WPF applications on it, and they even worked.
If these boards are about not bowing to the 'MS', then people in here should do a bit of research on what the 'MS' is actually doing and how it may impact the world, especailly if people in here are trying to even remotely keep up with the R&D that has been producing this stuff in some hidden closet for the past 5 years.
As it stands now, the technologies Microsoft are starting to disclose to its partners and Developer are bombshells of technology that they didn't even realize were going to happen and happen the way that they are. SO if these guys are blown away and surprised, the Open Source community might want to pay attention a little closer because if they 'get' it on the stuff Microsoft is actually making avialable they too will be blown away and find themselves a light year behind, and we will be left AGAIN with KDE and other parts of Linux and BSD that are only scrambling to catch up to Windows, and end up looking like Windows - again.
KDE users already have translucent menus, translucent xterms, multiple-desktop pagers, completely configurable widgets, etc. Porting the Vista gui to linux would be a step backwards for us.
Also, from the article:
eventually ported to... older versions of Windows ah, another reason NOT to upgrade. So why are they doing this? Perhaps its to try to keep people from defecting to linux, or to OSX or another of the BSDs. Their market share has nowhere to go but down, and they know it. It's just a question of how far, how fast. With this anouncement we can say:
Wow, when did KDE get a 3D XML based programming and presentation layer, that uses hardware acceleration without letting the OS have OpenGL take over?
And when did KDE get an XML based screen to printer rich document subsystem - that is encapsulates color matching and media that Adobe has even yet to offer or make for the OSX for Apple to use?
Oh, that right, it neither freaking exist..
Reading these posts, especially after the bombshells that were dropped at the PDC, and the developers that GET what Microsoft is pulling off, just amaze me.
Even looking at the new presentation system in Windows, it replaces GDI, has abilities accessible via XAML and C++ programming that even many illustration programs don't support - multi-layer texturing, muli-level/layer transparency, mixed raster and vector composition, etc. - a document format based around it, and printer output that is an exact correlation. (A system years ahead of what even OSX and Abode.) (And don't even try to compare PDF/Postscript or tell me that Apple had color matching years ago. - PDF/Postscript doesn't compare to what these technologies are doing, as they are not just in a document structure, it is how the whole OS's UI works and support so many more advanced vector concepts than PDF, and as for color matching - even Windows 95 had native Screen and Printer color management profiles - this is something different.)
And then add on that the new LDDM driver model Microsoft has come up with. (It is something that is so over looked.) The LDDM model lets applications actually share and use GPU devices on the system at the same time, even if the GPU doesn't have the memory support for the applications.
In other words, 3D acceleration is being brought to applications and will co-exists with other applications and games seamlessly. It is like when Windows98 allowed multiple audio streams to be processed and play simultaneously. Not a single review even noticed this, but yet it was a big step ahead in consumer OSes. LDDM is basically doing this with GPUs and video - and on a much grander scale. And don't tell me you can do this with OpenGL, or that some of the new 'pretty' project of KDE are doing these things, they simply are not. It would require abandoning the complete XWindows underlying structure of KDE to bring forth these features, unless KDE abandons XWindows and renders the whole OS and applications in OpenGL - and allows GPU and GPU memory sharing for OpenGL applications seamlessly.
At least if you are going to make smart comments, have half a mind about what you are talking about.
We've all seen Firefox/Mozilla/Konqueror/etc. bugs. What we like is that we also see the fixes really quick, too.
Really, I can show you a list of bugs and problems that have existed in Mozilla for a couple of years now, if that is timely to you, then I don't want to know your definition of slow. (And yes, some of these could be used to exploit the browser engine if someone wanted to take the time to do so.)
Microsoft does 2-3 day patches on critical vulnerbilities, and monthly patchs on all the little stuff.
The only bad rap or slow response of MS is more related to companies and users never installing the updates - not Microsoft providing them. - Go look up the statistics of the last major attacks on MS products - the fixes were available before they were exploited.
The article may be right about the 100-song limitation being Apple's fault, but all the other design flaws of the Rokr are the fault of Motorola and/or cell carriers, not Apple
You have to be kidding right? There is actually a SURGE of online downloadable content by these providers, they WANT you to download stuff, they get the air time.
Additionaly most carriers have unlimited usage on nights and weekends (even the provider partnered with Apple on this). The downloads could be made only availble during this window of time if this is why Apple was concerned.
Give me a break...
Have you seen the phones from Verizon? Full 3G, you can watch Video online on them, as well as TV Clips, download music, play 3D games online and download games.
This is just Apple trying to get their nose in a new market and failing miserably. They can't even do what other phones and providers have been offering for YEARS now.
Wow, I thought only MS products and Internet Explorer were capable of having bugs or exploits.
