But this user controlled scaling should be part of the OS not the browser or even worse in CSS, where 'pixel' starts to mean 'angle'.
The person who lost his glasses wants to control the font sizes not only in web pages. Or the eagle-eyed person wants to have small text in all apps.
In RiscOS there was a system of logical and physical pixels; applications only dealt with the logical ones.
There even was a screen mode for the visually impaired to have a ratio of 4.
The font subsystem provided very good anti-aliasing, making even 6 pt text very readable. (But they cheated: the font definitions had extra information for hinting and scaffolding.)
I can only hope that 300dpi screens are coming soon...
<rant subject="font rendering">
RiscOS font drawing didn't suffer from jumps in weight or size like Windows does.
Type a line of text in MS Word then copy the line 7 times. Now make for each line the text one point larger then the previous, start at size 10. You'll see that the top half of the lines the font has a lower weight then the bottom half! And the sizes are not linear, the last characters should be on a straight diagonal!
If you can have good anti-aliasing on a 25 Mhz ARM3 & 4 MB RAM and only 8 shades of gray, you could have superb font rendering on a modern pc.
But hell, no: MS gives us 'Font Smoothing' and 'Cleartype' which should be called 'Font Blurring' and 'Moirétype'.
And why can't I have a 7.35 point font size?? My 1991 machine could do it.
</rant>
"...a device the size of a small suitcase could produce enough biodiesel to power several farms..."
"...biodiesel could be produced between 10 and 100 times faster..."
"...coating the microchannels with a non-toxic metallic catalyst...would eliminate the need for the chemical catalyst..."
The way for faster/efficient code (both application and OS) is through better algorithms, not by implementing the same algorithm more efficient.
The way for more reliable code is not by manually inserting numerous checks at every level, but to have a system that is reliable in it's foundations. These foundations are the place to do these checks always and efficient.
How fast is this efficient OS with all the malware software (anti-virus, anti-spyware, multi-level firewalls, other anti-X stuff to come) using cycles and memory?
Cutting corners doesn't speed anything up:
Not the development cycle, not the execution of code.
Taking the off-road shortcut makes your trip shorter, not faster, hell, not even shorter 'cause you need more trips to the repair shop.
Using a system of sandbox/managed code makes (should make) programmers more productive, having more time to think up better algortihms.
So it took $20,000 to investigate if he had made other damages. Are they absolutely sure they didn't overlook anything? Well, you can't be sure.
And what about his colleagues who were outsourced too? They didn't delete a user account. Maybe they were too smart and did really harmful things...
As stated before: you can't be sure. I guess they've got to hire IBM whenever someone leaves the company.
Slashdot Mirror
But this user controlled scaling should be part of the OS not the browser or even worse in CSS, where 'pixel' starts to mean 'angle'.
The person who lost his glasses wants to control the font sizes not only in web pages. Or the eagle-eyed person wants to have small text in all apps.
In RiscOS there was a system of logical and physical pixels; applications only dealt with the logical ones.
There even was a screen mode for the visually impaired to have a ratio of 4.
The font subsystem provided very good anti-aliasing, making even 6 pt text very readable. (But they cheated: the font definitions had extra information for hinting and scaffolding.)
I can only hope that 300dpi screens are coming soon...
<rant subject="font rendering">
RiscOS font drawing didn't suffer from jumps in weight or size like Windows does.
Type a line of text in MS Word then copy the line 7 times. Now make for each line the text one point larger then the previous, start at size 10. You'll see that the top half of the lines the font has a lower weight then the bottom half! And the sizes are not linear, the last characters should be on a straight diagonal!
If you can have good anti-aliasing on a 25 Mhz ARM3 & 4 MB RAM and only 8 shades of gray, you could have superb font rendering on a modern pc.
But hell, no: MS gives us 'Font Smoothing' and 'Cleartype' which should be called 'Font Blurring' and 'Moirétype'.
And why can't I have a 7.35 point font size?? My 1991 machine could do it.
</rant>
"...a device the size of a small suitcase could produce enough biodiesel to power several farms..."
"...biodiesel could be produced between 10 and 100 times faster..."
"...coating the microchannels with a non-toxic metallic catalyst...would eliminate the need for the chemical catalyst..."
The way for more reliable code is not by manually inserting numerous checks at every level, but to have a system that is reliable in it's foundations. These foundations are the place to do these checks always and efficient.
How fast is this efficient OS with all the malware software (anti-virus, anti-spyware, multi-level firewalls, other anti-X stuff to come) using cycles and memory?
Cutting corners doesn't speed anything up:
Not the development cycle, not the execution of code.
Taking the off-road shortcut makes your trip shorter, not faster, hell, not even shorter 'cause you need more trips to the repair shop.
Using a system of sandbox/managed code makes (should make) programmers more productive, having more time to think up better algortihms.
Not using
What do you say to a lawyer with an IQ of 50? "Good morning, your honour."
So it took $20,000 to investigate if he had made other damages. Are they absolutely sure they didn't overlook anything? Well, you can't be sure.
And what about his colleagues who were outsourced too? They didn't delete a user account. Maybe they were too smart and did really harmful things...
As stated before: you can't be sure. I guess they've got to hire IBM whenever someone leaves the company.