Chip Midnight

[unpopular opinion]I find most of the flak that Microsoft gets to be irrational, unwarranted, and a kind of phony "all the cool kids hate Microsoft so I do too" thing. It's every bit as obnoxious and annoying as Linux and Apple evangelicals (not that there's anything wrong with those OS's but OS as fashion statement makes me want to vomit) and the Free Culture "I hate copyrights because I can't have what I want for free" drones. It's all superficial and intellectually vacuous. This suit by Opera, and those brought by Google are without merit. Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer in its OS in no way prevents anyone from choosing a different browser and using it. I personally use Firefox. If Opera's product isn't compelling enough to put a dent in the browser market I don't see that as anyone's fault but theirs. Microsoft is no saint but that doesn't mean they should have to put up with these constant shakedowns which are motivated by greed, not by fairness.[/unpopular opinion]

Richie Waves

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CaleVinson

I agree with you Chip, that a lot of Microsoft bashing is done for the "cool" factor.

That said, this case (which does seem rather odd) aside, my own opinion of Microsoft is unprintable. I don't want to write a wall of text here, so I'll stick to one illustrative example.

What was gained by Microsoft's introduction of Direct3D, given that an open standard for 3D graphics (OpenGL) already existed, and had been demonstrated (through iD's Quake-GL) to provide good support for PC 3D graphics applications? iD's John Carmack was scathing in his comments about Direct3D v3 (from memory, the comment was about it being "horribly broken"), and it wasn't until around v6 that it started to match OpenGL, which took a number of years. To this day, video card pricing presumably has to include the cost of developing drivers for two independent 3D libraries, only one of which is cross-platform.

I'm not a commie, I promise. I believe in the benefits of competition on the basis of quality of a product, price, etc. I don't think Microsoft does. Which is not to say that I think its a good thing for MS to be subject to inappropriate lawsuits. Just that I can't help thinking "Karma" when I see it happen.

Chip Midnight

I don't have much of an opinion about D3D, but I will say in its defense that the alpha sorting bug we all love so much in SL is an OGL bug. How many more years are going to go by before it's fixed? My enthusiam for OGL only goes so far.

The thing Microsoft has done which as an end user has saved me hundreds of hours annually (compared to 10-15 years ago) is to drive adoption of standards. Life as a computer user is exponentially easier now than it used to be. I've still had my share of computing headaches over the past few years, but they've been hardware/driver issues, not OS issues. Their products may not be the end all/be all, but they're quality, and mostly dependable. Microsoft has only improved my computer use and gaming (as a publisher and console maker) so for the life of me I can't understand all the anti-MS stuff. I have (and I suspect this is true for the vast majority of Microsoft bashers) nothing at all to hate them for. Then again, I'm not trying to peddle a competing OS or browser in a saturated market without any truly compelling features.

Fmeh

Well, there's their inability to make their browser standards-compliant and using active-x controls that can't be used on other browsers instead of trying to work with the rest of the community to get something going that could work on all the platforms.

Then they had their own proprietary version of Java for a while until they were sued over it, then there's Silverlight, then there's their attempts to destroy SVG--they consistently want to create proprietary web standards that can only be used in IE and don't want to give the code out so other browsers can use it--I'd say they still have a problem.

Embrace, extend and extinguish - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On the other side of the coin, for people to get after them simply because they INCLUDE a web browser, a media player, a paint program, and other tools--I think it's downright ridiculous. As you and others have said, if we were to hold Apple to those same standards (their whole "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials pretty much REVOLVE around the fact that the Mac comes with so many proprietary tools), they should be down the shitter with as many things as they've included with their OS.

Adobe is pretty nasty too-granted it's for other reasons--but they certainly make a lot of money out of their pricing structures.

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Chip Midnight

How is that different from any other technology company that's competing to have its tech adopted as the standard? They all play the same games, and MS seems downright saintly compared to Apple or Sony. I'm not defending predatory behavior, but it's not like Google or the other companies that sue Microsoft are actually being kept down unfairly by the man. Microsoft rules in some markets, and they routinely get their asses handed to them in others no matter how much money they throw at it. This suit, and the ones from Google are the equivalent of patent trolling, attempting to use the regulatory process as a weapon, for profit.

CaleVinson

Good point Chip.

That said, for on/off transparency, which I assume is the type we see in clothing and hair that results in perhaps the most annoying of the artifacts you note, there do appear to be some options available, even inside an OpenGL framework:

(Alpha-blending and the Z-buffer.)

And interestingly, a one-bit alpha approach is actually under consideration by LL:

([#VWR-6713] Alpha Sorting with a 1-bit alpha channel. - Second Life Issues)

Chip Midnight

Qarl Linden deserves a raise

CaleVinson

Warning: anal-retentive, only marginally-informed & highly-speculative comments follow - read at your own risk.

If I understand it correctly, on-off (1-bit) transparency can be handled correctly and directly by both OpenGL, and Direct3D. Both use the Z-buffer, and the Z-buffer can do the work because for both we can indicate whether a given pixel is to be written into the Z-buffer or not, by testing its alpha value.

