I don't care if it's Microsoft, Google, Apple, or some nerd's basement server, but please, please SOMEBODY make a single sign-on that sites actually use, so I can use it for casual things. I'm goddamned sick of every goddamned forum on the entire Internet asking me to create an account and sign in before doing crap. You can't even read comments on IMDB now without registering and making some moronic account.
I have thousands of petty little accounts on blogs, on news sites, on wikipedia and IMDB-- all with the same username/password combination. Single sign-on, PLEASE!
To a student, it may really make financial sense to spend a weekend obtaining and installing a cracked version of Photoshop, because he simply doesn't have the money to buy a legal copy. The thing is, it's very common in the retail world for businesses to offer different pricing to people who have different personal priorities about money versus hassle. Airlines sell first-class tickets, but they also sell economy tickets. Supermarkets give their best prices to people who have membership cards and who are willing to clip coupons from the Sunday paper.
And Adobe sells Photoshop Elements for $90 or less, and Microsoft sells Works for much less than Office. (Argue that works isn't equivalent if you want, but the point is that software companies already have this price structure set up.)
If you've used Photoshop Elements, and you don't do advanced print work, you know that it does 99.9% of what you need and is well worth the money.
The first map software that prints maps specifically designed for greyscale (laser) printers will get my business. The most ridiculous part of all those mapping sites (Mapquest, Yahoo Maps, Google Maps) is that they require expensive color ink to give you a simple route on a map. Print it out in greyscale, and your path is a slightly darker blob in the middle of slightly lighter blobs.
Video game companies are very good at making effective and user-friendly software
Looks like we found someone who's never attempted to play Battlefield: 2142!
For the record, video game companies suck at making user-friendly software. They usually rewrite OS controls for no reason whatsoever (even Flight Sim!), except to remove functionality. (Your mousewheel doesn't work in Battlefield because it's not a normal scrollbar, it's some mutant scrollbar they coded from scratch, for instance.) There are exceptions to the rule, but the vast majority of video games have terrible usability.
Also, from another angle, this is news reported from Russia. Russia's news is almost ways completely made-up, or at least mostly made-up. There's a good chance nothing was stolen from anywhere. (Pravda reports UFO sightings as fact frequently.)
If Vista didn't suck then I wouldn't still be reading horror stories about DRM, HD-crippling, driver issues, kernel vulnerabilities etc. etc. etc. long after it has been released.
Yeah, and using iTunes DRM will kill your pets also. Except I've been using iTunes and Vista for years and I've never run into any problems related to DRM or any of that horrible evil stuff Slashdotters are always ranting about. I've no problem with driver support, either. (BTW, the kernel vulnerability was a driver issue also.)
Barely a week goes by without a handful of things like this or this cropping up.
That's because you're getting your news from Slashdot. None of those stories are covered by the mainstream media because, other than Slashdot, nobody cares.
I've been part of several discussions trying to ascertain what advantages Vista actually offers to outweigh the drawbacks and it ain't pretty. The bottom line for us, and I daresay hundreds of thousands of other organisations, is that XP works, is mostly stable and is well supported. Vista can't compete with that - and they're calling it an upgrade?
Vista works better, is as (or more) stable, and is also well-supported. I'm surprised at how much more polished Vista is than XP.
So if you need Microsoft - and unfortunately we still need to develop with DirectX - then XP will do fine.
Ok, but please, PLEASE do your QA and testing on Vista as well for people who prefer it. Don't be EA.
1) Maintaining an OS is expensive. The EOL date is basically Microsoft saying "the benefit we receive from maintaining this software is no longer worth the cost associated with it." That applies as much to software as it does to hardware, or anything else for that matter.
2) Microsoft maintains their software products longer than almost anybody else in the industry. They have Apple and Linux OS vendors beat by far. (Ubuntu gives you, what, 18 months? You can still get Windows 2000 support from Microsoft, until 2009 IIRC.)
