Didn't a certain someone allegedly say that 640KB was enough for everyone in the dim and distant past?
You have to bear in mind that the guy's post that prompted this works in research, it may come to nothing, like WinFS did.
But if it does, then its uses on the desktop may not be apparent yet. Back in the days before Xerox came up with the concept of a GUI, telling anyone that in less than half a century, your home PC would use up to 4GB of RAM would have been mind-boggling.
First, look at the MSDN article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd285359.aspx unless it's against your religion to do so.
Microsoft is touting Warp as a software fallback where the PC hardware is not up to the job.
Well done to the ~5 posters who have seen this, your score a +10 on the scale of comprehending the MSDN article. -10 to Linix/Mac fanboys for seeing the word Microsoft, frothing at the mouth.
A software fallback makes perfect sense on several fronts:
1. Older software that uses GDI/GDI+ gets a performance increase on Windows 7. GDI/GDI+ performance got walloped with Vista. Try running some VBA in Excel that builds graphs for example. Stupid new diver model and crap implementation from device manufactures.
2. Direct 3D games. The article mentions device CAPS, that's capabilities if I recall. Game coders have to examine what the device (graphics card) is capable of doing before trying to do it. EG: If its ATI and it's model X do routine Y, otherwise do Z. The code should just run in software emulation. It will be easier for developers to at least run the code without it crashing and identify where the fallback to software is. They are then free to develop a better workaround without having crash dumps to understand. EG quicker game development.
3. And in my opinion, most important. The GUI, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) was introduced with Vista and on XP. While I think it's next to impossible to truly describe the potential impact of this, I'll have a go.
a. It's vector based. Resolution and device independent graphics for example. Coordinates are double precision, if someone makes a massive monitor or a monitor with 600 pixels per inch capability, WPF will still cope without the display looking crap.
b. Floating point precision colour. Put this in perspective, most colour values are byte based. One byte for red, another for blue, another for green and one more for alpha or opacity (transparency). A byte = 256 values. Ignoring the alpha channel, that's 256x256x256 colours, or 16,777,216 colours. A single (32bit) can be positive or negative in value, so lets be conservative and only use positive values; that's 3.402823e38 or 340,282,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Now multiply that by 3 for red, green and blue and you get: 120,846,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That should be enough colours to be getting on with. I imagine that display technology will take a while to catch up with a figure like that.
c. 3D. Developers can use 3D in their applications without an intimate knowledge of how the Direct 3D API works.
d. Recently,.net 3.5 SP1 introduced the ability for programmers to use shaders as well. It's early days yet; so useful implementations are bit thin on the ground. But you can introduce motion blur when a user is scrolling through a list of photos for example.
All of this stuff does not come cheep, so MS are offloading as much as they can onto the GPU. But if the GPU fails for some reason, they don't want GUI developers trying to understand why and code round the problem. Warp enables them to at least have the app run, regardless of hardware. They are then free to either fix the problem or up the hardware limits.
This technology has bugger all to do with playing Crysis, it's used as an example for gods sake.
Evolution has not changed; it still continues to exert itself. The thing is that, as a species, we exert changes on our environment with a speed that natural evolution cannot keep up with.
We have a problem when it comes to our own evolution; we are starting to control it more and more.
Vain ideals are becoming more prevalent, straightening teeth, bigger boobs, smooth skin. Everyone in the western world at least seems to be trying to aspire to the more and more artificial ideals of looks.
I remember having a conversation with a chap at work where I stated that teeth where a crap evolutionary design because they required care, rot and cause pain when doing so. I said it would be better if we had a hard chitin that constantly replenished rather than teeth. He said that it would look weird. Not if everyone had it I replied.
My point is that we are increasingly in control of our own evolution and the human race is starting to have choice between random mutations brought about by natural selection & the environment and between starting to manipulate our own destinies.
While I don't agree with feeding people with crap food or polluting the world with a legacy of poisons that affect future generations to come, what is the problem with starting to rectify inherent problems with human physic? For instance, allowing people to tolerate higher or lower temperatures. Better usage of body fats to combat obesity, becoming repellent to disease spreading insects, better adaptation to different pressures or tolerance to zero gravity.