Were the people championing these other browser lying to me, or just ignorant in the fact that all software when given mass distribution will exhibit growing pains and exploits will be found no matter how good the programmers think they are.
Hm... (Ok, mark this as Flamebait - even though what I say is factually correct.)
Lesse, creation time of audio + offset from that time gives the time at which anything was spoken. Most word processors have an "insert current date + time" command which can generally be assigned to an intuitive keystroke. So, press "record current time" and start typing your note.
Or there's always Audacity, which allows you to insert flags in the audio project at arbitrary locations. It's pretty easy to hit ctrl+b, type a number, and go on. Both solutions involve separate documents that can be bundled together with.zip, etc.
Ok, now play back the audio, and have it show the exact note as it was written, either typed or a hand note or a doodle. Line by line or pen stroke by pen stroke...
Your example kills automation and is only a way way street, as the audio playback can pull up the notes for you, you have to find the timeline yourself.
People somehow never see past typed text as a 'document'. What about Ink, what about video taken, what about the phone conversation associated with the meeting, what about the URL's shared and IMed, what about the Applications shared and examples demonstrated or reports shown also timelined and embedded?
Wow, would be nice to just wrap all this up into a simple 'document' of a meeting. (And each of these forms of media and embedded 'documents' can still be used independantly and extracted or used however you would like.)
It is handy to have a marketing meeting, where I am taking notes, looking at products, web references, samples of the artwork, expense project reports and even the IM's and Email all added to my 'document' with a chronilogical timeline - that even syncs with the audio timeline.
And there a couple of products that do this, and don't care what other document formats you use or embed. The cheapest is OneNote from Microsoft. The OneNote pages are not an open format, but any piece of information I put in it, can be any file format, open or not, and they are stored in a handy thing called a folder with the OneNote pages.
Having it so in your example both timelines can be referenced independantly and have them at any time reference the other 'automatically' is not such a hard concept...
Doesn't this site promote thinking outside the box anymore?
, but a lot of previous generation equipment (from tape players, to CD->Tape conversions, to early MP3 players) often were unable to produce much volume, period
Ya, that was so true about 15years ago...
However even the crappiest and cheapest CD Players, Media Players(MP3), and converters like Cassette input devices, there hasn't been one I have seen in a LONG time that can't produce adequate volume for even the crappiest car stereo.
This is not really an area to give any iPod Kudos over. I could put together parts from radio shack that would produce adequate output volume and quality.
So the guy reviewing this using an example of plugging it into his car shows how little he really knows about audio and how far from a techno-audiophile he is...
No, there are reasons people will want to be able to *synchronize* that data together, but that has nothing to do with the idea that you need one mother-of-all-document-format to store that different data in the same file.
The sane thing to do would be to store the video in a (common, open) video format, and your (textual) notes hold a time index into the video for synchronization, thus the text and video are separate from each other, *and* in standardized formats, *and* held in the same file using a standardized container format like a zip file. So you can still use open standards which keep your own options open, and keep your synchronization too.
Wow, wish I had read this cool response before today...
It is amazing that if someone offers a brief example, people will formulate a full rebuttal based just on the example alone, and yet don't even grasp the concept whatsoever.
The best line from your article is in reference to using all Open formats for the 'fragmented' timeline example I gave, and you suggest a 'standardized' container like a 'zip' file.
Ok, done laughing... You don't get the concept, and instead, you actually argued my point.
VoIP is something people would want stored in a document, even if it is (using your example) indexed to a timeline of edited notes and other fragments of information during this indexed timeline.
So once again, PEOPLE WOULD WANT this type of information stored in a document, even if you break the document apart in 'open' formats with an 'open format' index.
Thanks for giving an even further detailed example of why someone would do exactly what I said they do and want to do.
(Although I think you accidentally got off on a tangent arguing against Microsoft's XML and document formats instead of an 'open' solution, but that was not my point or my argument.)
I know this is a fake computer, but these are speacs close to those that Bill himself expects computers to reach in 2 years. He also said the OS will waste, I mean take advantage of the newer and faster CPUs and additional RAM. Then again a 3 Ghz CPU with 2 Gigs of RAM is the minimum requirement, Vista will horde
Wow you really know a lot about Vista, can I be cool like you too someday?
Oh wait, I am actually running Vista on a 128mb, 266mhz Laptop, and sadly it is out-benching Win9x and even WinXP...
But hey I still want to be cool like you someday and make up neat stories I pull out of my butt.
Does iTunes 5 fix the issue where volume adjustment settings aren't transfered over to the iPod?
Apparently not, guess it is beyond Apple's technological abilities, or they haven't found someone to write the code for them to 'borrow'.
Sad that a 5yr old Media Player from Microsoft is capable of such a simple concept when transfering songs to a device (of a company of your choice), and will even volume level when ripping the music to a CD as well.
