In comparison to Apple's heavily dithered font rendering, ClearType suffers from the jaggies.
No. It's less fuzzy. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you simply don't remember when computers actually *did* display jaggies on-screen, since it's been a decade or so. If you turn off ClearType, you'll see jaggies-- maybe you're confusing a computer with ClearType off with one with it turned-on?
Notice how the only one that has jaggies is Firefox with smoothing turned off. Both ClearType and Apple's smoothing have no jaggies.
That's the point people on both sides of the preference argument are making.
No, the argument is more "fuzziness" than "jaggyness". i.e. I think Apple's font smoothing looks too fuzzy, like your eyes are slightly unfocused.
In fact, the only real difference between ClearType and Apple's smoothing is that ClearType shifts each letter to the nearest pixel and Apple's doesn't.
As far as non-standard color-order (whatever that is), that sounds like a casualty of one OS trying to work on hundreds of different hardware options.
Well... yes, but that has *absolutely nothing* to do with the actual point of what I'm saying. You might as well replied, "as far as non-standard color-order, clouds are white!" and it would be equally relevant to the topic at-hand.
Take a look at this FAQ, and expand the question about BGR color-order: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartypefaq.mspx Looks like I'm a little out-of-date, BGR is supported in ClearType now, so it should no longer be an issue.
All I know is ClearType sucks on my Dell computer at work using Dell 19" flat screen monitors that came with the computer.
If you don't like it, you could bump the smoothing to the Windows 2000-style. The catch is that the new Vista fonts are going to look pretty much like ass on a system like that, but if you're on XP you shouldn't have any problems.
Then why doesn't it also block Microsoft Live search? Simply typing "hot babes" into a Microsoft Live search returns hardcore porn as the very first link.
This smells of antitrust to me.
Do you have it installed? What makes you assume it doesn't?
This smells of "I'm talking out of my ass" to me.
Why don't you INSTALL the filter, then try to search for "hot babes" in Live and see what happens? As an added bonus, you'll actually know what you're talking about instead of pulling it out of your ass.
If *every* pirate did what you did, I probably wouldn't have as much a problem with it. (I still think it's wrong, but it would be a lot less damaging to the rest of us.)
The problem is, you represent maybe 1% of software pirates, max. You're by far in the minority.
The vast majority of people who wanted to play this game had no alternative but to download it.
I suggest that they did have an alternative: they could have NOT downloaded it.
Seriously, "no alternative?" This isn't a life-giving drug, or people on the edge of starvation, it's a fucking VIDEO GAME. They could have shrugged their shoulders and gone back to Warcraft III for a few more days. "No alternative" my fat ass.
Piracy is good, because their QA was so shitty they never bothered to stress-test their multiplayer servers, and now the pirates have forced them to do it?
Yes, but you're just repeating the problem. What's the fix? It's not like the people cracking the game are going to put in an error-reporter dialog that says, "My crack encountered a problem! But the game is fine."
It's the same issue Microsoft has with bad drivers. Windows bluescreens... sure we (geeks) all know it's because of some third-party driver doing something stupid, or coded like shit, but the first thing the user says is, "wow, Windows crashes a lot."
Part of me feels sorry for Stardock, but more of me just wants to say, "what the hell did you THINK would happen?" I mean, the same thing happens every time a game with no DRM comes out. Remember all the press about when Halo was released for Macintosh, over 50% of the copies playing online were pirated? It's not news.
The problem is that the servers weren't ready, and I'm pretty sure a laggy, shitty, multiplayer environment isn't what the customers on the pre-order list want.
Are you an idiot, or did you just completely ignore the point of the article?
Now, reading into this a bit more, I think Stardock screwed up in several fundamental ways:
1) The game pings the update server *before* showing the main menu, and apparently in the same UI thread. This means if the update server isn't responsive (which is what happened), the game will just freeze at a black screen. Plain bad coding here, but it is a PC game, so you pretty much expect that.
2) Not using the production-ready server configuration for the beta test. Apparently, they were beta-testing on the development multiplayer servers? Also, did they never do a stress-test on the game?
3) Hooking the multiplayer servers into several other systems, when they should have remained separate. For example, the blog entry mentions that the forums stopped responding when the multiplayer servers were being hammered-- lolwut? Also, the update issue mentioned above-- why would checking for an update hammer the multiplayer servers?
In short, I think most of their problems were due to inexperience with multiplayer games.
THAT ALL SAID, I also think Starduck is being very naive with their anti-DRM stance. As far as I'm concerned, it's a *fact* that a PC game without DRM will end up with 50%+ of the copies being pirated. We've seen report after report of this.