Well, Vista looks better, it runs better, it's more secure, and it's a lot more polished than XP. I know Slashdotters refuse to believe it, but Vista is just a better experience as an OS. I switched from OS X to Vista, and I don't miss anything Apple had in OS X. (Actually that's a lie, I do miss the integrated spell-checker.)
When you start an app in Vista, you don't see all your desktop icons flicker 3-4 times for no reason. When you click "Log Out" in Vista, the "Are you sure you want to log out?" dialog appears right away, instead of that long-ass pointless lag time that it has in XP. When you try to run older, possibly non-compatible, software, Vista will actually say "hey, I think this software was designed for an older OS, let me re-install it in compatibility mode" instead of making you do it manually.
Good. I think languages with some kind of automatic memory management are the future and make development easier for software houses, which in turn gives them more time worrying about issues like, "will my grandma be able to use this software?" and less time worrying about issues like, "why does it crash when this pointer is dereferenced!?"
Not that I have anything against C or C++, but for applications (i.e. anything made by Visual C++) I don't think it's an ideal language. We've (as an industry) wasted too much time getting it working with a modern GUI environment already, let's move on. Make fun of VB or C#, or even Obj-C/Cocoa if you want, but all those languages are designed, and excel, for GUI software development.
Well, Microsoft's doing it, so therefore everyone here has to act all superior and make fun of it. And you need some way of seeing the useless phrase "convicted monopolist" about 40 times a day on Slashdot, so this is a good way of making some of those crop up.
So far I've gotten people telling me to "shut the fuck up" (I believe that's a direct quote), and your lovely death threat.
There's a big difference between me and a dolphin: I'm human. But I suppose you think it's a double-standard to believe that killing humans is wrong and killing animals is perfectly fine... and when you find a spider in your bathroom you gently cradle him in your arms and coo softly as you prepare a bed for him at night.
we caused it. human beings are now the managers of this planet.
I don't remember signing up for that.
we're powerful enough to destroy it.
Yeah, but: 1) We're not stupid enough to, 2) and you've offered no evidence that the existence of some dolphin in China actually prevents the planet from being destroyed in some way.
but you go ahead and talk about it's all so like disconnected man... nothing matters dude, yeah
I didn't say nothing matters. I said I don't believe this matters. I hope you can see the difference.
if you don't fucking care, then shut the fuck up, and leave the conversation to people who do care
otherwise, if you open your mouth on the subject, then you do care
What if I don't care about the dolphins, but I *do* care about the resources wasted every year in futile attempts to save species that were likely as not going to go extinct anyway? I'm a taxpayer, I have as much right to speak up about it as anybody else. And notice how not telling people to "shut the fuck up" actually can lead to a productive, respectful discussion where alternate opinions are heard.
I'd go as far as saying that I'd never want to be a member of a community whose main philosophy is "if you don't agree with us, shut the fuck up." That's why I generally avoid global warming activists, for example.
if you open your mouth again, when the words come out of your mouth, try not to be a moron
Why don't you tell me how I'm doing? I think I controlled the "moron" pretty well.
i'll bet my life any random chinese person could better articulate the shame and anger at this horrible crime and tragedy, against china, by the chinese themselves
Species die out all the time. They did before humans existed, and they will long after we've taken our turn and died out. It's not that big a deal.
MS can do everything "click and run" but OpenGL ARB can't do it since it may also end up in some military planes screen.
Stupid question: Why does that matter?
If the software is proven bug-free, or at least bug-free enough to be used by the military, then what difference does it make whether the plane's screen is using the version typed in with lots of text, or the version that was pointed-and-clicked into place? What does it matter whether the stripped-down OpenGL app on the cell phone was coded with typing or clicking? It seems to me that it makes no difference at all, except the clicking version may or may not be easier.
The examples in the summary are moronic. There are things Windows does better than other OSes. For instance, it has much finer-grained file/resource permissions, and it's been designed to support centralized control (using domains and Active Directory) for corporations to take advantage of.
