Great googly moogly! I didn't expect all of this. Ok, where to start...
First off, I guess I really need to watch my wording. The "Know thy enemy" line was supposed to be a light hearted jab, not the war-cry of a fanboy. I apologize to anybody who took it the wrong way.
Secondly, I was originally going to have this thread be about XP/Vista OS alternatives, but it was 3 am and I got to thinking that if we were going to talk about different OS's, why not branch out a bit and hence the list of all the other things that are Microsoft products to keep this thread going after the first Linux post. And plus, i thought it could start up other threads (Anything But Apple, Anything But GM, Anything But Dell, Anything But Facebook, Anything but Google, etc.)
Thirdly, I don't hate Microsoft. My current desktop and laptop are both running XP, I just BOUGHT the Office 2007 Ultimate Edition and while my Wii is sitting in a box (I don't remember which box since it's been so long.... side note: if you want to buy a barely used Wii, PM me.) the 360 is sitting right next to me with Halo 3 being the last disc it saw. But they are a large company who's products span lots of software and even now hardware, and who have a huge market share with most of them. And so it would be a perfect litmus. Oh, how does this alternative compare to what Microsoft has got?
Finally, I hope I cleared up a little of the mess. If you guys feel that this thread can get out of the mud, I'm fine with continuing it here, but if anybody wants to start this all over again on the right foot, I'm fine with that too.
So you waited until now to show that you aren't a dumbass? At least you came back and explained though, now everyone can stop arguing and being dumb and instead offer suggestions to you.
What the hell is that supposed to prove? Microsoft was using at least some of the TCP/IP derived stack from BSD, and I'm sure Linux was using the code well before Microsoft. With Vista's release Microsoft supposedly rewrote their TCP/IP stack, so that is even less relevant.
Are you going to try arguing that Linux users shouldn't use web browsers because Microsoft has a HTML implementation in their web browser? Because that isn't very far off from what you just implied with your previous post.
If you have trouble connecting the dots, try to think about the origin of the code used in their TCP/IP stack and the origin of the HTML standards.
Also, disable XHTTPRequest capability in your browser.
Would this be the "Not Invented Here" syndrome? W3C published working draft spec for the XMLHttpRequest API (well after its introduction), so it is on its way to becoming a standard. And while it was a good idea (in hindsight), it was never made popular by Microsoft. Maybe you remember it being used for something other than Outlook/Exchange web access, but I don't.
If Microsoft knew what potential it had, I imagine that it would be so patent incumbered that no one but them would be able to freely use it.
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
So you waited until now to show that you aren't a dumbass? At least you came back and explained though, now everyone can stop arguing and being dumb and instead offer suggestions to you.
Hey man, I'm in the middle of finals right now. Hobbies and the internet are down a couple of rungs at the moment.
Qs23 on
0
Options
EvilBadmanDO NOT TRUST THIS MANRegistered Userregular
edited December 2007
Had the OP read less like zealous crusade to boycott and more of a general list of alternatives to Microsoft programs, perhaps myself and other posters hadn't torn into you.
In any case I'll repeat the earlier suggestions of:
Pidgin/Adium (if on Mac)
Firefox/Opera
VLC/MPC
Paint.net/Gimp
Notepad++
What the hell is that supposed to prove? Microsoft was using at least some of the TCP/IP derived stack from BSD, and I'm sure Linux was using the code well before Microsoft. With Vista's release Microsoft supposedly rewrote their TCP/IP stack, so that is even less relevant.
Are you going to try arguing that Linux users shouldn't use web browsers because Microsoft has a HTML implementation in their web browser? Because that isn't very far off from what you just implied with your previous post.
If you have trouble connecting the dots, try to think about the origin of the code used in their TCP/IP stack and the origin of the HTML standards.
Also, disable XHTTPRequest capability in your browser.
Would this be the "Not Invented Here" syndrome? W3C published working draft spec for the XMLHttpRequest API (well after its introduction), so it is on its way to becoming a standard. And while it was a good idea (in hindsight), it was never made popular by Microsoft. Maybe you remember it being used for something other than Outlook/Exchange web access, but I don't.
If Microsoft knew what potential it had, I imagine that it would be so patent incumbered that no one but them would be able to freely use it.
I know where their TCP/IP stack came from. They didn't re-write it for Vista. Oh, by the way? It's used system-wide. It wasn't just for IE.
Also, Microsoft made XHttpRequest as an extension of IE's capabilities. Everyone started using it, and then other browsers implemented it and it became a standard. Invented by Microsoft. And they really couldn't have prevented other browsers from interpreting it in the first place, since it would have been so easily reverse-engineered.
My post was showing the point to the OP that it's near impossible to go about being No-Microsoft.
That said, I find VLC or Mplayer to be superior than WMP on the video side of things. Perhaps it was a bug in the CCCP release I was using, or the DirectShow decoder was slow, but 720p video that was (IIRC) encoded in H.264 absolutely killed WMP, giving me incredibly choppy playback on my machine (which uses an old Athlon XP-M 2500+). Mplayer handled it without a hitch.