Yah Apple! Proof of another company that has a better marketing team than a development team. Catering once again to the sheep screaming - "I don't care if it works, it is cute, and the ads on TV are cool!"
This Apple Ad Sponsored by Slashdot Apple Zealots....
You have to be kidding me... So are we going to see new product press releases for every piece of hardware and innovative products thrown on the front page of what was an Open Source News Site...
How about a product or press release for every truly innovative portable media player that doesn't lock you into one platform, one store for music, and a bastardized file format that has become Apple proprietary crap.
Why don't we see products from companies like Creative and some of the 'original' innovators in the portable music market, that not only out feature the Apple products, but are 'Open' in the sense they support many music and video formats, open formats even without locking you into one online store or one application to load the devices, and even allow Open formats to play on them.
And for God's sake, the IPod Phone - Wow it holds 100 songs... Such innovation here - my year old phone has over 200 MP3's on it, 2 Movies, and is a simple 'cheap' non-smart phone.
And yet Apple gets some sort of Kudos for all these 'wonderful' products - even on a tech-savvy site like Slashdot?
Oh, wait, Apple ripped off a *nix Open Source Project to rake in $$, so now they are the darling of the Open Source Community and should get all the free press and FUD we can throw at them.
Apple and their IPods are so against what the Open Source movement is about, they even make Microsoft and their formats for media look Open. (At least you can use the Microsoft formats without license from Microsoft, and even use the formats without using Windows Media Player to download the Media, and can buy songs from any online store, and can play everything from the Microsoft formats to Open formats side by side on the same device.)
Give me a freaking break. IPods are cute, but I will stick to a player that I can CHOOSE what stores I buy music from online, and even select what file formats I want to use on the device, and even be able to transfer Media on to the device without Apple's Proprietary Software, Proprietary File Formats and Apple's DRM control of what I put on my device...
Has the entire Open Source Movement halted or gone mad and everyone that dabbled in Open Source or *nix become Apple sheep eating out of the Apple marketing machine's feedbag?
I tried for three days to get bluetooth to work on my pc laptop, and never did. I did it with a powerbook in 3 minutes. That's the performance I'm concerned about, not a few seconds here or there.
Really that's scary... Should they even let you post here if this is such a daunting task.
Here let me help: 1) Turn on Bluetooth Device (or insert BlueTooth Dongle) 2) Insert Driver CD. 3) Press the Next Button 4) Connect to your Bluetooth device.
I have cell phones, mice, headsets, and scores of devices using bluetooth. Built in Bluetooth, to Bluetooth Dongles on almost every computer I own.
Never once was it a problem to install or make any of them work AUTOMATICALLY, with only a click or to when setting up the initial device discovery and profile that I wanted to use for the device. (Something that is considerably more robust that Apple's Bluetooth offerings.)
I love these stories, Wow Apple is so much easier, cause I tried forever to get it to work with la la la... These people are either really scary, or making crap up.
Secondly, this would be more a Bluetooth issue, as the driver and the stacks come directly from the Bluetooth development groups, not from Microsoft, and EVEN not from Apple.
(WTF. Do you like admitting you aren't bright enough to turn on a light too?)
Slashdot Mirror
I guess what amazes me is the amount of information people here either don't know or simply don't get.
.DOC format.
Since 2000, MS has options for storing ALL of their documents in various formats that can be predefined by any user, with the except of Access.
Microsoft could really give a crap whether or not people save the document in Word format or whatever. Microsoft's argument is that the OpenDocument specification does not GO FAR enough to do what is necessary for it be the 'standard' Open document format. There are many features of the OpenDocument model missing that have been a standard part of document structures for other products like Word and WordPerfect for years.
Yet no one here seems to grasp that this is the argument in the long run.
It was just like when Microsoft was fighting with the OpenGL group to expand to support more gaming features and better hardware direct support. OpenGL told Microsoft to go pound sand that OpenGL was good enough, and Microsoft said fine, and went off to work on WinG and what would become DirectX. It wasn't till DirectX had popularity and showed promise that a GUI could integrate and run Games seamlessly as fast as in a non-GUI environment did the OpenGL group get off their butts and decide to support more than the CAD/Engineering community.
This also was Microsoft trying to get the 'standards' of the time to PROGRESS and facing a wall, just as they are now.
As for the OpenDocument debate - Microsoft has already one this. Word from 2000 was designed to ROUND trip XML/HTML documents, even though it was not the default
Microsoft will simply support OpenDocument standards, as easily as everyone else has, but Microsoft will once again make the case, you can save in OpenDocument if you want, but here is what it doesn't support and what will not be able to be used in your document and saved. From loss of INK and other 'standard' formats to integration with upcoming concepts of media integration, OpenDocument users will be the poor step children until they get off their BUTTS as Microsoft has begged them to do and support more advanced and rich storage concepts in a freaking standard.