There are a huge amount of changes that could be made to the human body with no change to its looks. Even then, who would really care? Thirty thousand years ago, I bet our ancestors would have looked out of place with a shave and an Armani suit. Would it really matter to humans two thousand years from now if they did not look exactly as we do? As long as they survive, we are doing what all life on this planet does and ensuring the survival of the species.
For the religious readers out there, I doubt a deity constructed us in their image. If they did, they gave us a really substandard chassis. If we are truly in their own image then I expect the deity has been suffering nearly an eternity with arthritis, cancer and dementia. Never mind praying to the deity, we should all be preying for it!
If we are still around a few thousand years from now, I hope we have grown up.
OK, I admit it, I hate games that force me to insert a cd/dvd in order to play and I hate the idea of having to log on to confirm that I still have a legal game and have not stolen it. It makes me mad that I should have to put up with additional protection software that I have to install and is frequently not even mentioned in a 45 page EULA that I'd need a degree in law to understand.
That said, I still buy games I want to play because I don't want to see the PC die as a gaming platform. And, on the occasions where I play something I enjoy for ~20-40+ hours, I try to think that the price of £30 was less than a night in the pub and the taxi ride home.
When it comes to the DRM, try to see it from the developers/publishers point of view. If they see their game being downloaded 60,000 times on torrent sites, they are going to think that they need to stop it happening and the only way they can see how to stop it happening is by introducing more restrictive control of the software.
If you want to see less restrictive DRM, then the publishers/developers have to be convinced that they will see a good return on their investment. Games have changed over the years, the days of an individual coder releasing a game solo are almost gone, check out the credits of any new game now and you'll die of boredom before it finishes. All of those people need to be paid.
There is a middle ground though, many people have said that they have tried out a pirated version, liked it and purchased a game. Why not go a stage further? Write to the publisher/developer and say that you have a pirated version and include the cash for the full retail price of it? You were going to purchase it anyway and you can do it in an anonymous manner (postal/money order, cash). Sure, it's going to piss off retailers, but the publisher/developer will get the FULL retail amount (and I bet they will love you for it). Explain in the letter that you like the game and want to pay them, but are unhappy with the DRM. Even if you can't afford the full price, send them what you think is fair or can afford and explain why.
Even if they trace you, I think they would have a hard time persuading a judge that you did wrong by pirating the software and then paying for it.
Try something like the following,
To whom it may concern,
I have a pirated version of XXX. I have pirated it because I dislike your copy protection. However, because I enjoy XXX, I feel that I should reimburse you for the time and effort you took to develop it. Please find enclosed the retail amount for XXX.
Mr. Mongoose Disciple,
I salute you! Upon reading the parent post and logging in to comment upon it, I find that many people have already beat me to it. Your post however is a succinct response to a poster who clearly has not used.Net.
What never fails to amaze me with most/. posters is the zeal that they put into putting down operating systems and programming languages down that, they themselves don't use or understand.
If.Net is 'withering on the vine', why does Mono exist? It must be a huge undertaking to create a compatible framework in Linux. Why bother if the framework (no matter who developed it) is fundamentally crap?
A fairly small installation is a bit open ended. Small enough to fit on a CD? A USB memory stick? A floppy disk?
If by small, the poster meant one of the first two options, I'd go for using the.Net framework. The Express editions are free. Even in it's cut down mode, the IDE is really powerful. Languages available are C#, C++ & VB (though a lot has changed between VB5/6 & VB.Net).
The.Net route also offers some advantages:
1. It may matter to your boss or client that you're using a MS development tool. A mindset thing rather than anything practical.
2. There is a serial port component that you can use without having to dip into the API. Which is nice.
3. Because.Net code is managed code, it's far harder to introduce hard to find bugs such as creating memory leaks because of failing to release handles to the API (unmanaged code) or things like buffer overruns. That's not to say it's not possible, just that the garbage collector & the framework design helps a lot.
4. If the target machine(s) already have the framework on them, it's possible to just copy your app to them without having to create an install program.
5. DLL hell is greatly reduced. DLL's created in.Net can either live in the same folder as your app or be installed in the 'Global Assembly Cache (GAC). It's possible for the GAC to hold multiple versions of the same assembly.
That may whet the posters appetite.