The H.264 decoder that comes in CCCP is very inefficient, and you've got a really slow processor. You may get better performance out of the CoreAVC codec but complaining that WMP performed poorly with HD videos, using a slow codec on an Athlon 2500+ is essentially the same as blaming Crytek because you can't run Crysis at maximum detail. Your hardware is minimally sufficient for decoding HD videos.
There are plenty of viable alternatives to Microsoft out there but in many cases they are either inferior or already used by most people. I was pretty disappointed by both Ubuntu and Mac OS -- Windows has its flaws but the people suggesting I would be better off if I completely migrated to OS X or Linux are clearly insane. Nobody in their right mind can honestly claim that OpenOffice could even begin to replace Office 2K7 except in the most basic of uses. Winamp and Media Player Classic have been the de facto for playing music and videos for a long, long time. MSN Messenger gets the job done if you only use MSN, otherwise you should already be using a third-party solution such as Trillian, unless you want to devote half of your RAM to different instant message clients. And is anyone here not using Firefox?
For the sake of completeness, the OP might wish to include Entourage, which is the Mac equivalent of Outlook.
I really like Entourage.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Slow is relative. It is by no means recent, but the only times I have ever thought to myself "Man, I wish I had a faster processor" were the aforementioned video decoding, and compiling software (which doesn't happen that often). Gaming is the #1 reason why people around here upgrade their hardware, and I have consoles for that.
So the decoder distributed with CCCP is a slow piece of shit. Given that another decoder can play the same file perfectly, I'd say that the CCCP decoder should have been written more efficiently. Faster processors shouldn't be used as an excuse for poor programming.
[...] Your hardware is minimally sufficient for decoding HD videos.
HD video with that particular codec ;-) Xvid works fine at HD resolutions.
Also, Microsoft made XHttpRequest as an extension of IE's capabilities.
It was introduced in IE5. I know this. They extended IE to support something that, at the time, was used exclusively by their products.
Everyone started using it, and then other browsers implemented it and it became a standard.
It took three years after IE5 was released before Mozilla implemented it, and even then I think you would be hard pressed to say that "everyone" started using it. Can you name some non-Microsoft examples released prior to 2004, which is where the first notable example I can think of (Gmail) was introduced? Preferrably something that would be mainstream enough that it wouldn't require you to buy a product (such as Exchange) so that the niche browsers would have some incentive to implement it for their users.
And they really couldn't have prevented other browsers from interpreting it in the first place, since it would have been so easily reverse-engineered.
Yes they could have. That is what patents are for, as I mentioned in my previous post. This is why open source/non-commercial audio/video codecs are in a grey area (legally speaking). If Microsoft had patented some aspects of XMLHttpRequest, they could legally file for an injunction against browser developers to keep them from distributing products that infringe on their patents.
This isn't about keeping things in a black box. It is abusing the legal system to restrict competitors from providing competing products.
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
And they really couldn't have prevented other browsers from interpreting it in the first place, since it would have been so easily reverse-engineered.
Yes they could have. That is what patents are for, as I mentioned in my previous post. This is why open source/non-commercial audio/video codecs are in a grey area (legally speaking). If Microsoft had patented some aspects of XMLHttpRequest, they could legally file for an injunction against browser developers to keep them from distributing products that infringe on their patents.
This isn't about keeping things in a black box. It is abusing the legal system to restrict competitors from providing competing products.
If they had patented it, it wouldn't have become a standard, Google would never have used it, and it would still be only used for Microsoft-developed niche applications.
Slow is relative. It is by no means recent, but the only times I have ever thought to myself "Man, I wish I had a faster processor" were the aforementioned video decoding, and compiling software (which doesn't happen that often). Gaming is the #1 reason why people around here upgrade their hardware, and I have consoles for that.
So the decoder distributed with CCCP is a slow piece of shit. Given that another decoder can play the same file perfectly, I'd say that the CCCP decoder should have been written more efficiently. Faster processors shouldn't be used as an excuse for poor programming.
[...] Your hardware is minimally sufficient for decoding HD videos.
HD video with that particular codec ;-) Xvid works fine at HD resolutions.
Also, Microsoft made XHttpRequest as an extension of IE's capabilities.
It was introduced in IE5. I know this. They extended IE to support something that, at the time, was used exclusively by their products.
Everyone started using it, and then other browsers implemented it and it became a standard.
It took three years after IE5 was released before Mozilla implemented it, and even then I think you would be hard pressed to say that "everyone" started using it. Can you name some non-Microsoft examples released prior to 2004, which is where the first notable example I can think of (Gmail) was introduced? Preferrably something that would be mainstream enough that it wouldn't require you to buy a product (such as Exchange) so that the niche browsers would have some incentive to implement it for their users.
And they really couldn't have prevented other browsers from interpreting it in the first place, since it would have been so easily reverse-engineered.
Yes they could have. That is what patents are for, as I mentioned in my previous post. This is why open source/non-commercial audio/video codecs are in a grey area (legally speaking). If Microsoft had patented some aspects of XMLHttpRequest, they could legally file for an injunction against browser developers to keep them from distributing products that infringe on their patents.
This isn't about keeping things in a black box. It is abusing the legal system to restrict competitors from providing competing products.