Stardock's space game was the exception to the rule, not the rule. (And of course, they don't have an accurate measure of how many copies of it were pirated anyway, so it's hard to claim success without data.)
The freight system is exactly what drives people away from rail commuting in the Seattle area. The northbound Sounder trains get stuck behind freights all the freakin' time, I think they should change their motto to: "Sounder: Never on time."
The problem is that the route is so bad I'm not sure you could do much to improve it anyway.
How about we try installing the filter on MORE THAN ONE COMPUTER before speculating wildly?
I think it's far more likely that the submitter of this article has some strange configuration that it doesn't support correctly, or possibly some piece of malware screwing with his Hosts file. Since half of Slashdot stories are bullshit anyway, you should ensure this one isn't in the "bullshit" category before wasting neurons thinking about it.
Yeah, but wouldn't it be nice if we didn't *have* to go to the comments for the (almost inevitable) corrections to the story? Wouldn't it be great if the Slashdot editors would actually, you know, update the articles based on the corrections provided by the first few commentators? Or even pull ridiculous stories the instant they realized how ridiculous they were?
What version of NT was it? 4? Of course Geek Squad didn't exist when NT4 existed.
In short, I have no clue what you're talking about. Windows Update website supports Windows 2000, and all newer versions of NT have auto-updaters that work without logging on to the website at all.
Considering it's not *that* hard to find Model A parts around still without too much difficulty, your analogy might not have been the best one.:) But I appreciate the point you're trying to make.
The hole Conflicker used was patched 2 full weeks before it started spreading. If you don't update your computers, yes, they'll be insecure-- again, that applies to *all* OSes.
The only virus I've gotten in a Windows NT-based OS (2000, XP, Vista) was delivered via Sun's Java. Maybe I've just been lucky.
I've never been to Australia, but I did take a trip to Auckland, New Zealand. As a resident of Seattle (Seattilite? It's not in Firefox's spell-checker), what made me snicker is how people would get out their umbrellas when it wasn't raining. There were clouds in the sky, and maybe even a tiny amount of moisture would gradually mist downward if the wind was right, but it wasn't rain... meanwhile, I'm alone in a sea of umbrellas. It was almost surreal.
Of course, in Seattle, most people don't even use umbrellas, except tourists. I've never owned one. Just walk in the rain, you wimps.
I've used XCode and Interface Builder, and I prefer Visual Studio. For three reasons, one almost entirely arbitrary: 1) VS can be used to create web applications. Last I checked, XCode could only create desktop applications. Since I spend most of my time writing web applications, XCode is of practically no use to me. 2) VS has much better data integration tools, including a nice built-right-in GUI database management tool, and LINQ. A friend of mine told me that LINQ makes database integration so easy, "it's almost like cheating." After using it, I have to agree. 3) I don't like Objective-C. This is the arbitrary one. But with VS, I can pick my language, with XCode I'm stuck with the language Apple wants me to use.
1) Microsoft has the audacity to bundle-in a free media player with their OS, thus pissing off the EU 2) ??? 3) Microsoft scoops up protesters in giant trash trucks and processes them into snack food.
I don't want it to encode 500 different file types or whatever, I just want to put in a disk, hit Go, and end up with a file my iPod can play. Anything more than that is added complexity I don't want- so I use the old version.
I answered the question. Yes I have a link (I even pasted it into the post! I'm so generous), and yes I'm slinging insults.
What question is it, exactly, that you think I haven't answered?
To review: Q) Is it possible to legally play DVDs in Linux? A) Yes, Linspire did it.
Q) I'm a condescending prick, and I don't know what Linspire was because I'm kind of dumb, so I'm going to ask pretty much the exact same question again. How do I accomplish my goal [of playing DVDs in Linux] without potentially breaking any laws? A) You buy a license for the DVD decoding software, like Microsoft has, or Apple has, or Linspire did back in the day. The reason I bring up Linspire is to prove that it's perfectly possible for Linux software to be licensed to play DVD: there's copies of LinDVD on a whole bunch of Linux computers right now this instant.
Q) Do you have any links? A) Yes.
There. Now what question is left to answer? How about:
And what happens is that it determines that it wants to swap my actual program memory to disk to make room for these advanced features?
It won't. Superfetch only works with *unused* RAM. If you're using the memory, Superfetch won't touch it. Additionally, if the program you're actively using requests more memory, Superfetch will dump its cache to serve your program's needs. This takes far less than a millisecond.
And those features may save me 10 minutes a day, but they are 10 minutes I didn't know I was missing.