Some clarification: Doom 3/Quake 4 is an OpenGL title. They use DirectX for the DirectInput and DirectSound APIs, I believe.
WoW is a DirectX title with an OpenGL engine (like War3): It uses DirctX for graphics by default
Oh, I see, I was a little confused.
When you said "Blizzard and id are examples of games companies who are moving away from DirectX" what you actually meant to say was, "Blizzard and id are examples of games companies that both use DirectX in their latest products." You can see the confusion that resulted.
Seriously, though, if these are the best examples you can come up with, it seems to me that DirectX has a very secure future after all. I mean, if a "naive/beginner" games company like id uses DirectX, it seems that it has a pretty secure footing.
Dude, you don't have to debate with me. I'm not a games developer, and I'm not declaring that DirectX is better. I'm just giving some reason why I've been told it's better by people who are games developers.
What I don't get is the implication that current DX10 cards are going to be obsolete. The standard is basically a list of "requires support for X"... well, if you own a 8800GTX right now, and Microsoft says DirectX 10.1 "requires support for 4x anti-aliasing", you already have that. At most it's a driver update.
Can anybody provide an example where this new standard would actually make hardware obsolete? Even assuming game developers embrace it in full-force?
To control. Companies/Developers like ID Software, Blizzard spent extra millions as an answer. They are using OpenGL and OpenAL
They are? Doom 3 requires DirectX, as does World of Warcraft.
I mean, I suppose "they are" for the OS X port, but on Windows those games run with DirectX and usually with a faster framerate as well. (WOW definitely has a better framerate on similar hardware.)
Slashdot Mirror
People might actually recognize and use this, and nobody uses OpenID?
Just a guess.
It's simply impossible that Microsoft has recognized and fixed the problems it had years ago, eh?
Of course, since you didn't provide a source, and I have no idea what problem you believe needs fixing, I have no way of checking.
Screw that.
I don't care if it's Microsoft, Google, Apple, or some nerd's basement server, but please, please SOMEBODY make a single sign-on that sites actually use, so I can use it for casual things. I'm goddamned sick of every goddamned forum on the entire Internet asking me to create an account and sign in before doing crap. You can't even read comments on IMDB now without registering and making some moronic account.
I have thousands of petty little accounts on blogs, on news sites, on wikipedia and IMDB-- all with the same username/password combination. Single sign-on, PLEASE!
To a student, it may really make financial sense to spend a weekend obtaining and installing a cracked version of Photoshop, because he simply doesn't have the money to buy a legal copy. The thing is, it's very common in the retail world for businesses to offer different pricing to people who have different personal priorities about money versus hassle. Airlines sell first-class tickets, but they also sell economy tickets. Supermarkets give their best prices to people who have membership cards and who are willing to clip coupons from the Sunday paper.
And Adobe sells Photoshop Elements for $90 or less, and Microsoft sells Works for much less than Office. (Argue that works isn't equivalent if you want, but the point is that software companies already have this price structure set up.)
If you've used Photoshop Elements, and you don't do advanced print work, you know that it does 99.9% of what you need and is well worth the money.
I know jack about physics, but I have seen Speed.
The bus couldn't go below 50 MPH or the bomb would go off. 80 was the fastest it could go up that freeway ramp.
The first map software that prints maps specifically designed for greyscale (laser) printers will get my business. The most ridiculous part of all those mapping sites (Mapquest, Yahoo Maps, Google Maps) is that they require expensive color ink to give you a simple route on a map. Print it out in greyscale, and your path is a slightly darker blob in the middle of slightly lighter blobs.
Video game companies are very good at making effective and user-friendly software
Looks like we found someone who's never attempted to play Battlefield: 2142!
For the record, video game companies suck at making user-friendly software. They usually rewrite OS controls for no reason whatsoever (even Flight Sim!), except to remove functionality. (Your mousewheel doesn't work in Battlefield because it's not a normal scrollbar, it's some mutant scrollbar they coded from scratch, for instance.) There are exceptions to the rule, but the vast majority of video games have terrible usability.