This industry has fought and stagnated so many times with companies trying to do this or that and the infighting, it is usually when Microsoft finally gets fed up with this crap, does their own thing and then waits for the infighting to stop and the other companies and projects to realize that the consumers are more important than what freaking company gets the royalties or what file format is used.
I have watched fights in the *nix world destroy their platforms, XWindows environment in-fights and destroy their markets, DOS and PC application makers in-fight and destroy any market they had, and Microsoft come along, show them how to put the freaking pieces together for a real standard (even if Microsoft created the sucker) and continue on moving the consumers forward.
From the printer and peripheral support back in the WordPerferct/Lotus DOS days to Sound standards, streaming video standards, bitmap standards, font standards, to more advanced ventures like Direct Hardware support for GPUs in DirectX and full library of abstraction for game developers.
And people wonder why Windows and Windows development took over the 90s. You could write an application easily and not have to write the video drivers and printer drivers for every freaking device you wanted to use, and you could play sound in your application without having to program it for every freaking sound card made.
And all of this without the fighting of the best Video runtimes fights, and printer PCL/Postricpt fights and all the other crap all these other companies tried to force on the consumers to keep their 'stake' in the world.
Am I the only person that remembers WordPerfect's 'standard' document structure, how it is STILL closed, and am I the only one that remembers having 500 printer drivers installed in WordPerfect and still hope an
Ok, your response is about as full of information as the crap from this article.
Some of us here actually USE what these idiots are trying to understand and report on.
Take for example your 128mb example. Notice the reviews says the 'TOP OF THE LINE'. You somehow even miss that. For the TOP OF THE LINE Glass/AERO Blurring and Transparent effects, yes it does take a video card made in the last 4 years with 64mb of RAM.
However there are two tiers of visual enhancments under the TOP TIER. With the basic being not much more than WindowsXP.
And yes the computer only had 128Mb of SYSTEM RAM, and for video it has 2Mb and a very old NeoMagic Video Card.
And my performance claims still STAND.
I'm sorry the media misleads you, but maybe trying something for yourself would be better in the long run instead of just believing the reviews or the commercials the rest of your life.
The media still 'claims' that WindowsXP needs more than 128mb of RAM to run properly; however, anything over 80mb on WindowsXP is where the swap/application scale hits, and performance with a system with 80mb of RAM will run XP faster than it will run Win9x.
BTW on the test we work with, they are not baseline OS tests, we even force our testers to use these systems, and run everything from CorelDraw to Microsoft Office.
Quartz Composer (You are kidding right?)
Ok, should I just restate my post?
There is a difference between making a scene for a screen saver or a animation that is 'displayed' in an application and full 3D Vector/Raster Environment that becomes and reacts as a part of the application and even encapsulates the interface and user interaction metaphor, they are entirely two different things.
Making a ball with a cute texture bounce around or display information is not the same as having your contact list on the ball, type a new contact on the ball, then take and throw the ball to the back of the screen to get it out of your way.
Oh, also, OSX couldn't run the 3D spatial applications or the advanced vectoring abilities these tools are used to create.
That sentence doesn't make any sense.
If these terms are so foreign that it impairs your ability to understand this sentence, then why are you even replying to this topic? Grammatically perfect, no, but it does make sense, go look up the words.
One is left brain. One is right brain.
Asking a coder to do artwork is silly.
Actually, both are artsy type of brain activities. Hence why good programmers usually have a good ability to work from both sides of the brain as well.
Go look up Bridged Brains, there are a lot of people out there that can use more of both sides of their brain at once, even if you can't.
Oh, also, these tools are for designers for the most part, not developers, developers take the output of these tools, shove it into Visual Studio for example, and code the backend to these interfaces.
OMG QUARTZ!!!! Do your stuff Apple lawsuit ninjas!
Ya, but slight problem. Apple doesn't offer any development tools like this.
Oh, also, OSX couldn't run the 3D spatial applicaitons or the advanced vectoring abilities these tools are used to create.
Guess we will have to wait for OSXI before Apple can try to sue.
So Ninja Day will have to be cancelled for a couple of years... *cry*
So does this mean they are cool like Apple now for using Open Source technology in a product they sell?
:)
Can we start applauding them like we do Apple and put them on the same pedestal?
Are they are new heroes now, just like we made Apple when they started using Free Open Source technology instead of developing their own versions?
(PS the Flamebait Mod should be added to this post automatically)
You've read it on Slashdot first, folks : hardware accelerated XML presentation layer will change the computing world ! Forget quantum computing, you really more eye candies in the end.
I'm so excited, I just pissed on the carpet.
And once again ignorance raced to prove my point for me.