Translucency is a different proposition, because to get the final rendered colour, we have to multiply all the underlaying colours, and this multiplication necessarily introduces depth-order-dependence. Even if we restrict the scope of our graphics engine to not support, say, a red window in front of a green window, I imagine that translucency still comes in as a by-product of anti-aliasing.

Why I'm rabbiting on about this, is that I'm now not sure its fair to lay the blame for SL's alpha woes on OpenGL. For on/off transparency, a solution seems possible (and its the same solution for both OpenGL and Direct3D), for the case of general translucency neither library solves the problem itself, and additional sorting/polygon-splitting/whatever code is required on top of the base library.

I think.

Kind of.

Maybe.

Joshua Nightshade

Cale's right, the transparency issue exists in both Direct3D and OpenGL too.

You don't notice it because most of the time content is designed very specifically to minimize or get around it, but I even notice the flicker in World of Warcraft sometimes. There's a boss in one of the dungeons called Murmur which is made up of a bunch of polygons with transparencies to make him look like he's an elemental sitting at the top of a tornado. If I pay attention to the model, I've noticed parts of the tornado "wind" flickering in and out the exact same way as texture sorting in SL.

WoW uses OpenGL too, but point being that it's an issue which is difficult to get around unless you control the scene completely. Which never happens in SL.

Harvey Swenson

The biggest problem with microsofts standards from a developers point of view is that they lock you into other microsoft products and exclude you from using competitors products.

Personally, a few of the reasons (a nowhere near complete list) I hate microsoft are as follows :

Dos was distributed using illegal contracts which meant that any company that wanted to sell dos had to pay for dos for every pc it sold regardless of whether dos was distributed with the pc.

When windows was released, Microsoft hid core parts of the operating system from developers giving it's own products an advantage over competitors. Prior to windows, the most popular spreadsheet and wordprocessors were Lotus 123 and Wordperfect. As a supplier of an operating system Microsoft is untrustworthy at best and criminal at worst.

Netscape used to own the desktop browser market until Microsoft started bundling IE with windows. Netscape spent so much money fighting this that they simply vanished.

Borland used to provide the best development enviornment in the windows world and microsoft couldnt compete on any level. It's products were vastly superior to microsofts offering. Microsoft purchased a controlling share in borland in order to change it's direction and destroyed the competition. btw the Man in charge of .Net is ex Borland Chief Architect Anders Hejlsberg.


The list goes on and on over microsofts manipulation, controlling, stifling and criminal behaviour from stealing code to monopolistic behaviour.

All that's without mentioning Microsofts incredibly poor development standards making their software some of the most innefficient, bloated, and poorly tested products available (Never buy a version 1.0 of anything from microsoft).

Bill Gates has done more to harm the computer industry than any other individual or organisation could possibly hope to acheive.

As far as I'm concerned, the only people that choose windows are those that don't know any better, and those that have to support those that don't know any better.

Unfortunately windows has such a large market share that developers have to write software for windows or lose money but that market share has very little to do with the quality of Microsoft or Windows and more to do with manipulation of the market.

It's taken open source developers supported by companies such as Sun and IBM a very long time to start making dints in Microsofts empire. All of these savings in time that you enjoy so much could have been enjoyed 15 years ago with OS/2 (a vastly more stable, better multitasking, and more secure operating system than even windows is today).


If the only outcome of this lawsuit is that it costs Microsoft money it makes me happy but I'd really hope that the EU can force microsoft to make IE conform to standards so making websites isn't such a pain in the arse and in the future they might think twice about deviating.

Bard Jameson

Yeah, well all I want is a computer that works like my TV and I'm not interested one whit in getting mired in the nuances of OS wars. Nerds enter the fray and go boo-hoo about this and that and all I want is for these damn things to reach a UL standard of some sort so I don't have to choose between X and Y because everyone from major monopolies to Joe the Garage Developer is arguing over who's best.

Guess I don't know any better. Poor me.

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Brenda Archer

I don't know if you're being ironic or not, but this is pointing toward the source of the problem.

Many users will prefer an inferior product that does not permit them any choices, over a superior product that gives them more freedom to do what they want to. Making choices makes a lot of people's heads hurt. I don't pretend to understand this entirely.

I truly believe Microsoft's business model has been based on "we will never force your CEO to have to THINK about software, no matter the actual cost and risk. We are safe. We won't let you know enough to ask a question." It fits in with a lot of modern society very very well.

Harvey Swenson

It's not about which is best it's about which one is breaking the law, preventing competition and shutting down standards which would improve that tv set that you love so much which btw happens to use a standard that all television stations can adhere to rather than only being able to show the microsoft channel.

Bard Jameson

I don't know if you're being condescending or not, but this is pointing to the crux of my argument.

I've been in "the business" of PC hardware, software, networks, etc., since 1988. The one constant I have seen is the never ending battle over who's "best", which has, IMO, been the enemy of "the good". When electricity first became a commercial product around the turn of the 20th century, everyone had their own model - from the wiring to the bulbs to the wattage and amperage. If you bought "Bob's" electricity, you had to buy his wire and his bulbs and get wired to his grid. If your neighbor bought "Bill's" electricity, he did the same.