Whoooooooosh...
Also, from another angle, this is news reported from Russia. Russia's news is almost ways completely made-up, or at least mostly made-up. There's a good chance nothing was stolen from anywhere. (Pravda reports UFO sightings as fact frequently.)
Doh, typo. I haven't been using Vista for years, I've been using it for months. iTunes I have been using for years. Sorry.
If Vista didn't suck then I wouldn't still be reading horror stories about DRM, HD-crippling, driver issues, kernel vulnerabilities etc. etc. etc. long after it has been released.
Yeah, and using iTunes DRM will kill your pets also. Except I've been using iTunes and Vista for years and I've never run into any problems related to DRM or any of that horrible evil stuff Slashdotters are always ranting about. I've no problem with driver support, either. (BTW, the kernel vulnerability was a driver issue also.)
Barely a week goes by without a handful of things like this or this cropping up.
That's because you're getting your news from Slashdot. None of those stories are covered by the mainstream media because, other than Slashdot, nobody cares.
I've been part of several discussions trying to ascertain what advantages Vista actually offers to outweigh the drawbacks and it ain't pretty. The bottom line for us, and I daresay hundreds of thousands of other organisations, is that XP works, is mostly stable and is well supported. Vista can't compete with that - and they're calling it an upgrade?
Vista works better, is as (or more) stable, and is also well-supported. I'm surprised at how much more polished Vista is than XP.
So if you need Microsoft - and unfortunately we still need to develop with DirectX - then XP will do fine.
Ok, but please, PLEASE do your QA and testing on Vista as well for people who prefer it. Don't be EA.
1) Maintaining an OS is expensive. The EOL date is basically Microsoft saying "the benefit we receive from maintaining this software is no longer worth the cost associated with it." That applies as much to software as it does to hardware, or anything else for that matter.
2) Microsoft maintains their software products longer than almost anybody else in the industry. They have Apple and Linux OS vendors beat by far. (Ubuntu gives you, what, 18 months? You can still get Windows 2000 support from Microsoft, until 2009 IIRC.)
Well, Vista looks better, it runs better, it's more secure, and it's a lot more polished than XP. I know Slashdotters refuse to believe it, but Vista is just a better experience as an OS. I switched from OS X to Vista, and I don't miss anything Apple had in OS X. (Actually that's a lie, I do miss the integrated spell-checker.)
When you start an app in Vista, you don't see all your desktop icons flicker 3-4 times for no reason. When you click "Log Out" in Vista, the "Are you sure you want to log out?" dialog appears right away, instead of that long-ass pointless lag time that it has in XP. When you try to run older, possibly non-compatible, software, Vista will actually say "hey, I think this software was designed for an older OS, let me re-install it in compatibility mode" instead of making you do it manually.
Good. I think languages with some kind of automatic memory management are the future and make development easier for software houses, which in turn gives them more time worrying about issues like, "will my grandma be able to use this software?" and less time worrying about issues like, "why does it crash when this pointer is dereferenced!?"
Not that I have anything against C or C++, but for applications (i.e. anything made by Visual C++) I don't think it's an ideal language. We've (as an industry) wasted too much time getting it working with a modern GUI environment already, let's move on. Make fun of VB or C#, or even Obj-C/Cocoa if you want, but all those languages are designed, and excel, for GUI software development.
Well, Microsoft's doing it, so therefore everyone here has to act all superior and make fun of it. And you need some way of seeing the useless phrase "convicted monopolist" about 40 times a day on Slashdot, so this is a good way of making some of those crop up.
So far I've gotten people telling me to "shut the fuck up" (I believe that's a direct quote), and your lovely death threat.
There's a big difference between me and a dolphin: I'm human. But I suppose you think it's a double-standard to believe that killing humans is wrong and killing animals is perfectly fine... and when you find a spider in your bathroom you gently cradle him in your arms and coo softly as you prepare a bed for him at night.
we caused it. human beings are now the managers of this planet.
