July 29, 2005
Thats right zealots from all software alligience camps, shut the hell up!
Especially the wanna-be zealots illegally downloading Microsoft software Beta releases off of P2P and complaining about the interface of all things. I think that explains why only MSDN subscribers (which isn't cheap) get the betas. Because only MSDN subscribers are likely to have a clue. i.e. they are the Hardware and Software engineers who have a piece of paper to prove it and are employed in the industry, most other people cannot afford the thousands of dollars a subscription costs.
Those who says there aren't any significant improvements because the interface isn't 'revolutionary' shutup. Any feature that makes a developers life easy will eventually find their way down to the end-user and they will not even realise it and like the computer itself, take it forgranted and demand things which are most probably impossible at the current stage of computer developments, especially hardware wise.
If you are doubting Windows codename Longhorn, download the Avalon CTP, .net framework 2.0 beta and the Visual Studio codename Whidbey beta and learn how to use it to build XAML interfaces for applications, you will soon realise why it's so revolutionary.
Those who think the features in Longhorn aren't revolutionary go and take a good look at the point in time the feature list was announced, yes so many years ago. True some of the features have been included in 'competing' operating systems since then and some of them were only small improvements on existing features. However, Microsoft announced many of them well before any of their competitors, that includes Google's Desktop Search, as well as Apple's spotlight search.
Yes Microsoft were aiming high, and that takes guts, and thats why it's taken so long to get to fruition. It really wasn't so long ago that Longhorn pre-Alpha's would barely run at all, now the interface has been through probably at least half a dozen revisions since then, so it's likely that it's not the last time it'll be changed in the public Beta 1.
Though it's probably fairly likely the glass effect will stay as they had already named the high-end theme aero-glass, to what extent that will be in the final is probably still on the drawing board.
I have no insight into how Microsoft operates or anything like that, just like all you punters out there. Sure there are some conclusions that you can draw from the facts released from Redmond, but there is still alot to be answered for.
And finally to those illegally obtaining Betas. That is still piracy, it's still illegal and if you get caught I say one thing, SUFFER YUO. The beta wasn't made avaliable to it, which is no different to me not making all the thoughts in my mind avaliable to you, however I give you these ones for free with the value of 0.02AUD, not for re-sale.
This article is protected by Australian copyright law and you may print one copy for yourself for personal uses only, or reference a small portion of it (10%) as allowed in Australian copyright law. Yes if you live in Great Briton or the United States or America or wherever my law applies to you!
July 15, 2005
I'm having problems restoring the database backup on my home computer so I can adequately test the attachment MOD without fucking anything up on the site.
I am trying so bare with me please.
The backup is over 100MB of text and compatibility between a few things seems to be causing problems. You guys have been posting alot, this use to be much easier when the site was 1/6th it's size.
July 08, 2005
Back in the days of Windows 95, to play a new media format you would just have to download and install a new codec to play it with Windows Media Player 2. It was a great platform, we'd have one player which just play media files. Windows 95 even included a free game few people remember, Hover! And for those who didn't even know Windows 95 even had an AVI video clip of Weezer's song, Buddy Holly on the disc.
It was a great time in computing, where innovation seemed to be blossoming in the Y2k windup days. In many ways those days spoilt us very much so and we have become comfortable and lazy in the expectation for those days to continue at the same pace.
Then we had the days of Windows 98, and the days of affordable consumer internet access started to spoil us. We had windows media player 6.2. It had the same codec support as media player 2, and an improved interface. These were the hay days of the internet that everybody misses, but there is no way to get them back. We then had real player and winamp come onto the scene in a big way, neither had spyware, and a good reputation, and nullsoft wasn't owned by AOL, a small startup. Nobody cared that windows had a media player that couldn't rival any media players of other companies which were given away for free, even in those days.
I may have been in primary school in those days, but they were alot different. For one the term spyware hadn't even been coined. Redhat and Caldera (now SCO Unix) commanded the linux scene, and the world was relaxed in a state of peace post Cold War days of the 90s.
These were the days the video formats of choice were MPEG and MPEG2, and MP3 sharing was in it's days before all the lawsuits. Napster was large on the scene.
Then came 1999 and Windows Media Player 7, probably the best ever revolution made to the media player. Sporting the playlist features of other players of the time, it also included a skinned and unskinned mode that used XML to describe the skins. For those who think that XML is only just starting to get used, think again, XML made it into wide use long before you realise. The one big feature it had that changed everything was the media library. But it also supported the USB Mass storage Device transfer of songs to external devices. The common driver used by every USB Key (flash drive) and most media players out there today. These are the days before the iPod even existed.
Anyway, whats the point of all this rambling. Give us back our codecs. How are media players supposed to be interchangeable when apple will no longer make windows codec layer compatible codecs of quicktime. iTunes can easily make use of this layer which is present on every version of windows since windows 95. Probably even Windows XP reduced Media edition despite it lacking Windows Media Player. Windows Media Player is only an interface, it's heart and soul lies in drivers burried deep into windows.
And to finish the line of talking about the iPod. The first DAP's were flash based for a simple reason, this was supposed to be the solid state revolution. Thanks to IBM's pixie dust HDD technology the iPod was soon born (still before anyone knew about the iPod). This stiffled the progession of price cutting on flash media due to lack of demand, and has wasted so much extra power due to the need to spin up those power hungry discs in the iPod. The main reason flash continues to get cheaper is because of Digital Cameras.
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