If you were only paying attention to the limited information about the upcoming technologies announced by Microsoft prior to the Beta 1 Vista release and prior to the PDC, you might be considered to be informed of what is happening.
However, since Beta 1 of Vista - intentionally left out a large portion of the technology Microsoft has ready to keep people guessing, you will be lost int he crowd assuming what everyone knew several months ago about the WPF and XML.
I suggest you do some catch up reading and see what is 'really' coming from Redmond. Even as someone that gets PAID to follow their stuff, I was significantly surprised at what they have to bring to the table and how it will impact and advance some of the things we take for granted.
So make your jokes, close your eyes, ears and scream la la la, while the rest of the computing industry passes you by if you choose.
If there isn't something out of what new to what people know about the upcoming technology and development platforms that were released at the PDC that don't make almost everyone on these boards go, "Ok, even if it is Microsoft, that is cool." I will eat my hat.
Mmmm, am i wrong or vista has all that using D3D? how the hell can the os have 3d acceleration without an 3d api as d3d or ogl?
There is a different between providing the DirectX foundation classes for Games, which Windows hansles quite well, and providing this functionality to the OS's GUI as well.
Just like OSX you can play many great OpenGL 3D games, but when moving Icons around and doing cute animations, these are not 3D, onr 3D accelerated effects, as OSX has no concept of 3D in the Presentation Layer.
Go read the articles on this, Microsoft explains the difference Between DirectX and the GUI WPF, and why you woulndn't want to write a high end game in WPF, but could use it to make one one kick ass visually rich application. With literally only a few lines of code to do things people developing 3D used to take months to setup.
When I got Win98, my Mac had already been playing multiple audio streams for 6 years!
And as another poster pointed out, it wasn't even a feature of Win98, it was a feature of the soundblaster cards at the time.
Actually no, and also no...
Just cause another poster says it was the audio cards doesn't make it true. We had a full development team that had to turn ship with Win98, as we could let the OS handle and mix the audio.
We wouldn't of had a project and abandoned a whole section devoted to sound if we kind of didn't understand what Win98 was doing.
As for your Mac doing this for 6 years... Hmm.. I Just fired up an old Mac running 8.1 - it is the last of the non-PPC models and came out in 1995 I think. (3 years before Win98) And sorry, it is too dusty to crawl back and look at label.
And even with System 8.1 the sound could not play more than one audio stream at a time. When one application or sound was playing, and another application or sound tried to play, it would stop the first audio stream instead of letting it continue to play and just sample it in.
So if your Mac had been doing it for 6 years before Windows 98, you had a 'magical' one, that they gave you to use in the padded room, um I mean your house.
So like I said... Um.. No, and No...
If you people don't have the knowledge or even the tools to test this to know, why do you waste your time posting?
I'm sure Zack probably a really nice guy, and a genius when it comes to what he is doing.
However, I would tend to put my attention at Microsoft, as they have a room of Zacks with enough support and test equipment to make all of us drool cranking out this stuff from their R&D offices.
Just a thought here... At least, lets hope Zack is smart enough to be following what Microsoft is doing, so maybe he will be on top of things and can get you guys into the next generation of computing, since most everyone hear does the cover ears, eyes and sing la la la when they hear Microsoft is actually doing something good that is going to change the computing world.
So lets have some hope in Zack not closing his eyes and ears and screaming la la la after the Microsoft PDC last week.
afaik, the X Windows System is not frozen in time as you seem to think. Far from it, cool and exciting modular technologies either building up on it or adding value are coming. Check it out
True, it is not locked in time. But to do what Microsoft is pulling off would require some extensive rewrite, and to some extent break many of the pillars of the XWindow design model.
BTW Should I mention I might be one the geeks you guys probably pay homage to when sacrificing a goat in your *nix rituals on Fridays?
I use to work on both concept and design with the XWindows project in the late 80s and early 90s... I might know a bit about it, just a bit though. *wink*
XPS is not a traditional 'windowing protocal' like XWindows, but it is built to be network aware, that is why Microsoft is expecting the new RD and TS Clients that take avantage of the WPF will have excellent remote perofamance, as they aren't having to push as many raster images over the network anymore.
Win98 didn't support multiple sound streams simultaneously. If you had that functionality, it's because you had a sound card such as the SoundBlaster Live that had hardware support for it.
Here it is almost 10 years later, and you still don't realize it did this... Wow...
As a developer we had to abandon our 'audio-mix' code when the 98 Betas hit, as it was natively supported on ANY sound card available.
Find the oldest, crapiest sound card you can, I use the one built in to my 1997 laptop as an example.
Have The ocmputer running the very old Windows98.
Open Media Player or whatever you like and play a song, then run any program that makes sound.
You will notice the SONG IN THE BACKGROUND doesn't stop playing when program you are using makes a sound. It is downsampled in realtime right to the hardware via Win98.