I don't remember signing up for that.
we're powerful enough to destroy it.
Yeah, but:
1) We're not stupid enough to,
2) and you've offered no evidence that the existence of some dolphin in China actually prevents the planet from being destroyed in some way.
but you go ahead and talk about it's all so like disconnected man... nothing matters dude, yeah
I didn't say nothing matters. I said I don't believe this matters. I hope you can see the difference.
if you don't fucking care, then shut the fuck up, and leave the conversation to people who do care
otherwise, if you open your mouth on the subject, then you do care
What if I don't care about the dolphins, but I *do* care about the resources wasted every year in futile attempts to save species that were likely as not going to go extinct anyway? I'm a taxpayer, I have as much right to speak up about it as anybody else. And notice how not telling people to "shut the fuck up" actually can lead to a productive, respectful discussion where alternate opinions are heard.
I'd go as far as saying that I'd never want to be a member of a community whose main philosophy is "if you don't agree with us, shut the fuck up." That's why I generally avoid global warming activists, for example.
if you open your mouth again, when the words come out of your mouth, try not to be a moron
Why don't you tell me how I'm doing? I think I controlled the "moron" pretty well.
i'll bet my life any random chinese person could better articulate the shame and anger at this horrible crime and tragedy, against china, by the chinese themselves
Species die out all the time. They did before humans existed, and they will long after we've taken our turn and died out. It's not that big a deal.
Two-humped camels may or may not be extinct!
Walruses may or may not be extinct!
Jellyfish may or may not be extinct!
The common house cat may or may not be extinct!
Triceratops may or may not be extinct!
MS can do everything "click and run" but OpenGL ARB can't do it since it may also end up in some military planes screen.
Stupid question: Why does that matter?
If the software is proven bug-free, or at least bug-free enough to be used by the military, then what difference does it make whether the plane's screen is using the version typed in with lots of text, or the version that was pointed-and-clicked into place? What does it matter whether the stripped-down OpenGL app on the cell phone was coded with typing or clicking? It seems to me that it makes no difference at all, except the clicking version may or may not be easier.
The examples in the summary are moronic. There are things Windows does better than other OSes. For instance, it has much finer-grained file/resource permissions, and it's been designed to support centralized control (using domains and Active Directory) for corporations to take advantage of.
Some clarification: Doom 3/Quake 4 is an OpenGL title. They use DirectX for the DirectInput and DirectSound APIs, I believe.
WoW is a DirectX title with an OpenGL engine (like War3): It uses DirctX for graphics by default
Oh, I see, I was a little confused.
When you said "Blizzard and id are examples of games companies who are moving away from DirectX" what you actually meant to say was, "Blizzard and id are examples of games companies that both use DirectX in their latest products." You can see the confusion that resulted.
Seriously, though, if these are the best examples you can come up with, it seems to me that DirectX has a very secure future after all. I mean, if a "naive/beginner" games company like id uses DirectX, it seems that it has a pretty secure footing.
Dude, you don't have to debate with me. I'm not a games developer, and I'm not declaring that DirectX is better. I'm just giving some reason why I've been told it's better by people who are games developers.
What I don't get is the implication that current DX10 cards are going to be obsolete. The standard is basically a list of "requires support for X"... well, if you own a 8800GTX right now, and Microsoft says DirectX 10.1 "requires support for 4x anti-aliasing", you already have that. At most it's a driver update.
Can anybody provide an example where this new standard would actually make hardware obsolete? Even assuming game developers embrace it in full-force?
To control. Companies/Developers like ID Software, Blizzard spent extra millions as an answer. They are using OpenGL and OpenAL
They are? Doom 3 requires DirectX, as does World of Warcraft.
I mean, I suppose "they are" for the OS X port, but on Windows those games run with DirectX and usually with a faster framerate as well. (WOW definitely has a better framerate on similar hardware.)