It is a deeply flawed paradigm and a UI dead end as far as I’m concerned. In fact, let me give you couple of links to start you off. If you are interested, you can take a look in the archives to see why I feel the way I do. I have my reasons, but I will not repeat them here for the sake of brevity. Rather, they’re simply new features useful for selling their software.I am a vocal WYSIWYG hater. I guess the summery of my arguement is this: without adherence to an open system and without contributing usable information to the general knowledge base, Microsoft’s advances really cannot be called innovations. Contrast this to my experience over the summer, where I did a great deal of research on techniques to simulate X-ray diffraction, and I could actually use and build upon the stuff I learned. I’ve been working on my own implementation (because the sub-pixel AA in Xft makes italic fonts (Slashdot!) on my 1600×1200 laptop screen unreadable), and in the process of reading the Cleartype papers, I found some genuinely good scienctific work. A lot of thhe problem has to do with Microsoft’s taking advantage of the patent system to patent algorithms, like the filtering used in Cleartype. Great algorithm, great implementation, but so patent-encumbered that all the research done into it is not only useless, but hinders alternative research and implementations. While it can be argued that Microsoft is making innovations in the computer market, it can also be argued that those innovations do no good. If you are writing a new toy OS start thinking about inovation. At least someone bright has enough clarity to see things how they really are. Not being a software or kernel developer myself I have had the same ideia about inovation on computers, those who innovate (Microsoft) are prosecuted for the wrong rea$ons with law suits.īasically people (corporations and PC users) are very narrowed towards change and prefer to fund short term technologies to start a niche market and profit that’s narrowed, if some corporation started a really new technology (similar to TetraPak on liquids storage) they would profit exponentially.įor me the same happens in hardware and software applications: who has created a new way of word processing (excluding latex/lyx, maybe) ? a new way of photo editing ? a new way of electronic messaging, a new wide network protocol or packeting (IPV6 will not do it)? a new way of volatile system memory ? a new way of kernel to application addressing ( a reliable hybrid of real time + time-shared kernel or other ‘really new’ way ) a new way of inputing devices (mices are really bad for day-to-day use) ? (…) isn’t there creativity to put in computing ?Īnd it was a pleasure to read from a respected cientist that MS alone (or almost) does the recent research and implements the inovation (though, throug proprietary standards, damn …) while Linux is another copy of the old Unix stuff which brought only a new and open development model, which is good. That link (.pdf) and statements are the best I have read about computer related issues. Once Apple can get its performance issues straight, and stop chasing people with DMCA, I’ll recommend it most of the time. If I had to buy you a present, it’ll be a PC. And having UNIX is great when she wants to go deeper. But a normal user shouldn’t have to waste her time unless she wants to. My time is almost worth nothing, because I can fix PC problems really quickly. So PCs are only cheaper if your time is worth nothing. If something goes wrong, it’s not so bad the user can figure out where to go. So as long as Apples are reasonably fast, they’re better for normal use because they’re so much more usable. A boring, nitpicky thing that turns us all into accountants. He also says we’re stuck in the hell of benchmarks. But in many little ways, Apple now is innovating too. Basically he says (in 2000) that systems innovation is dead, except at Microsoft. Have you guys read this speech by one of the original Unix developers?
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