Huh? This doesn't even make sense. You're upset at the feature because it doesn't save *enough* time for you to easily notice it?
But I notice the 10 seconds longer it takes switching between programs because my open programs have been moved to the slow disk and out of the fast RAM.
Have you even tried Vista? It's hard to explain how wrong you are.
Yes, 2000 and XP had issues where they would swap out programs you were using when they were minimized. Windows took your minimize action (wrongly, usually) as an indicator that you wouldn't be touching the program in a long time, and thus swapped it out.
Vista doesn't do that. The worst complaint I have with Vista is that it'll sometimes swap out the UAC prompt code (since it's not invoked enough to end up in the Superfetch cache) and then it'll take a half-second or so for the UAC prompt to show.
I'd rather they don't touch them and waste my time, than think for me and get it wrong in a way that causes me trouble. It's an open program. There's available RAM. Don't touch my open programs, even if I haven't used them in 18 hours. (yes, if you leave a distro downloading over bittorrent overnight, you'll find that other programs will be swapped to the disk, and the open programs will take much longer to run in the morning)
Then you'd LOVE Vista, which does exactly what you want. You're basically selling it for Microsoft at this point.
It's not used in XP, except optionally. XP is perfectly capable of pulling all the updates it needs without invoking Windows Update through IE. (You do have fewer options when you do it this way, but it certainly works.)
I appreciate you trying to correct misinformation, but please correct it with actually correct information.
(I can't speak for Windows Server 2003. My guess is it can also update without invoking IE. Server 2008 certainly can.)
Slashdot Mirror
In comparison to Apple's heavily dithered font rendering, ClearType suffers from the jaggies.
No. It's less fuzzy. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you simply don't remember when computers actually *did* display jaggies on-screen, since it's been a decade or so. If you turn off ClearType, you'll see jaggies-- maybe you're confusing a computer with ClearType off with one with it turned-on?
Here's a comparison image. From left-to-right, it's ClearType, none, Apple's: http://www.robheller.com/images/blog/safari_smoothing.jpg
Notice how the only one that has jaggies is Firefox with smoothing turned off. Both ClearType and Apple's smoothing have no jaggies.
That's the point people on both sides of the preference argument are making.
No, the argument is more "fuzziness" than "jaggyness". i.e. I think Apple's font smoothing looks too fuzzy, like your eyes are slightly unfocused.
In fact, the only real difference between ClearType and Apple's smoothing is that ClearType shifts each letter to the nearest pixel and Apple's doesn't.
As far as non-standard color-order (whatever that is), that sounds like a casualty of one OS trying to work on hundreds of different hardware options.
Well... yes, but that has *absolutely nothing* to do with the actual point of what I'm saying. You might as well replied, "as far as non-standard color-order, clouds are white!" and it would be equally relevant to the topic at-hand.
Take a look at this FAQ, and expand the question about BGR color-order: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartypefaq.mspx Looks like I'm a little out-of-date, BGR is supported in ClearType now, so it should no longer be an issue.
All I know is ClearType sucks on my Dell computer at work using Dell 19" flat screen monitors that came with the computer.
If you don't like it, you could bump the smoothing to the Windows 2000-style. The catch is that the new Vista fonts are going to look pretty much like ass on a system like that, but if you're on XP you shouldn't have any problems.
If you're seeing jaggies, you're not using ClearType. (Alternatively, you're using ClearType on an LCD with a non-standard color-order.)
Then why doesn't it also block Microsoft Live search? Simply typing "hot babes" into a Microsoft Live search returns hardcore porn as the very first link.
This smells of antitrust to me.
Do you have it installed? What makes you assume it doesn't?
This smells of "I'm talking out of my ass" to me.
Why don't you INSTALL the filter, then try to search for "hot babes" in Live and see what happens? As an added bonus, you'll actually know what you're talking about instead of pulling it out of your ass.
If *every* pirate did what you did, I probably wouldn't have as much a problem with it. (I still think it's wrong, but it would be a lot less damaging to the rest of us.)
The problem is, you represent maybe 1% of software pirates, max. You're by far in the minority.
The vast majority of people who wanted to play this game had no alternative but to download it.
I suggest that they did have an alternative: they could have NOT downloaded it.
Seriously, "no alternative?" This isn't a life-giving drug, or people on the edge of starvation, it's a fucking VIDEO GAME. They could have shrugged their shoulders and gone back to Warcraft III for a few more days. "No alternative" my fat ass.
Yeah, the real problem is shitty coding and godawful QA, the only thing killing off Windows games faster than piracy is. Whee, I feel a lot better.