However, if the install needs to fit on a floppy, I'd say that Delphi would be the way to go:
1. Creates pretty small exe files with no need for any other files.
2. HUGE amount of components available, I'm sure there are loads of versions of serial port wrappers available.
3. Speed. Delphi is on a par with most C++ compilers. That said,.Net is no slouch either, I saw a version of Quake V1 written in.Net C++ that was only 10 FPS slower than the original.
4. The only downside I see with Delphi is (last time I looked) the free version was for personal use only.
Both solutions have good documentation. Personally, I'd say that.Net has a better set of documentation, but both have a wealth of recourses available on the interweb.
The best language in the world will not make up for a bad UI design. Check out
http://www.rha.com/ui_hall_of_shame.htm/
for examples of how it's not done.
Sadders
If your case/mobo can take it and you don't mind some noise, get a Thermalright XP-120 with a 120mm 90cfm fan. Keeps my 3GHz Prescott under 55C @100% cpu useage. Also, use a good compound like Artic Silver 5. Only time it went above 55C was a really hot summer day.
Well, what a surprise,
Another/. post that could have been interesting buggered by the non MS crowd and the ill informed.
SP2 IS of immense use to all users of Windows XP (sorry I don't care about what OSX or your flavour of Linux does, why the hell should you be posting on a subject that's MS specific anyway?)
Remember that XP is supplied with most home PC's. And that the majority of the users of those home PC's don't have a clue about the internet, its dangers or what they can do to protect themselves. And these people don't read/. Nor do they change the O/S they use. They don't know how!
Anything that helps the average user from becoming a zombie or stops them from running that nasty email script has to be a good thing. If it comes at the price of a small amount of software working, then I for one am happy to pay that price.
Wining about stuff like in-house software not working or obscure app not working is daft. Most of the time, if the software does not work any more it's because it has flaws that would make it susceptible to exploitation. Upgrade or change it. And if you're in-house developers are too lazy to get off their collective arses and find out why their software wont work, then perhaps they are in the wrong profession.
As for MS forcing SP2 on users. So what? The majority of people they are trying to help don't even know they need help.
Slashdot Mirror
Utter utter bollocks.
Didn't a certain someone allegedly say that 640KB was enough for everyone in the dim and distant past?
You have to bear in mind that the guy's post that prompted this works in research, it may come to nothing, like WinFS did.
But if it does, then its uses on the desktop may not be apparent yet. Back in the days before Xerox came up with the concept of a GUI, telling anyone that in less than half a century, your home PC would use up to 4GB of RAM would have been mind-boggling.
First, look at the MSDN article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd285359.aspx unless it's against your religion to do so. Microsoft is touting Warp as a software fallback where the PC hardware is not up to the job. Well done to the ~5 posters who have seen this, your score a +10 on the scale of comprehending the MSDN article. -10 to Linix/Mac fanboys for seeing the word Microsoft, frothing at the mouth. A software fallback makes perfect sense on several fronts: 1. Older software that uses GDI/GDI+ gets a performance increase on Windows 7. GDI/GDI+ performance got walloped with Vista. Try running some VBA in Excel that builds graphs for example. Stupid new diver model and crap implementation from device manufactures. 2. Direct 3D games. The article mentions device CAPS, that's capabilities if I recall. Game coders have to examine what the device (graphics card) is capable of doing before trying to do it. EG: If its ATI and it's model X do routine Y, otherwise do Z. The code should just run in software emulation. It will be easier for developers to at least run the code without it crashing and identify where the fallback to software is. They are then free to develop a better workaround without having crash dumps to understand. EG quicker game development. 3. And in my opinion, most important. The GUI, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) was introduced with Vista and on XP. While I think it's next to impossible to truly describe the potential impact of this, I'll have a go. a. It's vector based. Resolution and device independent graphics for example. Coordinates are double precision, if someone makes a massive monitor or a monitor with 600 pixels per inch capability, WPF will still cope without the display looking crap. b. Floating point precision colour. Put this in perspective, most colour values are byte based. One byte for red, another for blue, another for green and one more for alpha or opacity (transparency). A byte = 256 values. Ignoring the alpha channel, that's 256x256x256 colours, or 16,777,216 colours. A single (32bit) can be positive or negative in value, so lets be conservative and only use positive values; that's 3.402823e38 or 340,282,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Now multiply that by 3 for red, green and blue and you get: 120,846,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That should be enough colours to be getting on with. I imagine that display technology will take a while to catch up with a figure like that. c. 3D. Developers can use 3D in their applications without an intimate knowledge of how the Direct 3D API works. d. Recently, .net 3.5 SP1 introduced the ability for programmers to use shaders as well. It's early days yet; so useful implementations are bit thin on the ground. But you can introduce motion blur when a user is scrolling through a list of photos for example.