Not until standardization was "imposed" on the industry was electricity able to become widespread and the creation of electrical equipment able to explode because there was one set of standards to which all devices could be designed.

Was the "best" electrical sytem chosen? I don't know - but a standard was chosen, and the Age of Electricity blossomed because of that choice.

It took about 20-30 years for that "choice" to be made, and odd systems still held on for a time after that, but eventually died out. I'm waiting for that time frame to happen in computers for exactly the same reason - so that a standard can be adopted and we can stop fighting over who's best and let the explosion of applications take off simply because no one has to waste time and money and energy either choosing sides or trying to port their work to every OS that any garage tech ever devised.

Do you know how much of my time is spent on every goddamn project just working out the damn browser compatibility? Waste!!

Making choices "makes a lot of people's heads hurt."? Oh puh-leeze. How uber-nerd. THIS sort of "choice" wastes a lot of people's time and money and effort and creativity. I'm not complaining from my Lay-Z-Boy...I'm shaking my fist from the damn trenches.

Who broke the law? I remember MS being taken down a notch in the mid-90's. When were they last convicted of monopolistic practices? I may be out of the loop a bit, but if they aren't convicted, then I can't see how you or anyone else can claim criminal activity.

And as to reaching only the MS channel? Far from it. The (tacit) standardization I get from MS products gives me more options than I see from any other platform. How many products are available to MS that are not to other systems? Yes, that may be because of sheer market share - but that's a tacit form of standardization. I'd rather it be official - like UL standards - so everyone agrees. But since the computer industry seems hell-bent to shun standardization then it comes in other forms, like sheer numbers of installed units.

Joshua Nightshade

Are you kidding? Compared to OSX with its control panel hidden behind layers and layers of obfuscation and shiny icons? I believe "You don't have to think about anything" is Apple's entire marketing slogan.

Fade Languish

Yes, hidden far away. Like say, in the top corner when you click on the apple symbol, or in your dock and a double click away.

Richie Waves

Brenda Archer

I'm not trying to be condescending, but I spend a lot of time talking to end users who don't even want multiple choice in applications, much less in operating systems. These end users have very specific goals and all they seem to want is an appliance that will permit them to carry out exactly those goals in a linear, memorizable manner.

I suppose we could freeze all change in place, and most people would not use anything but MS Word and Outlook and MSIE to do most of what they do, for the next ten years. And quite a few of the end users seem to WANT that.

Yet efforts to offload these users onto dedicated purpose appliances don't seem to work out. Everybody buys a general purpose computer.

I think time will fix this one as a younger generation doesn't seem so allergic to the idea of effort and they DON'T want everything to be a television. The fear of choice seems mostly limited to people my age and older.

Besides that, are you arguing for the voluntary repeal of Moore's Law and the resulting constant change?

Bard Jameson

For not trying to sound condescending, you're sure doing a good job of it.

"a younger generation doesn't seem so allergic to the idea of effort"? You do realize that "effort", as you describe it, translates into unnecessary friction and cost, right? Do you want to make it harder to do a job, just to appease someone's idealized vision of the world in which uber-nerds rule by sheer force of being willing to work with complex systems and thereby prove their intellectual superiority?

If cardiac defibrillators could be computerized and standardized on one platform so that anyone trained in their use could use one in any hospital in any city in any state or country, would you prefer that, or would you rather these systems compete to the point where an EMT or RN has to apply additional "effort" to learn a new system in every situation, just to make them face their "fear of choice"?

IIUC, Moore's law applies to sheer computing power, not complexity of applications and systems. If anything, increases in computing power should, IMO, lead to greater simplicity in applciations, as more of the complexity is off-loaded to the system rather than the user. So how could I be arguing for a "repeal" of Moore's law, when I see it as the basis for the standardization and simplification of systems that I seek?

If anything, the generalization you make regarding generational differences are quite reversed, in my observation. It isn't effort that I (an my oldbie counterparts) shun, it is unnecessary complexity borne of a plethora of systems devised by every Man-Jack with the ability to code his own world. Why make things harder?

Joshua Nightshade

That's not the control panel.

That's the friendly Apple Settings Wheel where you can control such helpful aspects of your system like text and window colors.

Who needs to change anything else!

Bard Jameson

To quote Joel Hodgson: "You can have a lot of fun with people hopelessly mired in computer nuance".

Fade Languish

I dunno, I looked at pictures of the vista panel and most of that is all in there, it's not just fluff, and the little that isn't is in another equally easy place. Except for the uninstaller, I don't know if it's in 10.5, but they left that one out and I use a third party one. Honestly, you probably know I'm not really an Apple fanboy, I'm happy to bitch about what I think sucks, but most of that stuff is there and pretty easy, and I do need to do a lot of things beyond just changing colours and stuff. Link to image so as not to take up space.

Joshua Nightshade

FADE STOP BEING SUCH AN APPLE ASS LICKER WE KNOW YOU FANTASIZE ABOUT STEVE JOBS.

Lucifer Baphomet

I use windoze because people write stuff for it, and i like to play computer games.

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