So, to sum up, you're saying:
Piracy is good, because their QA was so shitty they never bothered to stress-test their multiplayer servers, and now the pirates have forced them to do it?
Uh. Yah.
Yes, but you're just repeating the problem. What's the fix? It's not like the people cracking the game are going to put in an error-reporter dialog that says, "My crack encountered a problem! But the game is fine."
It's the same issue Microsoft has with bad drivers. Windows bluescreens... sure we (geeks) all know it's because of some third-party driver doing something stupid, or coded like shit, but the first thing the user says is, "wow, Windows crashes a lot."
Part of me feels sorry for Stardock, but more of me just wants to say, "what the hell did you THINK would happen?" I mean, the same thing happens every time a game with no DRM comes out. Remember all the press about when Halo was released for Macintosh, over 50% of the copies playing online were pirated? It's not news.
The problem is that the servers weren't ready, and I'm pretty sure a laggy, shitty, multiplayer environment isn't what the customers on the pre-order list want.
Are you an idiot, or did you just completely ignore the point of the article?
Now, reading into this a bit more, I think Stardock screwed up in several fundamental ways:
1) The game pings the update server *before* showing the main menu, and apparently in the same UI thread. This means if the update server isn't responsive (which is what happened), the game will just freeze at a black screen. Plain bad coding here, but it is a PC game, so you pretty much expect that.
2) Not using the production-ready server configuration for the beta test. Apparently, they were beta-testing on the development multiplayer servers? Also, did they never do a stress-test on the game?
3) Hooking the multiplayer servers into several other systems, when they should have remained separate. For example, the blog entry mentions that the forums stopped responding when the multiplayer servers were being hammered-- lolwut? Also, the update issue mentioned above-- why would checking for an update hammer the multiplayer servers?
In short, I think most of their problems were due to inexperience with multiplayer games.
THAT ALL SAID, I also think Starduck is being very naive with their anti-DRM stance. As far as I'm concerned, it's a *fact* that a PC game without DRM will end up with 50%+ of the copies being pirated. We've seen report after report of this.
Stardock's space game was the exception to the rule, not the rule. (And of course, they don't have an accurate measure of how many copies of it were pirated anyway, so it's hard to claim success without data.)
Ah, so now it's *my* job to do *their* job. How very web 2.0 of you.
The freight system is exactly what drives people away from rail commuting in the Seattle area. The northbound Sounder trains get stuck behind freights all the freakin' time, I think they should change their motto to: "Sounder: Never on time."
The problem is that the route is so bad I'm not sure you could do much to improve it anyway.
How about we try installing the filter on MORE THAN ONE COMPUTER before speculating wildly?
I think it's far more likely that the submitter of this article has some strange configuration that it doesn't support correctly, or possibly some piece of malware screwing with his Hosts file. Since half of Slashdot stories are bullshit anyway, you should ensure this one isn't in the "bullshit" category before wasting neurons thinking about it.
Yeah, but wouldn't it be nice if we didn't *have* to go to the comments for the (almost inevitable) corrections to the story? Wouldn't it be great if the Slashdot editors would actually, you know, update the articles based on the corrections provided by the first few commentators? Or even pull ridiculous stories the instant they realized how ridiculous they were?
Wouldn't it be great if the editors of this site were tech-savvy enough to reject stories like this one: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/16/2259257 out-of-hand?
I know, I'm living in a fantasy world. They can't even fix the "Reply" button when posting a comment. In 6 months:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2159787&group_id=4421&atid=104421
http://schend.net/images/screenshots/slashdot/reply_button_with_growths.png
But it would be nice.
What version of NT was it? 4? Of course Geek Squad didn't exist when NT4 existed.
In short, I have no clue what you're talking about. Windows Update website supports Windows 2000, and all newer versions of NT have auto-updaters that work without logging on to the website at all.
Call me paranoid but with the current economic climate the world of "Mad Max" is looking like a possible eventuality
You're paranoid.
Although, to save money, civil trials will now be settled using the "Bust a Deal, Face the Wheel" method to save on transcription fees.
Considering it's not *that* hard to find Model A parts around still without too much difficulty, your analogy might not have been the best one. :) But I appreciate the point you're trying to make.
The hole Conflicker used was patched 2 full weeks before it started spreading. If you don't update your computers, yes, they'll be insecure-- again, that applies to *all* OSes.
The only virus I've gotten in a Windows NT-based OS (2000, XP, Vista) was delivered via Sun's Java. Maybe I've just been lucky.
Just to ask a stupid question, can you even *write* a GUI OS X app using C++? I was under the impression it was Obj-only.