All of this stuff does not come cheep, so MS are offloading as much as they can onto the GPU. But if the GPU fails for some reason, they don't want GUI developers trying to understand why and code round the problem. Warp enables them to at least have the app run, regardless of hardware. They are then free to either fix the problem or up the hardware limits.
This technology has bugger all to do with playing Crysis, it's used as an example for gods sake.
Evolution has not changed; it still continues to exert itself. The thing is that, as a species, we exert changes on our environment with a speed that natural evolution cannot keep up with. We have a problem when it comes to our own evolution; we are starting to control it more and more. Vain ideals are becoming more prevalent, straightening teeth, bigger boobs, smooth skin. Everyone in the western world at least seems to be trying to aspire to the more and more artificial ideals of looks. I remember having a conversation with a chap at work where I stated that teeth where a crap evolutionary design because they required care, rot and cause pain when doing so. I said it would be better if we had a hard chitin that constantly replenished rather than teeth. He said that it would look weird. Not if everyone had it I replied. My point is that we are increasingly in control of our own evolution and the human race is starting to have choice between random mutations brought about by natural selection & the environment and between starting to manipulate our own destinies. While I don't agree with feeding people with crap food or polluting the world with a legacy of poisons that affect future generations to come, what is the problem with starting to rectify inherent problems with human physic? For instance, allowing people to tolerate higher or lower temperatures. Better usage of body fats to combat obesity, becoming repellent to disease spreading insects, better adaptation to different pressures or tolerance to zero gravity. There are a huge amount of changes that could be made to the human body with no change to its looks. Even then, who would really care? Thirty thousand years ago, I bet our ancestors would have looked out of place with a shave and an Armani suit. Would it really matter to humans two thousand years from now if they did not look exactly as we do? As long as they survive, we are doing what all life on this planet does and ensuring the survival of the species. For the religious readers out there, I doubt a deity constructed us in their image. If they did, they gave us a really substandard chassis. If we are truly in their own image then I expect the deity has been suffering nearly an eternity with arthritis, cancer and dementia. Never mind praying to the deity, we should all be preying for it! If we are still around a few thousand years from now, I hope we have grown up.
OK, I admit it, I hate games that force me to insert a cd/dvd in order to play and I hate the idea of having to log on to confirm that I still have a legal game and have not stolen it. It makes me mad that I should have to put up with additional protection software that I have to install and is frequently not even mentioned in a 45 page EULA that I'd need a degree in law to understand.
That said, I still buy games I want to play because I don't want to see the PC die as a gaming platform. And, on the occasions where I play something I enjoy for ~20-40+ hours, I try to think that the price of £30 was less than a night in the pub and the taxi ride home.
When it comes to the DRM, try to see it from the developers/publishers point of view. If they see their game being downloaded 60,000 times on torrent sites, they are going to think that they need to stop it happening and the only way they can see how to stop it happening is by introducing more restrictive control of the software.
If you want to see less restrictive DRM, then the publishers/developers have to be convinced that they will see a good return on their investment. Games have changed over the years, the days of an individual coder releasing a game solo are almost gone, check out the credits of any new game now and you'll die of boredom before it finishes. All of those people need to be paid.
There is a middle ground though, many people have said that they have tried out a pirated version, liked it and purchased a game. Why not go a stage further? Write to the publisher/developer and say that you have a pirated version and include the cash for the full retail price of it? You were going to purchase it anyway and you can do it in an anonymous manner (postal/money order, cash). Sure, it's going to piss off retailers, but the publisher/developer will get the FULL retail amount (and I bet they will love you for it). Explain in the letter that you like the game and want to pay them, but are unhappy with the DRM. Even if you can't afford the full price, send them what you think is fair or can afford and explain why.