Patents do not prevent reverse engineering. Patents protect a method / design / whatever, with the catch that a) your design is now fully documented and b) you have a time limit on it, after which anybody can look up the documents and freely implement it. As an example, the NES's patent is up, so many companies are freely making NESes-on-a-chip since it's been fully documented. Whereas Coca-Cola has not patented their main drink because it would have started a timer on their exclusivity. However, they have to spend a lot of money protecting it and have no real legal recourse if someone manages to find it without breaking any laws.
Patents do not prevent reverse engineering. Patents protect a method / design / whatever, with the catch that a) your design is now fully documented and b) you have a time limit on it, after which anybody can look up the documents and freely implement it. As an example, the NES's patent is up, so many companies are freely making NESes-on-a-chip since it's been fully documented. Whereas Coca-Cola has not patented their main drink because it would have started a timer on their exclusivity. However, they have to spend a lot of money protecting it and have no real legal recourse if someone manages to find it without breaking any laws.
Coca-Cola might be a bad example: that foul liquid is valuable because of brand engineering and not the recipe; and even if someone reverse-engineered the Coke formula perfectly, they still wouldn't be able to use Coke's trademark, which is the only part that actually matters.
Patents do not prevent reverse engineering. Patents protect a method / design / whatever, with the catch that a) your design is now fully documented and b) you have a time limit on it, after which anybody can look up the documents and freely implement it. As an example, the NES's patent is up, so many companies are freely making NESes-on-a-chip since it's been fully documented. Whereas Coca-Cola has not patented their main drink because it would have started a timer on their exclusivity. However, they have to spend a lot of money protecting it and have no real legal recourse if someone manages to find it without breaking any laws.
Coca-Cola might be a bad example: that foul liquid is valuable because of brand engineering and not the recipe; and even if someone reverse-engineered the Coke formula perfectly, they still wouldn't be able to use Coke's trademark, which is the only part that actually matters.
this reminds me of OpenCola, the open source cola.
Patents do not prevent reverse engineering. Patents protect a method / design / whatever, with the catch that a) your design is now fully documented and b) you have a time limit on it, after which anybody can look up the documents and freely implement it. As an example, the NES's patent is up, so many companies are freely making NESes-on-a-chip since it's been fully documented. Whereas Coca-Cola has not patented their main drink because it would have started a timer on their exclusivity. However, they have to spend a lot of money protecting it and have no real legal recourse if someone manages to find it without breaking any laws.
Coca-Cola might be a bad example: that foul liquid is valuable because of brand engineering and not the recipe; and even if someone reverse-engineered the Coke formula perfectly, they still wouldn't be able to use Coke's trademark, which is the only part that actually matters.
And if you're Pepsi, there's no real point to doing it anymore since they've built up their own identity with their own taste. They would gain nothing by making a Coca Cola Copy.
Patents do not prevent reverse engineering. Patents protect a method / design / whatever, with the catch that a) your design is now fully documented and b) you have a time limit on it, after which anybody can look up the documents and freely implement it. As an example, the NES's patent is up, so many companies are freely making NESes-on-a-chip since it's been fully documented. Whereas Coca-Cola has not patented their main drink because it would have started a timer on their exclusivity. However, they have to spend a lot of money protecting it and have no real legal recourse if someone manages to find it without breaking any laws.
Coca-Cola might be a bad example: that foul liquid is valuable because of brand engineering and not the recipe; and even if someone reverse-engineered the Coke formula perfectly, they still wouldn't be able to use Coke's trademark, which is the only part that actually matters.
And if you're Pepsi, there's no real point to doing it anymore since they've built up their own identity with their own taste. They would gain nothing by making a Coca Cola Copy.
And a smaller brand would find it much easier to compete on taste, instead, which wouldn't be too hard if they just used sugar instead of goddamn High Fructose Corn Syrup.
But I think this is getting off-topic, unless Microsoft started making soda when I wasn't looking.
OS - XP & Vista
Web Browser - IE
IM - MSN Messenger
Media Player - Windows Media Player
Portable Media Player - Zune
Gaming Console - Xbox 360
E-mail - Outlook
Office Apps - Microsoft Office
Video Editor - Windows Movie Maker
I'm a Mac guy, so my stuff's going to be skewed in that direction -- but some of these are multiplatform.
OS - Mac OS X
Web Browser - Firefox
eMail Client - Thunderbird
IM Client - Adium
Music Player - iTunes or Cog
Video Player - VLC
Portable Media Player - 30GB iPod
Gaming Consoles - Wii, 360, DS
Office Apps - Ulysses, TextEdit, and sometimes iWork
Image Software - iPhoto for organization, and The Gimp for editing
Video Editor - iMovie '08, although I rarely use it.
Coding - vim, sometimes Coda
Screensaver - Phosphor from the XScreenSaver collection, tweaked to show output from command-line Fortune (installed via Fink)
ManusCelerDei on
Yell at Suds for taking a 3000 pixels wide dump in your sig.