It's goofy to claim C++ is a second-class citizen in VS when you can't even use it to create GUI apps in OS X. (Unless I'm mistaken.)
I've never been to Australia, but I did take a trip to Auckland, New Zealand. As a resident of Seattle (Seattilite? It's not in Firefox's spell-checker), what made me snicker is how people would get out their umbrellas when it wasn't raining. There were clouds in the sky, and maybe even a tiny amount of moisture would gradually mist downward if the wind was right, but it wasn't rain... meanwhile, I'm alone in a sea of umbrellas. It was almost surreal.
Of course, in Seattle, most people don't even use umbrellas, except tourists. I've never owned one. Just walk in the rain, you wimps.
I've used XCode and Interface Builder, and I prefer Visual Studio. For three reasons, one almost entirely arbitrary:
1) VS can be used to create web applications. Last I checked, XCode could only create desktop applications. Since I spend most of my time writing web applications, XCode is of practically no use to me.
2) VS has much better data integration tools, including a nice built-right-in GUI database management tool, and LINQ. A friend of mine told me that LINQ makes database integration so easy, "it's almost like cheating." After using it, I have to agree.
3) I don't like Objective-C. This is the arbitrary one. But with VS, I can pick my language, with XCode I'm stuck with the language Apple wants me to use.
1) Microsoft has the audacity to bundle-in a free media player with their OS, thus pissing off the EU
2) ???
3) Microsoft scoops up protesters in giant trash trucks and processes them into snack food.
Yeah... that sounds reasonable to me.
I don't want it to encode 500 different file types or whatever, I just want to put in a disk, hit Go, and end up with a file my iPod can play. Anything more than that is added complexity I don't want- so I use the old version.
I answered the question. Yes I have a link (I even pasted it into the post! I'm so generous), and yes I'm slinging insults.
What question is it, exactly, that you think I haven't answered?
To review:
Q) Is it possible to legally play DVDs in Linux?
A) Yes, Linspire did it.
Q) I'm a condescending prick, and I don't know what Linspire was because I'm kind of dumb, so I'm going to ask pretty much the exact same question again. How do I accomplish my goal [of playing DVDs in Linux] without potentially breaking any laws?
A) You buy a license for the DVD decoding software, like Microsoft has, or Apple has, or Linspire did back in the day. The reason I bring up Linspire is to prove that it's perfectly possible for Linux software to be licensed to play DVD: there's copies of LinDVD on a whole bunch of Linux computers right now this instant.
Q) Do you have any links?
A) Yes.
There. Now what question is left to answer? How about:
Q) How badass is Blakeyrat?
A) Immeasurably so!
And what happens is that it determines that it wants to swap my actual program memory to disk to make room for these advanced features?
It won't. Superfetch only works with *unused* RAM. If you're using the memory, Superfetch won't touch it. Additionally, if the program you're actively using requests more memory, Superfetch will dump its cache to serve your program's needs. This takes far less than a millisecond.
And those features may save me 10 minutes a day, but they are 10 minutes I didn't know I was missing.
Huh? This doesn't even make sense. You're upset at the feature because it doesn't save *enough* time for you to easily notice it?
But I notice the 10 seconds longer it takes switching between programs because my open programs have been moved to the slow disk and out of the fast RAM.
Have you even tried Vista? It's hard to explain how wrong you are.
Yes, 2000 and XP had issues where they would swap out programs you were using when they were minimized. Windows took your minimize action (wrongly, usually) as an indicator that you wouldn't be touching the program in a long time, and thus swapped it out.
Vista doesn't do that. The worst complaint I have with Vista is that it'll sometimes swap out the UAC prompt code (since it's not invoked enough to end up in the Superfetch cache) and then it'll take a half-second or so for the UAC prompt to show.
I'd rather they don't touch them and waste my time, than think for me and get it wrong in a way that causes me trouble. It's an open program. There's available RAM. Don't touch my open programs, even if I haven't used them in 18 hours. (yes, if you leave a distro downloading over bittorrent overnight, you'll find that other programs will be swapped to the disk, and the open programs will take much longer to run in the morning)
Then you'd LOVE Vista, which does exactly what you want. You're basically selling it for Microsoft at this point.
It's not used in XP, except optionally. XP is perfectly capable of pulling all the updates it needs without invoking Windows Update through IE. (You do have fewer options when you do it this way, but it certainly works.)
I appreciate you trying to correct misinformation, but please correct it with actually correct information.
(I can't speak for Windows Server 2003. My guess is it can also update without invoking IE. Server 2008 certainly can.)