Subsquently, Win2k, and XP have also also had this ability. That is why I can listen to Green Day in the background on Media Player when I am playing Matrix or Wow or SWG. (And still have the full sounds of the game as well.)
Please don't be so stupid to make me find the 8yr old documents that show where Windows98's new driver model added the ability to multi-plex audio streams to a single sound device.
Because it could, NO MATTER WHAT FREAKING SOUND CARD IT WAS.
Wow, you totally really hate MS uh and way over thought this a bit.
BTW Vista and the 3D presentation layer runs just fine on 5yr old 3D video cards. (And this is having 'some of the UI effects')
The only requirement for the 'advanced' glass UI effects is DirectX 9 support and 64mb of Video RAM, and if you will look, even these cards have been pretty much common place for several years... Remember the big Comdex event a few YEARS ago where NVidia released the 5200 and subsequent DirectX 9 cards for dirt cheap.
And btw, cards like the 5200 from NVidia don't even require power that cannot be supplied by AGP or even the old PCI interface.
SO as for this being a huge wattage drain, now add in that 95% of the current computers will require no modifications what so ever.
We also have been running vista on a 1997 laptop - 266mhz with 128mb of RAM. It outperforms Win9x on the same machine, and in some tests even out performs WindowsXP. And this is a debug bloated beta with lots of graphical overhead neither WindowsXP or WIn9x have.
So unless you are complaining that 266mhz PII and 128mb of RAM are too high system requirements, then you really don't know what you are talking about.
Oh, and we were running some of the 2D and 3D WPF applications on it, and they even worked.
If these boards are about not bowing to the 'MS', then people in here should do a bit of research on what the 'MS' is actually doing and how it may impact the world, especailly if people in here are trying to even remotely keep up with the R&D that has been producing this stuff in some hidden closet for the past 5 years.
As it stands now, the technologies Microsoft are starting to disclose to its partners and Developer are bombshells of technology that they didn't even realize were going to happen and happen the way that they are. SO if these guys are blown away and surprised, the Open Source community might want to pay attention a little closer because if they 'get' it on the stuff Microsoft is actually making avialable they too will be blown away and find themselves a light year behind, and we will be left AGAIN with KDE and other parts of Linux and BSD that are only scrambling to catch up to Windows, and end up looking like Windows - again.
KDE users already have translucent menus, translucent xterms, multiple-desktop pagers, completely configurable widgets, etc.
... older versions of Windows
Porting the Vista gui to linux would be a step backwards for us.
Also, from the article:
eventually ported to
ah, another reason NOT to upgrade. So why are they doing this? Perhaps its to try to keep people from defecting to linux, or to OSX or another of the BSDs.
Their market share has nowhere to go but down, and they know it. It's just a question of how far, how fast. With this anouncement we can say:
Wow, when did KDE get a 3D XML based programming and presentation layer, that uses hardware acceleration without letting the OS have OpenGL take over?
And when did KDE get an XML based screen to printer rich document subsystem - that is encapsulates color matching and media that Adobe has even yet to offer or make for the OSX for Apple to use?
Oh, that right, it neither freaking exist..
Reading these posts, especially after the bombshells that were dropped at the PDC, and the developers that GET what Microsoft is pulling off, just amaze me.
Even looking at the new presentation system in Windows, it replaces GDI, has abilities accessible via XAML and C++ programming that even many illustration programs don't support - multi-layer texturing, muli-level/layer transparency, mixed raster and vector composition, etc. - a document format based around it, and printer output that is an exact correlation. (A system years ahead of what even OSX and Abode.) (And don't even try to compare PDF/Postscript or tell me that Apple had color matching years ago. - PDF/Postscript doesn't compare to what these technologies are doing, as they are not just in a document structure, it is how the whole OS's UI works and support so many more advanced vector concepts than PDF, and as for color matching - even Windows 95 had native Screen and Printer color management profiles - this is something different.)
And then add on that the new LDDM driver model Microsoft has come up with. (It is something that is so over looked.) The LDDM model lets applications actually share and use GPU devices on the system at the same time, even if the GPU doesn't have the memory support for the applications.
In other words, 3D acceleration is being brought to applications and will co-exists with other applications and games seamlessly. It is like when Windows98 allowed multiple audio streams to be processed and play simultaneously. Not a single review even noticed this, but yet it was a big step ahead in consumer OSes. LDDM is basically doing this with GPUs and video - and on a much grander scale.
And don't tell me you can do this with OpenGL, or that some of the new 'pretty' project of KDE are doing these things, they simply are not. It would require abandoning the complete XWindows underlying structure of KDE to bring forth these features, unless KDE abandons XWindows and renders the whole OS and applications in OpenGL - and allows GPU and GPU memory sharing for OpenGL applications seamlessly.