-- Echo
I think the issue that I and many others had with the thread in general was that it seemed to suggest that the OP was completely anti-Microsoft, and not just anti-some-Microsoft-products-because-I-don't-like-them. That, personally, is what I was calling retarded, and I'm sure it's the same with some others. I've got nothing against a person wanting to find alternatives because he's not fond of the products that Microsoft offers, and that seems to be what he's after. Wanting to find alternatives because you don't like Microsoft, however, is a little narrow-minded.
Patents do not prevent reverse engineering. Patents protect a method / design / whatever, with the catch that a) your design is now fully documented and b) you have a time limit on it, after which anybody can look up the documents and freely implement it.
Tell me something I don't already know.
Patents might not prevent reverse engineering, but they can keep you from creating a compatible implementation. For example, you can't create compressed GIFs (per the standard) without using LZW compression.
Similarly, it would have been possible for Microsoft to patent aspects of XMLHttpRequest and use it to prevent competitors from creating compatible implementations of it. Sure, developers could work around it, but then it might not be compatible. You can't implement a library for compressing/decompressing GIFs without using LZW, because if you used another algorithm to create an image it wouldn't be a GIF.
Microsoft does a good enough of a job at making lives hell for web developers thanks to their poor CSS implementation. Thankfully we don't live in the hypothetical world where Microsoft created yet another situation were web developers have to design something twice (once for Internet Explorer, another for virtually every other browser on the market).
Patents do not prevent reverse engineering. Patents protect a method / design / whatever, with the catch that a) your design is now fully documented and b) you have a time limit on it, after which anybody can look up the documents and freely implement it.
Tell me something I don't already know.
Patents might not prevent reverse engineering, but they can keep you from creating a compatible implementation. For example, you can't create compressed GIFs (per the standard) without using LZW compression.
Similarly, it would have been possible for Microsoft to patent aspects of XMLHttpRequest and use it to prevent competitors from creating compatible implementations of it. Sure, developers could work around it, but then it might not be compatible. You can't implement a library for compressing/decompressing GIFs without using LZW, because if you used another algorithm to create an image it wouldn't be a GIF.
Microsoft does a good enough of a job at making lives hell for web developers thanks to their poor CSS implementation. Thankfully we don't live in the hypothetical world where Microsoft created yet another situation were web developers have to design something twice (once for Internet Explorer, another for virtually every other browser on the market).
Actually you can make standard-compliant GIFs without using LZW. They'll just be bigger than LZW-compressed.
And reverse-engineering DOES mean making a compatible version. Otherwise why would you have spent the money and time reverse-engineering? Linux has NTFS compatibility completely from reverse-engineering.
You know the patents on LZW compression expired years ago, right?
I mean, PNG is still a far superior format to GIF in other respects: it supports more than 8-bit color, it uses better compression, you can't make annoying animated smilies with it, etc., but GIF is just as free as PNG now.
Daedalus on
0
Options
Hi I'm Vee!Formerly VH; She/Her; Is an E X P E R I E N C ERegistered Userregular
edited December 2007
I was actually thinking of starting a thread like this, sort of, but this probably will do the trick.
I'm going to be building a new computer soon, and I was thinking about different OSes, since I'm considering branching out from my Windows heritage. This is going to be a top-of-the-line gaming computer, and I was wondering which OS would be best to support this concept.
I'm decent with computers, but I'm far from an expert when it comes to manipulating software, etc. For example, I get the feeling I'd be lost if I tried to use Linux. I wouldn't know what to do with a command line.
Is there an alternative to Windows I can use if I'm a Beginner-Intermediate computer user with no coding skills whatsoever? Or should I just stick to Windows and deal with the many problems it entails? And how compatible are modern PC games (i.e. Team Fortress, Oblivion) with alternative OSes?
And how compatible are modern PC games (i.e. Team Fortress, Oblivion) with alternative OSes?
They aren't. Epic and iD typically release Linux ports out of the goodness of their hearts, and they're the only ones. Wine and Cedega (basically Windows emulators for Linux) suck. If you are building a computer for gaming, your choices are Windows or Windows.
edit: if you don't care about gaming, many Linux distros have gotten quite user friendly lately and they've always been very stable. But if you're building a gaming rig, Microsoft has a lock. Sorry.
You know the patents on LZW compression expired years ago, right?
I mean, PNG is still a far superior format to GIF in other respects: it supports more than 8-bit color, it uses better compression, you can't make annoying animated smilies with it, etc., but GIF is just as free as PNG now.
Actually you can make standard-compliant GIFs without using LZW. They'll just be bigger than LZW-compressed.
No. Just...no. I'm beginning to believe that you don't know what a standard is, or are somewhat confused about how the algorithm is implemented in the standard. Either way, here is the format specification if you'd care to enlighten yourself.
The standard says nothing about alternative compression schemes.
And reverse-engineering DOES mean making a compatible version. Otherwise why would you have spent the money and time reverse-engineering? Linux has NTFS compatibility completely from reverse-engineering.
Are you dense? Nowhere did I say that you couldn't produce a compatible implementation through reverse engineering. How the hell do you think Samba has a SMB/CIFS client and server that plays nice with Windows? Or as you just mentioned, NTFS-3g (which provides a driver with write support for NTFS partitions).