Even if they trace you, I think they would have a hard time persuading a judge that you did wrong by pirating the software and then paying for it.
Try something like the following,
To whom it may concern,
I have a pirated version of XXX. I have pirated it because I dislike your copy protection. However, because I enjoy XXX, I feel that I should reimburse you for the time and effort you took to develop it. Please find enclosed the retail amount for XXX.
Mr. Mongoose Disciple, I salute you! Upon reading the parent post and logging in to comment upon it, I find that many people have already beat me to it. Your post however is a succinct response to a poster who clearly has not used .Net.
What never fails to amaze me with most /. posters is the zeal that they put into putting down operating systems and programming languages down that, they themselves don't use or understand.
If .Net is 'withering on the vine', why does Mono exist? It must be a huge undertaking to create a compatible framework in Linux. Why bother if the framework (no matter who developed it) is fundamentally crap?
A fairly small installation is a bit open ended. Small enough to fit on a CD? A USB memory stick? A floppy disk? If by small, the poster meant one of the first two options, I'd go for using the .Net framework. The Express editions are free. Even in it's cut down mode, the IDE is really powerful. Languages available are C#, C++ & VB (though a lot has changed between VB5/6 & VB .Net).
The .Net route also offers some advantages:
1. It may matter to your boss or client that you're using a MS development tool. A mindset thing rather than anything practical.
2. There is a serial port component that you can use without having to dip into the API. Which is nice.
3. Because .Net code is managed code, it's far harder to introduce hard to find bugs such as creating memory leaks because of failing to release handles to the API (unmanaged code) or things like buffer overruns. That's not to say it's not possible, just that the garbage collector & the framework design helps a lot.
4. If the target machine(s) already have the framework on them, it's possible to just copy your app to them without having to create an install program.
5. DLL hell is greatly reduced. DLL's created in .Net can either live in the same folder as your app or be installed in the 'Global Assembly Cache (GAC). It's possible for the GAC to hold multiple versions of the same assembly.
That may whet the posters appetite.
However, if the install needs to fit on a floppy, I'd say that Delphi would be the way to go:
1. Creates pretty small exe files with no need for any other files.
2. HUGE amount of components available, I'm sure there are loads of versions of serial port wrappers available.
3. Speed. Delphi is on a par with most C++ compilers. That said, .Net is no slouch either, I saw a version of Quake V1 written in .Net C++ that was only 10 FPS slower than the original.
4. The only downside I see with Delphi is (last time I looked) the free version was for personal use only.
Both solutions have good documentation. Personally, I'd say that .Net has a better set of documentation, but both have a wealth of recourses available on the interweb.
The best language in the world will not make up for a bad UI design. Check out
http://www.rha.com/ui_hall_of_shame.htm/
for examples of how it's not done.
Sadders
BestNicksRTaken,
If your case/mobo can take it and you don't mind some noise, get a Thermalright XP-120 with a 120mm 90cfm fan. Keeps my 3GHz Prescott under 55C @100% cpu useage. Also, use a good compound like Artic Silver 5. Only time it went above 55C was a really hot summer day.
Shadders.
Well, what a surprise, Another /. post that could have been interesting buggered by the non MS crowd and the ill informed.
SP2 IS of immense use to all users of Windows XP (sorry I don't care about what OSX or your flavour of Linux does, why the hell should you be posting on a subject that's MS specific anyway?)
Remember that XP is supplied with most home PC's. And that the majority of the users of those home PC's don't have a clue about the internet, its dangers or what they can do to protect themselves. And these people don't read /. Nor do they change the O/S they use. They don't know how!
Anything that helps the average user from becoming a zombie or stops them from running that nasty email script has to be a good thing. If it comes at the price of a small amount of software working, then I for one am happy to pay that price.
Wining about stuff like in-house software not working or obscure app not working is daft. Most of the time, if the software does not work any more it's because it has flaws that would make it susceptible to exploitation. Upgrade or change it. And if you're in-house developers are too lazy to get off their collective arses and find out why their software wont work, then perhaps they are in the wrong profession.
As for MS forcing SP2 on users. So what? The majority of people they are trying to help don't even know they need help.