At least if you are going to make smart comments, have half a mind about what you are talking about.
We've all seen Firefox/Mozilla/Konqueror/etc. bugs. What we like is that we also see the fixes really quick, too.
Really, I can show you a list of bugs and problems that have existed in Mozilla for a couple of years now, if that is timely to you, then I don't want to know your definition of slow. (And yes, some of these could be used to exploit the browser engine if someone wanted to take the time to do so.)
Microsoft does 2-3 day patches on critical vulnerbilities, and monthly patchs on all the little stuff.
The only bad rap or slow response of MS is more related to companies and users never installing the updates - not Microsoft providing them. - Go look up the statistics of the last major attacks on MS products - the fixes were available before they were exploited.
The article may be right about the 100-song limitation being Apple's fault, but all the other design flaws of the Rokr are the fault of Motorola and/or cell carriers, not Apple
You have to be kidding right? There is actually a SURGE of online downloadable content by these providers, they WANT you to download stuff, they get the air time.
Additionaly most carriers have unlimited usage on nights and weekends (even the provider partnered with Apple on this). The downloads could be made only availble during this window of time if this is why Apple was concerned.
Give me a break...
Have you seen the phones from Verizon? Full 3G, you can watch Video online on them, as well as TV Clips, download music, play 3D games online and download games.
This is just Apple trying to get their nose in a new market and failing miserably. They can't even do what other phones and providers have been offering for YEARS now.
Wow, I thought only MS products and Internet Explorer were capable of having bugs or exploits.
Were the people championing these other browser lying to me, or just ignorant in the fact that all software when given mass distribution will exhibit growing pains and exploits will be found no matter how good the programmers think they are.
Hm... (Ok, mark this as Flamebait - even though what I say is factually correct.)
Lesse, creation time of audio + offset from that time gives the time at which anything was spoken. Most word processors have an "insert current date + time" command which can generally be assigned to an intuitive keystroke. So, press "record current time" and start typing your note.
.zip, etc.
Or there's always Audacity, which allows you to insert flags in the audio project at arbitrary locations. It's pretty easy to hit ctrl+b, type a number, and go on. Both solutions involve separate documents that can be bundled together with
Ok, now play back the audio, and have it show the exact note as it was written, either typed or a hand note or a doodle. Line by line or pen stroke by pen stroke...
Your example kills automation and is only a way way street, as the audio playback can pull up the notes for you, you have to find the timeline yourself.
People somehow never see past typed text as a 'document'. What about Ink, what about video taken, what about the phone conversation associated with the meeting, what about the URL's shared and IMed, what about the Applications shared and examples demonstrated or reports shown also timelined and embedded?
Wow, would be nice to just wrap all this up into a simple 'document' of a meeting. (And each of these forms of media and embedded 'documents' can still be used independantly and extracted or used however you would like.)
It is handy to have a marketing meeting, where I am taking notes, looking at products, web references, samples of the artwork, expense project reports and even the IM's and Email all added to my 'document' with a chronilogical timeline - that even syncs with the audio timeline.
And there a couple of products that do this, and don't care what other document formats you use or embed. The cheapest is OneNote from Microsoft. The OneNote pages are not an open format, but any piece of information I put in it, can be any file format, open or not, and they are stored in a handy thing called a folder with the OneNote pages.
Having it so in your example both timelines can be referenced independantly and have them at any time reference the other 'automatically' is not such a hard concept...
Doesn't this site promote thinking outside the box anymore?
, but a lot of previous generation equipment (from tape players, to CD->Tape conversions, to early MP3 players) often were unable to produce much volume, period
Ya, that was so true about 15years ago...
However even the crappiest and cheapest CD Players, Media Players(MP3), and converters like Cassette input devices, there hasn't been one I have seen in a LONG time that can't produce adequate volume for even the crappiest car stereo.
This is not really an area to give any iPod Kudos over. I could put together parts from radio shack that would produce adequate output volume and quality.
So the guy reviewing this using an example of plugging it into his car shows how little he really knows about audio and how far from a techno-audiophile he is...
No, there are reasons people will want to be able to *synchronize* that data together, but that has nothing to do with the idea that you need one mother-of-all-document-format to store that different data in the same file.
The sane thing to do would be to store the video in a (common, open) video format, and your (textual) notes hold a time index into the video for synchronization, thus the text and video are separate from each other, *and* in standardized formats, *and* held in the same file using a standardized container format like a zip file. So you can still use open standards which keep your own options open, and keep your synchronization too.
Wow, wish I had read this cool response before today...
It is amazing that if someone offers a brief example, people will formulate a full rebuttal based just on the example alone, and yet don't even grasp the concept whatsoever.
The best line from your article is in reference to using all Open formats for the 'fragmented' timeline example I gave, and you suggest a 'standardized' container like a 'zip' file.