I said that patents could prevent you from providing a compatible implementation. That is not a technical reason, but a legal one.
I'm going to drop this line of discussion because it is horribly off-topic, and if this reply didn't make you understand the issue then I'm afraid nothing will short of locking you in a room with Stallman.
And for the love of all that is sacred, learn to trim quotes.
They aren't. Epic and iD typically release Linux ports out of the goodness of their hearts, and they're the only ones. Wine and Cedega (basically Windows emulators for Linux) suck. If you are building a computer for gaming, your choices are Windows or Windows.
edit: if you don't care about gaming, many Linux distros have gotten quite user friendly lately and they've always been very stable. But if you're building a gaming rig, Microsoft has a lock. Sorry.
Sad, but true. Even though Cedega has a dedicated group of programmers, it will always be behind on new releases. They don't [yet] support SM 3.0 or DX10 (not that the later is important at this point in time). And you have to buy a subscription for updates.
Even when companies release a native version of the game (which is rare as it is), is it virtually guaranteed to be well after the Windows version.
And hell, I'll mention Linux alternatives for some of the applications mentioned.
Web browser - Firefox, Konqueror, or Opera.
IM - Pidgin.
Media player - Amarok for music, Mplayer for video.
E-mail - Kmail, Evolution (I use Kmail)
Office apps - OpenOffice, KOffice.
Doesn't fit in the above category, but for those who are writing something like a master's thesis or a book, use LaTeX.
Text editor - Kate
IDE - Eclipse.
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
Erm, but Wine has implementations for SM3.0, and it's free.
Honestly a lot of games I've tried have worked, or worked with a few bugs (for instance no sound in Supreme Commander). However Vampire: Bloodlines doesn't work. And this saddens me greatly. You have no idea.
Personally for text editing I really like Gedit. It's simple, has tabs, and has syntax highlighting for a ton of programming languages. I was surprised, the other day I started programming a web page (hadn't done it in awhile) and the CSS was all nicely highlighted.
Hey, does anyone remember back when Quicktime used to be great, and then version 3 came out, and ever since then it's gotten slower and slower?
Slow is relative. It is by no means recent, but the only times I have ever thought to myself "Man, I wish I had a faster processor" were the aforementioned video decoding, and compiling software (which doesn't happen that often). Gaming is the #1 reason why people around here upgrade their hardware, and I have consoles for that.
So the decoder distributed with CCCP is a slow piece of shit. Given that another decoder can play the same file perfectly, I'd say that the CCCP decoder should have been written more efficiently. Faster processors shouldn't be used as an excuse for poor programming.
The CCCP H.264 decoder is just old, and I don't think it was developed with HD resolutions in mind. I couldn't even get 1080p videos to play correctly on my dual-core machines before I got CoreAVC. Now that HD videos are more common, you can find higher-performance codecs that are specifically designed for handling HD.
Azio on
0
Options
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
edited December 2007
I just want to note that for the record, all the Apple stores in the country with floating kiosks (the little "guns" they carry around that take credit card orders) use a version of Microsoft windows CE to make it happen.
Even APPLE doesn't adhere to the ABM mentality.
syndalis on
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I can't fully wrap my head around the concept of purchasing based on negatives rather than needs, outside of a coordinated boycott, which this isn't.
A mental exercise to purchase not the best product, but the product not made by a single manufacturer? If it so happens the single manufacturer has all of the worst products, then sure, you reach that result. Is that the case here?
I just want to note that for the record, all the Apple stores in the country with floating kiosks (the little "guns" they carry around that take credit card orders) use a version of Microsoft windows CE to make it happen.
Even APPLE doesn't adhere to the ABM mentality.
I just want to note that for the record, those things are fucking awesome.
I had to practically fight my way in to the Apple store last weekend, but I walked out with a Macbook in under 10 minutes.
Monoxide on
0
Options
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
I just want to note that for the record, all the Apple stores in the country with floating kiosks (the little "guns" they carry around that take credit card orders) use a version of Microsoft windows CE to make it happen.
Even APPLE doesn't adhere to the ABM mentality.
I just want to note that for the record, those things are fucking awesome.
I had to practically fight my way in to the Apple store last weekend, but I walked out with a Macbook in under 10 minutes.
Oh yes, I fucking love them. And aside from the obvious front they gave when I went "WAAAAAIT A MINUTE, THAT'S WINDOWS CE LOL" talking about how they hated the fact it was windows... they took my order and had me out the door in two minutes after picking up my iPhone car mount. No fuss, no muss... and it emailed the receipt to me.
syndalis on
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I just want to note that for the record, all the Apple stores in the country with floating kiosks (the little "guns" they carry around that take credit card orders) use a version of Microsoft windows CE to make it happen.
Even APPLE doesn't adhere to the ABM mentality.
I just want to note that for the record, those things are fucking awesome.
I had to practically fight my way in to the Apple store last weekend, but I walked out with a Macbook in under 10 minutes.
Oh yes, I fucking love them. And aside from the obvious front they gave when I went "WAAAAAIT A MINUTE, THAT'S WINDOWS CE LOL" talking about how they hated the fact it was windows... they took my order and had me out the door in two minutes after picking up my iPhone car mount. No fuss, no muss... and it emailed the receipt to me.
It's not like Apple designed those devices... if they did, they wouldn't have any buttons and it would read your credit card info just by flicking your finger over the screen.
Now, they did forgo every available inventory management system in order to design their own. The resulting system (called Maestro) is probably the best (and only?) IMS that runs only on OSX.
I was actually thinking of starting a thread like this, sort of, but this probably will do the trick.
I'm going to be building a new computer soon, and I was thinking about different OSes, since I'm considering branching out from my Windows heritage. This is going to be a top-of-the-line gaming computer, and I was wondering which OS would be best to support this concept.
I'm decent with computers, but I'm far from an expert when it comes to manipulating software, etc. For example, I get the feeling I'd be lost if I tried to use Linux. I wouldn't know what to do with a command line.
Is there an alternative to Windows I can use if I'm a Beginner-Intermediate computer user with no coding skills whatsoever? Or should I just stick to Windows and deal with the many problems it entails? And how compatible are modern PC games (i.e. Team Fortress, Oblivion) with alternative OSes?
For gaming XP with a dual boot of Vista for Dx10 games is your best option. Or you could run a Linux OS and use one of the windows emulators to try and run all your games.
Blip2004 on
0
Options
Moe FwackyRight Here, Right NowDrives a BuickModeratormod
edited December 2007
Why would you bother dual booting XP and Vista. IIRC you can use DX10 with XP, in fact a Google search for "DX10 XP" yields some results on the subject. Vista is a waste of resources, if you really want the eye candy, install Linux with KDE, after all, that and OSX are where MS got all the eye candy for Vista anyway.
Considering that the eye candy is the very, very least Vista has to offer (seriously, fuck that "wow" thing), and the max performance hit is currently very marginal, why bother dual booting to XP?
Alternately, DX10 isn't hot shit at all right now, so there's no reason to upgrade if you use your machine for gaming.
Why would you bother dual booting XP and Vista. IIRC you can use DX10 with XP, in fact a Google search for "DX10 XP" yields some results on the subject. Vista is a waste of resources, if you really want the eye candy, install Linux with KDE, after all, that and OSX are where MS got all the eye candy for Vista anyway.
Except that Alkey doesn't really port DX10 to XP, it just maps the feature calls to their OpenGL equivalents, which doesn't change the fact that DX10 has major architectural changes which needed the way the OS handled it to change, which is why vista is absolutely necessary to properly implement it. Besides that, you'd get better results fiddling with dx10 feature hacks on a game to game basis anyway, since right now most companies are just using it as an arbitrary hardware cutoff, and most of the effects are just masked in Dx9 mode (most notably crysis)
Because Vista does have a better security model, a more intelligent file layout, and is gonna be the defacto OS for the next 4-5 years at least?
I wouldn't make a new machine with XP anymore. No way no how.
It's only the defacto OS if businesses begin to make the transition. If they don't, it becomes the next Windows ME, and everyone forgets it ever happened.
And "more intelligent file layout" is pretty debatable.
I'm not sure if I'd consider that any more intelligent. Just different.
Because Vista does have a better security model, a more intelligent file layout, and is gonna be the defacto OS for the next 4-5 years at least?
I wouldn't make a new machine with XP anymore. No way no how.
I wouldn't shell out the money to put Vista on my new machine when I've got a valid license for an OS that does exactly what I want and need it to. No way no how.
Pheezer on
IT'S GOT ME REACHING IN MY POCKET IT'S GOT ME FORKING OVER CASH
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Posts
So you waited until now to show that you aren't a dumbass?
What the hell is that supposed to prove? Microsoft was using at least some of the TCP/IP derived stack from BSD, and I'm sure Linux was using the code well before Microsoft. With Vista's release Microsoft supposedly rewrote their TCP/IP stack, so that is even less relevant.
Are you going to try arguing that Linux users shouldn't use web browsers because Microsoft has a HTML implementation in their web browser? Because that isn't very far off from what you just implied with your previous post.
If you have trouble connecting the dots, try to think about the origin of the code used in their TCP/IP stack and the origin of the HTML standards.
Would this be the "Not Invented Here" syndrome? W3C published working draft spec for the XMLHttpRequest API (well after its introduction), so it is on its way to becoming a standard. And while it was a good idea (in hindsight), it was never made popular by Microsoft. Maybe you remember it being used for something other than Outlook/Exchange web access, but I don't.
If Microsoft knew what potential it had, I imagine that it would be so patent incumbered that no one but them would be able to freely use it.
Hey man, I'm in the middle of finals right now. Hobbies and the internet are down a couple of rungs at the moment.
In any case I'll repeat the earlier suggestions of:
Pidgin/Adium (if on Mac)
Firefox/Opera
VLC/MPC
Paint.net/Gimp
Notepad++
I know where their TCP/IP stack came from. They didn't re-write it for Vista. Oh, by the way? It's used system-wide. It wasn't just for IE.
Also, Microsoft made XHttpRequest as an extension of IE's capabilities. Everyone started using it, and then other browsers implemented it and it became a standard. Invented by Microsoft. And they really couldn't have prevented other browsers from interpreting it in the first place, since it would have been so easily reverse-engineered.