Ok, done laughing... You don't get the concept, and instead, you actually argued my point.
VoIP is something people would want stored in a document, even if it is (using your example) indexed to a timeline of edited notes and other fragments of information during this indexed timeline.
So once again, PEOPLE WOULD WANT this type of information stored in a document, even if you break the document apart in 'open' formats with an 'open format' index.
Thanks for giving an even further detailed example of why someone would do exactly what I said they do and want to do.
(Although I think you accidentally got off on a tangent arguing against Microsoft's XML and document formats instead of an 'open' solution, but that was not my point or my argument.)
I know this is a fake computer, but these are speacs close to those that Bill himself expects computers to reach in 2 years. He also said the OS will waste, I mean take advantage of the newer and faster CPUs and additional RAM. Then again a 3 Ghz CPU with 2 Gigs of RAM is the minimum requirement, Vista will horde
Wow you really know a lot about Vista, can I be cool like you too someday?
Oh wait, I am actually running Vista on a 128mb, 266mhz Laptop, and sadly it is out-benching Win9x and even WinXP...
But hey I still want to be cool like you someday and make up neat stories I pull out of my butt.
Does iTunes 5 fix the issue where volume adjustment settings aren't transfered over to the iPod?
Apparently not, guess it is beyond Apple's technological abilities, or they haven't found someone to write the code for them to 'borrow'.
Sad that a 5yr old Media Player from Microsoft is capable of such a simple concept when transfering songs to a device (of a company of your choice), and will even volume level when ripping the music to a CD as well.
Yah Apple! Proof of another company that has a better marketing team than a development team. Catering once again to the sheep screaming - "I don't care if it works, it is cute, and the ads on TV are cool!"
Geesh....
This Apple Ad Sponsored by Slashdot Apple Zealots....
You have to be kidding me... So are we going to see new product press releases for every piece of hardware and innovative products thrown on the front page of what was an Open Source News Site...
How about a product or press release for every truly innovative portable media player that doesn't lock you into one platform, one store for music, and a bastardized file format that has become Apple proprietary crap.
Why don't we see products from companies like Creative and some of the 'original' innovators in the portable music market, that not only out feature the Apple products, but are 'Open' in the sense they support many music and video formats, open formats even without locking you into one online store or one application to load the devices, and even allow Open formats to play on them.
And for God's sake, the IPod Phone - Wow it holds 100 songs... Such innovation here - my year old phone has over 200 MP3's on it, 2 Movies, and is a simple 'cheap' non-smart phone.
And yet Apple gets some sort of Kudos for all these 'wonderful' products - even on a tech-savvy site like Slashdot?
Oh, wait, Apple ripped off a *nix Open Source Project to rake in $$, so now they are the darling of the Open Source Community and should get all the free press and FUD we can throw at them.
Apple and their IPods are so against what the Open Source movement is about, they even make Microsoft and their formats for media look Open. (At least you can use the Microsoft formats without license from Microsoft, and even use the formats without using Windows Media Player to download the Media, and can buy songs from any online store, and can play everything from the Microsoft formats to Open formats side by side on the same device.)
Give me a freaking break. IPods are cute, but I will stick to a player that I can CHOOSE what stores I buy music from online, and even select what file formats I want to use on the device, and even be able to transfer Media on to the device without Apple's Proprietary Software, Proprietary File Formats and Apple's DRM control of what I put on my device...
Has the entire Open Source Movement halted or gone mad and everyone that dabbled in Open Source or *nix become Apple sheep eating out of the Apple marketing machine's feedbag?
Why don't you just rename the site to AppleSlashDot © Apple Computer Inc.
I tried for three days to get bluetooth to work on my pc laptop, and never did. I did it with a powerbook in 3 minutes. That's the performance I'm concerned about, not a few seconds here or there.
Really that's scary... Should they even let you post here if this is such a daunting task.
Here let me help:
1) Turn on Bluetooth Device (or insert BlueTooth Dongle)
2) Insert Driver CD.
3) Press the Next Button
4) Connect to your Bluetooth device.
I have cell phones, mice, headsets, and scores of devices using bluetooth. Built in Bluetooth, to Bluetooth Dongles on almost every computer I own.
Never once was it a problem to install or make any of them work AUTOMATICALLY, with only a click or to when setting up the initial device discovery and profile that I wanted to use for the device. (Something that is considerably more robust that Apple's Bluetooth offerings.)
I love these stories, Wow Apple is so much easier, cause I tried forever to get it to work with la la la... These people are either really scary, or making crap up.
Secondly, this would be more a Bluetooth issue, as the driver and the stacks come directly from the Bluetooth development groups, not from Microsoft, and EVEN not from Apple.
(WTF. Do you like admitting you aren't bright enough to turn on a light too?)