My post was showing the point to the OP that it's near impossible to go about being No-Microsoft.
There are plenty of viable alternatives to Microsoft out there but in many cases they are either inferior or already used by most people. I was pretty disappointed by both Ubuntu and Mac OS -- Windows has its flaws but the people suggesting I would be better off if I completely migrated to OS X or Linux are clearly insane. Nobody in their right mind can honestly claim that OpenOffice could even begin to replace Office 2K7 except in the most basic of uses. Winamp and Media Player Classic have been the de facto for playing music and videos for a long, long time. MSN Messenger gets the job done if you only use MSN, otherwise you should already be using a third-party solution such as Trillian, unless you want to devote half of your RAM to different instant message clients. And is anyone here not using Firefox?
I really like Entourage.
Slow is relative. It is by no means recent, but the only times I have ever thought to myself "Man, I wish I had a faster processor" were the aforementioned video decoding, and compiling software (which doesn't happen that often). Gaming is the #1 reason why people around here upgrade their hardware, and I have consoles for that.
So the decoder distributed with CCCP is a slow piece of shit. Given that another decoder can play the same file perfectly, I'd say that the CCCP decoder should have been written more efficiently. Faster processors shouldn't be used as an excuse for poor programming.
HD video with that particular codec ;-) Xvid works fine at HD resolutions.
It was introduced in IE5. I know this. They extended IE to support something that, at the time, was used exclusively by their products.
It took three years after IE5 was released before Mozilla implemented it, and even then I think you would be hard pressed to say that "everyone" started using it. Can you name some non-Microsoft examples released prior to 2004, which is where the first notable example I can think of (Gmail) was introduced? Preferrably something that would be mainstream enough that it wouldn't require you to buy a product (such as Exchange) so that the niche browsers would have some incentive to implement it for their users.
Yes they could have. That is what patents are for, as I mentioned in my previous post. This is why open source/non-commercial audio/video codecs are in a grey area (legally speaking). If Microsoft had patented some aspects of XMLHttpRequest, they could legally file for an injunction against browser developers to keep them from distributing products that infringe on their patents.
This isn't about keeping things in a black box. It is abusing the legal system to restrict competitors from providing competing products.
If they had patented it, it wouldn't have become a standard, Google would never have used it, and it would still be only used for Microsoft-developed niche applications.
I mean, duh.
Patents do not prevent reverse engineering. Patents protect a method / design / whatever, with the catch that a) your design is now fully documented and b) you have a time limit on it, after which anybody can look up the documents and freely implement it. As an example, the NES's patent is up, so many companies are freely making NESes-on-a-chip since it's been fully documented. Whereas Coca-Cola has not patented their main drink because it would have started a timer on their exclusivity. However, they have to spend a lot of money protecting it and have no real legal recourse if someone manages to find it without breaking any laws.
Coca-Cola might be a bad example: that foul liquid is valuable because of brand engineering and not the recipe; and even if someone reverse-engineered the Coke formula perfectly, they still wouldn't be able to use Coke's trademark, which is the only part that actually matters.
this reminds me of OpenCola, the open source cola.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
And if you're Pepsi, there's no real point to doing it anymore since they've built up their own identity with their own taste. They would gain nothing by making a Coca Cola Copy.
And a smaller brand would find it much easier to compete on taste, instead, which wouldn't be too hard if they just used sugar instead of goddamn High Fructose Corn Syrup.
But I think this is getting off-topic, unless Microsoft started making soda when I wasn't looking.
I'm a Mac guy, so my stuff's going to be skewed in that direction -- but some of these are multiplatform.
OS - Mac OS X
Web Browser - Firefox
eMail Client - Thunderbird
IM Client - Adium
Music Player - iTunes or Cog
Video Player - VLC
Portable Media Player - 30GB iPod
Gaming Consoles - Wii, 360, DS
Office Apps - Ulysses, TextEdit, and sometimes iWork
Image Software - iPhoto for organization, and The Gimp for editing
Video Editor - iMovie '08, although I rarely use it.
Coding - vim, sometimes Coda
Screensaver - Phosphor from the XScreenSaver collection, tweaked to show output from command-line Fortune (installed via Fink)
-- Echo
It is, particularly since the formula is a trade secret.
Tell me something I don't already know.
Patents might not prevent reverse engineering, but they can keep you from creating a compatible implementation. For example, you can't create compressed GIFs (per the standard) without using LZW compression.
Similarly, it would have been possible for Microsoft to patent aspects of XMLHttpRequest and use it to prevent competitors from creating compatible implementations of it. Sure, developers could work around it, but then it might not be compatible. You can't implement a library for compressing/decompressing GIFs without using LZW, because if you used another algorithm to create an image it wouldn't be a GIF.
Microsoft does a good enough of a job at making lives hell for web developers thanks to their poor CSS implementation. Thankfully we don't live in the hypothetical world where Microsoft created yet another situation were web developers have to design something twice (once for Internet Explorer, another for virtually every other browser on the market).
Microsoft hasn't, but Google has.
Seriously.
Actually you can make standard-compliant GIFs without using LZW. They'll just be bigger than LZW-compressed.
And reverse-engineering DOES mean making a compatible version. Otherwise why would you have spent the money and time reverse-engineering? Linux has NTFS compatibility completely from reverse-engineering.
Care to keep playing?
I mean, PNG is still a far superior format to GIF in other respects: it supports more than 8-bit color, it uses better compression, you can't make annoying animated smilies with it, etc., but GIF is just as free as PNG now.
I'm going to be building a new computer soon, and I was thinking about different OSes, since I'm considering branching out from my Windows heritage. This is going to be a top-of-the-line gaming computer, and I was wondering which OS would be best to support this concept.
I'm decent with computers, but I'm far from an expert when it comes to manipulating software, etc. For example, I get the feeling I'd be lost if I tried to use Linux. I wouldn't know what to do with a command line.
Is there an alternative to Windows I can use if I'm a Beginner-Intermediate computer user with no coding skills whatsoever? Or should I just stick to Windows and deal with the many problems it entails? And how compatible are modern PC games (i.e. Team Fortress, Oblivion) with alternative OSes?
They aren't. Epic and iD typically release Linux ports out of the goodness of their hearts, and they're the only ones. Wine and Cedega (basically Windows emulators for Linux) suck. If you are building a computer for gaming, your choices are Windows or Windows.
edit: if you don't care about gaming, many Linux distros have gotten quite user friendly lately and they've always been very stable. But if you're building a gaming rig, Microsoft has a lock. Sorry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animated_Portable_Network_Graphics
Yeah. I was just using it as an example.
No. Just...no. I'm beginning to believe that you don't know what a standard is, or are somewhat confused about how the algorithm is implemented in the standard. Either way, here is the format specification if you'd care to enlighten yourself.
The standard says nothing about alternative compression schemes.
Are you dense? Nowhere did I say that you couldn't produce a compatible implementation through reverse engineering. How the hell do you think Samba has a SMB/CIFS client and server that plays nice with Windows? Or as you just mentioned, NTFS-3g (which provides a driver with write support for NTFS partitions).
I said that patents could prevent you from providing a compatible implementation. That is not a technical reason, but a legal one.
I'm going to drop this line of discussion because it is horribly off-topic, and if this reply didn't make you understand the issue then I'm afraid nothing will short of locking you in a room with Stallman.
And for the love of all that is sacred, learn to trim quotes.
Sad, but true. Even though Cedega has a dedicated group of programmers, it will always be behind on new releases. They don't [yet] support SM 3.0 or DX10 (not that the later is important at this point in time). And you have to buy a subscription for updates.
Even when companies release a native version of the game (which is rare as it is), is it virtually guaranteed to be well after the Windows version.
And hell, I'll mention Linux alternatives for some of the applications mentioned.
Honestly a lot of games I've tried have worked, or worked with a few bugs (for instance no sound in Supreme Commander). However Vampire: Bloodlines doesn't work. And this saddens me greatly. You have no idea.
Personally for text editing I really like Gedit. It's simple, has tabs, and has syntax highlighting for a ton of programming languages. I was surprised, the other day I started programming a web page (hadn't done it in awhile) and the CSS was all nicely highlighted.
Hey, does anyone remember back when Quicktime used to be great, and then version 3 came out, and ever since then it's gotten slower and slower?
Yeah... how annoying.
Just an aside.
Even APPLE doesn't adhere to the ABM mentality.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
A mental exercise to purchase not the best product, but the product not made by a single manufacturer? If it so happens the single manufacturer has all of the worst products, then sure, you reach that result. Is that the case here?
I just want to note that for the record, those things are fucking awesome.
I had to practically fight my way in to the Apple store last weekend, but I walked out with a Macbook in under 10 minutes.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
It's not like Apple designed those devices... if they did, they wouldn't have any buttons and it would read your credit card info just by flicking your finger over the screen.
Now, they did forgo every available inventory management system in order to design their own. The resulting system (called Maestro) is probably the best (and only?) IMS that runs only on OSX.
or Brawl. 4854.6102.3895 Name: NU..
Alternately, DX10 isn't hot shit at all right now, so there's no reason to upgrade if you use your machine for gaming.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
I wouldn't make a new machine with XP anymore. No way no how.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Except that Alkey doesn't really port DX10 to XP, it just maps the feature calls to their OpenGL equivalents, which doesn't change the fact that DX10 has major architectural changes which needed the way the OS handled it to change, which is why vista is absolutely necessary to properly implement it. Besides that, you'd get better results fiddling with dx10 feature hacks on a game to game basis anyway, since right now most companies are just using it as an arbitrary hardware cutoff, and most of the effects are just masked in Dx9 mode (most notably crysis)
It's only the defacto OS if businesses begin to make the transition. If they don't, it becomes the next Windows ME, and everyone forgets it ever happened.
And "more intelligent file layout" is pretty debatable.
I'm not sure if I'd consider that any more intelligent. Just different.
I wouldn't shell out the money to put Vista on my new machine when I've got a valid license for an OS that does exactly what I want and need it to. No way no how.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH